Waking Up From The American Dream

These are difficult days for those who believe in community. Tough times for hands across the divide.

An ascetic mountain man stands accused of fomenting anarchy through a 17-year mailbomb campaign. A reclusive group of so-called “freemen” stands off federal officials in a remote Montana town. And has it really been a year since the federal building in Oklahoma City erupted in concussive fury and we learned that disaffected strangers lurk in our midst?

The thread common to them all, common to Waco and Ruby Ridge as well, is the obsession with pulling away from the center. Seceding from the American mainstream, withdrawing to a place of intellectual isolation.

Watching this trend, I wonder why, and find myself tempted by four little words…”once upon a time”…It is a conjuration the heart makes when the fear of present days becomes too much.

And I wonder…once upon a time, when women wore gloves, when dinner was a family event, when kids called fathers “sir,” did kooks and cultists flourish among us? Once upon a time, when Uncle Miltie was king of comedy and Uncle Sam was soul of righteous truth, could anyone have imagined pulling away from the center?

But even a child knows that once upon a time is just the gateway to a fairy tale. Once upon a time, some of us were confined to the kitchen, the back seat and the metaphoric closet. That’s the problem with wistful romanticizing: Sooner or later, you run into the reality that one person’s good old days are another’s hell on Earth.

Besides, the urge to diverge is not new; it’s an old and stubborn streak in the national character, exhibited by everyone from Jefferson Davis to Malcolm X. It’s noteworthy that we define both “cool” and “courage” the same way: as individualism - doing it your own way.

But something has changed since once upon a time, hasn’t it? These days, our isolationism is liberally salted with a new, free-floating anger that seems wholly unconnected to the state of the union. We enjoy a healthy economy, a falling crime rate and peace, and even the makers of garbage culture are on the defensive, if not in full retreat. So the rebels are without a cause, unless of course, you really believe the U.N. is plotting to overthrow the country.

Assuming you don’t, then perhaps like the rest of us you wonder why many are so angry and disaffected. Once upon a time we believed in a greater us. A larger we. Now the center holds us through force of law, but the us, the we, the sense of common cause above individual goals, seems largely eroded.

Did it happen because women doffed their gloves, families ate dinner in staggered shifts and fathers became sensitive and nurturing? Because Uncle Miltie went off the air and Uncle Sam went off the deep end and lied about war, politics and who knows what all else? Or, was it because we discovered that everyone is a victim, including southpaws, guys named Herb and people who spill hot coffee on their laps?

I think it happened because our confidence shattered, broke on the shoals of lowered expectations and diminished vision. Never mind that our expectations were too high to begin with, our vision too lofty to sustain. Never mind that we were naive, came roaring out of the 1960s expecting to not just confront poverty, discrimination and dysfunction, but to end them instantly and for all time. When all we got for our hard work and optimism was simple progress, many of us despaired.

We undervalue progress, I think. They know its worth in places like Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Rwanda. They know that sometimes circumstances force us to move in inches, not leaps, but that what is most important is just, at all costs, to move. Once upon a time, we knew that, too. Of course, once upon a time our people were not in the woods building bombs and gathering guns. Once upon a time the center was held by something stronger than law.

Now angry strangers prowl the fringe and the heart must call on conjurations, because suddenly there is so much to fear.

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