Bitterness of Long Wars

_{Flowers at Night by Kateryna Bilokur 1942}

To start with a poem: All the American Poets Have Titled Their New Books “The End” by Cornelius Eady.

I remember Cornelius as a young black man in a field of (mostly) white flowers, occupying his space with a confident, cheerful grace. This poem was published in 2017 but it’s even more relevant now.

Because. . . how did we get to here?

2024

Young people view the world through the lens of their lifetimes. Older people (Boomers like me) can look back and try to identify what has happened since the 1940s and 50s. This is my attempt to sort it out.

After World War 2 returning veterans and their young families tried to re-establish a normal routine, and moreover, a way of life seen through a nostalgic lens. Freedom of expression was not encouraged, conformity was.

Their children grew up in an era of increasing comfort and entertainment provided by technology, but quite a few came to feel something was missing: the spiritual and non-materialistic side of life.

In the 1960s and 70s minority rights were expanded: voting rights, women’s rights, and gay rights. Native Americans and Hispanic/Latino people began to be published and read by a larger audience. Individual rights, such as free speech, especially in literature, music, and film, helped break the hold of conformity. This evolved into celebrating diversity, but also identity politics, and ideas threatening to many who didn’t fit or want to fit into this “new world.”

In the 1980s materialism returned with a vengeance in the form of Yuppies. The political divide between conservatives and progressives deepened. Disco and rap gave young people an outlet, a way to express their hopes, challenges, happiness, and frustrations. The dreams of the 1960s that things would get better were fading. The Yuppie phase ended with “reality bites.”

Hatred was broadcast on radio talk shows in rural America. Hatred for cities and people who live in cities, Democrats, socialists, liberals, non-Christians and Christians who were “not Christians like me,” and gay people, and educated people. Distrust of government in any form, distrust of scientists and “liberal colleges.” People in the cities went blithely on with their lives, not thinking of people in rural areas and small towns, including old industrial towns that were falling into ruin.

In the 1990s the economy soared to the benefit of the middle class, and the black middle class grew significantly. For the first time, black wealth accumulated and looked to be generational. However, the seeds planted by those opposed to public education had taken root, resulting in charter schools and college student debt. Unions were corrupt and losing power.

Wars in Somalia, Iraq (first Gulf War), Bosnia, and Iraq (second Gulf War), and Afghanistan provided an ominous background, a grinding music. The Bush years began with 9/11. In response Congress passed the Patriot Act, which ushered in the surveillance state. (Our surveillance state is not as comprehensive, by far, as the Chinese.) We had to face the reality of the rise of Arab and Asian countries.

The Bush years ended with the Financial Crisis. Many Americans lost part of their retirement savings, and black families disproportionately, as the newer homeowners, lost their homes. Almost all the wealth black Americans had gained during the Clinton years was lost.

The Obama presidency made it seem the fight for racial equality had been worthwhile. Victories for women and LGBTQ people followed. The economy was stable and moderately expanding. But people wanted more money, more jobs. And a sizeable portion of the population was outraged that a black man was president.

Looking back: Famine keeps reoccurring, often in the same places. The benefit concerts by rock stars now appear to be foolish enterprises, almost cynical. Little progress has been made with major problems in the world: the same conflicts flare up, the same hatreds and prejudices, new dictators much like the old dictators, the myriad failures of governments to prevent or respond to disasters.

Today young people who know only the last 20 to 30 years feel they have been robbed of the benefits their parents enjoyed, of hope, and of a future. They cannot afford college, to buy a home, believe Social Security will end long before they retire, that the U.S. will continue to be engaged in “forever wars.”

Have they also inherited the bitterness of a long war between tired adversaries?

Liberal and progressive people are discouraged to find they are fighting the same battles they did in their youth. What is the answer, if every time a gain is made it will eventually be rolled back? What if these gains in freedom are such a threat to a determined part of the population that success is not possible? Can there ever be a resolution?

Should we devolve into autocracy some will believe the issues have been resolved. Life then will be easier for those who resisted change.

Both sides believe their vision is the right one. In the end we have disunity and distrust, accompanied by anger, self-righteousness, and sometimes, despair. This is the legacy we are leaving to the next generation.

What do you think?