Finally managed to get myself back to reading Steinbeck. I read all of "America and Americans" this morning; a fascinating and nuanced essay about the development of America into the (1966) modern age. Consistant with his later writings (see Travels With Charley) and even his more "radical" early writings (e.g. In Dubious Battle) he demonstrates that his sympathies are with people rather than causes. Those who wrote him off as a "Lefty Communist", or who were shocked that such a staunch "Advocate of The People" could express support for the American Soldier in Vietnam never got the man in the first place.
In America and Americans Steinbeck provides a very balanced and accepting telling of the development of (The United States of) America into its then modern (1966) form. He sums up by warning about tendencies which have since become tenets in our culture.
Steinbeck warns about the development of our culture of victimization, which he attributes to the profound reduction of infant mortality. Where once the goal was simply to keep the children alive, now we strive to make the children everything we wish we could have been; often resulting in children who are expected to act in many ways like adults. If the hapless kid fails, the blame is put on the parents and the stunted child learns early to blame someone else for their failure to suppress the beautiful and savage little hedonist that nature created. If the child succeeds in killing L'enfant terrible they never develop into their own person; just another flawed casting from the mold they were poured into. Either way once they are left to fend for themselves the individual is expected immediately to understand that they bear responsibility for their own actions and decisions; despite never having been taught any of the requisite skills.
I don't mean to imply that all parents are bad or all children are awful, far from it. I think everyone falls on a continuum and that a goodly number are generally well adjusted. What worries me is the degree to which we have essentially accepted the outliers; even celebrate them. Its hard to solely blame Honey Boo Boo's parents, when millions of American's tune in each week to watch the train keep on a'wrecking. Pee wee sports are a fantastic opportunity to teach kids to be active and to develop teamwork, but fall flat when we treat them as artificial ego boosters, or, worse yet, vocational training.
I believe that the resulting lack of personal accountability and pragmatic grasp of ones own faculties (no more than half of us can be better than the median) leads in many ways to the divisive clash of ideologies that seems to now define this country. Puritans of all stripes believe that they are the one in the right and that deviation from their idea of the norm is the result of the other guys clearly wrongheaded muddle of a world view. The stereotypical angry and indolent impoverished American who contributes less to the GDP then they consume is no more blind to their roll in building the world that we inhabit than the self-described John Gaults who seem to have lost site of the fact that the less driven "Parasites" are in large part the consumers of their inovations and production.
As our presidential election approaches I find that I dont really care who wins. The choice America makes, what ever it be, couldn't possible cause more damage than the fighting that leads up to it, or the fighting that will follow. If this is the best we can do with adversity (and let me be clear here that I don't believe it is) then I fear we have already stepped onto the same slope towards marginalization that ended the Romans, the Huns, the Byzantines, and every other upstart that managed to break through and change the trajectory of the world.
