Stranger in a Strange Land

Ideas fascinate me.  I can get caught up in a swirl of thoughts where one thing leads to another and another. Even among a handful of regularly visited web sites, there might be something to set me off.

An end-of-the-year book guide is one such danger.  There's a lot that won't interest me, and then, toward the end, is a recommendation from Norman Rush of George Scialabba's For the Republic: Political Essays.  It's a selection of reviews and essays Mr. Scialabba has published in various journals for over 30 years.  I quickly learned that this is his third collection (a fourth is out of print). I was familiar with many of the publications, but I don't recall his name from anything I've read previously.  But he's described as an independent, leftist intellectual, so I bought all three books.

It was interesting to learn that while Mr. Scialabba works for Harvard University, he's not on faculty. He maintains an archive of his work (though it doesn't always seem to be on-line).  The first review in his first collection covered late 1980's publications by Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.  I was hooked. He even has a story about getting started with his writing by sending a review of an earlier work by Chomsky to Village Voice just to let them know it was something worth reviewing. So far, his essays have introduced new authors to me, explained ideas, and developed context.  I even learn about books I actually own, but never get around to reading.  And it makes me want to buy just about every book he reviews that I don't already own. Mr. Scialabba seems like the kind of writer I'd like to be if I had a way with words and knew about a hundred times more than I do.  He writes

because I am too lazy to be an activist, and I do have these political emotions. It keeps me from just choking on them, and it also allows me to avoid getting out and expending any actual physical energy on political organizing.

Which more or less explains this whole "blog" thing for me.  Fortunately, Mr. Scialabba has an audience.

Ideas fascinate, but some thoughts are difficult to bear.  Knowledge is good, but politics can get in the way of acting on what you know.  Sometimes we reach the conclusion that there is no answer.

"Plutocratic Vistas" starts out describing the impact of the financial crisis on Harvard.  People are worried, get angry.  But, "what can ya do?"  Well, Marx had an answer.  And there are other thoughts such as Callenbach and Phillips' citizen legislature chosen by lot that Mr. Scialabba outlines.  Despite the fact that one-third of Americans reject evolution, David Graeber suggests that most people don't hold on to illusions such as "America is a democracy", but they think that other Americans do.  Social control is possible not because anyone really believes the bullshit, we just think our fellow citizens are too stupid for anything to change.

By the end of the essay, I'm re-introduced to Morris Berman, who, in a series of books, concludes that the American experiment is over.  Berman does think that even smart Americans are not very bright. The decline has been a long time coming--nothing changes because we just don't tolerate criticism of the country. (Checking today, it turns out reasonably priced print copies of Why America Failed are hard to find.) Berman calls the United States a nation of hustlers and states that the American Dream is the problem, not something to aspire to.  Citing the upside down priorities of the US, Berman moved to Mexico where he finds a different set of values such as community--no longer a stranger.

Politics is depressing.  The thought of American decline or that something like climate change could mean the end of industrial civilization is just difficult to live with.  I think a friend in college once told me, "If you're happy, you're not paying attention."  There's a certain comfort in knowing that it's not your own problem, everything really is fucked up.  Mr. Scialabba ends a bit more upbeat--that "[w]e may as well give Money a good fight." And I buy that.  Even if decline can't be avoided, we can strive for a "soft landing".

But there's depressing and there's depression.  The very next essay is "Message from Room 101", a reference to George Orwell's 1984.  Mr. Scialabba's ordeal was somewhat hereditary but also related to money problems.

We are all issued neurological shock absorbers, usually good for a lifetime of emotional wear and tear. But if you’re equipped with flimsy ones, or travel an especially rough road, the ride becomes very uncomfortable.

I can't claim to know anything of his experience.  It's interesting how simple calculations point to money solutions--I recall calculating how much easier things would be if I could get just so much of a raise.  But I was 24; I've been lucky not to have that worry at 54.

Is everything political?  Well, it seems so.  Even as he makes the calculations that could bring him relief, Mr. Scialabba acknowledges that there would indeed be more worthy recipients than him. And then a shock:

The first draft—very much shorter and even more purple—was a suicide note, to be left behind on the riverbank or rooftop or night table.

But he got past it without sugarcoating the truth.

Blessedly, miraculously, everyday unhappiness returned.

The essay was published to try to reach out to others who might need help.  And the book is dedicated, in part, to Aaron Swartz which underscores, for me, how serious politics can be.