The Bus As Civic Space

I believe that Americans don't talk enough to one another. We don't discuss politics with people we disagree with, we don't mingle with people beyond our rather narrow habitual territories, we don't explore enough of the cities that we live in. We live in secluded villages of the mind, only rarely stumbling into the haunts of our neighbors. And this is okay. Faced with the overwhelming hubub of modern life, we can do no better than to fracture the civic mirror and pick and choose what picture we look at. But it would be nice to have a shared civic space in the American city - and I don't mean 'space' in the English major way here, no; I mean a real-life physical space. We have television, sure, but we only watch television - few of us actually contribute to it.

But wow, my belief in communicating with people who disagree with me sure got tested this morning. My seat-mate on the bus was reading a book, and I thought I would be nice and friendly and ask her what it was. She was a little hesitant, and actually turned the cover a bit away from me so I couldn't peer over and read the title. After a moment of two of squirming, she asked:

"Are you a liberal?"

Rather than saying yes, or that I was a progressive, or that I have a set of complicated political views that I don't feel can be summed up in a label like 'liberal' or 'conservative' I just said "I don't know." Which surprised my seat-mate, an overweight blond woman who was slurping gas-station coffee.

The book turned out to be Bill O'Reily's Culture Warrior. When she told me this I tensed for a fight, but told myself - well, okay, I should actually listen to her to see if I learn anything. She told me that O'Reily was the only person who really was brave enough to take on the real issues. And that Fox News was the only news station that had the courage enough to deal with unpopular subject. I was sitting there, thinking of all the funny things I could say to her, thinking of how sad it was that she had taken a drink of the Fox News Kool-Aid, and thinking that it is exactly this sort of ignorance that is the problem with America these days.

I told her that I thought O'Reily a great bully, and that he was leading to an era of divisiveness in America, which led to a lack of people who disagreed with one another - like me and her - from talking to each other. But I don't need to tell you what I said. You already know all the wonderful arguments I leveled against her.

But here's the thing: when I left the bus we both remained unconvinced. I had her promise that she would watch some Keith Olberman, and I promised I would track down a Bill O'Reily book and give it a chance. But the point of this - the insight I came away with - is that it's incredibly hard to talk with someone if they're working from a different set of assumptions farmed from a different universe of information. And that's the huge problem with Fox News in particular, that in its hectoring blaring echo-chamber of 9-11 doom, it distorts not only national discourse - but people's entire universe of understanding - so much that it becomes increasingly impossible to talk across that chasm.

But as soon as I write this, I think: so what? Is there really all that big a gap right now between Americans? Are we at a special juncture in our nation's history at which we are seeing a sundering of the national discourse, or did we ever have a monolithic discourse to begin with? Am I just teary-eyed and nostalgic for a myth, a myth of America where two people on the bus can talk to each other?

The trouble with Fox News isn't just that the most popular television news network in America spreads sensationalist propaganda when it doesn't make outright lies - but it's that by misinforming people to so great a degree, it makes it so that meaningful argument in which both sides can change their mind incredibly difficult, if not in some instances impossible. If, when she thinks of liberals, she thinks about latte-swilling Ragnorocks of bothersomeness, and I think of happy caring people, swilling lattes, there is little common ground for debate left. And that's a serious problem, a moral problem, one that will impress itself upon this country in the coming years.

Sophistication / Alienation

(Image from unasthetic, found on digg.)

So, to get the basic outline of my mood, add up these two pieces of media: I've been reading George Saunders' new book, In Persuasion Nation, and listening to some Joanna Newsom.

And let's just illustrate the mood: I was walking through the supermarket last night, and all the products lined up looked like little soldiers, and I kept on thinking that there was something horrible wrong and empty about a supermarket at night. Maybe something horribly wrong when you were alone, friendless, and poor - like I was - trying to find solace in food, in consumption, in buying. There was a hint that the supermarket, or whatever grim force had organized it, was actually responsible for my feeling lonely. And thus I imagined a horrible conspiracy mustered against me and against every other sensitive person: to somehow rob their souls of this bright essential thing, to feed our loneliness and despair so that we would buy more, only because when we bought more, we needed to work more. And so work itself became this grim fuel for an engine grand and sinister. This vision! it came to me suddenly! as if the curtain hiding it from my sight was just ripped away! And America was no longer America anymore, but one huge strip mall, the roads clogged arteries leading to depression and loneliness, the houses no longer comfortable, but cages, our diseased heart beating only so we could lurch further into - into what? Some inexpressible doom. And me! How little I seemed next to it! And I have the pride and conceit to think that my little sadness can break it.

Now, the other side of this feeling, which may be particularly modern, is that at the same time as I was drawing this rather apocalyptic vision of capitalism I knew that I was just in a bad mood, that this discontent was somehow contingent and temporary. Which didn't make the feeling any better. It was like Don Quixote saw his windmills, wanted with all his heart to fight them, but also knew, knew with the better force of his reason, that they were windmills after all, and that he was a faker, for all his bravery.

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. My discontent is actually built on some pretty solid ground, I think. It's obvious, frankly, that our society is sick. And the precise source of that sickness may be a mystery, but it is fair to say that our materialistic tendencies are exploited in the extreme, while the spiritual and artistic fruits of our lives are left to rot.

The problem a young sophisticate faces when he turns and faces his culture with disgust is this: Do you turn away from the world, just because it seems for a moment wrong? That world is filled with plenty of people, people who may need help, and turning away from them in favor of Joanna Newsom albums and masturbation just seems a little bit solipsistic. But on the other hand, isn't it just pure ego to think that I, a wet-liberal sophisticate, just because I have some refined taste and political pretensions, actually have a duty to change the world? That those other people need my help? Because they don't have as good taste as me.

Beneath that, I whine to myself. I want someone - preferably the girl I'm interested in in a romantic way - to come and fix me. But, sad for me and sad for every single male sophisticate from the Song of Songs to the Counting Crows - the girl has her own life. And then, the cycle continues: I cannot even feel this selfish need wholeheartedly, I know it will pass, I know it is selfish, I know it is fake.

This wider cycle continues on. A cycle of alienation, disgust, and separation. And yet what is one to do?

Now, normally I really like supermarkets. I find there to be such a joy in looking at the fields of broad bright color of the food, and to know that you can have it, eat it - have you ever stopped to think the sheer bounty that you can find at your local supermarket? Foods of every sort, chocolate, ice creams, pizzas, peaches anything you want! Normally I can control myself from feeling alienated. I can look at everything pretty judiciously and gently. But what makes the floodgates of my ego fall down, and lead to this - to mopey sadness? To this mixture of pride and alienation? To this tangle of despair and ego? Because whatever it is, I think that more of us feel this confused feeling - only it's hard to name, hard to express.

And so this is how we register our discontent. This is how we rebel. The rebellion of an ingrown toenail.