COLUMNS
Talk Show 14 with Elisa Albert, Anita Diamant, Michael Lowenthal & Jim Shepard
/ Jaime Clarke
06.02.08
Lowenthal: The crowd in Copley Square was so stunned and sad. It was as though our optimism was a beautiful creature that had been amputated at the knees. Against all our better judgment during the dark times since 2000 and Bush's stolen election, we had kept some faith in "the system" and its ability to correct itself, in truth as opposed to truthiness, in the "reality-based community." But now we seemed irreparably detached from our country and its people (and it was weird to have this happen in real time, in the rain, with John Edwards less than fifty feet away, seeming so small up there on that stage). I know many folks who gave up entirely on politics after this, who refused to read the newspapers or to vote again. Which means that Bush and his team scored their ultimate victory, far beyond this specific election.
Shepard: My family (mother, father, older brother, and me) spent the rest of the day and the days following around the television, seeing the same information over and over, until *that* changed dramatically, too, when Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated in custody. Throughout all of that, the family's inability to look away, to go on to something else: that also seemed undeniable evidence that this was a massively important event.
––Which traumas for other generations, past and present, do you imagine are the equivalent?
Albert: I don’t think generational trauma, by its very nature, can ever be equivalent to anything but itself. It’d be ridiculous to bring up Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK here, would it not? But I’d be curious to talk to someone a decade younger than myself about Britney’s head-shaving and etc.
Diamant: I wouldn't want to compare this to wartime traumas, or even to other epidemics, since AIDS was/is such a loaded cultural phenomenon as well as a medical crisis. I leave it to history and historians to determine whether it was truly a "unique" moment.
Lowenthal: I don't know. I think of the challenges to progressive Americans' faith during the 60s, when so many bright and shining leaders were assassinated. I know these events must have been unbearably hope-crushing. But it was possible then, I imagine, to believe (and perhaps rightly) that the killings were the acts of deranged individuals, and didn't represent the will of the mainstream. Indeed, in some cases the losses may have galvanized the majority to further progressive action. In 2004, by contrast, nobody was killed, but the loss of faith was severe because it became clearer than ever that the majority of Americans––tens of millions of my countrymen and -women––was committed to taking action AGAINST progressive values. The majority (or, the majority of those who participate in the political process) seems to be small-minded, selfish, and fundamentally skeptical of the idea that government can be a force for good.
Shepard: Who knows, really? The intensities of traumas I'd assume have everything to do with individual idiosyncracies. I'm sure I had some classmates who were more or less unfazed by the Kennedy assassination. I don't remember, now.
Shepard: My family (mother, father, older brother, and me) spent the rest of the day and the days following around the television, seeing the same information over and over, until *that* changed dramatically, too, when Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated in custody. Throughout all of that, the family's inability to look away, to go on to something else: that also seemed undeniable evidence that this was a massively important event.
––Which traumas for other generations, past and present, do you imagine are the equivalent?
Albert: I don’t think generational trauma, by its very nature, can ever be equivalent to anything but itself. It’d be ridiculous to bring up Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK here, would it not? But I’d be curious to talk to someone a decade younger than myself about Britney’s head-shaving and etc.
Diamant: I wouldn't want to compare this to wartime traumas, or even to other epidemics, since AIDS was/is such a loaded cultural phenomenon as well as a medical crisis. I leave it to history and historians to determine whether it was truly a "unique" moment.
Lowenthal: I don't know. I think of the challenges to progressive Americans' faith during the 60s, when so many bright and shining leaders were assassinated. I know these events must have been unbearably hope-crushing. But it was possible then, I imagine, to believe (and perhaps rightly) that the killings were the acts of deranged individuals, and didn't represent the will of the mainstream. Indeed, in some cases the losses may have galvanized the majority to further progressive action. In 2004, by contrast, nobody was killed, but the loss of faith was severe because it became clearer than ever that the majority of Americans––tens of millions of my countrymen and -women––was committed to taking action AGAINST progressive values. The majority (or, the majority of those who participate in the political process) seems to be small-minded, selfish, and fundamentally skeptical of the idea that government can be a force for good.
Shepard: Who knows, really? The intensities of traumas I'd assume have everything to do with individual idiosyncracies. I'm sure I had some classmates who were more or less unfazed by the Kennedy assassination. I don't remember, now.