Confidence, unity and The New York Review of Books
By: Notebook M
Tags: Democratic Party, Dignity, New York Review Of Books, Working Class, National Unity

Confidence, unity and The New York Review of Books

By Lanny Morgnanesi

When I think of the Democratic party, I think of my father. But the Democrats of his day are not the Democrats of today, which may be why we have — sorry, had — Donald Trump.

My father was an odd mix. Mostly, he was a union man with imperfect grammar who felt more comfortable with working people than with the highly educated. Still, when in social settings with his so-called betters, debate often ensued and my father would prevail. When the debate concluded, the highly educated walked away not just in defeat but with a half-hidden, smoldering respect.

My father, this working man, not only read books, he read the New York Review of Books. And that was important. Armed with the Review, he could teach modesty to those who felt superior, allowing people on two social plateaus to sit in the same room and form a political alliance that served them both.

William F. Buckley and Mohammad Ali

Working people, who are not dumb, should not allow others to think they are. And they should not be driven to join a party that plays to their insecurities while doing little for them. David Mamet, a screen writer and dramatist, claims (partly in jest), “There has never been an illiterate Jew.” By that he means even the uneducated Jew habitually pursues knowledge and truth. In doing so, he maintains dignity. Years ago, I remember seeing a cool and confident Mohammad Ali on TV with conversative commentator William F. Buckley. Buckley had an Ivy League education and an immense vocabulary. Yet Ali, a high school dropout, was his equal. (Ali once said, “I’m the only boxer in history who is asked questions as if he were a senator.”)

For the moment, however, let’s put aside class distinctions.

If you like ideas, reason, logic, non-conformist opinions and excellent writing, you should read the New York Review of Books. For an enrapturing introduction to it, watch the Martin Scorsese documentary, The 50 Year Argument, which brings the Review and all its writers to life.

As a quick summary, The New York Review of Books was started in 1963 during the New York City newspaper strike. The literary world was upset that books were not being reviewed, so editors Bob Silvers and Barbara Epstein fill the gap with this new publication. In addition to reviews, it would have essays and reporting by the best American writers, people like Truman Capote, Normal Mailer, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, William Styron — it goes on and on.

When my father finished with his copies, he would give them to me. The most enlightening passages were underlined by him in yellow. Without having asked him, he exposed me to the intoxicating heights of intellectualism, to the results of deep learning and research and to the elegant breath of artistic prose. The Review made me want to be around these writers, to hear them talk and perhaps to even share some of my ideas. To me, the New York Review of Books represented a summit existing in a god-like atmosphere.

Oddly, I could see my father there, among that group, getting on and getting on well … and then feeling uneasy when all would adjourn to eat in some chichi restaurant. He preferred eating with the working class.

Founding editor Bob Silvers

I was struck by more than a couple things while watching Scorsese’s documentary. One was this: There was a time when the best writers were national voices who had attained celebrity status. The educated and non-educated watched the Dick Cavet show to see Mailer and Vidal tear each other apart in point and counterpoint. Top writers were always on TV and in the news. Few writers today gain such status. And why not?

I can only surmise that the less educated have chosen to increase the distance between themselves and the world of the mind, or maybe the world of the mind has knowingly or unknowingly distanced itself from them. Mailer, on the Cavet show, said if you aren’t a success, no one listens to you. Now, in our current era, those who are not a success don’t listen to those who are. Money, a measure of inclusion or exclusion, also could be a factor, since the less educated now have considerably less money.

It was not always this way.

The American Dream

When I was growing up in suburban Philadelphia, many a working man could afford to own a home, send their kids to college and maybe even buy a vacation bungalow at the Jersey shore, all while his wife stayed home and managed house and family. Typically, he had job security and spent his entire career at a single company. He didn’t much worry about saving for retirement because his pension covered that.

So what has become of the so-called middle class? The New York Times sketched it out this way:

In some pretty good years for the middle class, from 1948 to 1979, worker productivity grew by 108 percent and wages grew by 93.2 percent. Then from 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent but worker pay rose by only 11.6 percent. Meanwhile, chief executive salaries spiked by a spectacular 940 percent.

The Pew Research Center says in 2018, households in the top 20 percent earned 52 percent of all U.S. income. It says income inequality in the U.S. exceeds that in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, Japan and Canada. And it says the American growth of the middle class has been slowing for the past five decades.

This is humiliating.

Working people may be unaware of these statistics, but they sense them, feel them and fear them. And all indications are of a burning animosity that is growing. According to columnist Tom Friedman, it’s not so much money that the working class desires. Rather, it’s dignity. He says further that, in the past four years, the only person willing to restore that dignity was Donald Trump.

“They’re attracted to his attitude — his willingness and evident delight in skewering the people they hate and who they feel look down on them,” Friedman said in a Sept. 8 New York Times column. He adds, “Humiliation, in my view, is the most underestimated force in politics and international relations. The poverty of dignity explains so much more behavior than the poverty of money.”

Then Friedman quotes Nelson Mandela, who led a successful revolution of the humiliated in South Africa: “There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated.”

They revolted in South Africa, but in the U.S. — with our cars, phones, widescreen TVs and well-stocked supermarkets — people of all sorts are, for the most part, committed to the status quo. In many respects, that’s a good thing. Nevertheless, the threat of instability always remains when there is great inequality, and humiliation.

French Revolution

In the Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens retells a true account of a Parisian mob during the French revolution. With nothing in their stomachs, the energized, blood-thirsty horde grabbed a high government official who had advised starving people to eat grass. They tied him up, dragged him through the streets and repeatedly stuffed his mouth with grass. Afterward, his detached head went up on a pike.

I’m reading Dickens now. When I got to this part I thought of the normally passive people in the U.S. who have learned it is not so hard to smash a store window and rob, or to set a government building a blaze. These are not Trump voters, but like so many Trump voters they have been denied dignity and have felt humiliation. If these two groups — dissatisfied people who hate Trump and dissatisfied people who love him — ever went on a tear together, our Republic and our tranquility would be in grave danger.

Years ago at the University of Missouri, I met a convicted armed robber taking a master’s degree in journalism. He told me, “If everyone in jail had been shown even a modest amount of dignity on the outside, they’d never have committed their crimes.”

And so Tom Friedman has a solution to the potential destabilization of America. To those who think Trump has subverted and misdirected the working class, he provides this antidote : Listen.

Listening, he says, if the ultimate sign of respect. It is even better than action. By listening he means deep listening, not just waiting for someone to stop talking. This affirms dignity and brings unity and peace. In addition to listening, perhaps Democratic progressives — who will need allies in the coming months and years — also could lecture less on what to think, say and do. Tone down directives on permissible Halloween costumes and poorly told jokes. Stop dictating the use of new pronouns . . . that sort of thing.

Another solution might be to read The New York Review of Books. Its broad knowledge, its brilliant light and its untethered intellect will instill confidence and create a form of mental equality that brings internal dignity even when external dignity is absent. The Review is a powerful tool for self-empowerment. For my father, it was shield and sword. With it he could mount the battlements, head high and fearless.

There is no greater salve than dignity. And when a population has dignity, the nation has peace, pride and a trajectory for unlimited greatness.

In short: You from Harvard, listen more. You from the mean streets and the streets of hope, read more. End of lecture.