5 December 2018 (Washington, DC) – I watched parts of the farewell to George H. W. Bush from my hotel room, much of it at the Washington National Cathedral. Bush was remembered as much for his personal decency as his political accomplishments. As I noted earlier this week, there has been a lot of revisionist history on H.W. especially his “civility in politics”. Having lived through it, I remember more that Bush ran for President on racial fear-mongering like the now-infamous Willie Horton ad in order to explicitly exploit white fear of Black men. To me it was just more white supremacy that has continued up until the current president.
But as I looked at that assemblage of old-guard elites I realized the mourning was not about just this one man but that he represented an America that was over and done with … because that old-guard elites have less and less control of it. Yes, I know: those people that “rule us less well” are still rich. And white. And old. Most are simply nouveau rich, which means that they are greedier and cruder about their methods of control. Frankly they just seem slightly delusional regarding the “greatness” of bygone eras. But you could not help but feel a moody fatalism. “A golden generation is passing and nothing better will come”.
That’s not true. And it’s no longer up to them. And how remarkably sad it must be to be literally incapable of imagining better people making a better world. That’s what they’re mourning. They literally cannot imagine a better future.
The casual arrogance of saying so and so was “the last” this and that. Says who? You don’t own history. It will be made without you. On days like this, all these people who say they hate Trump invest themselves in his basic premise. That there’s a shining past that cannot be topped and must be reclaimed in part or in full. That our best hopes must lie in restoring what once was, not in imagining what could be. The figures leading mainstream politics and opinion, Democratic and Republican alike, are pining in different ways for the old world, a world that cannot and should not return.
And you want history? The world that was in many ways born during the Bush administration — as the Soviet Union crumbled, democracy spread and America’s preeminence solidified — is under severe threat:
- Russian aggression is again a chief threat to American and global security, with a different type of rivalry under Vladimir Putin but a rivalry nonetheless.
- China has supplanted the Soviets as America’s great rival: The new wars are over trade and intellectual property, with our unipolar status fading fast.
- Europe is fraying: the nationalist right has taken office in Poland and Hungary, and has the ground crumbling under German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s feet. Euroskeptics were swept into office in Italy. The U.K. is leaving the EU.
- The Middle East is a mess: 28 years after Bush declined to march on Baghdad, and 15 years after his son chose the opposite path, the countries of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan are in tatters.
Well, you know what? You can’t fight against time. You can’t ward off your own obsolescence. History knows you will be cast aside. You have anxieties about youth identity politics and the rise of left class politics. You say “hey, the chasms of meaningful moral conflict can be bridged over a friendly lunch”.
Nope. I’m a Baby Boomer (aged 67) and cynic though I might be I am impressed by the younger generations who are more committed to social justice and inclusivity. I had dinner tonight with 12 of them. And I know that us Boomers may have so thoroughly salted the earth behind us that nothing will be able to grow. But I look at my children and my grandchildren and their friends and they all seen so open-minded and accepting. We’ll see.
But democracy … assuming we have not destroyed it already … renews itself with new ideas and people not by looking backwards to lost causes. So to that old-guard elite: “You cannot fight your own obsolescence but you can try … kicking and screaming and refusing to go until you have no choice.” Yep. The world is ending because they are dying: *their* world is *literally* ending.
And, no, they were not the “greatest generation”. All the generations have greatness in them. It’s just that they are not all called to do things as big as fighting a war – thank God.
My generation shall fade, too, so I recognize the old elite mourning with a tinge of the melancholy to come. Yes, it is sad to see WWII generations fading. But we’ll see it attached to our 1960s activist generation in a decade plus, as well as the sinister things we have done to the future generations. There is a sadness at aging.
