I Confess — I’m Not An Average American.
Most Americans are insulated from the world’s dangers and hardships — and differences. Fewer than one in ten get passports. Fewer than half of those are ever used. We are very isolated within our very large bubble. You may watch us curiously from without, but we don’t much look out from within.
We tend to think young people are more open and adventurous than their elders, but the evidence here is otherwise.
For decades our public schools have taught young Americans they must be inclusive, they must not cause anyone discomfort or distress. Since they can’t exclude anyone, neither can they disagree. They end up homogenized, marching in forced lockstep.
Foreigners and older Americans know what happens when people march in lockstep. Younger Americans don’t. Our schools have worked overtime to erase or rewrite history — to demonize all conflict. To young Americans conflict is never necessary. Everything will be good, as long as we all agree.
How does that relate to “The Post”?
The only way to get everyone to agree is to coerce them with money, or by threat, and the only way to do that is to use the government.
Where older Americans look at the events surrounding the Pentagon Papers as a warning against all-powerful, dishonest government, younger Americans see them as a warning against an uncontrolled, needlessly honest press interfering with the legitimate goal of government — getting us all to agree.
Older Americans and most Europeans have, or have been taught memories of what can happen when the mass of a population marches in unison, crushing all opposition, whether foreign army, or domestic minority.
Were all Germans Nazis? No, but those who disagreed fled or were crushed by the mass of the Germans marching in unison. Were all Cambodians Khmer Rouge? No, but those who disagreed fled or were crushed.
Could that happen in America?
Of course. We’re human, with the same dangerous tendencies all humans everywhere have, and have always had. That’s why you’re right to fear an apparently disinterested young American population.
But you’re right for the wrong reason.
They’re not disinterested, they’re disapproving. They don’t think “The Post” is boring, they think what it purveys is wrong, what The Post did was wrong, it caused disagreement and discomfort, it foiled the government in its accepted, legitimate goal — achieving universal agreement —
— group think.
I’ve spent so much of my life in so many places I’m no longer monocultural, not even polycultural, more acultural. Culture is just the national veneer covering human nature. We’re all humans, and beneath the American cultural veneer lie the same humans who built Auschwitz.
I’ve been away for a long time, and what I’ve seen since coming home is truly frightening; a frightening intolerance in young Americans, a frightening approval of the methods used to homogenize a population, and a frightening ignorance about what happens when you have.
If you have time, read The Authoritarian Within, about this problem.
https://medium.com/@Penseur/the-authoritarian-within-5f12f515613f
