Thoughts on Memorial Day

Memorial Day Reminds Us To Remember The Sacrifices Made For Our Freedom 

Yesterday, I marched in the Memorial Day Parade as I have for many years.  In Appleton, where I live, the parade has a small-town feeling with high school bands playing and marching groups representing various local organizations. Lots of people turn out to watch the parade, too, and the patriotic feeling seems genuine.

Memorial Day reminds us that the freedom we enjoy in the United States has been dearly bought by people who made great sacrifices to preserve it, and we march in a parade to make sure that we do not forget those sacrifices. As Pres. Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

We Have Not Always Been Honest

But as I marched in the parade, I could not help remembering the occasions when we dishonestly asked our children to make great sacrifices. We sent them off to fight in wars that did not really defend our freedom and which they could not really win. Our children fought for many years in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Each of those wars were lost without diminishing our freedom here in the United States. They were lost in spite of the fact that our troops performed superbly in the field. Our children defeated our enemies militarily, but we did not attain the goals that we had set.

We Set Goals That Could Not Be Reached By Military Means

We did not attain our goals because they were goals that could not be attained by military means. In each case, our goal was to turn the country where we were fighting into a modern democracy, but that is not a goal that can be reached by winning on the battlefield. The reason is that, in order to win on the battlefield in each country, we had to ally ourselves with corrupt and undemocratic local leaders.  They were unfortunately, the only ones available to be allies, but in each case, the alliance doomed our efforts fatally. The Vietnamese communists took over as soon as we left Vietnam, and in Afghanistan, the Taliban are now in power. Iraq is a failed state. Nevertheless, we have not lost our freedom at home. So, it is completely clear that we acted dishonestly when we sent our children to war in those places.

We Must Resolve Never Again To Be Dishonest With Our Children

On this Memorial Day we must resolve never again to ask our children to sacrifice themselves in pursuit of goals that no amount of heroism or bravery can attain. Never again should we send our children to war on false pretenses.

The Political Conservatism of "The Idea of You"

Social Class in The Idea of You 

By now, most of us have heard of the movie The Idea of You, and many of us have seen it. It is a charming and enjoyable romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. Hathaway’s character Solène Marchand is a 40-year-old woman who meets Hayes Campbell, the 24-year-old lead singer of a successful boy-band. The two fall in love, and as in any rom-com, the course of love does not run smoothly. In this case, the difficulties center around the fact that Solène is 16 years older than Hayes.

A good deal has been written about the movie, but nothing that I have seen deals with the way that it supports and justifies our class structure. In romantic fiction, the protagonists almost always belong to the upper classes. Tristan and Isolde belong to the nobility, and Romeo and Juliet come from wealthy, merchant families. All of Jane Austen’s heroines belong to England’s landed gentry. The woman in a romance may be poor, but in that case, she must marry a prince as in Cinderella or Pretty Woman.

The Social Classes of Hayes and Solène

The Idea of You fits right into this tradition. Solène belongs to the patrimonial middle class, which is our equivalent of Austen's landed gentry who are well off but not extremely rich. The indicators of Solène's social class are clear. She dresses expensively but not ostentatiously so. She owns a house in Silver Lake in Los Angeles. It is not a wealthy neighborhood like Beverly Hills or Bel Aire, but the current median sale price of houses in Silver Lake is approximately $1.4 million. She owns and operates an art gallery, and she is the divorced wife of a successful attorney. Their daughter Izzy is a junior at Campbell Hall, a private school where the annual tuition is more than $40,000. When Hayes invites Solène to spend a weekend with him in New York, the cost of the trip is not an issue. She buys a ticket and goes, but she flies economy class. So, she belongs to the patrimonial middle class rather than the upper class.

Hayes, on the other hand, is very rich and definitely in the upper class. He is the equivalent of Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman or Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. When he visits Solène’s gallery, he buys her entire stock without asking the price of anything. When they go to Europe, they go in his band’s private jet. He has a driver who also acts as a bodyguard. 

Cultural Ideals Support Our Class Structure

How does this setup support our class structure? It does so by presenting its characters as cultural ideals. Hayes is presented as an ideal young man of his class. He is handsome. He is rich but not with inherited money. (The contemporary U.S. is not Austen’s England.) He is strong, muscular, graceful and athletic. He is clever, sociable and charming. He is strong-willed and talented. He writes original songs and plays two musical instruments. He is honest and open.  He is even a good dancer. So, we understand right away why he sweeps Solène off her feet.

She is presented as an ideal woman of her class. She is beautiful, and her clothes showcase her beauty in a way that expresses softness and approachableness rather than hardness or sexiness. She is soft-spoken and polite, but she is not afraid to say what she thinks. She moves gracefully and smiles easily.  She is devoted to her daughter. She is strong and independent, but she easily gives up her plan to go camping to take her daughter and her friends to a music festival at Coachella.  She runs an art gallery, which supports female artists, and she has a devoted circle of female friends. She lives in a craftsman-style house, which looks and feels like a real home. She even makes great sandwiches. So, we understand right away why she captivates Hayes.

Characters like Solène and Hayes are not just individuals. They are ideals, and they function as ideal representatives of their social classes. By doing so, they make their classes and their society attractive and admirable. We can see this in Georgette Heyer's regency romances. When we read them, we love and admire the elegance and refinement of the people that the novels portray and by extension the society that can produce such people. In the same way, Solène and Hayes make their social classes and their society admirable. 

We see its beauty, and we do not see the social inequities that lie behind the facade that Solène and Hayes present. We feel that the society that they represent is good. We like and approve of it wholeheartedly because we are captivated by the two characters. That feeling of admiration and approval is profoundly conservative. It leads us away from any criticism of our society because Solène and Hayes appear to live in our world, and they mask its injustices. We cannot not leave a showing of The Idea of You ready to go out and challenge our world's inequities.

Enjoy The Fantasy and Return to Our World

That is well and good, as far as it goes. The Idea of You is a charming movie. It is a pleasure to watch, and Anne Hathaway gives us a virtuoso performance as Solène. We should enjoy the movie for what it is. (I certainly did.) We do not need to be always in a politically radical mood, but we should remember that Hayes and Solène live in a fantasy world that has been created to give us pleasure. It is not really our world however much it may resemble our world superficially. In our world, there are real injustices. In our world, people go hungry. In our world, people die in unnecessary wars. Our world is not filled with beautiful people leading beautiful lives in beautiful settings. So, while we may enjoy the fantasy, we should not allow it to lull us into believing that its world is our world, and we should continue to fight to make our world a better place.

Black People's Music Is At the Heart of American Music

Did White People Steal Black People's Music? 

A woman recently interviewed on MSNBC claimed that white people had stolen most of American music from black people. It is certainly true that much of American music has its roots in forms invented by black Americans. Ragtime, jazz and rock all have black roots, and forms like country music, which did not originate from black people, have been heavily influenced by rock and jazz. However, to call American music “stolen” misses an important point.

American Culture is Not White

American culture is not a white or European culture, although some people like to pretend that it is. American culture has been created by the American people, including black Americans. We are not a white nation. We are a rich mixture of all of the races who have contributed to building our country, and our culture reflects that fact. 

Black People's Music is at the Heart of American Music

The contribution of black people to American culture has been enormous, especially in the area of music, but rather than saying that white people have stolen black people’s music, I would say that black people’s music has become the most important influence in the development of American music. That influence has been irresistible because of the quality, originality and variety of the music, because of the beauty of its forms and because of the talent of its performers. To say that white people stole black people’s music, doesn't really describe what happened. It would be more accurate to say that the music of black Americans is at the heart of what has become American music. 

The Environmental Movement and the General Welfare

Bringing Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition Together With Constitutional Progressivism 

In the movement to save our environment, Wisconsin’s progressive tradition comes together with the Constitution’s mandate to “promote the general welfare.” No one doubts that our environmental problems are serious or that global warming endangers the general welfare. The disagreements are over the question of who shall bear the cost of the changes that are needed. Today, as in the past, the fight is between the people and the moneyed interests.

Money vs. the General Welfare

The moneyed interests claim that the cost of making our planet livable is too high, but what they really mean is that things like converting to clean energy or preventing the pollution of our water will cut into their profits. They try to persuade us that making our practices sustainable will cost jobs, and they hope that we will not notice that jobs are not much use to people who are dying from cancer induced by the pollution in their water.

On a national level, we can see the conflict between the general welfare and the moneyed interests in the developing conflict over the Biden administration’s new rules governing emissions from coal-fired power plants. The Biden administration is working to promote the general welfare as the Constitution requires them to, while the power companies are already saying that the rules will be too costly and will make our power grid unreliable. 

On a local level, we can see the same dynamic playing out in the fight over CAFOs in communities in Wisconsin. The owners of the CAFOs claim that assuring the drinkability of local water supplies would be too expensive for them, while Democrats in Wisconsin are promoting this and other improvements in the management of our environment. We can see this in Gov. Evers’s clean energy plan, and in the money that Sen. Baldwin has brought into our state to improve our environment.  

Wisconsin's Democrats Follow the Tradition of Gaylord Nelson and "Fighting Bob" La Follette

Governor Evers and other Democrats are working in Wisconsin’s progressive tradition and following the example of Wisconsin’s Senators Gaylord Nelson and "Fighting Bob" La Follette. Democrats are working for the benefit of the greatest number of people and not just for the moneyed interests. We should stand with them in the coming election.