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Getting Excited
(c)1992 by Lois B. Laulicht
Valley Head, WV
Let me explain! In addition to the huge economic and social problems
which complicate our stretched out lives, we must also deal with our
national affliction. We are burdened with national cool and maybe even
international cool! It stalks our universe in politics, business, and
even in the family. It invades our relationships with bosses and
workers, parents and children, and particularly so, in the areas of
commerce and services. Conventional wisdom seems to hold the view that
without cool there cannot be objectivity!
To begin. There is a social expectation to maintain a polite and mild
response to major and minor impositions upon one's freedom, psyche,
pocket book, and time. One can almost expect a surprised recoil of
shock when these varied assumptions go too far and reaction to them
becomes blunt, angry and honest. When one refuses to accept the
stereotypes of race, class, sex or age and reacts with impatience,
communicating an unwillingness to put up with this expensive and
demeaning behavior, the reflexive excuses pour out. It is rarely the
responsibility of the provider of the service but something that
you did that wasn't quite correct. And with a quick sleight of hand,
the victim becomes guilty of the blunder or worse. Within this context
is the most insulting and infuriating expectation...that one is expected
not to fight back.
This social behavior is pervasive. As information technology has
become ever more sophisticated it appears there are more and more
areas where transactions are fouled up. From charge card credits to
accurate prescriptions to delivery of ordered merchandise -- you name
it. Most of us have shared this kind of experience. Some of us are
much less tolerant to the increasing time spent re-doing tasks and
correcting an ever increasing list of mistakes. The information age
appears to have created huge bottlenecks where many of us feel
ripped off and still more turned off.
In important areas touching upon the restriction of social freedom
the reaction is almost always defensive surprise when strong rebuttal
challenges cold war tactics of guilt by association. Very recently a
group of writers with whom I was associated either actively engaged
or went along in defining me an anarchist and Un-American because I
was critical of various computer industry marketing strategies. I not
only refused to go along with their definition of me but took steps to
remind others that this bunch of computer professionals were equating
product criticism with the political ideology of Joseph McCarthy.
(See "The Politics of Technology and PC Sales" by Jerome & Lois Laulicht
or Right.Zip) We were expected to fold our computerized tent and slink
away. That's the problem with not being cool. One cannot, should not,
and shall not play by the rules of "cool".
An example: When I recently saw that this same bunch were putting out
an on-line magazine I asked myself do you roll over and play dead or do
you act in your normal non-cool manner? The fact of the matter is that
covering up important social issues with cool posturing often ignores
the blatant abuse of the social rules we say we respect.
The forum of the BBS, like the radio talk show, reaches many people
and preserves a caller's ability to speak their minds. They are different
platforms but share many of the same characteristics as politicians like
Ross Perot and Jerry Brown understand. These forums provide a place to
help create public positions on a variety of issues and easily
disseminate information and new ideas. One of the things we know for sure
is that the audience is far greater than the number of active participants
and is growing. For whatever the reasons most people do not expose
themselves this way. They prefer anonymity and usually respond with
silence.
There are several very active conferences on ILink, Opinion and
Politics, which are home to a number of people who like to create
controversy and attack other members by making racial, national or
religious aspersions. The belief is that these are depersonalized
descriptions of various groups of people. All of this occurs within
the framework of defending the right to hold and offer differing
opinions or views. One does not lose one's cool in these kinds of
forums because it is both bad form and self defeating. Cool has won
again and we all have all become losers in the process. I turned these
conferences off when Jewish women were characterized as loud, pushy, and
aggressive. I will be offended by that blatant piece of anti-Semitism and
anti-feminism for a long time.
What are some of the areas we are "cool" about? Scales and charts are
pretentious for a non-scholar, so let's put it the terms of our
childhood - getting warm, warmer, hot and hottest! The ultimate
question is the one which deals with the relationship between the
reaction of "hottest" and how one behaves. Perhaps that uneasy relation-
ship is still another measure of our national cool; doing a lot of
talking and taking little action like a TV media event.
In terms of my first example - McCarthy type behavior from my former
associates in California - I was definitely uncool. My reaction to
their slurs upon my character were somewhere between warm and hot,
notwithstanding a call for a name check to the FBI to ascertain any
Neo-Nazi involvement. Will the Fascists on the aforementioned ILink
conferences be surprised at my uncool reaction to their bigotry
relating to my religious orientation or my sex? The Senate was
certainly surprised at the uncool stance of women all over America
when several women upset establishment politicians in Illinois and
in Pennsylvania. That process has just begun! The reaction to the jury
decision relating to Rodney King and the pounding he took in the name of
law and order is dangerously very uncool! The loss of life, the trauma
inflicted upon the innocent, the shame of decent law enforcement
officials around the country has become the symptom of our own national
neglect and responsibility.
And finally, my beloved son told me that a draft of a letter to the
Editor of Newsweek magazine was "rather emotional" The article I
responded to was a critique of Sen. Robt. C. Byrd of WV and his
porking tactics for his constituents. The letter was never sent but
was buried in son's computer and is good example of warmer on my own
personal continuum.
Senator Robert C.Byrd of WV is indeed, a very powerful man, but he is
also a man who has not forgotten his own beginnings. " The Anatomy of
Pork "; Newsweek: April 13, 1992 by Brian Kelly missed the point
thoroughly re: a four laner in remote WV. When this highway project
is completed it will represent one of the FEW successful economic
development strategies that the Fed has financed. This remote and under
developed area in WV has needed a project of this magnitude to make
possible easy and quick access for industry and tourism. Sen. Byrd has
converted a bit of his Congressional credit into a useful opportunity
for the hardworking and under paid people in this part of the state.
If this simple minded definition of pork is carried to its logical
conclusion all congressional activity which helps the few at a cost
to the many becomes pork. It seems to me that the question becomes
what community is in most need of "pork", how these fundamental
distinctions are made, and is there any equity in the crude horse
trading that goes on in the name of local constituencies. When business
is the beneficiary and the pork become rancid, it seems to take much
too long for corrective management action to get into high gear. The
profits are sucked up and the public is left holding a very expensive
bag with almost nothing to show for huge expenditures. The country will
be far better off when more of the heavily larded pork leaves the DC
metropolitan area to provide at least a floor of economic stability
to the many depression ridden communities in the country.
Many of the people who live and work in the Washington metropolitan area
do not live in America any more than do the affluent in California.
They live in the world of prestige, influence, and high living where
their country club fees would feed a small family for a year! Moreover,
the power structure inside the Washington beltway have little interest
in the needs of the American people any more than the upper middle class
in California have in the working people of Watts or San Francisco. The
rest of the society are simply not important others except perhaps
in an election year. Maybe!
That part of the society which objects to rich and pungent adjectives
consider all of this commentary bad form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
recently teed off at William Greider's "The Betrayal of American
Democracy"; Simon & Schuster in the April 27, 1992 issue of the New York
Times. Mr. Greider's adjectives are referred to as the "mud slide of the
author's prose". I think what caught my attention was the observation
that Greider's treatise was "the not altogether startling or original
contention that the wishes of the American people are no longer
expressed by what goes on in Washington". Obviously, as experts at
gauging national cool, Washington is of the opinion that we will not be
GETTING EXCITED, a reality underlined by Mr. Greider. Does the Times
book critic find the truth of our social condition redundant? That
may be, but some public issues don't disappear because they have been
analyzed, criticized or politicized.
Accepting the fact that being cool is often a social compromise of not
wanting to be different, sticking one's neck out, and compromising
one's economic or social condition-- we must ask again:
Do we get excited about the wholesale acceptance of drug abuse in the
society with a concerted "hottest" response?
Do we get excited over the spreading of AIDS into the population at
large with a concerted "hottest" response?
Do we get excited about S&L fraud and demand restitution with a
a strident "hottest" response?
Do we get excited about the shambles of our public education with a
consistent "hot" response?
Do we get excited that both national political parties are owned
body and soul by special interests and demand, by registering and
voting and with our "hottest" response, full loyalty to us-- their
constituents?
Do we get excited over a spiraling deficit and then fight Washington
to free up defense dollars for debt reduction with an imperative
"hottest" response?
Do we get excited over a recent Commerce Department definition of high
wages pegged at six bucks an hour and react with a dismayed "hot"
response?
Do we refuse to accept the mythology that issues of structural poverty,
infant mortality, illiteracy, and sub-standard housing are not local
questions and must be addressed with a national committed "hottest"
response?
Is the nation asleep or do we all need training in getting
excited? Is that not the message being sent to us by the tragedy of
South Los Angeles... with the"hottest" response which will alarm us
all.
May 3, 1992
Lois Laulicht
PCRelay->Ch1