Disillusionment in the Army and in America’s Literary Scene

[The following excerpt is sure to offend some, given my father’s caustic characterization of the typical men in America’s army. Even he recognizes his “sullenly superior attitude,” which would quickly earn him an “elitist” denunciation from many in today’s America. He uses “the discrepancy between human nature in the barracks and in the political science textbooks” as a springboard into a rumination about the state of American literature, and his own desire to ultimately write novels that do more than cater to the popular taste.

I like this excerpt because it illustrates my father’s ambitions and idealism as a young man, but also his realism and self-doubts. Tangentially, and sadly, one comment also references two marginalized professions of post-war America: fundamentalist ministers and book critics.  One of those groups went on to thrive in the subsequent years, but not the one that my father would have hoped.]

May 6, 1946 (Fort Lawton, WA)

The first summer that I was in the Army I wrote a letter to President Hutchins of the University of Chicago suggesting, among other things, that the Army qualified as a mass school of democracy. When he answered, he said that the only thing he remembered learning in the Army was how to avoid details. He suggested politely that I was wrong as hell.

Three years later I know that he was right. Very few men, I believe, have been improved by their contact with the Army, democratically or otherwise, and a great many men have been worsened, at least temporarily.  I myself have retained only tattered shreds of my respect for “the common  man of democracy” whom I fancied I would meet in mass in the Army. Actually, of course, I was looking for one of those idealistic myths which sensitive undergraduates construct during their days on campus and in the classroom

This is no “common man of democracy” in actual fact, and the Army is an institution which will soon make the most starry-eyed dreamer aware of actual facts. Most of the men of the American Army are poorly-educated, loudmouthed, undisciplined, and excessively vulgar individuals. Many of the officers, I suspect, are fundamentally members of this same class, though social pressure and fear of punishment forces them to exhibit the mechanics, if not the spirit, of civilized behavior in public.

In one sense I have gained from the Army an important lesson in American democracy. The fact that it hasn’t been the type of lesson I expected to receive has not lessened its value. The danger for me, and fellows like me, is that the discrepancy between human nature in the barracks and in the political science textbooks will persuade us that somehow America has cheated us, and our former zeal for social service will turn into a disillusioned resentment. The way of the expatriate is extremely seductive to those who pass through this disillusionment to the conviction that it is impossible in America to win mass appreciation for any serious artistic work. But one may pertinently question whether a work of art, particularly in literature, can be serious when it is deliberately divorced from its national and social origins. Those who write purely to entertain, which is apparently a not unworthy motive in a world of entertainment-hungry people, may write about a 17th century English prostitute or a 20th century American race horse or a fairy princess. So far as I can remember, the so-called “literature of escape” has never been unpopular, and today there is a phenomenal demand for it. A number of young ladies, in particular, has discovered that there is great profit and fame to be gained in the writing of sexy tales of romance. Their books seem to impress favorably almost everyone except the book critics. This situation suggests that book critics are members of an obsolete profession still blindly faithful to the literary standards of a forgotten age. They stand in a class with fundamentalist ministers and a few other stubborn individualists as forlorn standard-bearers for a culture which was imported in chunks from Europe, never properly assimilated by the masses, and almost completely ignored by the population at large in the years since the first World War.

The traditions of literature as an art based on the study of contemporary conditions and characters in society has not entirely died out. Occasionally a young writer still comes to maturity with an inescapable urge to give his own honest reaction to and interpretation of the life he has observed in his society. For every ten “Forever Ambers,” perhaps, there is one “Winesburg, Ohio.” For every simple magazine of honest opinion there are perhaps twenty to thirty movie, detective, confession, and comic magazines. These proportions are not statistically accurate, of course, but they indicate closely enough the state of literature in America today.

There’s plenty to be said for following the popular taste. Even a moderately skillful writer can make a fortune if he lets his work be dictated by the demands of vulgarity and sensationalism, and hires a smart press agent. He will find Hollywood eating out of his hand. The polite disdain of a few unimportant critics is a small price to pay for such rewards. He has even satisfied the predominant American moral code which classifies right action in terms of profit and success.

The fact that I have not yet been won over to this theory of literature probably proves that I’m not capable of applying it successfully anyway. My sullenly superior attitude is no doubt a shield of vanity with which I contrive usually to hide my own incompetence and laziness even from myself. Without denying either of these charges, however, I maintain that if I do eventually write novels and stories they will be in the tradition of Wolfe, Dos Passos, and Lewis. If I do have a literary bent that’s the direction in which it turns.

To get back to the Army, which was mysteriously lost somewhere near the beginning of this discussion, I have found it disillusioning in terms of certain of my college concepts, but enormously revelatory of the type of society which produces the men who actually make up the Army. I don’t flatter myself that I have made any original discoveries. The originality in my work will have to come in my application of recognized generalities to specific characters. One thing in particular which I hope to learn quickly is how to prevent myself from spending an evening in dressing up banalities for no one’s edification.

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“National Sovereignty” Concept Cripples U.N.’s Mandate

 [In this third installment drawn from the July 22, 1945 entry, my father presciently identifies the problems the new United Nations organization will face, especially due to its adoption of the slippery concept of “national sovereignty.” In many ways, this entry foreshadows the rocky road that the UN has travelled since its founding, particularly the Cold War-era face-offs between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Whether it’s from China, Libya or the U.S. itself, the constant invocation of National Sovereignty by U.N. member countries shows no signs of dissipating.]

 July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.), con’t.

…We may already have congratulated ourselves on the part we played in the drafting of the United Nations Charter at San Francisco, and on the part we now expect to play in whatever international organization is established under the charter. But our congratulations should be well-tempered with caution. The document on which we are preparing to set our Congressional stamp of approval is well booby-trapped with those supposedly rational words and phrases which technological developments have made largely obsolete in the modern world. We may bandy them about in good faith, but when we shape national policy on them, we’d better be damned sure we know what we’re talking about before we act.

“National sovereignty” was a phrase stressed more, perhaps, than any other at the Conference, and it’s by all odds the most dangerous. For what does “national sovereignty” mean in today’s world? The most common interpretation seems to be that the administration of domestic affairs is solely the concern of the respective national governments. This, at least, is the best that the delegates to San Francisco would allow themselves publically to express, though if they are the able men they’re supposed to be, they must all privately have realized that this interpretation is little more than a verbal evasion for the time being of a practical problem which must be faced repeatedly whenever the international organization begins to function. For it is simply a backhanded statement of isolationism (You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone), and  thus at the very beginning a flat admission that the nations are not willing to attempt to enforce that international law and order which could be their only justification for joining together in the first place.

Of course this is an overstatement of the situation. But it’s better to see it that way than to attempt to hide it or minimize it. Its most optimistic supporters admit that the charter is only a hopeful beginning. At least it gets most of the nations on the world peacefully together under one roof. What goes on after that admittedly depends on the willingness of the great powers, or the US and the USSR, to cooperate. But it isn’t clearly pointed out that international cooperation must inevitably mean a continuing compromise on matters which are still considered to be purely domestic in nature. Until “national sovereignty” is whittled down to about the present significance of “state sovereignty” in the US, no international organization will have a ghost of a chance of keeping the world at peace.

This is going to [be] a tough job of whittling, when most of it must be done by two nations of such divergent political opinion and practice as America and Russia. We want the Russians to come a certain distance towards democratic capitalism. We must then be prepared to move a certain distance towards democratic communism. I say this without meaning that Russian communism is at present markedly democratic. We believe that much is lacking in that respect, though we must concede that millions of Russians are apparently well-satisfied with their government, and convinced that we Americans are politically backward in certain respects. This is certainly not a situation which can be helped by name-calling. But we should insist on steadily expanding facilities for the interchange of unbiased news, as well as facts and figures on industrial production and military strength. Among nations which honestly desire to remain at peace with each other there can be no reason for suppressing such information, and its dissemination in reliable, public bulletins should have the effect of dissipating that unhealthful atmosphere of intrigue and distrust with which nations have habitually carried on their diplomatic relations. Texas doesn’t feel injured when Massachusetts knows how much oil it produces, or how many airplanes. The members of an international organization which means business should invite the publication of all such devious facts.

The possibilities of such forms of international cooperation are as numerous as the problems which the nations of the world share in common. But we will never see them realized if we place our hopes in the formal signing of documents and treaties, and the dispensation of high-minded advice. Ours is the potential power, and therefore the responsibility, to set practical examples of cooperation for the maintenance of international law and order. There’ll be no law and order in those places where people have no food and shelter and clothing. In those places it’s our responsibility to provide the essentials of life as far as our means allow without the actual deprivation of any of our own citizens of these essentials. Our business sense should tell us, if it’s as keen as we claim, that we won’t get something valuable without paying a good price for it. International order and peace in a world so terribly devastated by war comes at a high price. Millions of American men are still paying that price in the actual  waging of war. But most Americans have a chance to get off incomparably easy as compared with the peoples of the rest of the world. Near the all time material peak of their standard of living, in spite of the war, they have only consent to the slight cut in that standard which will be necessary to supply the peoples of devastated areas with the means of staying alive and starting a new community life from scratch.

Put didactically, as I have done it, this sounds like an easy thing to do. But put practically to Sam Jones and family, in the form of continued rationing so that our ships can cart off to foreign countries some of the things “we’ve been fighting for,” it will be near to a political impossibility. In the abstract, perhaps, it won’t be so hard to convince Sam that primarily we’re fighting for a peaceful world where all men will be able to enjoy a larger share of the things which make life more pleasant, – the beef steaks and the automobiles. But then tell him that he’ll have to wait a little longer than he expected for his own postwar beefsteak and automobile, and he’ll write to his senator: “Dear Bill: How much longer is this country of our going to play Santa Claus to those damned foreigners? Cut out sending them good stuff that American citizens can use right her and now!”

Already this outcry is rising like an Anvil Chorus throughout the nation’s newspapers. And no doubt it’s rising to a roar in Congressional mail. That’s public opinion. The poor Congressmen have little choice. Cut down UNRRA shipments. Stop feeding civilian populations in liberated and conquered countries. Relax rationing at home. No foreign loans without guaranteed security….

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The Limits of Letting Public Opinion Drive Public Policy

 [In a long journal entry — close to 4,000 words — on July 22, 1945, my father opined about foreign policy, the imperative of the United States to engage in reconstruction, the downside of public opinion driving public policy, and a host of other topics. In this first excerpt from that entry, he notes the proclivity of the “everyman” American, Sam Jones, to worry more about a steak dinner today than a recurrence of world war 15 or 20 years into the future. My father’s comments about the need for political leaders willing to buck the pressure of uninformed public opinion seem apropos to the present day (as his journal writings often do). Another of his statements that remains true for our times: “…we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world.”]

July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

… Basically, these war years, with their extravagant spending of men and material, have outraged the practical “business sense” of the common American who carries on the national business, be he civilian or soldier. Right now, he’s getting angry about our large scale handouts to our Allies, and President Truman, his perfect representative, is apparently telling the boys at Potsdam that from now on it’s “put up or shut up.” This attitude is generally applauded, and rightly so, if we don’t let ourselves get talked or scared into “practical” deals which end by increasing, rather than diminishing, the various frictions still existing among the nations. But that’s a big IF, and will often call for national policy which demands present sacrifices as the investment in future security. UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] presents such a situation now, and we don’t seem willing to go very far beyond a profession of good intentions. Exasperated, but well-fed Americans get the preference over starving Europeans. And later many Americans will become exasperated at these Europeans for embracing Communism after we’d gone to the trouble and expense of liberating them from Fascists totalitarianism. We’ll never know how quickly the sweets of liberation can pale on an empty stomach.

As a nation we’ll make these “mistakes” simply because a steak dinner today seems more important to Sam Jones and his family than another world war fifteen or twenty years from now. That doesn’t mean that Sam Jones is a bad or irresponsible man, but it would seem to mean that he’s a poor man to entrust with the shaping of American foreign policy. Yet Sam Jones, taken by the million, is public opinion, and we are told with authoritative finality that American foreign policy between these last two wars was increasingly isolationist and appeasing because public opinion would allow nothing else. “We knew what was coming,” many of our leading statesmen have said, “but we were powerless to act because of public opinion.” Of course, one seriously questions the omniscience of most of these bleating sheep, but at the same time one must admit a measure of truth in their argument. If important information was made available to the members of Congress, information which revealed the extreme danger of our position in an Axis dominated world, and if these men, reflecting the naturally limited viewpoint of their constituents, refused to believe in the significance of this information, refused, possibly for reasons of election strategy, to pass it on to their constituents, and thus left us dismally unprepared when the strike came, then our foreign policy set-up is certainly inadequate.

There is always pressure for various changes in any governmental system, and unimportant changes in both personnel and procedure are constantly being made. Over a period of years these minor changes may add up to a real change in political philosophy. This is evolutionary development, and has been a privilege of the American people since 1789, with the exception of the Civil War. At that time the revolutionary concept of the right of secession from the Union was advanced, and it was denied only at the cost of a bloody war.

The present war has been as much a Civil War as that war between the North and the South, but because it concerns a world union of “sovereign” nations rather than a continental union of “sovereign“ states, because the apparent national differences of the peoples involved have obscured the basic philosophical issue, we, as the victor side, are likely to bungle the victor’s responsibility of directing reconstruction even worse than we did after our Civil War, when the issues were relatively clearer. The German and Japanese totalitarian governments have been a mortal challenge to our own democratic institutions. This challenge could hardly have been made with such ferocity if democratic government had seemed as fair and advantageous to the rest of the world as it seemed to us. In other words, we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world. And to bring it closer home, we may as well admit that during the thirties the democratic way of life left several million Americans out in the cold of economic privation. Had these millions become a majority, or seized political power while still a minority, Americans might possibly have found themselves attempting the desperate cure for their ills which the Germans tried under Hitler….

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Material Power Trumps Moral Power in America

[My father wrote with some regularity about the intoxicating and corrupting effect of material wealth and power. Often, as in the following entry, he contrasted the power of military might with the different — and fading — power of democratic ideals and morality. Sadly, is seems my father was correct in suggesting that it was an “anemic hope” that “men in the democratic nations may learn to make their material power serve the moral ends for which they claim to stand.”

America’s recent history of pre-emptive (and misguided) war, Presidentially sanctioned torture and the elevation of tax cuts over critical programs for the poor and uninsured indicates a moral compass gone seriously awry. The rhetoric of the Obama Presidential campaign pointed toward a more promising path, but the rhetoric proved no match for the self-interests, partisanship and cash-fueled agenda that characterizes our broken “democratic” system.]

March 16, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

Our whole cultural climate today breeds in us inevitably a respect for power. Obviously in war it’s power that predominates above all other considerations, and the side with the greatest material power, applied to instruments of war, wins the victories. At least for the short run, moral considerations are lost in the shadow of mechanized power. I well remember a dread admiration I felt for the German war machine in the Spring of 1940 as it crashed into France, and rolled the Allied armies back onto the beach at Dunkirk. Though I could see the threat which these triumphs created for the very survival of the Western democracies, including my own country, not yet directly involved in the war, I could still not avoid a certain astonished delight in the then unbelievable audacity and power of the German armed forces.

Now we have seen five years of war since those days, and have had plenty of opportunity to marvel at the slow accretion of power by the Allies. Our only effective answer to the Nazi power has thus far been power of the same order, and on an even larger scale. We have not succeeded yet in putting anywhere near the same power behind our democratic philosophy. This is possibly because a different sort of power is needed, a power that is often atrophied in our development of material power. That is moral power. Though these two categories of power need not be mutually exclusive, they have thus far tended so to be. The only legitimate reason for continued faith in a democratic political philosophy, however, is the hope that men in the democratic nations may learn to make their material power serve the moral ends for which they claim to stand.

This usually seems to be a rather anemic hope. We are sponsoring a world organization in which material power alone will determine the ruling nations, and many of us, I believe, have passed from an acceptance of this situation as the practical inevitability to a condoning of it as the right, – the moral right, of the victors. This leads us to a condescending attitude towards the smaller nations, and the weakened nations, such as France. In our mind grows the conception of nations as power units of varying importance, and not as aggregations of individuals like ourselves, with much the same needs and aspirations.

Traditional American idealism is not dead, but it is considerably watered down by the skepticism of a large section of the American people. This is probably just as well, since our idealism has most often been used in the past as a mask for realistic financial operations which very largely contradicted the ideals in whose name they were made. Thus American democracy is suspect among the American people as well as among many peoples abroad. Perhaps this is the condition which will ultimately lead to its reaffirmation in practical foreign policy and trade.

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Dewey’s Style versus FDR’s Substance

[Here my father critiques Thomas E. Dewey, then the governor of New York and the Republican presidential candidate, and charges that he is not a man of firm principal or real substance. Franklin D. Roosevelt, by contrast, is a “real man” with real principals, my father argues, even while acknowledging that FDR sometimes deviates from those principals when politics requires.

I think my father’s take on what helped make FDR a great American president is largely on target, as his assessment of the compromises even great presidents must sometimes make. Barack Obama has made more compromises and, probably, more deviations from his core principals than I wish he had, but I don’t doubt that Obama holds genuine democratic and moral principals that I and many others share. Unfortunately for him and his measured, professorial demeanor, style counts far more than substance in today’s 24-hour, entertainment-driven media.]

September 24, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

… Willy-nilly, we’re breeding a society of specialists, and losing the faculty of being men in the old moral sense. Some hack writes Dewey’s speeches, after being told by experts just what the public wants to hear. Dewey raises his aggressive mustache above rostrums and reads the speeches to the people. Oh, sure, he must agree with them “in principle.” But where and what is the meaning of principle in this mechanic process. A principle is born of passionate conviction in one human mind, and that mind alone, which has felt its creation, can give it meaningful expression.

Yes, this is politics, not ethics or aesthetics. But even in politics there should be men of genuine principle, and no efficient pleaser of the public taste can be such a man. Dewey is a man who has learned how to put a nice taste in people’s mouths. That, he’s been assured, is the way to win votes and elections. And it’s also the way to eat out the moral foundation of the nation. He’s just the latest of the bright young men to further the art of making unscrupulous statements in a decorous manner. Who can imagine Dewey writing a Declaration of Independence? or even an Atlantic Charter. And even if he did produce such a document, it would need behind it such a moral force of character as he doesn’t have.

Franklin Roosevelt is a smart politician who has at times sacrificed principle to political expediency. But the great difference from Dewey is that he is accepted as a man of principle, in spite of his often serious deviations from that principle. Obviously these deviations are dictated by the necessity which faces every president of maintaining the support of more or less unprincipled political groups to further the progress of laudable legislation and statesmanship. It’s the old question of whether the ends justify the means, and a man who wishes to remain an effective president can’t keep the question in academic suspension. He must constantly do something, and hence must constantly outrage the sensibilities of some. If he keeps the outraged people in an impotent minority, however, he is politically successful, and has as free a hand as any democratic leader can ever gain to act according to his principles. This, I believe, is the theory that FDR has accepted for himself. It makes him considerably less than a saint, but it also makes him a great President. His speech to the AFL teamsters yesterday was the speech of a real man, sarcastic, humorous, hearty, frank, boastful, humble, and hopeful, – altogether, the words of a much “younger” man than any which have passed the lips of the Dewey organism.

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Business-Government Imbalance Poses Potentially Fatal Risks

[This entry begins with an analysis of the interplay between government and business in communist and fascist countries, and contrasts that interplay with America’s historically more-balanced model. From that foundation, my father revisits one of his favorite themes — the importance of individual self-expression and creativity — and discusses how America has done better than most in cultivating and nourishing the individual. Near the entry’s end, however, he cautions that “A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests.”

Sadly, in our current electoral season, corporations have been given carte blanche by the U.S. Supreme Court to spend endlessly and anonymously to promote their preferred candidates and causes. While Tea Partiers and other right-wing zealots worry endlessly about Big Government, they seem completely oblivious to the threat that Big Business poses to our democratic institutions (to say nothing of the threat to their own self interests…). Perhaps we’ve already reached the tipping point where American democracy is beginning to spin “fatally out of balance.”

September 10, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Call government the chicken and business the egg. Then ask which came first, the chicken or the egg. In the Communist state it was the chicken, nor was this simply a matter of chance. In Russia at the time of the Revolution there was only a comparatively small industrial plant, and its owners were on the losing side. So, entirely aside from the Marxist theories, it was quite natural that the political organization should come first, and that it should assume complete control of the development of the nation’s industry, making it a state enterprise. Nor is it strange that the Communist leaders should believe that their way was the best way. They made it work.

In Germany after the World War, the ruling class, mostly in the person of the Kaiser, was eliminated, but German industry, already highly developed, and not greatly damaged by war, remained in the hands of its pre-war owners. Thus they, by default, became the top-dogs in Germany, and controlled the government as they saw fit. This was the prime condition of Fascism. These businessmen picked Hitler as the best front-man available, and have perhaps lived to regret their choice. But that’s debatable, since it isn’t quite clear that Hitler has ever got completely out of hand, or crossed them up badly.

In the United states, the question of the chicken and the egg remains a riddle. Business and government, through the historical accident by which our state was established at the beginnings of the industrial revolution, have grown up together and though the preponderance of power has sifted back and forth during the years, they’ve never been completely out of balance with each other. It’s this system of constantly-maintained balance between business and government which we’ve come to call democracy. It’s an extension of the system of checks and balances which was written into the original Constitution, and which is probably one of the most fruitful social theories ever formulated. Though we may have acquired it partly through accident, it’s very important today that we understand its value and function, so that we’ll be the stronger to dismiss all temptations to destroy it.

The Communist and Fascist states are both built to ignore the most pressing need of modern society, which is the need for individual self-expression. The leaders of these states have become fascinated with the idea of the mass, and have forgotten that the strength of the mass is in its individual members. And though, for a limited time, and under special conditions, it may be possible to inspire mass movements of considerable force, there is nothing more permanent in such a movement than in the display of the pent-up force in a released rocket. Both are brilliant, and soon spent.

Democratic society has few moments of this type of hysterical mass movement and in these moments it’s the least democratic. The crude techniques of mass appeal have no place in a democratic system, and should be avoided except as a last expedient at times when the state is threatened by outside force. Even then such appeals should be strongly salted with emphasis on the individual.

For the end of democratic society has never been conceived as the power of the state, but as the opportunity and happiness of the individual citizen. In a civilization which seems peculiarly suited to the creation of great Force-States, this democratic theory may appear almost archaic, and certainly very fragile. But the facts don’t bear out this fear. The United States is today the most powerful state in the world, and at the same time, among the large nations, the most democratic. We have demonstrated that mass effort can be demanded of millions of individuals without destroying their individuality. The danger among us now is that fascination with the material power we’ve built for ourselves will make us forget that the main source of this power is in the individual who is free to think for himself, and, to a large degree, free to direct his own creative activities.

In any society it’s always been hard to find a way of guaranteeing a practical degree of freedom to every adult individual, and most societies haven’t even attempted to find such a way. Industrial society, perhaps, makes it at the same time more possible and more difficult than ever before. The material and mechanical means exist which can free men from slavery to the labor of maintaining a bare subsistence. But these same means can also be used to subject men to the most terrible slavery in history. This is the slavery which makes them not slaves of themselves, or of other men, but of the machine. All human quality is sapped out of this relationship, and men can be brutalized to a point where they are themselves nothing more than machines. Something of this sort has happened to the leaders of the Nazi state.

The safest state of affairs exists in a society where no element or interest is completely satisfied, and no one is completely denied satisfaction, where everyone has an opportunity to voice his own desires and have their merits submitted to a forum of the whole. A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests. In such a society, sufficiency is sacrificed to efficiency. The machine-quality displaces the human-quality. Such a society cannot last…

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American Fascists and the America First Movement

[This entry illustrates my father’s life-long omnivorous reading trait as well as his enduring skepticism of politicians and others who engaged in anti-democratic actions under the guise of “patriotism.” The book he references is Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, published in 1943 and written by John Roy Carlson, one of the pen names used by investigative journalist Avedis Boghos. The book, in part, explored the fascist, pro-Nazi leanings of many of the politicians who joined the America First organization, which lobbied to keep America from entering World War II. Once again, my father’s words reverberate with meaning for today’s polarized political landscape, where obstructionist right-wing politicians exhibit nothing but “contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system.”]

May 16, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Today I finished Under Cover. It was most surprising to me to find how deeply the Fascist philosophy has penetrated the minds of political big shots like Senators Nye, Wheeler, Taft, and other members of Congress, though I wasn’t unaware of their apparent leaning in that direction. Such men may not call themselves Fascists, but their inflated “patriotism” which makes “America First” a great ideal for them is the beginning phase of just such an unhealthy nationalism as has produced dictatorships in many countries.

Along with the extravagant concern for the power and purity of one’s own nation there comes a contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system, a cynical disdain for the “mob,” and a distorted conception of the destiny of one’s own “race.” This last fallacy makes the persecution of the Jews, Negroes, and other relatively defenseless minorities the proper concern of those in power. No sensible democrat claims that such persecution is absent from American democracy. But he knows that the democratic philosophy makes it morally binding on all sincere citizens, whether in the government or out, to try and eliminate persecution and discrimination. He isn’t discouraged when democracy fails of complete fulfillment in his country, because he knows that it’s doing an immeasurably better job of maintaining human freedoms than are Fascism and Communism in other nations. He believes, too, that social conditions are gradually improving wherever democratic government is kept alive and healthy. So he’s willing to fight for his system wherever he sees it challenged, at home or abroad. 

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Lack of Leadership, and America’s “Rotten Core”

[Here, my father uses the racism faced by African-American contralto Marion Anderson and the story of a Japanese-American ill-served by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to conclude “there is something rotten at the core of our national life.” He suggests that the failure to live up to Christian-democratic ideals can be traced to the lack of real leadership in America, where even the President “can very rarely speak the whole truth, especially when it’s bitter, and most-needed, because this would be politically inexpedient.” How little things have changed, given our current world of hysteria over the building of Islamic mosques and the blatant racism evident in many of the “birther,” “secret Muslim” and “Kenyan anti-colonialist” attacks on our first black President.]

May 6, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

While at [Jefferson Barracks], I had the opportunity to go into St. Louis one night and hear Marian Anderson sing. It was an experience I still remember with intense pleasure. Marian Anderson not only had a  beautiful voice; she was a very gracious lady. It makes me ashamed to remember that here is a whole section of our country where it would be practically impossible for this great artist to give a recital, and that out of this very state of Mississippi there is a man by the name of Bilbo who fiercely champions in the United States Senate the cause of “white supremacy.” [Note: Theodore G. Bilbo, a Democratic U.S. Senator from 1935-1947 and, earlier, a twice-elected Mississippi governor. He was an open member of the Ku Klux Klan.]

There seems to be plenty of the same kind of people in the North, and in the West, too. Just this week in LIFE I read of the sorry plight of a Japanese-American who was recently hounded out of a New Jersey town where he was sent by the WRA.

I believe that the soldiers who worry about these conditions on the home front form a very small minority. Most of the fellows don’t connect their parts in this war with the preservation of Christian-democratic ideals. The thoughtful letters from soldiers which appear in the magazines and newspapers are perhaps interpreted by some as a hopeful sign. But these letters represent but a few thousand out of millions.

Though I keep well-posted on the news, I know that I frequently let myself forget the disquieting events which are occurring throughout the country, or, if I think of them, it’s with a rather hopeless feeling of resignation. What can I do? Write a letter?

Actually, however, I’m not in a mood to allow myself the luxury of cynicism, and haven’t been since I came into the Army. I’ve learned that the progress of civilization is often at an indiscernible pace, but that as long as there are men and women who have the faith to work for the betterment of their society, there is still progress, even though it doesn’t make the daily headlines…

It seems that our schools, as a system, fail to teach us faith in, or even respect for, the ideals of democratic society. This failure, of course, is shared by our churches, our public leaders, and by our families themselves. Nowhere in the institutions of our society is there a profound conviction in the values on which these institutions are founded, or, if the conviction is there, it no longer characterizes the institutions. The continuing neglect of their fundamental values naturally reduces the effectiveness of the institutions. Instead of serving their valid purpose of invigorating and strengthening our society, they become centers of disintegration. Even in this very serious crisis of war, they cannot bring any real unity of faith and purpose to the American people.

The lament over the lack of an integrating faith, both religious and political, is an old one, but there is little evidence that it is being heeded constructively. By this I don’t mean to say that there aren’t many thousands of people who are doing all that they can, which is considerable. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. There’s something rotten at the core of our national life, and I think I have an inkling of what it is.

There are far too many leaders in America, and there is a corresponding lack of real leadership. There is no one person, no one institution, which can speak with authority to all the people, and speak the truth, – not even the President of the United States. He, it is true, can speak with considerable authority, especially in war-time, though Congress still has many ways to hamstring that authority. The President, however, can very rarely speak the whole truth, especially when it’s bitter, and most-needed, because this would be politically inexpedient.

The ministers, if they have the courage and the insight, can speak the truth until it hurts. But the ministers can no longer speak with authority. There is too much division in the Christian church itself, and too much disbelief among the people. The teachers can tell the truth about some things, and with considerable authority, but their influence is mainly limited in a person’s life to his few years of school, and even during these years is often counteracted by the student’s experience outside of school.

The writers are free to write what they please, but the people are free to read what pleases them, so that too many writers, who might do better, write simply to please.

Thus the American people as a whole never hear the truth about themselves and their duties and responsibilities spoken to them with authority. They grow up in an intellectual atmosphere of pleasant myths, romantic idealism, and easy optimism.

Where will all this end? I only know that the main serious conflicts in American society are apparently very much similar to those which have ended in dictatorships in many countries. And democratic process, as we practice it half-heartedly, and sometimes cynically, does not seem capable of resolving these conflicts.

When I look for a solution to the problem of leadership, I run into a dilemma. For inevitably I must try to conceive a government both more authoritative and more democratic than the one we have now, a government which can aggressively protect and promote its basic democratic philosophy, and at the same time give more real meaning to the democratic freedoms. 

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