Waiting for 2003
J.R.R. Tolkien was adamant that his fantasy novels not be
misconstrued as political parables. But there was something
uncanny about sitting down this Christmas in Manhattan for the
second installment of the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy.
Second parts of trilogies are often difficult, of course. The
audience is left hanging at the beginning and at the end. Suspense
is built and released but then has to be built again. Like real wars,
Tolkien's epic struggle of good against evil therefore has its lulls,
its protagonists beset by self-doubt or fear or exhaustion. There is
a modest relief at having survived much; but there is also
deepening fear of what may still lie ahead.
In America, the last year felt like just such a bridge. The war in
Afghanistan ended over a year ago; the preparation for the war
against Saddam has filled the entire interlude since. Only once did
real terror strike again at the heart of the country: as a radical
Muslim convert murdered one innocent citizen after another in the
region around Washington, D.C. But the blast in Bali was also felt
nearer home, a timely reminder of the depravity of the enemy, and
its long memory and reach. The rest of the time, anticipation was
the rule. From George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech last
January to his September speech to the U.N., he spent a year
attempting to make the case for a real war against the terror
masters and their state allies. Some are still unpersuaded. But if
2002 was a test for the president in his stewardship of the war -
bringing the American public, the allies, the U.N. and the
Congress toward endorsing the next step - then even his harshest
critics would be hard put to argue he failed. His unprecedented
election victory in November was the clincher. Now, of course, he
has to fight the war. But sometimes in divided, democratic
politics, making a necessary war possible is as hard as waging it
itself.
Domestically, two deep shifts occurred. The first was the visible
implosion of the American Catholic Church. It's hard to over-
estimate the damage that has been done to what is the largest
single denomination in the wealthiest and most powerful religious
country on the planet. Last January, the Bsoton Globe began
aggressively reporting on the Boston Archdiocese's record in
tolerating the sexual abuse of children. Within a year, the most
powerful and respected cardinal in America, Bernard Law of
Boston, had resigned. But in those twelve months, the rotten core
of the American Catholic hierarchy had been exposed as never
before. Cardinals, we discovered, routinely put the reputation of
the Church above the protection of children from statutory rape.
Faced with scandal, the hierarchy behaved less like servants of
Christ than peculiarly hapless politicians, unable to understand
what the fuss was about and alternately sickened to their stomach
by what they knew was true. By the time the Catholic bishops got
around to opposing war against Iraq, they had about as much
moral authority with the general public as Ozzie Osbourne.
The painful reality that the Church had done so much to obscure
was now implanted in every American's head: that vocations to
the priesthood had collapsed; that the Church's negligence was
leading to financial crisis; that up to a third of Catholic priests
were gay; that a few were so sexually conflicted and immature
that they found sexual expression satisfying only with children;
that knowledge of this went right to the top, to the Vatican itself;
and that there was no sign that Rome would begin to address even
the minimal steps to repair the harm done: allowing married
clergy, talking about the possibility of women priests, or initiating
a dialogue on the role of homosexuals in the Church. The Church
will endure, of course. But it is hard to see how the American
Church can reform itself, maintain the commitment of its own
laity and remain loyal to Rome. A year ago, hitting that trifecta
would have seemed unlikely. Now it seems all but impossible.
And then there was a subtle but profound cultural shift on the
matter of race. Some of this doubtless has something to do with
September 11 - as the threat from outside the borders helped erase
racial animosity within. But something else was also happening. A
new generation of Americans, those who do not think in the
black-and-white paradigm of their baby boomer parents and pre-
civil rights grandparents, began to make their presence felt. The
biggest entertainment success of the year was one Marshall
Mathers, aka Eminem. His extraordinary movie, "8 Mile," will
one day be seen as a cultural watershed. It was in one way a
classic, almost conservative, American morality tale: poor boy
struggles to get out of the ghetto both of class and of race. He
faces down black hostility to a young white rapper, and he also
leaves his welfare-dependent single mother to advance up the
social ladder. But it was also a brilliant exposition of how race is
now far more complicated a factor in America's social and
political landscape than it once was. As Eminem yells on his latest
album, "White America, I could be one of your kids!" And, yes, he
is one of their kids. But is he really white or really black? Some
deride him as yet another Elvis rip-off, another American white-
boy purloining a black cultural form. But they forget that Mathers
really is a part of black hip-hop culture. In his generation, class
trumped race, as it does increasingly at the very bottom and the
very top of American society. He is to his circle what Condi Rice
is to hers.
You only have to think about this for a minute to realize why
Trent Lott had to resign as Senate Majority Leader just before
Christmas. Lott had made a jovial, off-hand remark at Senator
Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. The remark was to the
effect that he wished that Thurmond had won the presidential
election of 1948, when Thurmond had run on an explicitly
segregationist platform. That kind of sentiment is not only
repulsive; it's almost culturally absurd to those who grew up after
the Civil Rights era. Once the story got real play in the media, the
country gave what might be called a nervous, collective gasp, and
it became clear that no-one who could have made such a joke
could actually govern in contemporary America. Like Cardinal
Law, Lott lived posthumously for a while, but eventually
succumbed to reality. Both men had been left behind by history.
Law had grown up at a time when no-one ever criticized the
Catholic Church and got away with it, while Lott had grown up in
a South where segregation was not the slightest bit controversial
among most whites. But by 2002, the culture's tectonic plates had
shifted, and suddenly two of the most powerful men in the country
fell, humiliated, into a quake.
No doubt next year will be as cruel to some others as 2002 was to
these old men. But these shifts at home struck me as mere cultural
and social adjustments, compared to the terrorist trauma of the
year before. And we obsessed over them not simply because they
were riveting and revealing, but because they also helped us
ignore the gathering storm beyond the borders. Just as we were at
the beginning of this year, we are still waiting in this bridge to the
twenty-first century, glancing nervously at the sky. But the next
phase cannot be forestalled for much longer. And in this brief
holiday respite, most Americans sense it.
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