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    An Age of Inflation

    by

    New York Times, December 1980

    It was a peculiar incident because young people aren’t supposed to be shy anymore. The meeting , which concerned politics, had resolved into small groups of lingering talkers. A young man stood by himself, apparently waiting for the woman he’d arrived with. Another woman wanted to kiss him goodnight. He submitted, rather stiffly, and recoiled slightly after the taxing kiss. She laughed, of course, and kissed him again; he looked quite miserable.

    He was right, even if over-serious. Much of the talk had centered on inflation (they were conservatives), and the usual things were said. But not the important thing: Inflation isn’t only an economic problem; it symbolizes o our time.

    The spirit of our time consists of hot air, and it inflates all our means of communicating.

    We know, too well, that money inflation occurs when dollars multiply faster than what economists are pleased to call goods and services. This makes each dollar mean only a fraction of what previous ones did, although each says the same thing: ONE DOLLAR.

    Words, too, have inflated, and in the same way. I’m not thinking of propaganda, political or commercial (lying does not inflate; lying counterfeits and counterfeiters depend on the worth of the currency they imitate). I’m thinking of the proliferation of words, of our suspicion that we are told more but hear less that’s worth listening to. Magazines and books clog the supermarket, radios chatter, and television sets flicker in the night. They tell us of the world, which does and thinks more or less what it has always done and thought, but now with more accompanying verbiage. The changed ratio between what expresses meaning (which grows) and what’s meant (which stays the same, even as it changes) makes each meaning-unit–each word–worth less, mean less.

    The young man who endured those perfunctory kisses may have sensed that inflation afflicts our gestures as well. Some 40 years ago, Americans could still believe the credo of sentimentalism: that a kiss is still a kiss, a smile is still a smile, and fundamental things don’t change, as time goes by. Like those who imagined that dollars had intrinsic worth, that words had inherent meaning, they mistook a medium of exchange, of communication , for value itself. They were innocent of TV `personalities’ and their relentless grins, of Hugh Hefner’s glossy mass-produced porn. Embraces and kisses, smiles and caresses–they’ve multiplied exponentially since Casablanca. But the sum of human affection that makes such gestures meaningful surely has not.

    Some economists say that inflation results from fulfilled demands for higher pay, without increased production, which force the government to print more money. Others say government needs no forcing, that it prints extra, devalued money, to pays its debts. No serious quarrel here. While some explain that we would get more for less, the others explain that we would pay less for more.

    Word inflation also has greed behind it. Prolixity pays, as a thousand hacks can testify. And just as otherwise moderate worker feel compelled to act greedily once inflation begins, word-makers hold forth ever more loudly and longer. As the babbling intensifies, the religious part of humanity long for the Word that will stop the words, rather as this-worldly monetary economists yearn for a President who will stop the money-pressure.

    The inflation of gesture partly depends on the liberation of another greed, the greed for sex. This generates those laughable worshippers of their own afflatus, whose ancestor, Orgoglio, Edmund Spenser described in his poem The Faerie Queene. Appetite replaces affection, debauching our gestures as surely as it does our other currencies.

    Yet not all affection dies from affection’s crowding, and not all gestures communicate appetite. Affection survives, forlornly, in a world that fails to hold much of a place for it. Does affection’s forlornness account for the proliferation of unfeeling, unfelt gestures. For the discomfiting kisses suffered by that young man had no appetite behind them. Perhaps we imagine that if we increase our use of the forms of affection, we can somehow conjure it.

    What pumps air into this balloonage of dubious money, glib talk, and spurious intimacy?

    Distraction I think: the separation of our minds from the feelings and thoughts that make them distinctively human. Distraction lets us try to appear as more than we are while making u less than we were. We have inflation because we want its precondition, having almost forgotten anything else to want. The young man’s sadness and the woman’s unintended comicality mark the limits of a world that tries to expel reason, tragedy, and love, without quite succeeding.

    Rhodesia: Emotions and Realities

    by

    Published June 1979

    In 1979 Rhodesia, a former British colony which had declared its independence in 1965, was ruled by a regime consisting of the descendants of English colonists. Prime Minister Ian Smith, who had spearheaded the move to independence, also chaired the ruling Rhodesian Front Party. Almost immediately following the declaration of independence, black tribes began guerrilla warfare against the whites’ rule; the two prindipal organizations were the Soviet-backed Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), headed by Joshua Nkomo, and the Communist Chinese-backed Zimbabwe African National Union, (ZANU), originally headed by Ndabaningi Sithole but eventually taken over by Robert Mugabe, Nihomo’s erstwhile associate in ZAPU. By the 1970s Methodist Bishop Abel Muroweza brought the two groups together under the rubric of the African National Council, but tensions among these ambitious men continued. In 1978, Great Britain brokered an agreement between Muzorewa and Smith, establishing an interim government. Subsequent elections brought Muzorewa’s party to power and he became prime minister. But Nkomo and Mugabe rejected the agreement and continued the war.

    The United Nations did not accept the Murozewa-Smith agreement or the newly-elected government. Because the militant black organizations enjoyed international communist support, however, the United States Congress held the militants at arms’ length, despite its disapproval of the continuation of minority rule. The noted African-American newspaper columnist , Carl T. Rowan (1925-1975) opposed this stance, and this essay is a reply to one of his opinion pieces, published earlier in the spring of 1979. Between his decades as journalist, Rowan had served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Kennedy Administration and Director of the United States Information Agency in the Johnson Administration.

     

    It is understandable and appropriate that American blacks take special interest in African politics and perhaps especially in southern African politics where, as in America, white and black people must learn to live in the same place. Like American Jews, who cannot feel the same way toward Israel as they feel toward any other foreign country, American blacks have special feelings for African nations.

    Carl Rowan is America’s most widely-syndicated black political columnist, and for good reason. He is a thoughtful man and one of the few journalistic commentators who actually has experience in government, having served in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. He is a moderate liberal, having resisted the New Left critique of mainstream liberalism–really the old Progressivism as retooled by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers–in the 1960s.

    Mr. Rowan is “surprised and appalled that 79 [U. S.] senators would vote to lift economic sanctions against Rhodesia” because such an action may lead to “an African debacle.” Specifically, he fears that America may gradually accept the “lunacy” of participating in the Rhodesian government’s attempt to defeat Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. He blames “the media” for feeding Americans “a load of clichés about the people engaged in the Rhodesian struggle,” thus drugging them into a state of imminent madness.

    There are three principal media-concocted stereotypes, Mr. Rowan claims:
    1} that the blacks “who crawled into bed with Smith”–in opposition to the militants–are moderate and pro-Western, whereas the “Patriotic Front blacks” who oppose the settlement are Russian-supported guerillas or pro-communist terrorists;
    2} that the recent election in Rhodesia was based on the principle of one man, one vote;
    3} that black majority rule now exists in Rhodesia, by grace of this election.

    The latter cliché is erroneous, he argues, because “the 3 percent white minority will rule Rhodesia or many years more,” in fact if not in name. The whites are over-represented in the legislature, occupying some 39 percent of the seats under a constitution approved in a “whites only” referendum; thus, in effect, one man, one vote does not exist with respect to the overall Rhodesian population at all. Finally, while Nkomo is indeed supported by the Soviets, he is “nor more a communist than Muzorewa,” the newly-elected Rhodesian head-of-state. “The chief difference between Nkomo and Muzorewa is that while Muzorewa craves power so that he will sell himself to Ian Smith and South Africa and become a figurehead perpetrator of injustice, Nkomo would rather take Soviet arms and fight and die before submitting to that indignity.”

    Several of Mr. Rowan’s points are indisputably correct: the Rhodesian parliament is not purely, or even very, democratic, and the whites, by reason of their economic power alone, will continue to dominate Rhodesian political life for some time, if not for “many years.” And Nkomo is not a communist, although he is Soviet-supported and supplied. But there are some flaws in other parts of the argument.

    Mr. Rowan is an admirer of Nkomo’s. On a televised documentary filmed in Rhodesia and aired several months ago, Mr. Rowan went so far a to compare Nkomo to George Washington. It is unclear, however, if Mr. Nkomo is as fervent an adherent of republican principles as Washington was; indeed, it is to be doubted. One might add that, like Washington, Nkomo not only risks death for his cause but undoubtedly prefers killing for his cause than dying for it; one should avoid sanitizing one’s heroes, whether American or African.

    As for Bishop Muzorewa, it is unclear why a man who “craves power” would “sell himself” and become a “figurehead.” Those who really craved power surely avoid that sort of thing. Mr. Rowan exclaims, “I’ll risk my security on a man of Nkomo’s principles than [on] Muzorewa’s opportunism any time.” But Nkomo’s principles, from what one hears of them, seem quite consonant with the craving for power. If he reaches for power with more apparent dignity, he also reaches for it with bloodier hands.

    The only real idealist in this nest of vipers is Mugabe. Regrettably he is a Marxist, and Mr. Rowan passes over his principles discreetly, which is to say silently. Even more regrettable is the fact that according to those who guess about such things, Mugabe commands some four times the number of men that Nkomo commands.

    The Rhodesian dilemma is this: a racist regime has taken a step toward becoming less racist, more democratic. The regime remains unsatisfactory to democrats everywhere, and also to African nationalists ant to communists of every description. The enemies of that unjust regime are Mugabe, who is now undoubtedly the Soviet Union’s first choice, and Nkomo, who is not capable of overthrowing the regime by himself. It should be noted that Nkomo, Muzorewa, and Mugabe detest one another–sentiments one can heartily endorse, while not failing to detest Ian Smith, also.

    An additional complication, as Mr. Rowan correctly reminds us, is the rest of black Africa–especially Nigeria. Nigeria is a major oil supplier to the United States and its ally, Israel. Any policy that would cause Nigeria to reduce or stop its oil deliveries would be quite foolish–an effective way of increasing already excessive Arab power. It is important to add that Nigeria has never threatened an oil boycott if the U. S. lifts its trade sanctions on Rhodesia.

    With Mr. Rowan’s help we have defined the problem. For its solution we may need his help again, but in the meantime there are two points to be made. First, all who care about democracy in Rhodesia, in Africa or anywhere else, should condemn Robert Mugabe. Marxists do not bring one man, one vote to the countries they master; they do not belong in any democratic government that intends to perpetuate itself because their purpose, as Marxists, is to subvert the government and gain exclusive power for themselves. Mugabe is exploiting racial feelings for purposes that have little to do with race.

    Second, we grow weary of gun-toting ‘revolutionaries’ who would, conveniently, revolutionize nations in such a manner as to gain power exclusively for themselves and their associates. Given two self-serving men, we usually prefer the one who serves himself by rolling political logs to the one who serves himself by shooting at passenger airplanes. The latter may be more glamorous, but he is also more lethal. Rhodesia may yet become a serious democracy, but not for a while, no matter who wins the ongoing war.

    2016 NOTE: The war continued, and eventually a new settlement was reached and a new election held. This time, Mugabe and ZANU won, in part thanks to voter intimidation. Mugabe went on to a career as the tyrant of Zimbabwe, a role to which he still clings at this writing. This was predictable, given his ideological orientation, an orientation that Carl T. Rowan ignored.

    Edward M. Kennedy in 1980

    by

    Article published January 1980

    When this article was written, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts was challenging incumbent president Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party nomination. Although President Carter had brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, Senator Kennedy supposed that he could broker an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

    Senator Kennedy has angered many friends of Israel by proposing that the Arab Palestinians be given Judea and Samaria. He adds that U. S. troops should guarantee Israel’s protection–something Israel has never requested. He naively assumes that such a “resolution” of the Mideast conflict would assure a trouble-free flow of oil to America. Among other things, this assumption overlooks two obvious problems: it would not satisfy the Arabs, who really prefer that Israel not exist at all; there is more than one Mideast conflict, and therefore no trouble-free oil flow would result.

    The same friends of Israel may imagine that Kennedy, who never fails to insist on his support for Israel, surpasses Republican candidate [and former Texas governor] John Connally in sensitivity and prudence in matters where Israel is concerned. He has told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel should have “secure, defensible and recognized borders”; and he has refused to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization, which continues to call for the erasure of Israel. But a careful look at the Senator’s character, record, and rhetoric conceals a far weaker position than those dazzled by `the last Kennedy’ see, or dare to see.

    The Senator’s character has excited much comment, most of it tendentious. Understandably so: shabby doings pockmark the biography from its beginning. Many critics have asserted that Kennedy’s most notorious misadventure, which involved the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and numberless clouds of evasion, reveals a man incapable of dealing with crisis, a man incapable of enduring the still more serious pressures imposed on a U. S. president. Few can listen without contempt when Kennedy hagiographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. straight-facedly contends that the Chappaquiddick disaster put “iron in Kennedy’s soul.” For what we have seen before and since is the same old all-too-human clay, mixed with precious little soul and even less iron. Yet such critics miss part of the point: anyone can botch things in a crisis, but Chappaquiddick and other Kennedy scandals bare not just had crisis management but the thoroughgoing weakness of a lifelong hedonist.

    Kennedy’s hedonism shows itself not only in private acts but in public words. Unlike other liberals (his older brother, J. F. K., and Lyndon Johnson), who promised Americans more butter while insisting on defending it, and them, with guns, the left-liberals of the Democratic Party (Henry Wallace yesterday, Senator George McGovern and Senator Kennedy today) promise more butter with a reduction in guns. They overlook the fat that those who have butter always face–indeed, attract–enemies with guns who at very least would take the butter away. Hedonism without some sort of moderating self-discipline eventually gets squashed–one of the few moral lessons history upholds.

    Kennedy’s hedonism extends to public acts as well as to public words. In a recent issue of the liberal American weekly, The New Republic, journalist Morton Kondracke lists some of these acts, and it is a record to be wondered at. In 1975, for example, the Senator voted against President Gerald Ford’s request for $522 million extra aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia–contending, in effect, that wouldn’t make any difference. Maybe yes, maybe no, but, given the mass murders committed by communist rulers in both of those countries in the intervening years, might it not have been worth trying?

    In 1976, Senator Kennedy supported a proposal to withdraw U. S. troops from Europe at a time when the Soviets had already achieved marked conventional military superiority over NATO. Responding in 1978 to the determined Soviet effort to equal and surpass overall U. S. military strength, Kennedy voted to transfer four percent of the defense budget to domestic programs. In fact, he voted against almost every new seasons system developed in the decade, including anti-ballistic missiles, the B-1 bomber (which alone can match the Soviets’ Backfire bomber), the cruise missile (a second-strike, hence defensive weapon), the neutron bomb (a tactical weapon designed to prevent a Soviet-led tank attack on Western Europe), aircraft carriers (essential for trouble spots like the Mideast), and Trident submarines (an upgrade to the only class of nuclear weapons that is relatively invulnerable to a Soviet first strike).

    Prudence? Iron will? Sensitivity? Kennedy also voted against the AWACS early-warning system, without which in the event of a nuclear attack, his fellow Americans will never know what hit them. There may be a sort of sensitivity in that.

    On the diplomatic front, the senator would threaten dictatorial allies like Chile, Argentina, and South Korea with withdrawals of American aid, while offering aid to dictatorial enemies like the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. If he did that, you see, he could then threaten to withdraw aid from America’s enemies and encourage America’s erstwhile enemies, so that they too might qualify for aid. Alice, meet Wonderland.

    Whereas Connally would make Israel an outright American protectorate while amassing the military power to make that stance believable, Kennedy would applaud Israel’s independence while weakening one of the bases of that independence: America’s military power, the now-weakened bulwark of the democracies.

    Kennedy, whom so many Americans prize for his `charisma,’ his `qualities of leadership,’ in fact would preside over–aid and abet–a decline of the very power that buttresses leadership, makes it real., not a sustained act of pretension. The senator has just published a book entitled Our Day and Generation: The Words of Edward M. Kennedy. Reviewers have complained that it reveals nothing of Edward Kennedy, the man–consisting as it does entirely of statements of public policy. But the critics misspeak. For the Senator’s words–banal snippets from the kind of politely meaningless speeches senators give when asked–are much less prominent than the photos, all of which burnish the Kennedy image instead of foregrounding the Kennedy substance, of which little can be seen.

    How much substance is there? Someone described Stalinist Russia as a mystery wrapped in an enigma; Edward Kennedy is banality wrapped in an image. Or, perhaps more accurately, he is a vacuum wrapped in an image. In revealing nothing he reveals himself.

    2016 NOTE: President Carter went on to defeat Senator Kennedy in the Democratic Party primaries before losing the presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Senator Kennedy returned to Capitol Hill, where he eventually gained a reputation for hard work on behalf of the left-liberal economic and social programs he favored. All three men might be said to have gone to their proper reward that year–four, if you include Connally, something of a wheeler-dealer who took his act into the private sector, where scrutiny is less intense.