-Caveat Lector- From http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/117/oped/What_we_lost_in_the_boomP.shtml What we lost in the boom By James Carroll, 04/27/99 <C>harlie walks into the Ritz Bar in Paris, a favorite haunt in the old days. With rueful sympathy, the barman says, ''I heard that you lost a lot in the crash.'' ''I did,'' Charlie replies grimly, ''but I lost everything I wanted in the boom.'' This incident from F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''Babylon Revisited,'' a story written in 1931, comes to mind as a parable of the American condition today. The boom rides on. The Dow is up nearly 17 percent this year, in one record session after another. Interest, unemployment, and inflation rates continue to defy every prediction, staying low. An economic take-off, fueled apparently by the new technologies, has left behind worries about budget deficits and Social Security shortfalls. Most indicators suggest that a rare prosperity is still maturing, with yet more records of production and investment return ahead. The good times roll. And then two boys walk into a school and open fire. And, all the while, American-made bombs are falling in Serbia. A ''patient'' NATO is satisfied with itself, despite doing nothing to protect the besieged innocents of Kosovo. Now, perhaps a million fugitive people face starvation, and NATO makes it worse. The word ''boom'' takes on an absurd resonance, as the boom of gunfire in a high school, and the boom of air war ordnance serve as counterpoints to the boom of the American economy. Already, ''boomer'' had become a catchword for shallow self-absorption, but this new juxtaposition of meanings suggests that the post-World War II generation of Americans internalized the bomb shelters of our childhoods, encasing our hearts and souls in concrete. As this savage war drags on, NATO, and its supporters, can blame Slobodan Milosevic. As Tony Blair and Bill Clinton slap aside Russian-brokered peace feelers, NATO critics, like me, can lay the fault at the alliance's odd combination of naivete and vindictiveness. But is it possible for all of us to ask what this war is revealing about our common condition? Similarly, we can blame the shootings at Columbine High School on a dark subculture, neglectful parents. Or, without denying the particular responsibility of the shooters, we can ask what epiphany this incident offers to every citizen of this nation? Not so long ago, a new American mantra was adopted: ''It's the economy, stupid.'' A new breed of political leaders, eschewing the ''rhetoric'' of the New Deal and Great Society, purged the public agenda of all but things measured in the numbers of low rates and high growth. Lip service was given to education reform, but only for its economic benefit. Otherwise, the national purpose was stripped. Impending environmental crises were downplayed, an already modest foreign aid budget was slashed, and the urgent task of creating post-Cold War structures of international peace was never taken up. The measure of American ambition was reduced to one thing, with the promise that a preempting focus on the economy would bring fulfillment in other areas as well. Our government ''reinvented'' itself at the service of this new ideal, and every other social hope was put in second place - or eliminated. Was crime a problem? Instead of addressing its causes, we doubled the prison population. Was the arms race with the Soviet Union over? Instead of transforming our war economy, we became arms merchants to the world - and expanded NATO to expand our weapons market. Were people of color still insisting on equal access? Instead of keeping the promises of Civil Rights, we redefined their insistence as itself unfair to whites. Traditional American hopes, once unselfconsciously expressed in language about justice and peace, were caricatured as '''60s idealism,'' and dismissed. ''I lost everything I wanted in the boom,'' Charlie said. Characters in fiction are what they want. The same is true of us. What do we want? What do we really want? When we see photos of the Colorado dream house in which one of the Columbine shooters lived, or of the BMW he drove, the pang we feel must be partly a pang of conscience. How did it happen that the ''American dream'' was reduced to our houses and our cars? That our deepest hopes were reduced to ''the economy, stupid?'' Nothing more quickly yanks a people out of such shallow wanting than the discovery that its children are in trouble. What if their trouble, finally, is trouble with what we, their parents, want? Are some children plunged into the despair of overt nihilism by the implicit nihilism of a consumer culture that cares nothing for others? Meanwhile, an apocalypse, partly of our making, is unfolding in the Balkans. Last month, only fringe Russian legislators spoke of World War III; last week, Victor S. Chernomyrdin warned of the danger. Who is listening? What do ''boomers'' hear beside the clang of the Stock Exchange's closing bell? It is unconscionable that the American balloon can rise ever higher while a true millennial catastrophe befalls southeast Europe. Politicians in Washington want only to avoid the issue. NATO wants only vindication. Bill Clinton wants his reputation back. And us? If we the American people do not find it in our hearts to want - really want - an end to the carnage in Yugoslavia, then our children will increasingly entrust their hopes to the thrill of violence, eventually hating us for all that we squandered in the boom. James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. This story ran on page A15 of the Boston Globe on 04/27/99. � Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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