THOUGHTS ON A TROUBLED EL DORADO

TIME'S Managing Editor, Henry Grunwald, recently completed a three-week tour of the U.S. His impressions:

As one moves through today's America, a set of terms from South Africa comes to mind: verkrampte, meaning literally "the cramped ones," or "the closed-minded," and verligte, literally "the enlightened ones." or "the open-minded." Perhaps those terms define the most significant division in our deeply divided country.

One is tempted to speak, in Disraeli's phrase, of two nations--"two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets." Perhaps that picture, originally drawn of 19th century England, is too extreme, too simple, too alarmist. But if we are not yet two nations, surely we are in the grip of two realities.

In one view of reality, America is under attack from junior barbarians devoid of all respect and patriotism, spoiled by permissive parents and spineless college administrators, misguided by essentially subversive professors and other intellectuals; under attack also from blacks ungrateful for the favors done them and unwilling to work hard enough when crime is so much easier and more tempting. In the other view, America is ruled by a hypocritical Establishment that prates of virtues it does not practice, instead putting profit above all else, fighting an immoral war for material gain and in pursuit of some insane imperialism, and racist to the very marrow of its white bones.

On the one side, law-and-order, honor, country, decency pitted against treason, anarchy, filth, immorality. On the other, freedom, justice, "the people" against entrenched power, blind chauvinism, blood lust and repression. Two visions: two ghastly caricatures: accepted as truths by more and more Americans.

But still far from totally accepted. There are countless gradations between the two visions, and a genuine, tortured desire not to surrender to the extremes. We must urgently recognize that Middle America is a myth if it denotes a singleminded, Ag-newite bloc, the home or heartland of the Silent Majority. America is not divided between Middle Americans on one side, and radicals plus their sympathizers on the other. Middle America itself is divided, and perhaps that is hopeful. -

The division is not easy to label. It is certainly not between Republicans and Democrats, nor necessarily between conservatives and liberals. It is most nearly between verkrampte and verligte. Obviously, these terms originate in a totally different context. Obviously, it would be utterly false to present the conflict in America today as a contest between the children of light and the children of darkness. But within every state, within every community--and within many individuals--there is a conflict between impulses: merely to condemn or somehow to understand, merely to shut out change or somehow to move with it.

Therefore the real polarization, the crucial struggle, is not between Middle America and all the rest. It is everywhere, it is within Middle America--it is within America's own heart.

In earlier times of crisis, there always were certain very American talismans to which one could turn for reassurance. Now the magic does not seem to work any more. One source of comfort used to be the sheer size of the land: the vastness of America, surprising again and again no matter how often one had glimpsed it from plane or train, always promised that there was enough room for everyone, enough space to dwarf all factions and conflicts. Now the huge stretches seem oddly empty, even useless despite the abundance they produce, and one is all too conscious of the fact that our fate is being decided in the crowded cities. For them, the wide spaces have little meaning except at times by way of mocking the urban claustrophobia.

Another source of comfort used to be the countless signs of American inventiveness and ingenuity, a tradition stretching from colonial tinker to modern technocrat, asserting not only mastery over nature but also a sly, triumphant outwitting of every kind of adversity. It was the frontier spirit mechanized. Despite the triumph of the moon voyages, that spirit now seems suddenly unequal to mundane problems: they are beyond the powers of technological or scientific tinkering.

Perhaps the greatest source of comfort used to be the plain common sense and decency of most Americans, the more or less good-humored willingness to see the other side of a dispute. Possibly that tolerance has always been a bit more illusion than fact. Today, at any rate, you find people everywhere whose common sense is consumed by anger, whose decency is limited to their own kind, whose tolerance is only for those who substantially agree with them, and whose openness to change lasts only as long as change does not seriously unsettle them. There seems to be developing a kind of American tribalism that is not wholly new, but is taking more virulent forms

than ever before.

A few scenes:

EL DORADO, KANS. It's pronounced El Do-ray-do, but the symbolic significance of the name is hard to escape. A town of 13,000 people, solid houses, well-kept lawns and quiet streets on which Andy Hardy might be expected to appear at any minute. A town with a junior college of truly distinguished architecture, sitting like a graceful fortress-shrine in the windy Kansas plain. A town with a gleaming computerized newspaper plant to keep up with the outside world. Except that the town doesn't really want to keep up. Says the paper's publisher: "If we had our way, we'd build a fence around this town. We don't want your Mickey Mouse problems. We don't need them." The real "new isolationists" do not want to withdraw from foreign countries: the publisher and his like-minded fellow townsmen are, if anything, interventionists. But they do want to withdraw from New York; Lindsayland and the other big U.S. cities are more alarming now than the jungles of Indochina or the wiles of Europe. The world overseas represents almost an escape from America.

In the country club with its placid hilltop view, a group of El Dorado's most solid citizens reflects the town's bitter confusion about the war. As elsewhere, there is the danger of turning the conflict into a morality play. Honor, freedom, the future of America, say those who echo the President; crime and shame, say the radicals, quoted daily on TV and in the press. Those in the middle who cannot live with either version are increasingly beleaguered. Most people still talk about making a stand against Communism, though they are increasingly unsure whether Viet Nam represents the right place or the right method Here, as elsewhere, even the fiercest hawks tend to say that getting into the war was a mistake in the first place. It is not so much that El Dorado's people support the war as that they are angered by radical attacks on the country, the President, the armed forces. The President, they argue, must know what he is doing. One gets the distinct impression that if he changed his stance--for instance, if he were to call the war a mistake and announce a much faster exit --El Dorado would go along with him. Most people instinctively stand with the President. Richard Nixon himself, apparently a passionless man. provokes a passionless, no-alternative kind of support; but the President of the U.S. remains a strong focus of loyalty and hope. More than a "pause" from crisis, El Dorado rather desperately wants leadership. -

One line is heard almost as often as the one about Viet Nam having been a mistake: even the angriest critics of the young concede that "they have a point, they have some valid criticisms." The Methodist minister in the group speaks up for the young, for their idealism, for the need to hear them. So does the Republican state representative. Yet tolerance of radical youth is distinctly a minority position. One civic leader observes: "Well, maybe we do need something of the police state; maybe we do need a little repression." The young radicals, in the words of a woman member of the school board, "are traitors and they should be treated as traitors."

Later that night, some of the local radicals assemble in a rickety frame house by the railroad tracks, amid scented candles and tequila. They do not seem especially traitorous: a dozen people in their 20s, a young minister, some teachers, some Vista and other OEO workers. The stories about trouble in El Dorado spill out: kids busted for selling an underground paper, a teacher dismissed for his unorthodox ways, poor people and blacks (El Dorado has only a few) deprived of their rightful unemployment benefits. The complaints are utterly earnest, sincere, not negligible--yet not major, either. One feels that much of the confrontation in this community is still symbolic--repression still more verbal than actual, dissent still token and vague. It is perhaps significant that most of these dissenters have come to El Dorado--in a rather touching desire to help--from other communities. El Dorado has to import its rebels. But this does not mean that it fails to be troubled, indeed tortured, by the same fears as the rest of the country, for no fence can keep them out. -

KENT STATE. The gently rolling green campus is deserted except for a couple of men with tape measures and sketch pads who are still trying to map the recent shootings. Taylor Hall, which houses the School of Journalism, stands massive and not quite graceful on solid, modern pillars, a temple to the American faith in education as salvation. Barely noticeable signs gradually enter one's field of vision: half a dozen stakes in the ground with white tags to show where bullets struck; a chalked outline of one body, made by the police, already beginning to fade; an angry red cross painted on the ground to mark the place where another student was killed. Not far away stand the deserted women's dormitories. Through the uncurtained, trustingly unprotected windows one sees the scenes of hasty *departure. The bunk beds are unmade, pillows and blankets on the floor; irons stand upended between containers of Sea Mist spray starch and Love cosmetics. Snapshots of boyfriends--who could have been among the dead, the wounded, the rioters, the bystanders, or possibly the Guardsmen--are tucked in mirror frames. One of the beds carries the cryptic sign: WELCOME TO CLOUD 9.

A little later, in nearby Akron, the handsome wife of a well-known evangelist discusses the events of Kent State. She has just come from the morning service, where her husband preached eloquently on the importance of parental love and guidance in the home. She herself had sung, to a backing of country guitars and choir, a hymn intoning "O what love we have in Jesus." Now, her eyes flashing, she says fiercely: "I would rather see my sons dead, dead in their caskets, than to see them tear down the flag or insult their country like those kids at Kent." Under other circumstances, one might admire such passion, the stuff of Greek tragedy. But now one can only be appalled by the bitter, unforgiving spirit, the flash of hate that has led so many other people to say more or less openly: "It served them right; they had it coming."

Are we really a law-abiding people? A lot of Americans seem to want order, but not law. They regard the law as applying to people who behave themselves in the first place; the notion that the law is for those who break it is unpopular and willfully overlooked. True, the backlash was inevitable, a "little repression" was necessary, given the extraordinary provocations. Still, the frightening fact is that so many people seem ready to use bullets against stones, or clubs against words.

Not all, by any means. In a half-empty union hall, a black shop steward, one of Akron's striking rubber workers, says: "I hear a lot of the guys on the picket line saying that shooting was too good for those kids at Kent. But I tell them, if this strike gets ugly, why that same Guard could be coming after us." Countless others today are leading quiet battles for reason and self-control, and their victories are too often ignored or taken for granted. Among them are innumerable cops who keep their tempers. Among them one could name the Governor of Iowa, Robert Ray, a man who certainly does not condone campus riots but who reacts to them with measured calm. Among them is the mayor of Indianapolis, Richard Lugar, who runs an explosive city coolly and fairly.

Among them also is a leading Republican politician from Cleveland who recalls his days as a Marine and how he was sent to restore order after an integration riot in a Southern town. He tells with lingering pride--and with contempt for panicky amateurs--how he took over that town. "I told my men, 'You turn over every single bullet to me, and any son of a bitch who fires one shot in this place is going to have his ass in a sling and a court-martial to boot.' " The old, tough but evenhanded Western sheriff? One would smile, except that we are only a few weeks and a few miles away from Kent, and that tough, even spirit seems to be just what is needed.

There are sharp differences between the crises involving the war, the young radicals and the blacks. The war is "our" war in the sense that our sons fight in Viet Nam. The young radicals, in considerable numbers, are "ours" too--not just a handful of crazies or paid agitators, but literally or symbolically our own children. The black problem is not "ours" in the same way. America is racist--not in the Nurnberg sense of a deliberate, perverted, master-race philosophy, but in the sense of an instinctive, profound feeling of difference and separateness. More than is the case with the young, blacks are "they." As has often been pointed out, this separateness is stronger in the rest of the country than in the South, where one can at least sense a feeling of common destiny that is lacking in, say, Wichita.

In Wichita and elsewhere in the Midwest, the blacks are at worst a threat, at best "a problem."

Men of good will break it down into its components --jobs housing, education, crime. However necessary such a'breakdown may be, it has the odd effect of depersonalizing and diffusing "the problem." Oddly enough, it is among some of the blue-collar people, where sheer, visceral prejudice is strongest, that you get much less of this depersonalized feeling. I the black "problem" is utterly concrete--fear in the streets ghetto blacks taking over the classroom, the neighborhoods "going." Most of these threats are exaggerated, are actually seized on eagerly and elaborated to serve as respectable excuses for prejudice.

Yet at least the fears and the resentment are personal and alive. This could lead to the worst kind of trouble, including urban guerrilla warfare. But it could also lead to some kind of accommodation --not out of a sudden decline in prejudice or a dawning of brotherly love, but out of necessity. There is a limit to how much strife can be endured. Here and there among lower-and middle-class whites, you can already find the glimmerings of a sense of common fate with the blacks: a dim recognition that, like the blacks, they are not in control of events but are at the mercy of more or less remote forces Unlike more affluent middle-class whites, these people can rarely play the elaborate games of evasion --moving to the suburbs, sending the children to private schools. Their hate and anger are frightening; but perhaps less frightening than the more polite concern, the detachment of the white middle class. For the true racism of America is based not on hate, but on indifference.

It is extraordinary to find how successfully the white middle class can still keep the "black problem" at arm's length. Partly this is a matter of geography. Symbolic of this separation is East St. Louis, the notorious industrial slum that has been in steady decay for years. It lies within sight of the lovely arch, and yet one crosses the river and enters it with a'sense of going to some quarantined area where a dangerous disease is rampant. The place is in the grip of convulsive urban-renewal programs: various plucky black self-help groups, Rube Goldberg structures of federal aid, new housing, new clinics, a maze of Model Cities projects. Some of the buildings may seem a little bedraggled even before people have moved in, slightly reminiscent of those new apartment houses in Moscow that never look new.

Still there is lots of action, lots of hope, lots of whites trying to help. Yet one gets the uneasy feeling not only that too much of all this is based on make-work welfare schemes unrelated to any economic reality, any true change in employment and income patterns, but that it is all happening in an enclave separated from the rest of the community.

This is not to slight the progress that is being made.

The crucial problem is a sense of time. Most whites and blacks are operating on different clocks. It is almost as if the ancient cliches about the races had beer reversed: the dynamic, impatient white man, who wants everything done instantly, is now begging for patience; the slow, lackadaisical black man, who has no sense of urgency, now demands everything at once.

The new cliche is as much a caricature as the old one, but there is a glimpse of truth in it. Even the most extremist blacks know they can't have everything at once; but even the mildest blacks want faster, more dramatic evidence of change.

In voicing their demands, by the way, the blacks have developed at least three distinct accents or approaches, which have been too little noted. One mi^ht be called businesslike militancy; it is brisk, precise eloquent, well-informed, tough, often demagogic but'not unrealistic. The best of the black leaders have it, and at times one cannot help envying the joy and the certainty that comes with a single-minded struggle, with a clarity of goal. The only other people among whom this quality is readily found are the Israelis.

The second accent might be called ritualized rage. It is irritating, infuriating, a deliberate shock tactic that also provides relief and release for those who use it. It can be turned on at will. This does not mean that it is phony, that much of the anger isn't real; but it is controlled, a game, and not without its dangers. The third accent is true despair --not tough, not raging, but steadily bitter, the result not of hopelessness but of insufficient hope. It is the third accent, of course, that is the most deeply disturbing. Black militancy continues to enrage whites, but i has also had the effect of reducing white guilt feelings While guilt is useful as a social goad, the result of this reduction could be a slightly healthier atmosphere. In many communities, the situation seems somewhat closer to an argument or a bargaining session between equals. It is not too fanciful to see blacks turning into a conservative force some day, just as the blue-collar workers have. White Americans should welcome and encourage this. Right now black-white tribalism is frightening, and it may never be dissolved (if only because many people need it emotionally).

But it could be rendered irrelevant in a vastly and increasingly prosperous nation. Unfortunately, the fear caused by recession works sharply against this prospect. The recession may be only an episode, but it is perhaps also a metaphor for a deeper fear that American growth is not un limited and that the country may not be capable of paying for all its exigent dreams, of redeeming all its pledges too long deferred. Another scene:

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS. A Student strike is in progress. In front of the student union, a rock band is playing and a crowd lounges on the grass in a holiday mood. But the atmosphere is even more festive and more exciting inside. For here, the unique heady sense of joint action has taken hold, the camaraderie of the common cause. Tables where coeds sell pamphlets--Marx, Marcuse, Che. Other tables with various buttons and badges of dissent. Posters. Proclamations--demands addressed to the President of the United States, to the Governor of the state, the spelling a trifle erratic. Everywhere, the calls to specific action: organize transport, line up pickets, circulate petitions. It has often been noted that in times of grief or stress, doing concrete things, even small things, brings a sense of relief. So it is here. To a great extent, the purpose of such strikes is action quite divorced from ultimate accomplishment, a desperate desire to shake off a sense of impotence, the need to do something, anything.

In a room near by, a group of strike leaders and other students are gathered to discuss the situation. There is much talk of revolution--the word is repeated endlessly, like an incantation. The students are confused about whether they are using the word as program or merely as prediction, whether revolution must be organized and made to happen (as some insist) or whether it will happen inevitably (as most claim). It is somehow odd that Marxisms hoary theoretical dilemma about the inevitability of revolution reappears in this young, eager group in Minneapolis. There is some confusion not only about the eschatology of revolution, but also about its very meaning When pressed, most admit that what they mean by revolution is really radical reform; they are impatient with such distinctions, perhaps because they fail to understand that what seems to be merely a semantic difference has often decided the fate of political movements (and sometimes of nations).

As so often with youth, a sense of revelation surrounds some very old, familiar ideas--as if the world and good and evil had just been discovered yesterday. "Human rights, not property rights"--the phrase is a rallying cry, without any apparent realization that the concept would not seem exactly revolutionary to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And yet there is some justice in their sense of discovery. The principles you praise as part of the existing order are too often mere cliches, vitiated by countless exceptions, delays, chicanery, corruption or plain indifference. You may try to tell the students that the regimes that emblazon human rights on their banners--from the French Revolution onward --in fact almost invariably result in bloody repression; while the bourgeois, capitalist regimes, for all their mundane emphasis on profit and property, in fact allow people wider freedoms and a greater scope than any other political system. But you know that this argument simply isn't good enough. For the point about these young people is that their approach is not comparative but absolute, not historical but Utopian (and as Americans, we dare not use the word Utopian as synonymous with "impossible" or "silly"). They don't care whether America is better than other countries; they care only that it is not as good as it should be, as it once promised to be.

They are probably no more ignorant of history than any other generation; if anything, they probably know more. The difference is that they lack a sense of history, a respect for it, that they refuse to draw certain lessons from it. They are told, for instance, that in their passionate condemnation of the Viet Nam War, they may well be in the minority among the American people. Are they ready to impose their will on the majority? And don't they know what has happened as a result of such attempts in the past? They refuse to be cowed by this. "What is the majority?" they ask. "How can you speak of majority will when that will is shaped by the Government information machine or by the media? If the majority knew the real facts, they would feel differently." Sophistry? Agnewism? Sure. But containing elements of truth.

Most of these students would argue that if driven far enough, they would favor violence. But by and large, they are against it, not necessarily on principle but because they consider it a self-defeating tactic. It is odd to find, by the way, how grateful one is these days to anyone who announces that he eschews violence. It used to be a minimal attitude, it almost went without saying that one opposed violent methods. Now, on hearing that assurance, we are inclined to rush up to the speaker, shake his hand and embrace him as a brother moderate.

At any rate, some of these young people do have a rather special attitude about violence. There is some talk about "trashing," breaking windows or setting fires. One of them argues quite seriously: "But that isn't really violence. That's only destroying property. Violence is hurting people." For "hurting people," read "the war in Viet Nam." The argument bespeaks a sincerely felt humanism. But surely it also suggests that these sons of affluence have little regard for material property, little understanding that for many people its acquisition and preservation represent a very human right indeed. ' The radical youth care nothing about the recession that worries their elders. They have a deep revulsion from capitalism, though they seem to understand little about its true nature--and above all, about the true nature of the alternatives to capitalism. And yet one wonders with a pang: Do they know something we don't know? Have they got hold of an insight that we have not yet quite faced ourselves--that acquisitive, Faustian man may be dying? The notion is not limited to youth. Isn't one extraordinary, still-echoing piece of evidence the fact that even a Republican President in a State of the Union speech cast doubt on the gospel of growth?

How to cope with these students in Minneapolis or with other dissenters and radicals? One imperative is to make distinctions between them, to recognize that --like the Middle Americans--they are not a single-minded bloc, that they include verkrampte and verhgte in their ranks. But the most important thing of all is to be responsive without letting the radicals dictate the terms of discussion. Many of them ask for unreasonable and impossible things. It is utterly wrong to conclude from this, as many people do, that therefore it is useless to do reasonable and possible things. But we will have to stretch our definition of what is reasonable and possible. When reform of U.S. institutions is mentioned, most Americans still think of a few cosmetic and very gradual changes. The radicals force us to think about more than that: not instant Utopia, but a convincing commitment to reform and convincing proof that things are moving. Yes, radicals must be told that violence is wrong, that the rights of others must be protected, that the left can be as fascist as the right. Of course. But to say all these things, while necessary, is not sufficient.

The job of building America has only just begun --or so one feels, traveling across a country that still conveys a haunting sense of tentativeness. Other nations, in Europe and Asia, are. Even in times of extreme crisis, a Frenchman cannot imagine Europe or the world existing without France. Perhaps an American cannot quite imagine the world existing without the U.S. either. But he knows that only a short time ago the U.S. was not there; he knows, vaguely perhaps, that the U.S. is as much an idea as it is a country, an experiment unique in history. That is why the U.S. has this constant passion for examining itself, to judge itself and be judged. "How are we doing?" is the big American question--not how is the economy doing, or the President, or the parties, or education, or traffic--but the whole thing, the whole enterprise. It is for this reason that we tend to be manic-depressive in our view of ourselves: one moment the greatest, strongest country on earth, the hope of the world; the next moment on the brink of decay and disaster. That is why American patriotism can be so strident, so naive, so defensive. The fiercest insistence that this is God's country, the most devout treatment of the flag as an icon, suggest an inner doubt, a sense of impermanence and vulnerability. The trouble is not excessive nationalism but, on the contrary, inadequate nationalism--if we define the term not as aggressive superiority but a sure sense

of self.

Yet the view of America as an experiment remains a tremendously exciting fact. It sets up an important parallel between conservatives and radicals. The radicals would sneer at the "American Proposition," the belief that the U.S. must live up to a special act of providence, which was John Courtney Murray's scholarly elaboration of "God's country." And yet this fierce sense of a special American destiny is where Murray --and Henry R. Luce--meet the radicals. Radicals make demands on America that could only be fulfilled by an extraordinary nation, by a nation straining against the limits of history, even of human nature. At their best, they call us beyond the ordinary life of nations, beyond the averages of a little compromise at home and a little conquest abroad, beyond the mediocrities of blood and power, beyond comfort. In short, the radicals--always excepting the most violent fringe --insist that America must be great. That is why, within reason, we must cherish them.

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