Nostalgia/detritus

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	Jason Tanz
 
>Sojourner mentioned that this doesn't feel like the sixties.  As a recent
>college graduate ('96) I can't really speak on how the sixties felt.  But
>I can say that political activism on my campus (including countless
>"rallies on the green") seemed to me to suffer from trying to imitate the
>popular image of sixties activism.  People bemoan the death of activism in
>"the kids today."  I actually thought that the traditional means of
>expressing activist concerns seemed forced, a charade, like attending
>Woodstock 2, for crying out loud. 

Anybody remember Jimmy Carter's reinstatement of draft registration in
the wake of the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan long about 1979?

Determined not to become the Peanut President's playthings, and feeling
that draft registration was the upper end of that Long Slippery Slope
toward renewed US militarism at a very dangerous time in our history, at
Kenyon we staged a rather successful if modest campus protest, complete
with all the trappings: We got the signs, we got the effigy dummies, we
alerted the media, we turned out the students and we marched on Ransom
Hall, where a conveniently placed General Westmoreland was debating
Ramsay Clarke on this very topic.

The lead story on the evening news? "Kenyon Students Stage Protest"? No.
"Anti-Draft Sentiment High on Central Ohio Campuses"? Nossirree. 

I swear to God, the news report began, "It seemed like the Sixties all
over again on the campus of Kenyon College tonight, as students staged a
rally..."

Like we'd been playing fucking dress-ups or something. More than a
little humiliating, and _quite_ inducive of cynicism.

> Maybe this is an illustration of the
>way that nostalgia can reduce our attempts to act meaningfully.

Yep. Yep-yep. Uh-huh.

Resolved (1): Self-consciousness in an utterly immobilizing emotion.

Resolved (2): Nineties Credo: If you express yourself sincerely you will
be understood as insincere. If you express sincere thoughts in an
insincere fashion you will be understood as insincere. If you fail to
express yourself at _all_ you will be understood as insincere. Only if
you are _sincerely_ insincere will you be believed.

Harrison
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