TPPM Watts: (25) Failure

[Paul Nightingale]

And then, after conformity ...

"There is a similar difficulty among the warriors about failure. They
are in a socio-economic bag, along with the vast majority of white
Angelinos, who seem more terrified of failure than death. It is
difficult to see where any of them have experienced significant defeat,
or loss. If they have, it seems to have been long rationalised away as
something else."

Cf: "The white kid ... is conditioned to believe so much in escape".

And: "In Watts, apparently, where no one can afford the luxury of
illusion, there is little reason to believe that now will be any
different, any better than last time."

Until: "Yet the poverty warriors must believe in this form of
semimiracle, because their world and their scene cannot accept the
possibility that there may be, after all, no surprise. But it is
something Watts has always known."

Just as "Watts has always known" the Deadwyler cop was going to be
"cleared ... of all criminal responsibility".

At the outset, the official verdict ("case ... closed") is immediately
rejected ("it's still very much open"), precisely because Watts knows
there will be "after all, no surprise"). To go along with the court
theatre--which proceedings include the possibility that evidence, duly
reflected on, will lead to a guilty verdict--is no different from going
along with the fiction of political reform.

Note also the continued usage of "you": "You are likely to hear from
them wisdom ..." etc.

I think one might now speculate about the degree of reflexivity
involved: the NY "you"-- no longer a tourist--will possibly consider
such "wisdom" as being the kind of thing they themselves might say. Not
only is the reader incorporated in the scene as subject, but also object
here. The kind of empathy that might have been involved at the outset is
a long time gone.