TPPM Watts: (27) Moderation and compromise

[Paul Nightingale]

"But in the white culture outside, in that creepy world full of
precardiac Mustang drivers who scream insults at one another only when
the windows are up; of large corporations where Niceguymanship is the
standing order regardless of whose back one may be endeavouring to stab;
of an enormous priest caste of shrinks who counsel moderation and
compromise as the answer to all forms of hassle; among so much
well-behaved unreality, it is next to impossible to understand how Watts
may truly feel about violence."

The NY reader might have began by imagining that "white culture"
referred specifically to Los Angeles. Earlier, that "the two cultures do
not understand each other" is tied to the failure of white commuters to
go to Watts. The paragraph above, by invoking "drivers who scream
insults at one another", gives the reader subjective access to the
experience of the commuter, one they are perhaps--as with the personal
interactions touched by prejudice--personally familiar with. The
description of "so much well-behaved unreality" now includes,
explicitly, the whole of middle-class society.

Cf previously: describing Watts as "a pocket of bitter reality" tied
"this white fantasy" to white L.A. (as in paragraph 17, when alcohol and
LSD are juxtaposed).

And, more recently: "... the warriors ...are in a socio-economic bag,
along with the vast majority of white Angelinos ..."

However, confining "fantasy" or "unreality" to L.A. is no longer
possible. This confirms that the reader's ability to empathise, or the
text's ability to 'make' them empathise, is no longer the issue.