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Last
week, in an incident that didn't get much attention in the national news, a
man named Tom Ball set himself on fire in front of the county courthouse in
Keene, NH. He left a fifteen-page suicide note explaining his actions. He was
angry at the state child protection bureaucracy and the courts after a
ten-year battle over a child abuse charge that became, for him, a Kafkaesque
struggle with cruel authority. The long suicide note he left was a thoughtful
and disturbing indictment of the legal procedures now common across America
that have had many unanticipated consequences - from breaking up families to
homelessness - but it was also a grim comment on the condition of American
manhood.
A
casual Martian observer hanging around any convenience store in the "fly-over"
zones of this nation must be impressed with the striking way that American
men present themselves to the world. Forgive me for revisiting an
oft-dredged-up theme - male costuming and adornment in our time - but I
wouldn't keep bringing it up if I didn't think it was significant. On the
whole, American men present themselves as savages. I think they do it because
they feel very insecure about themselves - similar to the insecurity that
prompts a politician to wear a flag lapel pin. Should there be any doubt that
an elected official cares about his country? Or maybe we should ask: what
kind of country produces such craven, weak, pandering elected officials? What
kind of culture produces men who get themselves up like chain-saw murderers?
The
same country that furnishes an endless diet of super-hero movies to pubescent
males who are not expected to develop normal adult coping powers. The same
country that supplies gruesome, sado-masochistic
video games to occupy the idle hours of young men - and then lets them take
those "skills" to some tilt-up bunker in Nevada where they sit in
air-conditioned comfort and direct drone aircraft ten thousand miles away to
incinerate suspected "enemies" in mud villages. (Sometimes
"mistakes are made" and they blow up a wedding party or something -
but the drone controllers still get to leave the bunker at the end of their
shift and roll down the strip for a plastic tray full of burritos.)
This
month's WeinerGate was another instructive
incident. Up-and-coming wonderboy politician
revealed to be secret sex schlemiel, undone by "social media" -
which turns out to have the unanticipated consequence of undermining the
impulse control of supposedly grown men. Who knew? But what interested me
more than Weiner's pitiful dishonesty was the parade of women journalists on
cable TV news who all agreed that poor Weiner's downfall was yet another
conclusive demonstration of how hopeless men are - not to mention that their
male colleagues on-screen, Blitzer, King, O'Donnell, sheepishly agreed with
them. This ceremonial posturing for moral brownie points in an extremely
moralistic and puritanical culture does tend to obscure the reality that
adult male humans are sexually alert in an inconvenient way that is not
identical to the experience of females. Notwithstanding the evident insanity
of Dominque Strauss-Kahn jumping the hotel maid,
men sometimes make passes. American women cannot forgive them for this.
Lesson: perhaps American men should not make such an effort to seek
forgiveness. I am waiting, personally, for some Mark Sanford type (former
South Carolina governor caught in "affair" with Argentine
firecracker) to go before the microphones and say to media (and the voters),
"this is none of your goddam business."
Which
brings me to the troublesome subject of gay marriage, which is lately up for
debate in the legislature of New York State where I live, making it the
public's business. I have an unpopular view of it for men of my demographic
(Democrat, Boomer). I'm not in favor of it. I don't think it is a good idea.
I don't have empirical proof, but I suspect that unsettling such an age-old
and fundamental social arrangement will produce strange unanticipated
consequences that we are not prepared for. I don't believe gay marriage is a
genuine social justice issue. I think it is a bid for a kind of broad social
approbation which does not require ritual enactment in law, and would be
socially mischievous to pursue. Civil unions would cover the necessary legal
issues. Otherwise, it is a case of unwarranted relativism, a Boomer weakness.
Not all conditions or states of being in this world are the same. Some things
are on the margins because they are marginal.
What
fascinates me in the debate is the narcissism of Boomers, males especially,
who advocate so earnestly in favor of gay marriage. Is it really about the
law and social relations, or is it about making yourself
feel good? Is it just more posturing for moral brownie points, for approval?
Is your job and social position or maybe even sense of yourself at stake if
you have a differing view?
I
had an interesting experience with my last two books (World Made By Hand
and The Witch of Hebron), which were set in a post-oil, post economic
collapse American future and depicted daily life in a way that was quite
unlike the way we live right now. I received a heap of criticism from female
readers - including peak oil activists - full of consternation that I did not
present female characters in the kinds of dominant valorized roles that are
favored today: the post-oil equivalent of CEO, news anchor, CIA-Ninja
warrior, Presidential candidate. What struck me was their complete failure of
imagination. They could not conceive of male / female relations that were
different than today's, even in a world that had been turned economically
upside down.
However,
this was not inconsistent with the failure of American men to know how to act
like men in this anxious moment of history. The choices are pretty
unappetizing: be a jobless loser in a "Pray for Death" T-shirt with
neck and knuckle tattoos, or a loser in a corporate cubicle, or a loser in
that Nevada drone-control bunker, or a loser in the eyes of the family court,
or a loser on cable TV. Tom Ball, the man who set himself on fire in Keene,
New Hampshire recommended something that sounded a lot like violent
revolution, though his tone was eerily measured for someone about to commit
the most desperate personally public act. I hope we don't have to go through
a convulsion in this land to find out how what it means to be a man.
James
Howard Kunstler
James
Howard Kunstler’s new novel of the post-oil future, World
Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.
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