Americans, especially young Americans, cannot find their country in the land about them. Often, in fact, they cannot find the land, hidden as it is by the cancer-growth of concrete and the slow poisoning of air and water. Wealth accumulates, men decay; racism stubbornly, and violence insistently, remain with us; riches and poverty exist in insane juxtaposition. Some turn to the chemical laboratories to provide fevered moments and mad dreams; others delight in the effete pornography of violence found in fashionable motion pictures; sex becomes an industry and a routine, almost a duty devoid of joy. Boredom and rage walk together; and war, with infinite patience, watches every act.
To be trapped in the present is not only to lose perspective. It is to be blinded, by one’s own revulsion if not by the blaze of products and illusions which society proliferates. Even resistance, then, is only a wild lashing of blows which as often as not fall on the shelf. Those would change, or even endure, America must recognize the roots of her agony in themselves; even in their horror, most Americans think, believe, and act in ways that reflect their Americanness and reveal that the same seeds from which the horror grew are planted in their own spirits.
In this condition, memory can be an ally of men. The contemporary American is not unique, and his struggle is not in a historical sense waged alone. The combat, for all its bizarre and peculair features, is as old as the settlement of the land and possibly older, part of the human inheritance. If the present struggle is more desperate, our perception of it is blurred by the desperation itself; all the more reason to look to those Americans who had the luxury of easier times and a clearer sky to help them think more clearly. Too, by knowing how we have come to our dismal passage, we may be able to find the way out. To restore the past is, perhaps, to recover the future.
It may recover the present as well. Under the blank and brutal masks, behind the strange faces and suspect conduct which Americans have made for themsleves, we can learn to see our countrymen. We can recognize that our tensions and torments are common, that the stranger and the enemy are not very different from the self. If one is fortunate, he may even find a brother among his fellow Americans, which opens the path to many things, as Plato knew: ‘The older I grew, the more I realized how difficult it is to manage a city’s affairs rightly. For I saw that it was impossible to do anything without friends. . .”
Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Idea of Fraternity in America, ix-x.