Is America entering an Era of Resignation? There are some observers who think so, and there are others who hope so. Both can find a surfeit) of evidence in the public's reaction, or lack of it, to the election campaign.
What would an Era of Resignation look and feel like? What public policies and attitudes does it imply? The operating principle of the Era of Resignation will be that America must lower its aspirations for justice and equality. That principle will be backed by a mythology and a political strategy.
The mythology will offer, as explanation of America's predicament, the Myth of the Radical Sixties. According to this myth, the '60s saw American aspirations cranked up to absolutely unjustified, unrealistic heights, and not by the people generally but by a growing class of intellectuals and semi-intellectuals and, under their influence, by the mass media.
The nation's response, so the myth goes, was a sincere and extended effort to meet those aspirations. That effort failed. Not only did it fail, it jacked the dissatisfaction still higher and legitimized assaults, sometimes illegal, sometimes violent, on the mainstream society.
Like all myths, this one has its grains of truth. But it forgets, or ignores, the fact that the effort of the '60s was limited largely to the middle years of the decade; was framed by experienced politicians in search of a political strategy rather than by Utopian intellectuals; was underfunded from the start and quickly cut off from anticipated expansion by the war in Vietnam—instead of seed money becoming sapling money, the programs were deforested—and always operated within tight political restraints. There was an effort, to the credit of many; an effort characterized by numerous shortcomings, selfdeceptions, and miscalculations, all of which should now be fair game for analysis and criticism. But to imply, as is now being done, that "We did our best, and our best wasn't enough, so the poor, the disadvantaged, and the excluded are now on their own" is as inaccurate as it is cruel.
The political strategy of the Era of Resignation will flow logically from its operating principle and from its mythology. If the fundamental problem is swollen aspirations, then society must be "managed" so that aspirations are kept under control. In the economic sphere, the Administration has already attempted this with its wage-price controls, a radical reform put to conservative purposes, as Michael Harrington explained in these pages a year ago.
But the mythology of the Era of Resignation does not perceive the danger to its desired calm as coming from the economic sphere. It indicates three crucial targets for its political "management": radical activists and community organizers, the mass media, and the intellectuals. Insofar as any of these again threaten to encourage demands which cannot be easily met, they will have to be isolated and discredited, threatened, and, if necessary, subject to government reprisals.
The strategy will differ from target to target. Direct repression can be attempted in the case of political radicals or activists who threaten the kind of effective direct action which might have reverberations in a wider public. Community organizers or groups like those providing legal services to the poor will be placed under strict control or lose their government funding. If they are not government-supported, a hostile atmosphere of accusations and litigation will frighten away foundations and other private contributors.
The approach to "managing" the mass media will be much subtler. It will involve a combination of public attacks, legal threats, friendly overtures, demands of official prerogatives. The government will present itself not as a partisan voice but as the spokesman of the public in opposition to private (critical) media. This concern for the public's right to know and for a variety of viewpoints will be expressed very selectively indeed. Where the media will act "responsibly" to keep aspirations from coming to a boil, there will be only praise and privileges.
The main object of attention will, of course, be television. As large, inherently conservative corporations subject to government control, the TV networks are not naturally resistant to this mixture of pressure and blandishment. It would not be surprising if the Era of Resignation saw an unwritten equivalent of the media blacklists of the '50s.
Finally, the strategists of Resignation will want to isolate and discredit the intellectuals, or alternatively to encourage and sponsor the growth of a "clerisy," an orthodox intellectual establishment, to oppose the "adversary culture" they feel has infected intellectual life. In this effort, they will be assisted by the economic squeeze on the universities, which will put intellectual good behavior at a premium, both for individuals and institutions.
The strategists of Resignation would no doubt prefer America's victims, from welfare mothers to Vietnamese peasants, to be resigned to their lot; but they are too smart to bet on it. They are gambling that the rest of us can be lulled and worn into a resignation about the sorry fate of others. They know that we can get along comfortably enough, if a mite shamefacedly, in a nation that has learned to shrug and look the other way. It is a cynical but perhaps realistic bet.
