American sage

I re-read James Michener’s Space last year, and as I did I was stunned to realize how prescient he had been — in 1980 — about so many things.

Though nobody in the history of the world has actually spoken as Michener characters speak, with 35-years distance it is clear that he was no mere entertainer; Michener saw what was coming. He foresaw the systematic looting and possible ruin of the middle class, he foresaw the political rise of the anti-intellectual evangelical right and its southern locus, he foresaw that cynics seeking political power would target gays as subjects of especial odium, he foresaw that American life would stratify into layers of knowers and resolute know-nothings.

Recalling that, and with this awful election season, I decided to pick-up and read This Noble Land, a sort of valedictory and advice piece written in the last months of his life before his death in 1997.

America’s looming racial crisis, intensified by the Simpson trial and verdict, leads us to the crucial, inescapable question regarding race in the United States: “Have relationships deteriorated so badly that interracial conflict has become inevitable?” I believe the answer is Yes. All signs point to an oncoming clash, and I estimate that it will occur in the early years of the next century.

Now we have Black Lives Matter and the public indecency of Donald Trump’s blatant appeals to the crudest racism imaginable. And, of course, anybody who thinks the perverse obstructionism of the Republican Party during the past 8-years has nothing to do with racism is delusional.

He repeats then, as he did in Space, anxiety about the growing wealth inequality in America.

Michener was regarded during his lifetime as a mere entertainer, just as Norman Rockwell was dismissed as a mere illustrator — not serious. Minor. Bah. I wish there were more such men in our public life, and fewer preening intellectuals.

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