It's an understatement to say that we live in troubled times--a pretty spectacular understatement, as a matter of fact. But that's all the more reason to look for good news wherever you can find it. Here are three recent examples. Actually, it's going to be four--there was one late-breaking development about which we'll all happily know more by the time you read this post. I'll still save that one anyway, because the magnitude of it outweighs all of the others put together, along with many more added.
First, a little bit of news about "1984." No, not the year, the book. It's notoriously famous for its utterly bleak ending, possibly the bleakest in all of English-written literature. Its last sentence are four words, which I won't repeat here so as not to create a spoiler for all of you who have not yet read it. And, if by chance you've failed to do so, read it, not in spite of the bleak ending but because of it. George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian state dedicated solely to preserving its own power into eternity is what all who have written about it have said it is--a cautionary tale about the dangers of such states and the perversion of language in the service of their perpetuation.
And yet, language, which in one sense is the major subject of the book, is also referenced therein as a source of hope, in a time beyond the bleak ending. I'm referring to the book's Appendix on the principles of Newspeak.
I had read the novel several times, including the Appendix, and cannot believe that I did not pick up on something that, in hindsight, seems blindingly obvious. Blindingly obvious, that is, after reading articles like this one.
It had never occurred to me that, tucked carefully into what seems like something less of interest to the average reader, and more like something aimed at scholars, that Orwell was sending, even as he was dying, a message of hope to a world he saw as falling apart around him. Language, in "1984" is the vehicle by which Big Brother and the Party maintain control over Oceania. But language is also, ultimately, the vehicle by which that control is one day subverted.
This ought not to be interpreted as a "happy ending" to the novel. Orwell's oppressively bleak view of what might happen to us, if we let it, should always shape our thinking about politics, and life in general for that matter. If anything, it should be even more reason to fight as hard as possible against the possibility of a totalitarian state, one whose destruction of humanity is as senseless as it is ultimately futile.
And, speaking about the fight against totalitarianism, there's reason to think that we haven't forgotten how to do it. Not even in ruby red Kentucky. Take a look.
It's worth remembering in connection with this news that Reagan's first major move was breaking PATCO, the union representing air traffic controllers who had gone on strike. That move was not about air traffic control, or the safety that the controllers' work provides to million of Americans every day. It was about creating a template that could be used against any union, against all unions, to blame them for double-digit inflation and interest rates, and to make voters, including many union members, believe that corporations would be their very best friends, as soon as all of that nasty union stuff went away.
And, sadly, people bought it, which is why inflation-adjusted wages have steadily declined over the past four decades. Thanks, in a signal of the massive level of irony to come under right-wing domination of American politics, to the first President who was also a president of a major union, the Screen Actors' Guild (full disclosure: I am a member of SAG-AFTRA, its successor).
Even worse, during this same time period, many states enacted so-called "right-to-work" laws, which are in fact right-to-work-for-LESS laws. By forbidding the collection of union dues from non-union workers in unionized workplaces, these laws dilute the power of unions to act politically outside of the workplace, i.e., to work on behalf of legislation that would promote the interests of employees generally. These laws, permitted by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, were intended to prevent labor from doing what capital has been doing for centuries--organizing and fighting for its interests. And this intention has been so fully realized that, thanks to a conservative Supreme Court, corporations are now treated as people--which is much more than can be said for American workers.
If a lesson like that can be learned in Mitch McCONnell's home state, and put to ingenious effect as is the case here, there may finally be hope for those workers.
Changing the subject for a moment, to one that's near and dear to my heart--historic preservation--here is a tale of two New York movie theaters, one that is being renovated and will eventually be re-opened, while the other is being closed forever and is more likely than not to be replaced, given its location, by high-end retail.
The common thread in both stories is that single-screen theaters, after years of onslaughts by television, cable, video recorders/players, and, finally, the Internet, have finally bitten the dust. This is a sad occasion for folks like me who enjoy movies as both a spectacle and a social experience, and the fact that multiplexes now serve as replacements for many of these lost palaces is thin gruel indeed. Multiplexes, for the most part, look a lot like each other, a common failing in much of urban/suburban architecture.
In contrast, even a small theater like the Paris had in own quirky personality, in part because of its status in New York as the city's premiere art-film house. Now, it has the distinction of being the last single-screen movie theater in the city to close. My father and I went there on the day I moved up there for a civil-service job, and saw "Get Out Your Hankerchiefs." We were not impressed by the movie, but liked the theater very much. It's a shame that someone can't find a way to preserve it as an event space, like the former Ziegfeld Theater, perhaps even as one with a film focus.
On the other hand, it's great to see the Sanders/Pavilion Theater in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to something that will at least suggest its former glory, even though it will essentially be a multiplex. The company behind the theater's new lease (pun intended) on life has committed to restoring the few original decorative elements of the building, which is great news. There are many more buildings like this one, in New York and around the country. Preserving them and bringing them back to life has been shown, again and again, to be the key to reviving communities all across the country. I encourage you to take a look at www.lhat.org to learn more about this.
So, there you have it. Three small reasons to smile in the midst of the darkness.
And one BIG reason to think that the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is not an oncoming train.
Right here.
Finally.
See you in October.
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