We live in a nation that is supposedly the greatest on earth, in a period of seemingly endless economic growth. Yet for a time that would seem to be so conducive to nationwide optimism, murmurings of the sorry state of society, the degeneration of youth and the loss of the ideals of the American Dream are disturbingly prevalent.
A survey by the Pew Research Center, cited in The News & Observer of Raleigh, found that Americans are very optimistic about their personal future-a reflection of the strength of the economy-but are pessimistic about the future of the nation. In fact, the last time that national pessimism was so high was during Watergate; today's gap between personal and national outlooks was termed "unprecedentedly vast."
The factors cited in the survey as contributing to this malaise tended to relate to moral and social decline and included worries about drugs, crime and low moral and ethical standards.
One of the most visible, oft-mentioned and relevant analogies to the condition of contemporary America revolves around, appropriately, the all-American institution of football. Ah yes, those rambunctious Dallas Cowboys, erstwhile America's team and current poster boys for innocence lost. To many, the reprehensible antics of Michael Irvin and his teammates typifies precisely what is wrong with America.
But the rightful indignation of the public has commingled with the mistaken view that these acts are unprecedented, that in the good ol' days, sports heroes were role models, politicians were good guys and the worst a kid could be expected to do was to be caught necking in the family Buick.
The truth is, though variant in form, moral crises are nothing new. Not to burst any bubbles, but the Cowboys of the 1970s also did drugs, committed assaults, had a house where players could have extra-marital affairs and were generally as roguish as players today.
Ty Cobb was a racist hooligan. JFK had more mistresses than Bill Clinton has had Big Macs. The Harding administration pioneered corruption while Nixon was still in diapers. You get my point.
The difference is that today we are confronted with these ills every day, by virtue of a mass media that thrives on negativity and sensationalism, and makes every misstep of a public figure an instant headline.
Also contributing to the sense of gloom pervading thoughts of the future is the old "grass is greener" theory. We like to glamorize the 1950s (and certainly the vision of a Beaver Cleaver-like paradise render contemporary America the eighth ring of the Inferno), but consider its negative aspects: Women were expected to cook a great pot roast and not do much else, blacks were second-class citizens, the paranoia of McCarthyism reigned.
These factors support the idea that the negative aspects of today's society have been exaggerated, creating an inordinate degree of pessimism. Still, the statistics cannot be ignored; there is indeed something rotten in the state of Denmark, but it does not lie in the concrete dilemmas. America's most insidious cancer is a more abstract quandary, referred to by columnist Roger Rosenblatt as the absence of the "old, absurd and necessary dream of the perfectible society."
We have a national attitude problem exemplified by the pervasive use of the term "whatever" by many Generation X-ers. Returning to the Cowboys, it's not so much the heinous acts that Irvin committed, but the bravado, the above-the-law mentality that is both relatively new and profoundly disturbing.
Since we have solved many of the economic problems of the nation, we have shifted our focus to social problems that have proved much harder to eradicate. The intractability of these problems have led many, most notably the youth, to throw in the towel. The prevailing irreverent and apathetic attitude creates an atmosphere where cynicism is the mood of the day, and that is what Americans should really be concerned about.
Someone once said, "Cynicism is the imagination of the mediocre." America has never been a perfect society, nor will it ever be. The principle difference between our era and the previous ones is attitude. Only when we surrender the "whatever" mentality that plagues our era will we prevent this nation from sliding into a mediocrity that runs counter to everything America has always stood for.
Parker Stanberry is a Trinity sophomore.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.