The Burden of Southern History

10 A Second Look at the Theme of Irony

10 A Second Look at the, Theme, of Irony THIS IS REALLY AN EXTENDED FOOTNOTE TO THE PRECEDING essay, written to relate its ideas to more recent events. When that essay was written in 1952 it was still possible to say that the American legend of invincibilityhad been "supported by an unbroken succession of victorious wars" or what Americans had been taught to think of as victories, and that the country had not so far sustained "so much as one South African fiasco such as England encountered in the heyday of her power." America had just recently returned from a triumphant crusade she deemed morally impeccable. Her unique record of military triumphs was matched by unparalleled successes in the fields of diplomacy, domestic politics, and economic growth that stretched back to the age of settlement. The tradition of success and victory had been put to recent test by a generation beset by unrelenting crises, from the Great Depression that began in 1929, on through the worst of world wars, and then without respite into the rigors of the Cold War and a nasty little war in Korea. None of these harrowing experiences, nor the national response to them, 214 THE BURDEN OF SOUTHERN HISTORY seriously called in question the national legend of success and invincibility, the assumption that in the end the American will would prevail, nor what Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., once approvingly called "the profound conviction that nothing in the world is beyond its power to accomplish." It was this pattern of myth sustained by experience that provoked the grave apprehensions voiced in the previous essay, the fear of risk and danger involved, both to America and to the world, in pursuing national policies grounded on the legends of success and invincibility. The risks and dangers seemed enhanced rather than diminished when those legends were combined with illusions of innocence and virtue dating from the childhood of the nation, and when the people who clung to such illusions and legends were endowed with unprecedented power and unequaled wealth. This fateful combination of myth and experience seemed to me to expose Americans to the temptation of believing that they were somehow immune from the forces of history, that "history was something unpleasant that happens to other people," and that it lay within their power to compel history to conform to the pattern of their dreams and illusions. In the sixteen years since these reflections first took form, history has begun to catch up with Americans. The fabled immunity from frustration and defeat has faltered in its magic on several fronts, foreign as well as domestic. National security, traditionallyperceived as free, a natural right of Americans, has been stripped away by revolutions in weaponry. Such security as remains, far from A SECOND LOOK AT THE THEME OF IRONY 215 free, is purchased at frightful cost. With more power than ever before, more than any nation has ever had, we enjoy less security than we did in the era of national weakness. And we have found that all our power and fabulous weaponry can be ineffective in a war with a weak and undeveloped nation torn by a civil war of its own. In the meantime the innocence and virtue with which we assumed American motives are natively endowed, especially in relations with other nations, had become a stock subject of jeers and ridicule even among our friends and allies. Not only were we threatened with failure and defeat in a commitment of national honor, but we wereconvicted of guilt and perfidy in the court of world opinion. Historic developments on two fronts have been mainly responsible for the rude challenge to the national legends of success and victory and the mythic corollariesof innocence and virtue. On the foreign front it was the war in Vietnam, and on the domestic front the revolt of the Negroes in the city. American involvement in problems of both types and in these very problems is not new. But heretofore it was possible and plausible to shift the burden of any failures and defeats, as well as any burden of guilt involved, to other shoulders. In the instance of Vietnam and similar fiascoes, responsibility was readily thrust upon the French or British or other "imperialist" powers. As for the problems of the Negro, they were regarded as very old and the failures, frustrations, and guilt incurred were traditionally considered the responsibilities and...