The Great Divide

There is an attribute lacking in the Eighties that was throbbingly present in earlier decades, even in the silent Fifties: memory. Today, amnesia is much easier to come by. As technology has become more hyperactive, we, the people, have become more laid back; as the deposits in its memory banks have become fatter, the deposits in man's memory bank have become leaner. It is the Law of Diminishing Enlightenment at work.

Ironically enough, Jacob Bronowski observed, the average person today knows more facts about the world than Isaac Newton did, though considerably less truth. Certainly, we know more facts, overwhelmingly trivial though they be, than any of our antecedents. But as for knowing the truth about ourselves and others....

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The World Book Encyclopedia defines the Great Divide as a series of mountain ranges that crosses the North American continent and divides it into two great watersheds. A second divide now splits our country, one that bespeaks more than the deepening chasms between the haves, the have-nots and the have-somewhats. It is the rift of race that, at times, appears to close and then casually widens, not unrelated to having and not having. It is the split in the sphere of worship, rendering unto Caesar what may not rightfully be his and unto God what may not spiritually be His. It is the cleft that has cut us off, one from the other and, indeed, from our very selves. It is the breach that has cut off past from present.

A TV Wunderkind explains, "In the past ten years, we've shifted to faster communication. We depend on these little bursts, these little sound bites. All good politicians, as well as good advertisers, lay out their programs in something that will play in ten to 12 seconds on the nightly news."

In an old burlesque skit, the second banana, a Dutch comic in baggy pants, challenges the first: "Qvick, vat's you philosophy of life in fife seconds?" The baldheads, pot bellies and pimply faces in the audience (I was one) roar at the randy though succinct riposte. Today's TV anchor person asks the same thing of the expert. It is deadly solemn in the asking, equally so in the response and duly acknowledged by the audience. Nobody's laughing.

Repeated often enough and authoritatively enough, on televised Sunday mornings, by pundits of familiar face and equally familiar Cabinet members and the even more familiar elder statesman, the Doctor (who evokes startling memories of the Dutch comic), the announced idea becomes official. Yet something unofficial is happening out there.

Consider the market-research man--an up-and-coming father, an archetypal middle American. He was foreman of a jury that acquitted four odd birds (including a Catholic nun) who had, in the spirit of Isaiah, committed an act of civil disobedience. He, a fervent believer in law and order, experienced something of a small epiphany. "We are quiet people," he said, "quiet in our disturbance. But once confronted with facts, they're really hard to let go. You start asking yourself, What can I begin to do?

"We see on the news today that something happened. A week later, something else is presented as though it's just as important. It's got the same kind of emphasis in the speaker's voice. All of a sudden, last week is gone behind us. A year ago is even further gone. How we blow up things that aren't important and never talk about things that are important."

In dealing with time present, memory is absent, stunningly so, among the young. "I am struck by the basic absence of historical memory in this year's--or any year's--college freshmen," says a history professor in Texas. "These young students are not the children but, rather, the grandchildren of the atomic age, born almost a quarter of a century after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have never known a time when nuclear weapons did not exist. As my freshmen might ask, 'Why bother?' "

Could Henry Ford have been right after all, that history is bunk?

Despite such bleak communiqués from the academic front, a subtle change of climate may be detected as we approach the Nineties. Courses on Vietnam and its history are among the most popular in a surprising number of colleges. A professor of Russian history tells me that his classes are standing room only.

Although I've come across depressingly many 18-year-olds who admire J. R. Ewing "because he kicks butts," a young instructor in journalism has discovered that his students insist on asking about professional ethics. "This year, nobody in class asked me how much I make." The majority of recent graduates at a college in the Northwest accepted a pledge "to take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job opportunity I consider."

Don't bet the farm on it (if there is any farm left to bet), but there does appear to be a new kid on the block. This one is not a Sixties remainder nor an Eighties automaton; not as stormy as the first nor as air-conditioned as the second. He is more ambivalent, perhaps, yet possibly more reflective.

To intimate that these new kids are the kids of the future would, unfortunately, be far off the mark. They are a baby-faced Gideon's army, considerably outnumbered by their peers who cheer on Rambo and disparage wimps. Yet the new kids may reflect something in the others, something unfashionable for the moment and thus hidden away, something "fearful": compassion. Or something even more to abjure: hope.

At an extension college in Little Rock, the students damned the victims of AIDS--"They deserve to die." Yet on seeing a documentary film about those they damned, they wept softly. Their teacher attributed the overt absence of generous heart to their thoughts of eventual Armageddon. "With absence of hope, I found absence of generosity. Why bother?" But why did they weep?

These young, who wept for those they damned, may offer the challenge as yet unrecognized. In a wholly different context, Tom Paine remarked that the nature of infidelity to oneself is professing to believe what one does not believe. Could that be our "dirty little secret"?

A hunger for belief is certainly no less today than it was in the past. It is the nature of belief that may have changed. In the time lapse, new phenomena have taken over our lives and psyches: the Cold War, the sanctity of the military, union busting beyond precedent (encouraged by the cravenness of labor's Pooh-Bahs), along with televised sound bites offered with the regularity of a cuckoo clock and a press that has assiduously followed the dictum of Sam Rayburn: To get along, go along. As a result, reflective conversations concerning these matters have become suspect or, at best, vestigial remainders of a long-gone past.

A daughter of Appalachia may have put her finger on it: "We've gotten away from our imaginations. The reason we're image-struck is because we don't like who we are. The more we get over this fake stuff, the more chance we've got to keep our sanity and self-respect."

Voices Across The Great Divide

Sean Kelly:He's 27 At Bowling Green State University in Ohio, he teaches three composition courses.

"I was 24 at the time I started, just a few years older than my students. They called me Professor Kelly.

"There's a six-, seven-year difference between us, yet when I mention the Rolling Stones, I could be talking about Tommy Dorsey. The gap is enormous. They were born in '67, '68, coming of age in a blackout generation when nobody really talked about Vietnam. They have no idea who Nixon is. Most of their thoughts of Vietnam come from this surge of television interest. They've rewritten Vietnam history. In Magnum, P.I. and Simon & Simon, the protagonists are Vietnam veterans. They use flashbacks and a wave of patriotism for show plots: Go back and get the POWs. Rambo is a perfect example. They're refighting Vietnam as though it were World War Two.

"I've had several students tell me we won in Vietnam. They've become so used to the Hollywood version, where we know exactly what we're doing and that we're right. Nobody innocent ever really gets hurt, and there's glory when you die.

"They've been hearing Reagan's view of the world regularly. They love him. Before the last election, Reagan came to the campus to speak. Five or six helicopters landed; he came in. It was carefully orchestrated. The students were very excited. Ironic, because it was just at the time he was cutting student aid. That didn't matter. He was a celebrity, somebody famous. Just the way they'd have been excited if Sylvester Stallone had come--or Bruce Springsteen.

"I asked them, 'If war were declared against Nicaragua, how many of you would just pack up your bags and leave tomorrow?' All but two said they'd go. I followed up: 'Who would we be fighting for? What side would we support? Would we support the government of Nicaragua?' The two knew. The other 26 didn't know.

"They've become so conditioned to not make waves, even though they might get killed for something they didn't understand. Or kill the wrong people."

Larry Heinemann:He has written two novels based on his experience in Vietnam. His second, "Paco's Story," won the 1987 National Book Award.

"Some guys are bemoaning that they didn't share the rite of passage, fighting in Vietnam. They regret they have no war stories to tell. I would trade them my stories and my grief any time.

"I got drafted in May of '66. I was in combat from March of '67 to March of '68, a couple of months after the Tet offensive began. I left Vietnam on a Sunday afternoon at four o'clock and was home in my own bedroom Tuesday morning at two. Half the people in my platoon were either dead or in the hospital.

"It was clear from the first day that it was a bunch of bullshit. We were there to shoot off a bunch of ammo and kill a bunch of people. We were really indifferent. The whole country was indifferent: 'Why are we fighting in Vietnam?' (continued on page 164) Great Divide (continued from page 114) "When I got back, I was scared and grateful and ashamed that I had lived, 'cause I was getting letters: So-and-so got hit, so-and-so burned to death. I had been given my life back; I felt a tremendous energy. At the same time, I felt like shit.

"The summer of'68, I got a job driving a C.T.A. bus. The streets were crazy. One night, I'm driving a bus down Clark Street, past Lincoln Park. I look out under the trees to see what's happening. You can see the silhouettes of cops, cop cars and kids. I heard there was tear gas and cops beating up kids. When I was in Vietnam, we used tear gas to flush people out of tunnels.

"As we got closer, I pulled the brake and said, 'I'm sorry, we're not goin' anywhere.' The passengers hollered, 'Go on, go on!' I said, 'No, no, no, no!' I fully expected people were gonna get killed.

"I think the police riot was the next night. I came to a stop light at the south end of the Loop. All four curbs were bumper-to-bumper buses, which each held maybe 60 guys. They were just filled with cops and all the lights were off. All I could see was riot gear: helmets and billy clubs. I knew exactly what was gonna happen. These guys were gonna do the same thing I had done overseas. They were just gonna smash people. I turned my bus around; the hell with it."

Rex Winship:He deals in futures. In fact, he deals in just about anything: grains, metals, livestock, bonds, bills, currencies, interest rates. "Anything you can buy, we can trade." His estimated net worth is more than $400,000,000.

"I'm sure we're close to another change. I don't know if it'll come next week or ten years from now. Nothin' is forever. You always have to stay flexible, so you can change. That means education.

"There's a business we should go into: training people to be in the service business. Give them basic skills: math, speaking, diction. You can't be in the business world and not be able to communicate. It wasn't as important when you had a screwdriver in your hand.

"Back in the Fifties, when you went in for a job, the guy said, 'How old are you?' 'Twenty-six.' 'Married?' 'You bet.' 'Boy, that's good. What a guy, you're married.' Stabilizing force, right? Today, you don't want the kid married. You want to be able to send him to Singapore for two years, Sydney, Australia, for a year, and then back to Chicago. Two, he's gotta go to school nights. He's gotta learn math, statistics; he's gotta learn Fed policy. When he goes to work at six and gets home after school at 9:30, what's his new wife gonna say to him?

"It's very hard to make a profit in a free market. Look at the airlines decontrolled. With controls, you're simply smarter than the controllers. Christ, if you can't outsmart one little Government staff, you shouldn't get to work in the morning."

If you're called a pirate, a robber baron, is that an insult?

"It's a compliment. Absolutely. I wish I had their money. Who developed America? The regulator? The President? Or was it Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller? I mean, tell me what they did that was bad. Seriously, what did they do that was bad?"

Douglas Roth:He is that rarest of birds, a defrocked American Lutheran minister, only the second in the church's history. En route from the Pittsburgh airport to the steel-mill town of Clairton, where he had his parish and where he still lives, we pass other such communities: Munhall; Duquesne; Homestead, of bloody labor history and lore; McKeesport; Hazelwood. It is impossible to distinguish one from the other: the same rows of smokeless chimneys, remainders of what were once furiously engaged steel mills; the same gray landscape, superimposed on the obstinate green of the trees; the same silence.

"It began as an ordinary mill-town ministry. Our first call. In '78, the mills were working pretty good. Our plan was to stay three years and head back to the Midwest. Then prophetic things began to happen [laughs]. The city of Clairton went bankrupt. They had no money for police or firemen or any other city workers. In our research, we discovered that the chief cause behind everything was a massive disinvestment. The money was leaving this valley at a fantastic rate, going overseas, to the Third World and cheap labor.

"The number-one culprit is the Mellon Bank. It runs Pittsburgh: every institution from the churches to the schools to the various corporations across the board. All roads lead to the Mellon Bank.

"The church is real good about writing up all kinds of statements on economic justice, wonderful words. We said we have to go beyond that. So we devised a whole series of actions.

"We put out a whole series of fliers. The most famous dealt with the closing of Mesta Machine Company. It makes the equipment that goes into a steel mill. The bank foreclosed on Mesta for $13,000,000. At the same time, it was lending millions to Sumitomo in Japan. It's a huge conglomerate that makes the same product.

"The Mellon Bank holds a lot of pension money for these men and is using their money against 'em. We had a pledge D day, June 6, 1983. It was disinvestment day, and we organized massive withdrawals.

"In October came the penny action, with about 100 union workers. They went into the bank with ten dollars each and said, 'I want ten dollars' worth of pennies. I wanna count them, make sure they're here.'

"The next time, our guys took out safe-deposit boxes: 'We want to do business with you.' The workers would then bring in frozen blocks of fish and deposit them in their boxes. Before that, we'd had hours of meetings with the executives of the Mellon Bank. They just kept telling us how they had this fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders. They were just bankers and had no real power. That's when we decided to take the fishes and loaves, give them to the Mellon Bank and see if they could feed the multitudes."

The Reverend Bill Hybels:At 34, he is senior pastor of the Willow Creek Community Church. He also acted as chaplain of the Chicago Bears until 1988. Several of their star players are among his parishioners.

We're in his expansive office suite on the second floor. It's shortly after the early service, attended by a full house, 4500. In about an hour, the second service will get under way. Another full house is expected.

"We have a Yuppie crowd, upper-middle. We say, 'Once a Yuppie has bought his second BMW, then what?' They're 34 years old, they're investment bankers, they've got their home and two BMWs and they're empty. They're saying, 'I'm only 34, what is this all about? I don't need a third BMW.' That's when they start looking.

"They come here and they perceive me as their peer. They say, 'There's another Yuppie.' I don't have two BMWs, to be sure [laughs]. They say, 'There's a guy who could qualify, but he has some direction to his life. I think I'll listen to him.' They see other people their own age singing songs about direction. They see a creative drama about it on stage. There's a band playing that could play at any lounge anywhere. They have to take this seriously.

"There's never been an age more ripe for the message of hope in Christ and love in God than right now. As for the danger of war and the bomb, I am concerned as a citizen of the planet. Have I lost one wink's sleep over it? No. I have peace, in spite of the fact that the world may not have peace. I would love to see it."

Mark Becker:He is 17, a senior at a private school in New York. He is captain and cleanup hitter of the school's baseball team; he heads the hockey team--"It's really rough, I love it"--and the math team, as well.

"I run a mutual fund for the students in the school. My father runs his own Wall Street firm, and I guess that's where I learned. He's an arbitrager; it's the hottest thing on Wall Street these days. Those are the guys who are getting caught for insider trading. I'm sure my dad's not one of 'em.

"When I was a freshman, this fund was started. We formed a business club; we were gonna invest in the stock market, put our money together. It's called BIC, Business Investment Club. I was made chairman when I was 14. We have 135 investors. We make a lot of money. We started with $1600 and we now have $8000.

"A lot of our fathers are in the market. But everything we do is strictly our decision. We don't ask them for advice.

"I read the paper every day. The sports section and the business section, that's it [laughs]. I look at the funny page, too. I read a little column about companies, three-sentence stories about what's happening. You can't just read about it and buy it. I get the Standard & Poor's sheet. I know what to look for a little bit. That's why I'm goin' to business school, 'cause I'm still only a high school kid.

"I watch the news on TV, but the only show I really watch is Dallas, every Friday. It fascinates me, 'cause I like J. R. Ewing. He does everything he wants. I love him he kicks butts. I like to do it in sports. That's why I play hockey. I'm very physical. I'm known as an intimidator."

Sugar Rautbord:She is a member of Chicago's young social set. It is difficult to point to any one magazine or tabloid where her face and story have not appeared.

Her horizons have extended to Washington, where she tossed a dinner for President and Mrs. Reagan.

"I think of myself as an upper-class working girl. The handle the press has given me is 'socialite.' A socialite in today's world is a well-dressed fund raiser. Socialite women meet socialite men and mate and breed socialite children so that we can fund small opera companies and ballet troupes, because there is no Government subsidy. And charities, of course.

"The party I gave in Washington was for Nicaraguan refugee children. It wasn't for the Contras, though I'm sure that would be fun. I did meet an awful lot of Contras, all sorts of interesting people.

"I had a briefing at the White House given by a very interesting gentleman, a Marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North. And then I had another briefing with a very interesting gentleman named Robert McFarlane. Then there was a knock on the door and it was a gentleman by the name of Adolfo Calero, who had come to see me. Patrick Buchanan was another one I spoke to. I learned a lot about political science, just by osmosis.

"In the political world, people are out there trying to make a difference. Adolfo Calero, for one. He was charming. So many of those from the Somoza regime are so Americanized.

"God knows where the funds for the dinner went. I asked for some accounting figures.

"I hope the President and Mrs. Reagan remember me. I've been to dinner once or twice at the White House. I worked on the Blair House restoration this year, which I thought was nice.

"You must remember that fund raising is my work. Sometimes you have to be a little dramatic if you're trying to solicit. It's hard to separate people from their money. As I was riding around New York in a limousine during a hotel strike and there was no place to go, I said, 'Now I know what it feels like to be a bag lady.'

"You can't pick up every homeless person and bring them home. But if you can help by saying something entertaining, you bring a light into their eyes. Maybe that's what the word socialite means.

"It may be naïve, but I still think we can soothe savages with Beethoven. If we can learn to laugh at the same comedy, to cry at the same tragedy, to be moved by the same arts, we've moved closer to an understanding. If you don't understand people, then you bring out the bullets.

"Someone's got to raise money for the arts. Sometimes corporations do it. Sometimes the Government does it. Sometimes it is left to us ladies running around with our Tiffany cups out."

Tiffany what?

"Cups out. Panhandling, you know."

Jean Gump:A grandmother and a mother of 12, ranging in age from 22 to 35. She and her family have lived in a middle-class western suburb of Chicago for 32 years.

For something she did on Good Friday, 1986, she was arrested. Along with her, four other Catholics, young enough to be her children, have been sentenced to terms in prison. Their group is called Silo Plowshares.

"We commemorated the Crucifixion of Christ by entering a missile silo near Holden, Missouri. We hung a banner on the outside of the chain link fence that read, Swords into plowshares, an act of healing. Isaiah 2, from Scriptures: We will pound our swords into plowshares and we will study war no more.

"It's a Minuteman II silo, a first-strike weapon. There are 150 of these missiles. If one of them were to leave the ground, it would decimate an area of 72 miles. We wanted to make this weapon inoperable. We succeeded.

"We carried three hammers, a wire clipper, three baby bottles with our blood, papers with an indictment against the United States and against the Christian church for its complicity. To get through the fence, we used the wire clipper. We had practiced in the park the day before. Once we were in, I proceeded to use the blood, and I made a cross on top of the silo. Underneath, I wrote the words Disarm and live in black spray paint.

"About 40 minutes later, the soldiers arrived in an armored vehicle. There was a machine-gun turret at the top. The commander used a megaphone and said, 'Will all the personnel on top of the silo please leave the premises with your hands raised?' So all of us personnel [laughs] left the silo.

"The area filled with about eight automobiles. FBI, local sheriffs, and so on. They took us into this armored vehicle. On its right-hand side was a big sign: Peacekeeper.

"I said, 'Young man, have you had an opportunity to read Orwell's 1984?'

"He said, 'I'm not allowed to talk to you.' "I said, 'I'll talk to you, then.'

"He said, 'If I had my uniform off, we could talk.'

"I said, 'Maybe we'll meet and have coffee someday.'

"My children knew nothing about this. 'Mother's doing her thing' is what they always say. As I leave the house, they often say, 'Don't get arrested, Ma.' I've been arrested five other times for civil disobedience.

"When the kids were little, I always said, 'Don't ever look to the next guy to affect change. Do it yourself.'

"There's a ripple effect from what we're doing. That's exciting. You never know where it's going to hit. You just know you must do what you must do and let the chips fall where they may.

"You know, I have never been so hopeful. If I can change my way of thinking, anybody can. I don't want to be singled out as anybody special, because I am not. We have got to have a future for our children and we've got to make some sacrifices for it, Ok? Call it a legacy if you want to. What else is there?"

Postscript: Jean Gump was sentenced to eight years at a Federal penitentiary on the charges of conspiracy and destroying public property. For the past 11 months, she has been number 03789-045 at the Correctional Institution for Women, Alderson, West Virginia.