The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (Paperback)

In this book, Gitlins strategy is to try to lower the heat of the culture wars through a "pox on both their houses" retelling of its genesis and most important battles. His attempt to shed light on the destructive effects of identity politics as practiced by the Left and distorted by the right feels forthright and balanced. Theres a good summary of the influence of various thinkers on the academic Left: Foucalt, Derrida, Horkheimer, Adorno, all of whom attacked the Enlightenment project in varying degrees, ushering in the era of "relativism." Also, he anticipates much of the ad hominen counter-Enlightenment criticism to be heaped on him by Lefty reviewers  e.g., hes an old white male liberal academic Jewish prof out of touch with the latest radical twist on of those white male French guys, who still believes there can be a Left, and liberal and progressive causes worth fighting for. In other words, he does not agree with one of his graduate students who told him there is "no such thing as truth  there are only truth effects." (Gitlin nicely points out that anti-Enlightenment types still use the ground rules established by the Enlightenment to attack the Enlightenment).

He starts the book with a first hand report on the difficulties of getting a new textbook series approved in Oakland, CA, which serves to demonstrate on a practical level the effect of post-modernist theory. Identity politics, that hydra-headed hyphenating monster (Japanese-Americans, African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc.) kicked up so much dust that Oakland didnt succeed in adopting any textbooks for at least two years. By contrast, the conservatives who protested were easy to mollify: some minor revisions mentioning creationism and they were fine. The hyphenates major complaint? The textbooks didnt treat their various victimologies fully enough. Or that their stories were not told with enough obsequiousness and guilt. The textbooks themselves, in trying to anticipate such criticisms, broke up the main narrative with a multi-media look, and multi-perspectivist story-telling strategy.

Less balanced is his description of how the false crisis of P(olitical) C(orrectness) was created in think tanks fueled by conservative money men (Olin, Heritage, etc.), spread by DSouza and others, and promulgated through the media to whom it was cynically and successfully pitched as a story of "free speech denied." But then, Gitlin couldnt have "balanced" this chapter in the Culture War because the Left, ambushed by the conservatives, couldnt recover fast enough, and never had a chance to tell its side of the story in any meaningful way. It was an upside-down time when conservatives got to call liberals anti free-speech and McCarthy-like. Those free speech loving conservative anti-PC warriors were suddenly keeping America safe for good old-fashioned race-baiting, gender intolerance and just plain good ol hate! I know they helped me see how wrong to be anti-anti-woman, anti-anti-Semitic, anti-racist, and anti-fascist.

Eventually this latest semi-real war against terrorism will die out and we'll see the usual rancor return. In fact, the lack of a budget consensus now is a welcome step in that direction!

The formative bases of America: anti-monarchial and minimalist government and rough equality among land-owning, farming citizens have not been relevant since the Civil War. The advance of industrialism and the rise of huge, powerful private concerns ripped asunder that idyllic world. The Knights of Labor, the Populists, and the Socialists tried to mount challenges to these changes and really represent the only challenges to that new order. The union drives of the 30s and 40s were interested in getting a piece of the pie, not fundamental change.

The middle class and rich kids of the 60s that led the protests against the excesses of American foreign policy in Vietnam did serve as a useful corrective to the arrogance of the United States. But in no way did the 60s protest change the common dream. As Gitlin himself points out consumerism replaced citizenship as the American dream easily by the 1920s.

Gitlin is right to say that identity politics detracts from a common purpose. But the significance of those movements pale in comparison to the dominance of the corporate order in remaking and controlling the direction of the world and national orders. There is no Left or whomever that is being drowned out or replaced by identity voices.

This reviewer found Gitlin's book difficult to understand at times. He clearly wants a commons reestablished but one is left with a rather murky view of what that is or should be and how it will happen given no Left, identity politics, and global economic forces.