We Can do Better

I've been reading some pieces by Carey McWilliams, former editor of The Nation, and also well- known for his insights into the history and culture of California. I was particularly struck, though, by a passage in "The Politics of Utopia", in which he quotes Progressive California Governor and Senator Hiram Johnson, speaking of Harrison Gray Otis, the red-baiting, strike-breaking publisher of the L A Times in the 1890s and early 1900s. As a Labor Day celebration, I give it to you:

"In the City of San Francisco, we have drunk to the very dregs of infamy; we have had vile officials; we have had rotten newspapers. But we have nothing so vile, nothing so low, nothing so debased, nothing so infamous in San Francisco as Harrison Gray Otis. He sits there in senile dementia with gangrene heart and rotting brain, grimacing at every reform, chattering impotently at all things that are decent, frothing, fuming, violently gibbering, going down to his grave in snarling infamy. He is one thing that California looks at when, in looking at Southern California, they see anything that is disgraceful, depraved, corrupt, crooked, and putrescent--that is Harrison Gray Otis."

And that is what I call polemic! Here in our day, we are content with calling Bush an idiot and Cheney a pig and Rumsfeld "deluded". Where is "putrescent"? Where is "debased"? Why don't we apply that oh so appropriate word to their actions and intentions, "infamy"?

At any rate, in 2006, it is worth remembering that decency has to be fought for and won over and over. There is and never has been a shortage of wingnuts, never a shortage of shills for the rich and powerful, never a shortage of grasping, lying, power-mad psychopaths at the top. We are too shy! We can insult them more eloquently, expose them to deeper contempt! We can do better!