Volume 1, Number 9 · December 26, 1963
The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After
By David Riesman
It has always astonished me that the Civil War, obscured by the drama and nostalgia which surround it, has had so minimal an impact in reminding Americans of the violence endemic in our society. Nor did the shooting of President Lincoln (one among a number of assassinations and attempted killings) jar the complacency of many Americans that ours is fundamentally a manageable and peaceable society. Despite the fashion in small circles to proclaim one's tragic sense of life, it has been difficult for the reasonably well-off in America fully to appreciate the precariousness of civilized life here at home: the lights go on, the jets take off, the daily agenda of noise and imagery provided by the omnipresent media set before us an apparent continuity of experience. In the ancient world, the arson of the library at Alexandria by Heliogabalus symbolized how great can be the orbit of a single destructive, vainglorious act; with us, a man capable of boasting that he was the 'youngest Marxist' appears to have perpetrated an act upon our Chief of State that symbolizes and brings to mind the case with which our whole society might be destroyed by the trigger-happy in this nuclear age.
Feature, 1806 words
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