University of Virginia Library

Charles Bryan

A Pessimistic Whirl

This is the first of a weekly column
which was began last year.

These are days of despair and
cynicism for everyone, but especially
for an observer of current events.
Since the purpose of this column
is to observe current events, its
tone would not be honest if it
were not gloomy. Consider today's
installment, then, as an initial
apology for the melancholy of
future weeks.

This feeling has been exacerbated
for me by my experience
this summer, which I spent largely
without access to news media.
Such isolation from daily events
should, I had thought, produce a
feeling of ignorance-or, more accurately,
a feeling of even graver
ignorance than before.

But such has not been the case.
Sadly, nothing at all seems to
have changed over the summer.
And for a person whose every
predisposition favors, even assumes,
change, this is more than
momentarily depressing.

In Vietnam, the war rages on.
We bomb in the north and dislocate
in the south; the NLF is
less guilty only because it is less
powerful. Accusations are exchanged
before an international
audience while the peasants of Vietnam
suffer most of all.

In the Middle East, only the
shooting has stopped, and this
just barely. The Arab nations are
seething. Israel is indulging in an
arrogance which, if sustained, must
eventually lead to her fall. And
the great powers, who underwrote
the Six Day War to begin with,
seem oblivious to their sins.

But the raging domestic issues
give no more basis for optimism.

The 1968 presidential campaign
is superficially just beginning to
warm up, but in fact the candidates,
barring something cataclysmic,
are already decided-and an
unholy trinity they are. George
Wallace has announced and is not
to be deterred. President Johnson
almost certainly will run again,
Richard Nixon, the second shiftiest
politician in the country, has all
but sewn up a majority of the
Republican convention votes. And
the New Left doesn't seem to be
able to hold a convention, much
less nominate anybody.

Finally, the gap between
Negroes and whites is as great
as ever. The "establishment" has
lost what momentum it ever had
towards an alleviation of the
tragedy, while black militants seem
to consider the murder of Negro
by Negro a reasonable facsimile
of revolution.

I apologize for the emotionalism
of this article and, again, that the
dominant emotion is despair. Perhaps
deeper analyses will yield
happier conclusions. Perhaps.