The America Syndrome Read online

  THE

  AMERICA

  SYNDROME

  APOCALYPSE, WAR, AND

  OUR CALL TO GREATNESS

  Betsy Hartmann

  Seven Stories Press

  NEW YORK • OAKLAND • LONDON

  Copyright © 2017 by Betsy Hartmann

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Seven Stories Press

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hartmann, Betsy, author.

  Title: The America syndrome : apocalypse, war and our call to greatness / Betsy Hartmann.

  Description: New York : Seven Stories Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016057014 (print) | LCCN 2017010548 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781609807405 (hardback) | ISBN 9781609807412 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States--Civilization--1970| Fear--United States. |

  Crises--United States. | National characteristics, American. |

  Exceptionalism--United States. | Social psychology--United States. |

  BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. | SOCIAL SCIENCE /

  Future

  Studies.

  Classification: lcc e169.12.h378 2017 (print) | lcc e169.12 (ebook) | ddc

  973.92--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057014

  Printed in the USA.

  987654321

  For Alistair and the next generation

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Introduction

  End Times and Endless War

  Chapter One

  The Puritans: Pride and

  Prejudices of a Chosen People

  Chapter Two

  Utopian Dreams, Millennial Madness

  Chapter Three

  Boom and Doom: The Magic of the Atom

  Chapter Four

  The Church of Malthus

  Chapter Five

  Climate Change: Tip of the Melting Iceberg

  Notes

  An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

  Howard Zinn, “The Optimism of Uncertainty,”

  The Nation, September 2, 2004

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people have helped me in the process of writing this book that I worry, in my usual way, that I have left someone out. First, I’d like to thank my agent and friend Rick Balkin who believed in the book since its inception. He went above and beyond the call of duty by casting his sharp editorial eye on drafts and keeping my spirits up whenever they lagged with his great sense of humor. Special thanks go to publisher and editor Dan Simon, assistant editor and publisher Lauren Hooker, marketing and publicity director Ruth Weiner, and their team at Seven Stories Press. Dan’s insightful comments helped me to see and shape the book in new ways, and it has been a pleasure to work with such a dedicated publisher.

  For help in developing a deeper understanding of American history I am grateful to Susan Tracy, professor emerita of History and American Studies at Hampshire College, who kindly commented on numerous chapter drafts, lent me books and answered my questions. I just wish I could have put everything I learned from her into the book. Alan Hodder, professor of Comparative Religion at Hampshire, shed light on the Puritans and transcendentalism. I also owe a big debt of gratitude to two great scholars of American history: Paul Boyer and Sacvan Bercovitch, both of whom passed away recently. Their books inspired many of my thoughts, and I wish I’d had the opportunity to thank them personally.

  A number of colleagues, friends, and family members gave valuable feedback on the manuscript or parts of it. They include Sue Boyce, Axel Harneit-Sievers, Anne Hendrixson, Nick Hildyard, Peggy Hobbs, Katie McKay Bryson, Kathy Pfister, Rosalind Pollan, Jade Sasser, Sarah Sexton, and Banu Subramaniam. My previous work with Banu and Charles Zerner on our anthology Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties helped lay the ground for this book. The population chapter benefitted from my long association with dedicated scholar/activists Mohan Rao and N.B. Sarojini in India, The Corner House in the UK, and Hampshire College colleagues Marlene Fried, Anne Hendrixson, and Kay Johnson. Through teaching together and through her books, Kay taught me so much about the tragic human consequences of China’s one-child policy. Ongoing conversations with colleagues Michael Klare and Frank Holmquist and disasters expert Ben Wisner have deepened my knowledge of climate, security, and the African context. Lyla Mehta and Melissa Leach at the Institute of Development Studies and Jan Selby in the Department of International Relations at Sussex University in the UK have helped me sharpen my analysis of population, scarcity, and environmental security issues. Simon Dalby has also been an important influence on my thinking.

  Hampshire College, from which I recently retired, has always been supportive of my research and writing, and I especially appreciate my colleagues in the School of Critical Social Inquiry, the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, and the Population and Development Program for all the help they have given me over the years. I also appreciate my students for keeping me on my toes and hopeful.

  Geoffrey Boyce and Sarah Launius taught me a lot about border issues and activism, and Sonia Kruks introduced me to Simone de Beauvoir’s views on political purity. Charles Mann provided me with new materials and insights on the history of apocalyptic thinking in environmentalism. Thanks to Amy Diehl for her help in website design.

  A fellowship at the Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes, CA in the spring of 2012 allowed me the space to write the first draft of the climate chapter, and that same spring, thanks to Jade Sasser, I was able to workshop my chapter on the atomic bomb at the University of California, Berkeley, Workshop on Environmental Politics.

  My mother-in-law Alice Boyce and four friends, Cliff Kuhn, Bill Howley, Sue Leather, and Robert Prasch, all of whom were inspiring thinkers and activists, died while I was writing this book and I hope it honors their legacy.

  Many friends and family provided moral support, guidance, and a sounding board along the way. Special thanks to Rosette Gault, who has been there for me since the age of twelve and whose ideas spark my thinking, Corinne Demas, Kathy Pfister, Neil Stillings, Joyce Duncan, Sam Gladstone, Jennie Kitteringham, Ivan Nutbrown, Patty Mintz, Debbie Bernick, Doug and Jane Smith, Greg Lieberknecht, Matthew Roehrig, Jerry Epstein, Fran Deutsch, the members of my writing and political study groups, my father-in-law James E. Boyce, my sister Darcy Hartmann, my mother Martha Hartmann, and my children and their partners, Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and James Sinclair, and Tom Hartmann-Boyce and Melissa Arrambide. My first grandchild Alistair was born while I was writing th
is book and he has brought enough joy to brighten even the darkest day.

  Last but not least, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my husband Jim Boyce. He has been there beside me every step of this journey, never faltering in his interest, smart advice, and emotional support. He is also a thorough and meticulous editor, and my prose is better for his patient editorial labors of love.

  PREFACE

  I came of age in the late 1960s, at the apogee of that tumultuous time in American history. In the spring of my junior year in high school, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated and revolution convulsed the streets of Paris. A few months later Mayor Daley’s police busted the heads of anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. When I entered Yale University in 1969, as part of the first class of undergraduate women, breaking that gender barrier seemed tame compared to manning the barricades.

  On May Day 1970, demonstrators converged on New Haven to protest against the trial of Black Panther leader Bobby Seale for the murder of an alleged FBI informant. When news broke of the secret US bombing of Cambodia, the protest expanded to include the bloody war in Southeast Asia. Yale’s president Kingman Brewster opened the university’s gates to feed and house thousands of young people who came from across the country. Meanwhile, the Nixon White House dispatched 4000 National Guard troops to join the ranks of armed state troopers in the city.

  The day before the protest was scheduled to begin, President Nixon upped the ante, announcing the invasion of Cambodia and denouncing domestic dissidents in a televised speech to the nation. “My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home,” he warned. “We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed.”1

  Speaking the next day at the Pentagon, he was even blunter. “You know, you see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world and here they are, burning up the books, I mean, storming around about this issue, I mean, you name it. Get rid of the war, there’ll be another one.”2

  The May Day demonstration in New Haven went off relatively smoothly, but things got scarier that night. Street skirmishes drove protesters to seek refuge in our dorms as tear gas wafted through the windows. We got off lightly. On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen shot four students dead at Kent State University and wounded nine others. Less than two weeks later, two more students lay dead and eleven were wounded at Jackson State University in Mississippi. The killings galvanized a national student strike movement and classes were suspended at many colleges and universities, including Yale. It felt like I was living on the edge of a revolution.

  Personal transformations were in the air, too. I became a feminist, and then, after spending a year working in India in 1971–72, a believer in third world peasant revolution. During my last year of college, two close friends, my boyfriend (now my husband, Jim), and I began to talk about going back to the land.

  The prospect of nuclear annihilation added to our sense of urgency. For the most idealistic of my generation, the task was nothing less than saving the human race and the planet. We would build sturdy arks to survive the apocalypse. Our music reflected our hopes and fears. In 1965, a tune called “Eve of Destruction,” recorded by Barry McGuire, hit the top of the pop charts. I was 14 years old and knew all the verses by heart. At Woodstock in 1969, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills & Nash both played the haunting song “Wooden Ships,” in which a young man and woman from enemy sides stumble upon each other after a holocaust, munch on purple berries, and float peacefully away as others perish around them. “We are leaving, you don’t need us,” goes its refrain.

  The specter of the bomb knit together the diverse utopian experiments of the 1960s and ’70s. The 1962 Port Huron Statement that launched Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) captured the mood: “Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living.” If so, why not experiment? Maybe a new revolutionary millennium was to come—maybe it had already been born in Maoist China, still hidden from the world by the bamboo curtain. It was imperative to devise new ways to live in harmony with each other and with nature. We would strike the right balance between manual and intellectual labor, work and leisure, communal solidarity and individual freedom, escaping as much as possible from the capitalist world’s cruel hierarchies of class, race, and gender.

  On graduating from college, Jim and I received grants to go to Bangladesh, so we put the back-to-the-land dream on hold. Our friends moved to make the dream a reality. They lived rent-free in an abandoned farmhouse in West Virginia until they scraped together enough money to buy 70 acres along with another couple. The house that came with the land had been grand in its time, but now it had no windows, electricity, heat, or running water. It was being used to store hay.

  We returned from two years in Bangladesh in serious culture shock and reeling from the political violence we’d witnessed there. We needed a place to live cheaply where we could write our book about the village. Though we’d grown enormously during our time away, we hadn’t outgrown the back-to-the-land dream. Our friends invited us to join them in West Virginia and to build a cabin on their land. When my grandfather counseled against building on property we didn’t own, I bristled at his bourgeois values.

  And so we bought an old Dodge Dart for $150, packed it with our belongings, and headed to Appalachia in the fall of 1976. After the crowded cities and highways of the northeast, driving into West Virginia was pure liberation. We floated over rolling waves of green hills, and from their crests glimpsed tantalizing views of steep meadows and pastures. The John Denver song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” was our anthem. It did seem “almost heaven,” this West Virginia he celebrated, though his geography was a little off—the Shenandoah River and Blue Ridge Mountains the song extolls are further east in Virginia. It didn’t matter. The map we were following led more to a dream than to any specific locale.

  Countless others took such journeys. Some went back to the land, others formed urban communes or joined the political underground. The ’60s, or whatever one chooses to call the era since it stretched well into the ’70s, were heady times. In our youthful zeal to transform the world, few of us realized that we were acting out a much older American apocalyptic tradition. Had we understood this, we might have better prepared ourselves for the political challenges that lay ahead—the rise of Reagan, the collapse of Communism, the new wars on the horizon. Nixon’s remark, “Get rid of the war, there’ll be another one,” proved all too prescient.

  Writing this book has taken me on a long journey—back to my past, but also toward the future. My generation’s apocalyptic terrors and utopian dreams were my starting point, but I realized that to understand them I had to look much further back in American history. Our apocalyptic mindset was less the exception than the rule.

  Today apocalypse is again in the air Americans breathe, blown on a swirling wind of religious prophesies, sci-fi movies, doomsday prepper TV shows, environmental predictions, and worst-case national security scenarios. A young college student recently told me she didn’t see any point in having children since the planet is headed toward collapse. To ride out the coming apocalypse in style, a number of super-wealthy American tech executives and hedge-fund managers are buying up land in New Zealand or investing in luxury survival condos in old underground nuclear missile silos. The latter feature sniper posts so armed militia can protect against unwanted intruders.3 And now we have a president whose apocalyptic rhetoric is calculated to raise fear to a fever pitch. Trump’s policies also heighten insecurities about the future. The more his administration slows progress on environmentalism, for example, the worse the long-term impacts of climate change will likely be. While it’s hard not to be anxious and pessimistic in the present moment, we need to resist t
he temptation to become apocalyptic.

  In the course of writing this book, I spent four months in New Delhi, India as a Fulbright Scholar. There’s so much more there than here to induce doomsday despair—deadly pollution, nightmarish traffic congestion, unconscionable rates of poverty and disease. Not a pretty picture, in other words. Yet people in Delhi seemingly went about their lives without fear that the world would soon end. They didn’t shoulder that unnecessary burden. Why do so many Americans shoulder it, then? What’s so appealing about the burden that we can’t lay it down?

  My hope is that this book challenges Americans to think beyond the apocalypse, sparking fresh thinking and opening new windows on the world. In writing it, I have felt the burden of apocalypse slip slowly from my own shoulders. It’s a big relief.

  Amherst, Massachusetts—December 2016

  Introduction

  END TIMES AND

  ENDLESS WAR

  According to opinion polls, a staggering percentage of Americans accept that the world will end in a battle in Armageddon. In a 2010 Pew poll, 41 percent of respondents said they expected Jesus Christ to return to Earth by 2050. Two years later a Reuters poll found that over one-fifth of the American population believed the end of the world will happen in their lifetime, as compared to 6 percent in France, 7 percent in Belgium, and 8 percent in Great Britain. Another recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that 49 percent of Americans think that natural disasters are a sign of “the end times.”4

  In the months before the purported December 21, 2012 Mayan apocalypse, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) received so many inquiries from children and adults terrified that a rogue planet might crash into the Earth or that the sun might explode that it set up a special webpage to allay their fears. The page received over four and a half million views. On December 22, NASA posted a video it had made in advance, “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday.”5