
                             Getting Excited
                       (c)1992 by Lois B. Laulicht
                             Valley Head, WV

  Let me explain!  In addition to the huge economic and social problems
  which complicate our stretched out lives, we must also deal with our
  national affliction. We are burdened with national cool and maybe even
  international cool! It stalks our universe in politics, business, and
  even in the family. It invades our relationships with bosses and
  workers, parents and children, and particularly so, in the areas of
  commerce and services. Conventional wisdom seems to hold the view that
  without cool there cannot be objectivity!

  To begin. There is a social expectation to maintain a polite and mild
  response to major and minor impositions upon one's freedom, psyche,
  pocket book, and time.  One can almost expect a surprised recoil of
  shock when these varied assumptions go too far and reaction to them
  becomes blunt, angry and honest. When one refuses to accept the
  stereotypes of race, class, sex or age and reacts with impatience,
  communicating an unwillingness to put up with this expensive and
  demeaning behavior, the reflexive excuses pour out. It is rarely the
  responsibility of the provider of the service but something that
  you did that wasn't quite correct. And with a quick sleight of hand,
  the victim becomes guilty of the blunder or worse. Within this context
  is the most insulting and infuriating expectation...that one is expected
  not to fight back.

  This social behavior is pervasive.  As information technology has
  become ever more sophisticated it appears there are more and more
  areas where transactions are fouled up.  From charge card credits to
  accurate prescriptions to delivery of ordered merchandise -- you name
  it. Most of us have shared this kind of experience.  Some of us are
  much less tolerant to the increasing time spent re-doing tasks and
  correcting an ever increasing list of mistakes.  The information age
  appears to have created huge bottlenecks where many of us feel
  ripped off and still more turned off.

  In important areas touching upon the restriction of social freedom
  the reaction is almost always defensive surprise when strong rebuttal
  challenges cold war tactics of guilt by association. Very recently a
  group of writers with whom I was associated either actively engaged
  or went along in defining me an anarchist and Un-American because I
  was critical of various computer industry marketing strategies. I not
  only refused to go along with their definition of me but took steps to
  remind others that this bunch of computer professionals were equating
  product criticism with the political ideology of Joseph McCarthy.
  (See "The Politics of Technology and PC Sales" by Jerome & Lois Laulicht
  or Right.Zip) We were expected to fold our computerized tent and slink
  away.  That's the problem with not being cool. One cannot, should not,
  and shall not play by the rules of "cool".

  An example: When I recently saw that this same bunch were putting out
  an on-line magazine I asked myself do you roll over and play dead or do
  you act in your normal non-cool manner? The fact of the matter is that
  covering up important social issues with cool posturing often ignores
  the blatant abuse of the social rules we say we respect.

  The forum of the BBS, like the radio talk show, reaches many people
  and preserves a caller's ability to speak their minds. They are different
  platforms but share many of the same characteristics as politicians like
  Ross Perot and Jerry Brown understand. These forums provide a place to
  help create public positions on a variety of issues and easily
  disseminate information and new ideas. One of the things we know for sure
  is that the audience is far greater than the number of active participants
  and is growing. For whatever the reasons most people do not expose
  themselves this way. They prefer anonymity and usually respond with
  silence.

  There are several very active conferences on ILink, Opinion and
  Politics, which are home to a number of people who like to create
  controversy and attack other members by making racial, national or
  religious aspersions. The belief is that these are depersonalized
  descriptions of various groups of people. All of this occurs within
  the framework of defending the right to hold and offer differing
  opinions or views. One does not lose one's cool in these kinds of
  forums because it is both bad form and self defeating. Cool has won
  again and we all have all become losers in the process.  I turned these
  conferences off when Jewish women were characterized as loud, pushy, and
  aggressive. I will be offended by that blatant piece of anti-Semitism and
  anti-feminism for a long time.

  What are some of the areas we are "cool" about? Scales and charts are
  pretentious for a non-scholar, so let's put it the terms of our
  childhood - getting warm, warmer, hot and hottest!  The ultimate
  question is the one which deals with the relationship between the
  reaction of "hottest" and how one behaves. Perhaps that uneasy relation-
  ship is still another measure of our national cool; doing a lot of
  talking and taking little action like a TV media event.

  In terms of my first example - McCarthy type behavior from my former
  associates in California - I was definitely uncool. My reaction to
  their slurs upon my character were somewhere between warm and hot,
  notwithstanding a call for a name check to the FBI to ascertain any
  Neo-Nazi involvement. Will the Fascists on the aforementioned ILink
  conferences be surprised at my uncool reaction to their bigotry
  relating to my religious orientation or my sex?  The Senate was
  certainly surprised at the uncool stance of women all over America
  when several women upset establishment politicians in Illinois and
  in Pennsylvania.  That process has just begun! The reaction to the jury
  decision relating to Rodney King and the pounding he took in the name of
  law and order is dangerously very uncool! The loss of life, the trauma
  inflicted upon the innocent, the shame of decent law enforcement
  officials around the country has become the symptom of our own national
  neglect and responsibility.

  And finally, my beloved son told me that a draft of a letter to the
  Editor of Newsweek magazine was "rather emotional"  The article I
  responded to was a critique of Sen. Robt. C. Byrd of WV and his
  porking tactics for his constituents. The letter was never sent but
  was buried in son's computer and is good example of warmer on my  own
  personal continuum.

  Senator Robert C.Byrd of WV is indeed, a very powerful man, but he is
  also a man who has not forgotten his own beginnings. " The Anatomy of
  Pork "; Newsweek: April 13, 1992 by Brian Kelly missed the point
  thoroughly re: a four laner in remote WV.  When this highway project
  is completed it will represent one of the FEW successful economic
  development strategies that the Fed has financed. This remote and under
  developed area in WV has needed a project of this magnitude to make
  possible easy and quick access for industry and tourism. Sen. Byrd has
  converted a bit of his Congressional credit into a useful opportunity
  for the hardworking and under paid people in this part of the state.
  If this simple minded definition of pork is carried to its logical
  conclusion all congressional activity which helps the few at a cost
  to the many becomes pork.  It seems to me that the question becomes
  what community is in most need of "pork", how these fundamental
  distinctions are made, and is there any equity in the crude horse
  trading that goes on in the name of local constituencies. When business
  is the beneficiary and the pork become rancid, it seems to take much
  too long for corrective management action to get into high gear.  The
  profits are sucked up and the public is left holding a very expensive
  bag with almost nothing to show for huge expenditures. The country will
  be far better off when more of the heavily larded pork leaves the DC
  metropolitan area to provide at least a floor of economic stability
  to the many depression ridden communities in the country.

  Many of the people who live and work in the Washington metropolitan area
  do not live in America any more than do the affluent in California.
  They live in the world of prestige, influence, and high living where
  their country club fees would feed a small family for a year! Moreover,
  the power structure inside the Washington beltway have little interest
  in the needs of the American people any more than the upper middle class
  in California have in the working people of Watts or San Francisco. The
  rest of the society are simply not important others except perhaps
  in an election year. Maybe!

  That part of the society which objects to rich and pungent adjectives
  consider all of this commentary bad form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
  recently teed off at William Greider's "The Betrayal of American
  Democracy"; Simon & Schuster in the April 27, 1992 issue of the New York
  Times. Mr. Greider's adjectives are referred to as the "mud slide of the
  author's prose".  I think what caught my attention was the observation
  that Greider's treatise was "the not altogether startling or original
  contention that the wishes of the American people are no longer
  expressed by what goes on in Washington". Obviously, as experts at
  gauging national cool, Washington is of the opinion that we will not be
  GETTING EXCITED, a reality underlined by Mr. Greider.  Does the Times
  book critic find the truth of our social condition redundant?  That
  may be, but some public issues don't disappear because they have been
  analyzed, criticized or politicized.

  Accepting the fact that being cool is often a social compromise of not
  wanting to be different, sticking one's neck out, and compromising
  one's economic or social condition-- we must ask again:

  Do we get excited about the wholesale acceptance of drug abuse in the
  society with a concerted "hottest" response?

  Do we get excited over the spreading of AIDS into the population at
  large with a concerted "hottest" response?

  Do we get excited about S&L fraud and demand restitution with a
  a strident "hottest" response?

  Do we get excited about the shambles of our public education with a
  consistent "hot" response?

  Do we get excited that both national political parties are owned
  body and soul by special interests and demand, by registering and
  voting and with our "hottest" response, full loyalty to us-- their
  constituents?

  Do we get excited over a spiraling deficit and then fight Washington
  to free up defense dollars for debt reduction with an imperative
  "hottest" response?

  Do we get excited over a recent Commerce Department definition of high
  wages pegged at six bucks an hour and react with a dismayed "hot"
  response?

  Do we refuse to accept the mythology that issues of structural poverty,
  infant mortality, illiteracy, and sub-standard housing are not local
  questions and must be addressed with a national committed "hottest"
  response?

  Is the nation asleep or do we all need training in getting
  excited? Is that not the message being sent to us by the tragedy of
  South Los Angeles... with the"hottest" response which will alarm us
  all.


  May 3, 1992
  Lois Laulicht
  PCRelay->Ch1
