Originally written August 3rd, 2005
BY EDWIN COONEY
In my last two columns, I have offered my perspective on the lives or actions of two American Presidents—Gerald R. Ford and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Indulging in perspective can be both entertaining as well as informational. Its value can however be quite problematical.
Perhaps the simplest definition of perspective is: the capacity to view things in their true relationship or relative importance to one another. That, of course, can be exceedingly difficult to do, especially depending on how personal the situation is.
Suppose you’re about to attend a party you’ve been looking forward to, but you begin that day by biting the inside of your cheek. Your ability to have a really good time at the party is invariably affected as, time after time, your attention is disrupted or the food you’re trying to enjoy stings, as your tongue constantly explores the sore spot in your mouth. It’s even possible that you still aren’t feeling much better when you come across your Aunt Alice who happens to be suffering with a broken leg. Yet, years later, with the inside of your cheek healed, you might recall that you had a lot of laughs and that your cousin Henry looked both silly and pompous in his suit alongside the swimming pool even before he was tossed into the water. Your less-than-perfect experience has been modified by a pain-free distant perspective.
Political and historic events, religious passions, or matters of the heart can also be quite formidable experiences. Few, if any, of life’s experiences occur in either a personal or situational vacuum. However, perspective can be a very valuable tool in assisting you in coming to grips with the conflicts that come with them. Perspective’s greatest gift is intellectual, emotional, or even spiritual balance.
War and ongoing international crises cry out for perspective. Since the spring of 2002, when the build-up to our invasion of Iraq began, supporters of the administration’s policy have been particularly vigorous in their denunciation of France. French fries have become “freedom fries”. There is even a riddle that asks why the French have such wide and shady boulevards entering Paris. The answer is to make things more comfortable for the invading Germans.
The irony here is that this anti-French feeling is generally encouraged by conservatives who insist all of the time that they have eternal respect for the views of our founding fathers. A bit of perspective would remind them, however, that France is our oldest ally. Without her aid during our Revolutionary War, George Washington, John Adams, John Hancock (the guy with the big signature), Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin would all have been hung -- if not drawn and quartered -- on London’s Tower Hill with thousands looking on.
Our love for the British, which I share, is really quite new. There were few Americans born between 1760 and 1930—a period of 170 years—who loved the British. Not until Winston Churchill inspired our desperate efforts in World War II with his bulldog face, his cigar, and his eloquent defiance of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini did the average American have much good to say about the British. For most Americans, the British -- with their fancy dress, haughty manners and accents, their Empire and their love for royalty -- just weren’t “…down to earth!” Eventually, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and others would come along to provide Americans with a different perspective on Britain.
One common thread that runs through American history is the irresistible tendency of the current generation to look longingly back to the past. Our 229 year history, going back to 1776, is sufficiently filled with events and achievements on the part of both Conservative and Liberal devotees to encourage such longings.
Modern Conservatives look back to the 1950s as a time when our streets were comparatively safe, our neighborhoods and schools were pretty drug free, and God and the flag reigned supreme in the classroom. However, they fail to take into account that in 1950, for example, we were at war in Korea, our future seemed imperiled because Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had sold atomic secrets to the Russians, polio annually terrorized thousands of American homes, and millions of black Americans lived in fear of Jim Crow lynch mobs.
Modern Liberals look back to their 1960s “heyday” to remember when Earl Warren’s court, the Congress, and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson championed their just causes. Flowers, folksongs, and free love flourished at Woodstock and in the streets of San Francisco. It’s exceedingly doubtful, however, that these longing Liberals would much care to relive the challenges that made them famous such as General Louis Hershey’s draft, J. Edgar Hoover’s crackdown on student dissidents, or Bull Connor’s anti-civil rights dogs and hoses.
Perspective, therefore, can be like any other tool: valuable or pointless, boring or entertaining. One’s perspective usually depends on how one perceives situations and events. Since most of what I’ve written about perspective has had to do with looking backward, I’m going to close this week’s effort with, I think, a neat little story as to how things were perceived for the future 105 years ago.
In their delightful 1980 book entitled One Night Stands in American History, Richard Shenkman and Kurt Edward Reiger tell of a forward-looking perspective from 1900. This was still the horse and buggy era. Most of America’s streams were free of industrial waste and the air was still largely free of smog and pollution. No one had heard of the ozone. Most environmentalists would, supposedly, be smiling more than they are today.
At the close of 1900, someone estimated that there were three million horses in urban America. Not only could you see, pet and ride them—you could also smell them.
New York City’s approximately 150,000 horses dropped about 10 million pounds of equine dung annually on “the Big Apple.” Droppings from Rochester, New York’s 15,000 horses were enough to create a manure pile one acre square and 175 feet in height.
Even worse, every street corner in American cities contained a stable of horses packed with urine soaked hay. Flies were everywhere. When it rained the streets became a muddy manure mess. When the weather was dry, heavy carriage and foot traffic would grind the dry horse dung into a fine powder that would blow into one’s clothes, hair, nostrils and homes.
Horse pollution was getting so serious that some Americans, according to Otto L. Bettman’s 1974 book The Good Old Days: They were Terrible, really feared that our cities might eventually be buried under by horse manure.
What does this story have to do with perspective you ask? The answer is simple. Forward-looking Americans in 1900 perceived that a better time was on the horizon. Cities would very soon be quieter, cleaner, and healthier places in which to live: the gasoline engine was on its way!
Our capacity for perspective is most definitely a special gift! I love it and will continue to use it! How about you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY