Last chance.
And I remembered.
Not far away, probably torn down, probably only a greasy ghost sharing
the fourth dimension of some new structure with a marquee and a
doorman, was a hall bedroom within spitting distance of the curved
rails of an extinct elevated railroad where I'd made my abode for a
year. Not far away, the loft in which I'd earned my eighteen simoleons
a week with the other sweated youths. The counters of that department
store where, with the stupendous poor, I'd cut yard goods. Far away,
though, the farms I'd labored on and farther still the crewmen of the
freighter. In time, however, Rushford was near--the American rustic
who will not call himself a peasant because he drives a Ford. Cruel,
unwashed, suspicious, insanitary louts and ugly lasses--poor.
Salt of the earth. Savor of dung.
Backbone of the nation. Spineless.
In a properly informed electorate, the majority will make intelligent
decisions.
Agreed.
Then, gentlemen,
shall we not inform the electorate that this is the age of knowledge?
Shall we not rectify the schizoid discrepancies between these people on
the fire escapes, bumpkins, and the inhabitants of penthouses? Give the
good-natured fornications of the poor back to the taut middle classes?
Inform the poor of the ways of children? Release the entombed libido of
them all? Having done that, so they may vote sanely--having revealed
the democracy of desire--how shall we set about to teach them advanced
algebra, genetics, relativity, and bacteriology--so that their acts
will be in some small measure relevant to the exigencies of our times?
Freedom of the mind is immured in the vaults of the Navy and the War
Department and the Air Forces.
Freedom of speech is chained in the cellars of the churches.
Freedom of action is spread-eagled on the wheel of business.
There is no information in the electorate.
Instinct only.
It is a fact we had better face unless we are prepared to lose our own
selves in the stunted years of an American feudalism.
Liberty, or death, gentlemen.
We who would not fight for liberty because we did not see the
involvement of it are staring into the hot barrels of death.
The time for sacrifice is at hand. What have we? Production, instead!
And compulsory reproduction.
I went up to Hattie's bagnio because I am a middle-class American male
in the higher brackets, of Princeton extraction, who was denied the
poor man's access to females during adolescence and early maturity
and who (owing probably to that abnormal deprivation) belongs to a
distinguished group that makes blah per cent of its sex contacts
with prostitutes, blah per cent by unorthodox means, and blah per
cent with males. That is evidently why I knew the address. I went,
owing to the fact that a member of the generation behind me--a
prodigy, similarly conditioned--of superior stature, superior health,
superior life expectancy, superior stability (_sic_), and a superior
happiness quotient--far above the average by the tables!--had come a
psychological cropper in a tart's arms owing to the fact that the Age
of Kinsey is also the Atomic Age and he, briefed in the latter, was
emotionally distrait over the conundrum: how to tell the people on the
fire escape all about the effect of neutrons on chromosomes--a datum
to be regarded as utterly essential for political judgment. And other
troubles.
Personally, I was of the opinion the poor could not be told at this
late date and would have to learn by doing. Also the rich. And this
judgment, while it in no way impaired my faith in democracy, and while
it gave me a good assurance of the long future, singularly blighted my
assessment of so-called democratic practices in the land during the
past century and filled me with a ribald contumely for the poor-doting,
poor-blind, wisdom-spurning, technologically blank intellectuals,
together with nearly everybody else.