I thought I had seen it all, really, when I came upon something called ODD. It almost seems like a humorous acronym.
But no, it stands for something that provides a cover for a lot of us boomers from when we were young.
We looked at a lot of the things happening around us and revolted. We thought we had cause, naturally.
We revolted against many of the norms thrust upon us by our elders. We didn't call them "the greatest generation" back then. That didn't come until many of them were in assisted living facilities.
The greatest generation didn't want to rock the boat about a lot of things. So that was left to us.
Of course we had self-interest to promote. For many of us that self-interest was to simply stay alive.
Dying to avenge Pearl Harbor was one thing. Or to liberate the death camps. Viet Nam was quite something else.
So a lot of us rose up because of this issue and some others. We had ODD.
There wouldn't have been enough psychiatrists to treat us. We had "oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)."
I came across this term when reading on one of the commentary websites I regularly visit.
ODD isn't some whimsical term. It isn't some vague theory of the type that might get discussed on the Maury Povich show.
ODD is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
It's nice to know after all these years that my misbehavior in school had a psychological underpinning.
There is a serious philosophical question to reflect upon here, though.
Is it always bad to reject authority?
Sounds like a fine question for the Great American Think-Off of New York Mills fame (probably more famous even than the "New York Mills Philharmonic" which was a product of P.D.Q. Bach's imagination).
I have read that the "generation gap" of the '60s and early '70s was just as intense, on a passive level, as the U.S. Civil War.
It has become distant in time. We focus on the present, so the past retreats in our thoughts.
We also tend to remember more good things than bad about the past. So we wax nostalgic watching a TV show like "The Wonder Years." It's a surreal vision.
We associate the '60s with the Beatles. But the world was going mad all around us.
Lyndon Johnson escalated the Viet Nam War. Young people en masse were infuriated. We saw the Jim Crow mindset in the South and became equally infuriated.
We all developed ODD.
We learn that ODD is "an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures which goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior."
Does this definition admit that some rebellion is normal? I wonder where the line gets drawn.
How does the definition address situations where grievances are real and rebellion is called for?
Isn't the present-day "tea party" movement kind of an echo of the older rebellions?
The tea party draws a line in the sand. It says "no compromise." It circles the wagons.
Look at the recent behavior of Rep. Allen West of Florida. West's denunciation of colleague Debbie Wasserman Schultz went beyond the accepted bounds of U.S. political disagreement.
Someday when the fall of the U.S. empire is studied, West's comments might be seen as reflecting a turning point. No more civility.
The U.S. isn't supposed to be like this.
The tea party says it wants government to be torn down. If you're familiar with my writing - and thank you - you know I dismiss the tea party as like a reactionary fly buzzing around our heads.
I feel it's a faux political movement. Deep down a lot of these people don't really know what they want. They're really just fearful. They want simplistic answers.
An element like the tea party has existed for a long time. When I was a kid it was the John Birch Society.
These voices have historically been marginalized. William F. Buckley gained fame by rejecting the Birchers.
I'll assert as I have before that conservatism is primarily a voice of restraint. We need to put the brakes to an interventionist government at times.
What's dangerous, is when the most conservative elements try to seize the reins of power.
The likes of Grover Norquist feel empowered today, beyond what his predecessors of previous eras could have imagined. Where does this new empowerment come from?
I'll gravitate to a topic that provides a thread on this blog: the media.
Really, the media? Let's explore.
The old print media was a bastion for political thought that tended to be left of center. The print media almost seemed like an instrument (or extension) of government.
We are reminded of this whenever we hear tea party types deride "the mainstream media." They're really just talking about the old days.
There actually was something to the old "liberal media bias" charge. There was just something about the old print-centered, aggregated and paternalistic media that was favorable toward government and its designs.
Then a particular brand of talk radio flourished. It was unfettered.
We learned that political conservatives could harness the electronic media much more effectively than print.
The old print-centered media tended to be favorable toward the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Remember that?
As that poorly-crafted measure got eviscerated, we perhaps saw the first example of this newly emboldened political right.
The old media, so complacent with its power, failed to analyze the ERA adequately. They just made a lazy, knee-jerk judgment that "equal rights" must be a good thing, so shame on you who disagree.
Oh, I remember at least one finger-wagging editorial.
I remember the Minneapolis newspaper assailing the campaign of Republican Robert Short as being "slashing," i.e. unethical when all Short had done was try to portray Hubert Humphrey as a big government proponent.
One of the hallmarks of the new media is that it shoots down laziness. You'd better be prepared to support an argument. Knives will come out from all sides.
That's fine to a degree.
Conservatism is a sound principle (shall we say in the abstract) and easy to trumpet in the new media.
An intrusive government is a handy villain. Until you need to depend on Social Security and Medicare.
The new media landscape, so transformative it's mind-boggling, is giving the tea party a platform with power that perhaps even surprises them. Norquist must want to pinch himself at times.
What will staunch conservatives do if they really do take over, if the Allen West style of rhetoric really does carry the day?
It'll be like the dog chasing the car that actually catches the car. What does he do?
(The Robert Redford character faced a quandary like this in the '60s political movie "The Candidate.")
The outcome might be scary.
Might the new media be a conduit causing mortal schisms in America?
What are the ramifications of the political right flexing its muscles? Of saying "no compromise" and really meaning it?
An island of dinosaurs?
I think maybe we're seeing an example of "chaos theory" as articulated by the character Ian Malcolm in "Jurassic Park."
Us boomers grew up with norms and boundaries that we all took for granted. We see the change of today but perhaps we don't see the storm clouds accompanying it.
The idealism of our youth, albeit with some naivete, has given way to a "leave me alone" attitude. So we might vote for a Michele Bachmann.
We hated Spiro Agnew but wasn't Dick Cheney arguably worse? Wasn't Cheney out of a mold we would have mocked when we were young?
Didn't we "dig" Jerry Brown back when he was Linda Ronstadt's boyfriend?
The new media represent radical change and change is always accompanied by unknowns. Social media mean we're never bored anymore. Remember boredom?
Social media are the innocuous side of our new media. The less innocuous? We may not be fully aware yet.
Physics describes behavior by linear equations. It deals with known parameters, and for boomers this means arising in the morning to our "morning newspapers" which had a voice of God type of temperance. It was our known world.
The screamers like Glenn Beck had no place in our old world.
Physics does not deal well with turbulence. Turbulent events are described by nonlinear equations. Answers and solutions are elusive.
Maybe America is turning into a giant Jurassic Park.
Where will the symptoms of ODD take us in the political sphere?
Defiance in the '60s seemed healthy. Today there's a giant gray area as Norquist casts his shadow over Washington D.C.
Defiance can be in the form of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Polarization looks dangerous now, nothing like the Tip O'Neill vs. Ronald Reagan wrangling of a time that now seems buried in the past. Yes, quaint, like a Michael J. Fox movie.
What happens if compromise becomes not an option?
The island of dinosaurs will start to break down. We can only pray we can adjust.
Consider the tea party like one big Tyrannosaurus Rex.
- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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