The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars

Written in the mid-90s when the "culture wars" were at their height, Gitlin's history of how the wars began in the Left, how conservatives fanned the flames and in the confusion consolidated their claim on the average American, seems somehow remote now. What with all politicians now running for the center, and the latest war (on terrorism) acting as a yet another national "unifier," the flames of the culture wars appear to have been stamped out by all the rushing, marching feet. Appearances are deceiving though. It's my guess the embers are still smoldering, and that a little poking and stirring will re-ignite the blaze.In this book, Gitlin?s strategy is to try to lower the heat of the culture wars through a "pox on both their houses" retelling of its genesis and most important battles. His attempt to shed light on the destructive effects of identity politics as practiced by the Left and distorted by the right feels forthright and balanced. There?s a good summary of the influence of various thinkers on the academic Left: Foucalt, Derrida, Horkheimer, Adorno, all of whom attacked the Enlightenment project in varying degrees, ushering in the era of "relativism." Also, he anticipates much of the ad hominen counter-Enlightenment criticism to be heaped on him by Lefty reviewers ? e.g., he?s an old white male liberal academic Jewish prof out of touch with the latest radical twist on of those white male French guys, who still believes there can be a Left, and liberal and progressive causes worth fighting for. In other words, he does not agree with one of his graduate students who told him there is "no such thing as truth ? there are only truth effects." (Gitlin nicely points out that anti-Enlightenment types still use the ground rules established by the Enlightenment to attack the Enlightenment). He starts the book with a first hand report on the difficulties of getting a new textbook series approved in Oakland, CA, which serves to demonstrate on a practical level the effect of post-modernist theory. Identity politics, that hydra-headed hyphenating monster (Japanese-Americans, African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc.) kicked up so much dust that Oakland didn?t succeed in adopting any textbooks for at least two years. By contrast, the conservatives who protested were easy to mollify: some minor revisions mentioning creationism and they were fine. The hyphenates major complaint? The textbooks didn?t treat their various victimologies fully enough. Or that their stories were not told with enough obsequiousness and guilt. The textbooks themselves, in trying to anticipate such criticisms, broke up the main narrative with a multi-media look, and multi-perspectivist story-telling strategy. Less balanced is his description of how the false crisis of P(olitical) C(orrectness) was created in think tanks fueled by conservative money men (Olin, Heritage, etc.), spread by D?Souza and others, and promulgated through the media to who

I applaud this book because it provides a good analysis of how various culture wars has diverted attention away from the TRUE issues of numerous inequalities within existing social power structures. Instead of coming together as a whole, there is a large tendency to fragment into small groups and accuse each other of hearsay. Thus the emergence of hyphenated Americans and separate agendas!! The elites love this because the focus is not on them. They enjoy watching those towards the bottom fighting amongst themselves while they continue to accumulate more wealth and power. We're killing ourselves here! We need to see the commonalties of all our "victimizations" and realize who the true enemy is. Only then is there a chance for social change.

Todd Gitlin has written a much needed book. I hope for an update soon. There is no question that today's "left" is really not "left" at all - it's just wacky! Gitlin is arguing for a TRUE left...one that focuses on the evils of capitalism and the gulf between the rich and poor. Gitlin wonders what happened to the left that challenged the moneyed class. Instead, today's "left" is all about race, sexual preference, (add the latest "Transgendered" rights), all of these culture wars caught up in Identity Politics and having no interest at all in fighting the class issues of the haves and have nots based on CLASS. Today's left is consumed with their own particular victimizations, rather than as a member of a class that is being oppressed for THAT larger reason. The "left" of today (or what's left of it) MUST wake-up to the realization that they are turning potentially hundreds of thousands of possible progresssives away with way-out "in the ozones" cultural absurdities. Not all, mind you, some such as race have to always play a large role in the fight. However, the left is so splintered into fragments, each fighting their own little corner of the culture wars, that one has to wonder if the idea of progressive and/or socialist unity is impossible. There is NO way all these disparate groups can come together as long as they are trashing white folks just for being white and insisting on absurd things like reperations,.....I just realized, I could go on and on. You get the idea. Gitlin is right on-target and only needs to update this or write another book - as this Identity Politics business that runs off all potential progressives who might join us on CLASS issues and concentration of wealth issues and corporate abuse issues and labor issues erodes the ever smaller foundation of what TRUE "left" there is. Good book!

As an "activist"--whatever that means--for years, I grew increasingly disillusioned with Left Wing fantasies. For what or whom are we struggling? Do we know what "they" want, or are we passing our middle-class fantasies onto people who're busy trying to make a living and live in an imperfect world? Or making hay off of them by developing organizations and bureaucracies, while simultaneously complaining about such things as "hierarchical" and "oppressive"?At the time, incidentally, I worked in civil rights law, in a bureaucracy the effectiveness of which was, shall I say, impeachable. Hence some of the disillusionment.Then I read this. It seems that Californians were debating over textbooks for social studies and history. The author, and others, anticipated that the "right" would be most vocal in their comments on proposed textbooks. "Why isn't there more about St. Joe McCarthy? Why so much about those satanic hippies in the 1960s?" We've all heard the diatribes. Well, it turned out the the left was more vocal. Becoming parodies of themselves, "progressives" all over were claiming the texts didn't include enough references to black, homosexual, working class women (to partake of a comic phrase of many years ago). The concept of which I learned--and which has continually amused me since--is IDENTITY POLITICS!Indeed, it's a symptom of what went wrong with the direction the 60s were taking us: we're all victims now. And if not, we're oppressors. Ultimately, it's led to post-modernism, the "academic left" and other schools of contemporary comedy, and other travesties on which volumes have been written.Do you want to understand what identity politics means? Or why the left is its own worst enemy? Read this fine volume.And read other Gitlin too. He's grown up. That's more than I can say of some of his contemporaries of approaching 40 years ago.

It ill-behooves an author to devote too much time to rebutting ignorant pseudo-reviews by people who show no signs of having read the books they pop off about, but in this case I cannot help but note that my book contains lengthy discussions and arguments on the subjects of American history, textbooks, demographics, and philosophy. I would hope the book would be taken seriously by fair-minded readers