PARTISAN REVIEW
529
LIFTON: What I would say to th a t, William, is that's for you to
discover, but much of which we may have in common.
MORRIS DICKSTEIN: When people in the street in various parts
of the country were interviewed about Nixon's mining of the harbor
of H aiphong the response seemed to run four or five to one in favor
of Nixon's action. But none gave the slightest indication of guilt. Now
perhaps there was no guilt because attention was focused on some–
thing tha t was remote and technologized, not on an anti-personnel de–
vice, so the situation could be discussed tactically. But in any case there
are two extremes that have suggested themselves: one, guilt will simply
not be an element in any large segment of the American public's de–
cision about Vietnam; and two, there is the opposite feeling of perhaps
most of us in this room - we are closer to the idea of guilt, and to
feelings of guilt on our own part, but also leery of the dangers of the
manipulation of guilt. Still, both seem to have very little to do with
the ways people are either jumping in to support the Army or the
President or to the ways that they're objecting to it.
LIFTON: I don' t know if one can generalize about the man on the
street and his reasons for supporting, or half-supporting, Nixon's action.
There certainly are many who are sUPlxlrting him. I think in many of
them there's potential guilt that they're violently avoiding, which you
can see in the anger with which th ey ,ay we've got to support the Presi–
dent. I think that in taking this extraDrdinary step now the adminis–
tration is trying to transform this dirty little war that they're losing
into a major confrontation with a great power, to create a vast en–
nobling call to arms,
SO
that any guilt or recognition of the air war,
which has become a saturation air war, can readily be avoided. The
response to the Calley case earlier on was a similar process: not only
was he defended, but in "The Battle Hymn to Lt. Calley" he becomes
a great war hero. It's as if the notion that an American warrior had
been dragged through the mire and had been really into evil (as in–
deed most men wearing our uniform in Vietnam have been now) was
a violation of American virtue and threatened an experience of guil.t.
This was so unacceptable to the American people that th ey did all
sorts of seemingly bizarre things including creating a kind of hero where
none was. This is avoidance of the sort of animating guilt I'm describing.
FARBER:
I welcomed the trivial example about the book that wasn' t
returned because I find this talk about political gui lt somewhat numb–
ing, to use a term of Bob's, because it takes me so far away from the
experience of guilt as I know it. In regard to these people who were
being interviewed about Nixon's :lction, I wouldn't be able to say to
what degree they felt any guilt and if the guilt they felt was authentic
or inauthentic. And if there was guilt, I wouldn't know what relation
that guilt feeling had to do with a book that wasn't returned or a
blow that was struck against a friend or a wife.
LIFTON: Yes, I agree that the possibility of their feeling some
guilt - authentic or inauthentic or whatever - around what America
is doing or not doing is from this distance unknowable in some degree.
But would you eliminate that possibility? And would you eliminate the
possibility of their avoiding it?
