misplaced

A couple of years ago I was puzzling about some things, and I asked a friend what he thought about it -- recently I found a spot in one of my notebooks where I wrote down notes about that conversation:

-------------------- I asked R what happened in the 13 years when I was out of the Local Swirl -- working on a statewide level, as far as travel -- I said, Is it me? Did I get too accustomed to being only with people in a relatively narrow demographic and -- lose perspective? Or did society and daily culture become meaner and stupider in those 13 years?

R said people's style and behavior became meaner and stupider. He didn't think about it -- he spoke immediately and decisively.

He said, "I don't know why."
I asked, "Is it the whole country, or is it just the town where we live?"
R said, "It's the whole country."

And it wasn't like -- wanting to "put down" people -- it was just behavior we were wondering at. ...it was like, random, scatter-shot hostility, and deliberate rudeness -- not everywhere, but in a lot of places.

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In September I read this -- when the book and tapes were coming out from Caroline Kennedy, with 1964 interviews given by Jackie Kennedy...this Comment was on the internet:

--------------------"When I read... during breakfast that May morning that Jackie had died, I ...cried, ...not just for Jackie's passing but more especially for the final passing of what was a better, more American era, one of hope, challenges to our better selves, far-sightedness and elegance. Had I known then how far we were to descend since 1994, I would have cried ... much longer."

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That Comment-er was noticing things similar to what I had noticed, I thought....

Trying to imagine a reason, or reasons, for these transformations, I've blamed reality shows, talk shows, economic changes that harm working people, Congress' lack of responsiveness to Real World Challenges, the undeclared war on America's middle class...

and an idea which keeps re-surfacing is this:
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, it was this -- seismic change on Planet Earth. Communism was no longer a threat. And it strikes me that maybe -- lacking the Soviet Union as Common Enemy, Americans unconsciously turned that warehoused Mistrust and Hostility on each other.

Like -- I used to have a cat named Genie who lived a long and happy Cat Life -- one of the few times when she was NOT happy was if she would see an outdoor cat walking by outside in the yard. She would freak out, on these occasions, and attack the other cat, Chess, whacking him with her paws, running at him, and snarling like a cheetah. It was really scary. Once she knocked over a piece of furniture in my writing studio.

The vet called it "misplaced territorial aggression": because Genie couldn't get at the "foreign" outdoor cat, she turned her territory-protecting instincts on her housemate cat, with whom she ordinarily got along great. ...

That's what I wonder, if -- when we had the common enemy of Soviet communists, there was a balance in the world, a long-standing balance, crossing a couple of generations -- and then with that gone, it was like a vacuum, and some people's "territorial aggression" (or general, formerly submerged hostility) got "misplaced" onto their fellow Americans. And they became like Genie-the-cat, attacking their friends and neighbors and co-workers.

I wonder if there is anything in this theory.
David J. Lieberman has a chapter on this type of bonding, and creating a sense of unity through opposition to a common enemy in his book, Get Anyone To Do Anything.
Going to look it up.

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