The Return of Jedediah Purdy

Scourge of smart-alecks, butt of Saturday Night Live gags, whipping boy for underemployed culture critics… Back in the nineties, Jedediah Purdy was all these things and more, on the strength of his book, For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today. Although the Washington Post still calls him "ubiquitous," the only thing I've seen from Purdy in the past few years was a sidebar in Esquire, and with his biggest boast being that he's affiliated with a Hot Think Tank, I figured him for another unsung victim of September 11. So it's good to see Purdy, a sadder and a wiser man, back in action, grappling with our changed new world in a think piece for The Atlantic. (Is it too much to hope that Clinton-era sensations Quentin Tarantino, Newt Gingrich and Wendy from Snapple might get second acts of their own?) Having disposed of cynicism, Purdy now takes on the great debate over Trust, and his arsenal of Ye Olde Hornbook aphorisms ("Mistrust is not bad in itself. A polity of suckers is no better than a nation of cynics."), airy generalizations ("before the controversy over Vietnam got ugly"), and dubious policy ideas ("Funding AmeriCorps and other volunteer programs will help.") will undoubtedly send all foes packing.

The important question, then, is what fosters a trustworthy government. At least part of the answer appears to be interpersonal trust—the supposition that most other people are trustworthy. Suspicious people are less likely to join associations, follow public events, get to know their neighbors, or make contact with their congresspersons. In fact, they are less likely than others to do just about anything except watch TV and flip off other drivers on the highway. That means they are not the kinds of citizens who are likely to hold government accountable, intelligently and regularly, and thus keep it trustworthy.

The irony in all this is that back when he first ran the media gauntlet of envy and skepticism, the one person Purdy could trust to give him a tough-but-fair interview was the late Tim Cavanaugh—who even during the boom times flew so low that a second ride on the nineties comet is a truly horrifying thought.

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

So "the only alternative to trust is coercion" (rough paraphrase). What that really means, for the state, the only alternative to maintaining "ideological hegemony"--controlling the conceptual cateogries through which the public views the world--is brute force. As Stephen Biko put it, "the chief weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

As I see it, distrust of government is not subject to some golden mean. It is an unqualified good. I assume Dumb W. Ass is lying any time he has anything to gain by it, for the same reasons I assume Saddam is lying. The state, by definition, is an instrument of organized coercion that lets some people live off the sweat of others. Why would any sane people trust a gang of robbers?

For all the goo-goos who believe the state is just "all of us working together," go back to sleep. Tomorrow you won't remember ever seeing those fnords.

[K. Cohen]

I dunno--in Cuba and China, suspicious people are always watching their neighbors, going to public events, taking names, etc. And why is getting in touch with a member of Congress such a good thing? Why would I contact Barbara Boxer--she's not interested in my crunchy-con views. I think distrust of just about everything--pundits, elected official,s unions, advertising, media, and TV psychics is a good thing.