Robert Coover - Public Burning

They were listening now, even as they continued to whoop it up. People have noticed that “peculiar sales executive charm” I have, and I poured it on, smiling, scowling, clutching the flag tight around me with one hand (though it was all hand-stitched and the seams chafed me sorely), hammering home my points with the other — not for nothing had Dick Nixon won the Reader’s Digest Southern Conference Extemporaneous Speaking Contest so many years before! I started out by laying on them a real eye-opening, tub-thumping, hackle-raising sermon on world history (I’ve always been basically a history buff): the rise, development, and — as some would argue — partial decay of the philosophy called “liberalism”; the parallel emergence of a liberal heresy called Communism; the assumption of world leadership by two superpowers, America and Russia, each wedded to a competing faith; and finally, the present confrontation of these two faiths and these two superpowers in every part of the world. “America today stands almost alone between Communism and the Free Nations of the world!” I told them, and now I was addressing myself to all the people leaning out of hotel and business block windows and the anonymous masses crammed into the distant streets and avenues all the way up to Central Park as well, Jesus, I was in good voice. “ If you could lift the United States bodily off today’s globe, the rest of the world would live in sheer terror!” This was my big play, and, egged on by my father’s grins and grimaces, I swung into it with all my might. I told them we had to roll back the Phantom’s power, had to give up the negative, futile, and immoral policy of containment which abandoned countless human beings to a despotism and godless terrorism, and set out immediately to liberate the captive peoples. “All that is needed is the will to win — and the courage to use our power — ALL our power — NOW!” The mussed-up clown trying to crawl over the lip of the stage gasped and slipped back, clinging to the edge by his fingertips. Conscious of the cameras on me, I flashed a smile and demanded that the Russians dismantle the Iron Curtain, free the satellites, and unite Germany under free elections. I called for all-out victory in Korea: “The only way to end the war in Korea is to win it on the battlefield!” —and made it clear that we should warn the Chinese Communists that “unless they cease their aggression against Korea by a certain date, our commanders in the field will be given the authority to bomb Manchurian bases! History tells us we are on the right side! Man needs God, and Communism is atheistic, so what we must do is to act like Americans and not put our tails between our legs and run every time some Communist bully tries to bluff us!” Hoo boy, I was really wound up! I thought of things I hadn’t even thought of yet! I argued for a naval blockade of Red China, a massive invasion of Southeast Asia, and if necessary, a preventative attack against mainland China itself: “All we have to do is take a look at the map and we can see that if Formosa falls, the next frontier is the coast of California!” I bounded forward, coins and belt buckle jangling against the stage floor, and shouted that we should not be afraid to use — wherever and whenever — all the massive, mobile, retaliatory power at our disposal! “Remember, it’s a cause bigger than yourself! It’s the cause of making this the greatest nation in the world — the leader in the world — because without our leadership the world will know nothing but war, possibly starvation or worse in the years ahead! With our leadership it will know peace, it will know plenty—“

“What a shifty-eyed goddamn liar,” complained somebody in the front pew. I recognized that sour country whine. “I can’t figure out why people listen to him!”

This set off more derisive laughter from the horde, but I welcomed the challenge and wheeled to meet it: “ I am not going to engage in personalities,” I cried, “but I charge that Mr. Truman is a traitor to the high principles of his own Party! I charge that the buried record will show that he and his associates, either through stupidity or political expedience, were primarily responsible for the unimpeded growth of the Communist conspiracy within the United States — the one that has led us here to this historic occasion tonight!” The crowd cheered at this and Truman took a mocking bow, but I forged on, confident now, back on the tracks once more and returning to the fold, so feeling the power wax in me. Dad was still scowling, but he seemed pleased. I caught Darryl Zanuck’s eye and he threw me a thumbs-up sign. Truman was maybe not as discomfited as I might have wished, but then I bore him no grudge, and in fact I was grateful to him for throwing me a cue. “ If the Russians had been running our State Department during the seven years of Trumanism, they couldn’t have developed a better Asiatic foreign policy from the Soviet viewpoint! I say we must deal sharply but fairly with internal Communism as an idea, but with its agents as DOUBLE-DYED TRAITORS!” Some goddamn donkey had started braying in the middle of this and a lot of the crowd were heehawing along with it, including (I could hardly believe it!) my old man, but I shouted them all down: “When our administration came to Washington on January twentieth, we found in the files a blueprint for socializing America! This dangerous well-oiled scheme called for socialized medicine, socialized housing, socialized agriculture, socialized water and power, and perhaps most disturbing of all, socialization of America’s greatest source of power, atomic energy! For the first time in American history, the security of the nation was directly and imminently threatened!” Uncle Sam was still jumping up and down and pointing frantically up at the clock, but I wasn’t about to quit now. I was coming home, I could feel it, running up the walk from that long exile up at my aunt’s to be kissed at the front door by little Arthur just a few months before he died, stepping down from the war in my Navy whites onto U.S. soil and into Pat’s arms and Mom’s, returning to the fold of the Party and Ike’s grandfatherly embrace in Wheeling — for me , I thought, this whole thing: it’s all been for me! And as my mind cleared at last, the mad dreams fading like spent fireworks, the old familiar phrases came rolling back to me about the competitive spirit and moral values and history will be the final judge and shooting Reds like rats. “When an egg is rotten you throw it out!” I recalled Tom Paine’s times that try men’s souls and Harding’s God-given destiny of our Republic, remembered Teddy Roosevelt’s counterattack on the professional pacifists seeking to Chinafy this country and Calvin Coolidge’s American legions armed with the cross, Wilson’s summons to all honest men — and our own Great Crusade, Ike’s and mine… “The American people will be eternally grateful for the achievements of the Eisenhower administration which is kicking Communists, fellow travelers, and sex perverts out of the federal government by the thousands! The Communists conspiracy to which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg devoted themselves with such blind fanaticism is being smashed to bits by this administration!” I slapped the electric chair with my free hand for emphasis (luckily it wasn’t live) and glanced toward Uncle Sam for approval: surely now — but he was in a furious temper, his blue eyes blazing, his elbows and coattails starchily akimbo, stamping his feet and holding up eight fingers, all atremble with rage…and what was amazing was that he seemed to be holding all of them up on one hand!

What was wrong? What was he trying to say? The Paramount clock said 7:53, but all I could think of at the moment were the eight minutes on the Doomsday Clock, and I broke out in a cold sweat — though it wasn’t any goddamn international apocalpyse, which I only half believed in anyway, that I was thinking of, but my own: I was at the cliff’s edge! This was sink or swim, do or die! “Fellow citizens!” I gasped, trying to calm myself, keep the words (something about liberty, the incomparable Constitution, and shrinking violets) from disintegrating in my mouth. Would he strike me? “We must seize the moment! Complacency is dangerous! So, uh, we must stir our stumps and go to work. I remember our mother used to get up at five o’clock every morning to bake pies, and…and…what I am saying is that America is what made hard work great! Or rather …” I could feel it all breaking down inside, like wires fusing, burning at the ends, bulbs blowing: why did this always happen to me? Why could I never please him, no matter what I did? “That and a certain inner drive, and the power of prayer, and moral fiber, and, uh, moral — dignity! No, decency!” Was that right?