AMERICA'S PERESTROIKA

Unfortunately, Not Fiction

by

James R. Melcher

Admittedly, my following of recent events in the Persian Gulf while learning in stages that I have an advanced colon cancer could be expected to engender an apocalyptic view of the state of our nation. So could my all-season bicycle commuting beginning almost two decades ago with the first Arab boycott. One and a half hours each day contemplating our transportation system from the point of view of the lowest class on the road garnered a healthy sensitivity to the choices being made by our nation during the 70's and then the 80's. Now, seeing my fears of an energy-precipitated catastrophe come true in the Middle East makes especially painful the feeling that we are long overdue in having a national energy policy that generates real security and promise for the future. This commentary is an attempt to portray the degenerate de facto energy policy of our nation for what it is and then enunciate some changes that are required if what is essential about our way of life is to survive.

It is also an attempt to achieve personal reconciliation. At the age of 54, my years of life expectancy have been replaced suddenly by months. Especially for someone who never drank or smoked and who kept in good enough condition to run the nine miles home from work at MIT on a moment's notice, this is surely a dirty deal. But, the resentment I feel for now having to distill my time with loved ones and friends is nothing compared to my feeling of alienation from my country, culture and religion for what has been permitted to happen during the 80's and thus far in the 90's. In a sense that biblical prophets would understand, many of us are in need of a reconciliation with our fellow citizens, many of whom must now be pictured as spending the 80's burning our nation's candle at both ends. Even now, these people are not entering the 90's with a resolve to pay past due bills, but rather with angry resentment of a diminishing standard of living. I, and even more others, suffered during the 80's as we strove to have our nation's course seen for the folly that it was. We take little solace now in saying "I told you so." As we now find ourselves being sucked into a Persian Gulf war, pardon me if I see both the time for my reconciliation and the tune for America to make some fundamental changes as running out.

Ultimately, it is our personal experiences that give real meaning to what we learn in the abstract, whether that be from history books or from the news services. Asked "How's it going?", the answer is much more likely to reflect personal job satisfaction, health and love life than it is how many trillion dollars Reagan added to the federal deficit, especially if there are apparently no dire consequences. This year's college freshman, born at about the time of the first Arab boycott, did not experience even those events of 1979 that again revealed that the hand affixed to the energy spigot was the hand that controlled our nation's destiny. Rather, they came of age during the Reagan administration, when every conceivable form of indebtedness was undertaken to maintain a comfortable if unreal existence. Are recent events in the Middle East, together with some understanding of our economic state, sufficient to raise an urgency among the young that there is innate in our system a cancer that must be dealt with? For so many whose expectations have been inflated by the good times of the 80's, what personal experiences are necessary to now see and cope with the stark reality...to not vote the anger of children suddenly forced to grow up but to make the sacrifices necessary to preserve what is most important in our way of life? With the thought that insight comes as much from experience as from exposure to facts, let me first share with you how the world has looked to me during the past few months.