Our Age Of Folly

For Lapham the US government is a font of folly. He sees the 21st century American government in the way that Winston Churchill saw the British government in 1904: "A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation; corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad ... sentiment by the bucketful; patriotism and imperialism by the imperial pint; the open hand at the public exchequer; the open door at the public house; expensive food for the millions, cheap labour for the millionaire."

Lapham doesn't get everything correct. He doesn't give Reagan a fair break or credit for ending stagflation and the Cold War. Instead, Lapham portrays Reagan as just another servant of the rich. Lapham doesn't catch on until late about 9/11, but neither did most others, including architect Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, now 3,000 strong. Lapham never says 9/11 was an inside job, but he artfully describes how the orchestra and chorus were miraculously ready to play the required tune, just as somehow the US military was ready and able to invade Afghanistan less than one month after 9/11. In other words, the invasion force was assembled awaiting the pretext, and the orchestra and chorus were awaiting the 9/11 conductor's baton.

Lapham spares no one, least of all his own class. As a young man Lapham was a member of the upper class and remains today a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He could expect a career guaranteed by the preferments bestowed on his class. Returning from Cambridge University, he secured an interview with the CIA, looking forward to an exciting life as a spy serving the cause of freedom and democracy. In a passage that is perhaps the most amusing in the book, he describes boning up for the interview by "reading about Lenin's train and Stalin's prisons, the width of the Fulda Gap, the depth of the Black Sea. Instead of being asked about the treaties of Brest-Litovsk or the October Revolution, I was asked three questions bearing on my social qualifications for admission into what the young men at the far end of the table clearly regarded as the best fraternity on the campus of the free world."

His fellow Yalies wanted proof of his upper class bonafides and relied on three questions that would reveal if Lapham were the real goods. Lapham had to answer the question, which club does one take from the golf bag when standing on the thirteenth tee at the National Golf Links in Southampton, followed by the question of the direction at dusk in late August of the prevailing wind on final approach under sail into Hay Harbor on Fishers Island, followed by "Does Muffy Hamilton wear a slip?"

Muffy was a very beautiful, very rich young socialite "much admired for the indiscriminate fervor of her sexual enthusiams," which those with bonafides would have experienced. Lapham correctly answered the first two questions. His experience with Muffy was limited to mixing her a drink at the New Haven Fence Club. He knew only by second hand authority that her underclothes consisted of Belgian lace.

The questions, Lapham reports, killed his interest in a CIA career. He apologized for having misread the job description and walked out of the interview. So much "smug complacence, self-glorifying certainty and primogeniture crowed into so small a room" offended Lapham and revealed to him an attitude "not well positioned for intelligence gathering."

The failure of intelligence, not only the CIA's, but also the failure of the intelligence of the leadership class, politicians, media, and a goodly chunk of the American people, explains the folly that has devoured our civil liberties and the economic prospects of our people and has left us with children unfamiliar with the world both past and present, making them "easy marks for the dealers in totalitarian politics" of which our country has an excess supply.

In this digital age in which wordsmiths are extinct, to read a Lapham essay is a delight for those of us old enough to appreciate the performance. One of Lapham's virtues is that he is a delight to read whether or not one agrees with him. His other virtue is that in his sarcasm is a true picture of our era of folly.

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