More on Macdonald
To the Editor:
Even in the Columbia School of Journalism, I’m sure they try to teach students not to generalize so flagrantly about (1) candidates, and (2) writers and journalists. I fear that Dwight Macdonald [“The Candidates and I,” April] is tired. A road that begins with (a) Trotsky and ends with (b) Anarchism must contain enough confusion to befuddle even a brighter student of the human scene than he gives evidence of being in his article.
It’s confusing to read (1) that only on the local level does politics count and (2) the Supreme Court started the Negro on the path of improved civil rights. Also that he apparently thinks (a) we can individually negotiate nuclear testing bans with Khrushchev or (b) perhaps hold Town Meetings to accomplish this on a village level.
And Mr. Macdonald, why didn’t you just ask (1) Mr. Lippmann and (2) Mr. Kennan whom they’d prefer for president?
Arthur J. Strom
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
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To the Editor:
. . . Of course, it’s understandable that Dwight Macdonald can’t generate any enthusiasm for the 1960 candidates—they haven’t been nominated yet, a little thing that seems to have eluded his attention . . .
It’s the contention of utopians like Macdonald and me that, in contrast to the violent revolutionists, the Communists, Trotskyists, etc., we care about people “here and not there,” as Macdonald once put it, “now and not then.” Yet Macdonald too is willing to forgo the small but concrete difference that Stevenson and Eisenhower make in our lives out of allegiance to an anarchism which somehow “leads back to the individual and the community.” Well, it leads there, I agree, but by a pretty roundabout route, and meanwhile here we are, here and now. Somehow it escapes me how a considered vote will delay the arrival of Utopia.
Nathan Henry
New York City
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