“History is what hurts,” as Fredric Jameson wrote. Why, then, even bother with such pointless little rebellions? Because the past - the thing that makes it impossible to stay silent, or at least to casually take part - isn’t just something one knows. Righteousness, in these circumstances, is a grim pleasure, at best a consolation, never a victory. The buzzkill faction is rarely more than a rump. What makes the experience especially painful is not its intensity - often low-level, occasionally rising to the point of rage - but how few others share it. The experience of being alienated from common, mainstream ritual, unable to take pleasure in a friend’s wedding like a normal person, is something people with left-wing politics will recognize, and not just because of our proverbial social awkwardness. The next night, a few of us stepped off the dance floor when the band started “Sweet Home Alabama.” No one noticed, but it felt like the tiniest victory, a knot of shared bad feeling in the midst of celebration. We don’t use the S-word here.” Here I am, I realized - the death of the party. A stranger - a white man, obviously - leaned down the bar. The night before the ceremony, at a place downtown, I made some comment along these lines. A city full of gorgeous mansions (who built them?) beside a beautiful harbor (what cargo lined these piers?), it felt like a reunion staged inside a concentration camp. The wedding itself was harmless and fun, but the city is a haunted place, unrepentantly hawking its evil past as if it were a tourist trap like any other. ![]() I was at a high school friend’s wedding in Charleston recently.
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