RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sift through the Tom Wolfe papers and you get a picture of a writer who, from Sixties hippies to Eighties “masters of the universe”, has been a correspondent on the frontline of American society, reporting on its changes, its absurdities and its hypocrisies — and in doing so, helping a country make sense of itself.

In December 1969, Tom Wolfe received an invitation to the Park Avenue apartment of Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia. They were holding a party for guests “to meet and hear from leaders of the Black Panther Party and lawyers for the New York Panther 21”.

Wolfe was 38 and becoming famous as the Man in the White Suit. He had published a bestselling and ground-breaking book about the hippie movement, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), as well as two collections of essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) and The Pump House Gang (1968). With his wit, his powers of observation, his application of the novelist’s tools to non-fiction writing, and an unmistakable style, he turned himself in a few short years from a just another newspaper reporter into a journalistic sensation. And it was after this metamorphosis, at the end of 1969, that Wolfe found himself on the guest list for the Bernsteins’ glittering fundraiser.
The “Panther 21” were facing trial for conspiracy to blow up department stores, a police station and the Bronx Botanical Gardens and they need money to post bail and pay for lawyers. But Tom Wolfe left his chequebook at home and instead packed his notebook.

The result of his reporting that night was an article published several months later in New York magazine. “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s” is an evisceration of the Bernsteins and other socialites who had taken to hobnobbing with the leaders of radical movements. It is the trivial concerns of those at the gathering and the shallow motivations for their involvement that Wolfe satirised so savagely:

The Iran nuclear deal agreed in Vienna on July 14, 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will be the focus of furious debate for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s term in office and beyond. The White House and other proponents will argue its merits and proclaim it to be a “good deal” in the best interests of the United States and our allies and friends. They will also warn that the only alternative to the Vienna deal is war. Opponents will claim that if the deal goes into effect as it is currently structured, it will prove to be a catastrophic mistake and will make the Middle East and the world at large a far more dangerous place. They will argue that the alternative to this deal is a better deal.

Perhaps the underlying reason for this glaring disparity can be found in a phrase that often afflicts strategic thinkers and political decision-makers: We don’t believe the world we see; we see the world we believe. As the great liberal philosopher Karl Popper argued, the always-difficult search for truth is guided in part by “the gradual discovery of our prejudices.[1]

The Obama Administration has avoided such a voyage of discovery, signing a nuclear deal based on a belief system and a series of assumptions that, in the President’s own words, provide “a historic chance to pursue a safer and more secure world.” Hence, the fundamental question is this: “Does the President’s conclusion match up to the world as it is, or is the conclusion based on series of profoundly false assumptions?”