Presidential
Today’s missive comes to you from the profoundly strange Wyndham Presidential Hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which is decorated exactly how you might expect something called the Presidential Hotel to be decorated. I am not sure whether I am more struck by the cannon in the lobby or the fact that the carpet is covered in stars and Presidential seals, which I walk on with each step through the halls and even in my room.
I am here partially enough by choice that I should really place the blame where it belongs — namely, on myself. I decided that it was probably wiser to ride out Tropical Storm Ophelia inside than under a forest of oak trees. Oak trees having notoriously brittle branches that do not fare well in high winds, after all. But I could have chosen anywhere, and my curiosity got the better of me, so here I am.
What is more unsettling to me than the decor of the hotel is the reason for it. I cannot wrap my head around why one would turn the site of a massacre into a tourist attraction. I can understand, at least partially, why one might want to come to the site of such a battle to pay respects, or meditate, or contemplate notions like duty, responsibility, self-protection, or the things that we as humans choose to do to one another. But I am profoundly disoriented by why one would allow those serious tasks to be … I don’t know what bothers me exactly. Disneyfied? It feels like a theme park. But I’m not sure that’s the extent of it. There’s also something lurking under the stars and presidential portraits hanging on every wall that feels like an aggressive sort of … well, I guess it feels like an odd kind of flattery. “Your pilgrimage, in coming here, is noble. Worthy. Stately. Historical. You are carrying a torch for our way of life.” I think it’s that need for reassurance that bothers me, one that has turned the entire hotel into an architectural yes-man.
To be fair to the town of Gettysburg, this need to be flattered and reassured that we are on, not just a good path, but The Right Path is not limited to here. It’s pervasive. I haven’t been in the woods long enough to have gone fully feral, but I’ve been there long enough that coming into town even just for shopping and basic tasks has become profoundly unsettling. There’s just so much … stuff, and it’s all screaming various flattering messages all the time. “You’re refined!” ooze the sleek interiors of coffeeshops and restaurants. “Hey hun, nothing like a good downhome country meal for a good ol’ downhome girl,” coo others. “I know you want to be pampered,” purr the little boutiques with their flowers and scents and fake candles flickering. “You deserve it, queen.”
Maybe I’m an outlier, but I don’t want this. I don’t need my every move affirmed and reaffirmed constantly. If I am on the wrong track, I’d like to know. Not that calling out nonsense you see too often, and which is the opposite of flattery. I don’t need to be subjected to a barely concealed form of abuse that takes as much pleasure in tearing people apart as flattery takes in ensuring they don’t change a single thing about what they’re doing. But just…basic guidance. A conversation. A well-intentioned tip or pointer. Done properly, such course corrections don’t have to be a source of conflict for our tremendously conflict-averse society to build entire monuments to avoiding.
I know that this cannot explain the source of it entirely, but I do wonder to what extent this aversion to conflict in the form of being told one is off-base is a consequence of living in a society with a pronounced technocratic bent. If knowledge is cultural capital, it can easily become a threat to tell someone they’re wrong. But I also think this is the fundamental error that technocrats make — they mistake knowledge for the stuff of good leadership. When people turn reactionary against that (as they will, because it is a naive understanding of what it takes to rule), they have a tendency to just go to the opposite and look to rule by vibes or gut instinct. But neither one of these are wisdom, which seems to me the (tautologically) wiser choice.
Maybe I live in the woods now because it is hard to figure out how to be wise when everything else is just so loud and weirdly smarmy all the time. I don’t think wisdom yells and flatters. It is quiet and hard to hear over everything else. But maybe I am flattering myself to imagine that and the truth is simpler: that I am not cut out for being in “Society” for a while. I am, in all honesty, not entirely sure why I am here, even if I know that it is something I need to do. I am getting my book written. I am enjoying myself. I am figuring it out along the way. Maybe that’s all that really matters.
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