Me? "Radical"?

Here we were, my very counter-cultural 30-something friend Sarah and I strolling near work when she asks, “How do you stay radical as you get older?”

I’m 56 and I was bemused by the question because I can’t possibly be “older” yet, but of course I am. More to the point, though, I can’t be “radical” as I understand it. Bougee? Oh, yes. But “radical”? No, I flirted with and then backed away from that route, it seems to me, about 30 years ago or more.

She pressed the point. A bit flummoxed, I babbled something about . . . . Actually, I don’t remember what I said because I was either lamely trying to live up to the compliment or more modestly insisting that I’m sort of in the world, but not fully of it, like so many of us in the Bay Area. No biggee.

A few days later, I ran into Sarah and asked, “What do you mean by ‘radical’ and what is it in me that suggests ‘radical’ to you?” She just said she knows it when she sees it; that it’s a “way of encountering the world.”

So I asked my wife. “You’re not a radical,” she said. “Look it up.” Radically, I avoid dictionaries, preferring a pretty good ear for how words are used idiomatically.

So how do we understand this word? To progressives of my generation, a “radical” was someone who plotted the overthrow of the “capitalist-pig police-state” by nearly any means necessary, only barely acknowledging that a pacifist could be within their ranks. Now, progressives don’t seem to use the term much. Where are the radicals today? Even the Occupy movement doesn’t seem to be “radical” . . . yet.

In fact, we progressives have let conservative US Americans commandeer “radical” so that now their ilk bandy it about with vigor as a pejorative, as hyperbole to discredit even the most moderate liberals. President Obama, for example, is called a “radical” by the foam-at-the-mouth crowd on the right wing. If President Obama is a radical . . . then the term has lost its meaning. Like "awesome."

Still, I have a young friend, SB, whose lovely little voice vocalizes lots of terms of endearment and some radical ideas, particularly about capitalism, war, equity, gender and pronouns. My wife and I call SB our “sweet and gentle” radical. This, of course, presumes that our impression of radicals does not generally include sweetness and light. And that would be true. I think of radicals as lean, angry types with perpetually clenched teeth, bandana’d faces protected from tear gas, necks straining as one arm flings a rock.

To borrow an insight from Russell Baker, calling  myself a radical would seem . . . immodest certainly. Like looking in the mirror and insisting I’m handsome or clever, kind to children and the elderly, or good in the sack. It’s for others to say, not me.

And sometimes those others are mistaken. Sarah sees something in me that I just can’t imagine could be called “radical.” But I appreciate her regard.

Look, I’m married -- heterosexually and even within the same ethnicity; we own a home; we are gourmands, aka, “foodies” following the trends; we read the New Yorker and watch foreign films; when we travel, it’s to Europe; I teach the children of the “1%” in a private high school with a tuition of $34k. Radical? How could it be?

The equivalent, by the way, for conservatives is “patriot,” a term they distribute willy-nilly to even the most weak-kneed privileged draft-dodgers as long as they kowtow to the rants of Lumbaugh et al. They’ve debased and stolen the term so thoroughly that I cannot imagine how it could apply to me or to, say, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose work sprung from a deep love of and abiding faith in this country, and from a real radicalism.

How about “counter-cultural” or even “Bohemian”? Well, sure. We lived together for 21 years before marrying and then didn’t tell anyone for 2 years; we didn’t marry until my wife’s gay brother and his partner could do so; the home we own was, we’re told, “built by hippies” high in the Oakland hills; we don’t eat in chain restaurants and we buy organic; we drive Priuses; I teach “Nature Writing” among other subjects and my Econ class begins with a poem about work each day; we both believe we’ve escaped the South and can’t imagine living anywhere other than the SF Bay Area; a great outing is a hike in Pt. Reyes. Yeah, I’m a stereotype, but not a radical.

We have young friends who may be radical. We love them. Wouldn’t turn ‘em over to the police. Would bail them out if it comes to that. But me? Radical? Me? Only if the term is neutered. Or commodified.

I find it amusing that Sarah and I enjoyed our conversation while strolling on Haight St. -- the Coney Island, the Fisherman’s Wharf, the tawdry Disneyland of commodified radicalism. Had I looked around me I might have said, “Sure, compared to this commodified radicalism banking on 60’s wannabe fetishism, I am surely more radical.” Had I thought of it, I would have thrust my bag of Haight Market purchased Blue Bottle coffee beans into the air, thus letting my 2012 freak flag fly.