It was the type of sleepy bedroom community that sprang up around thriving metropolae in the late forties, early fifties. The neighbor's house was the same as yours, mostly. Perfect cookie cutter, gingerbread three bedroom, one and a half bath, rec. room finished basement clapboard bungalow after bungalow slung neatly in rows, ad infinitum. The unusually verdant front and backyards, usually the same size, were bordered by gleaming chrome-painted chain link, sporadically dotted with lawn jockeys (most of them black), ceramic geese, plastic lawn aviary (most of it pink) and an occasional child's bike. It was what the citizens of this hamlet called "a planned community" which, in hindsight, was a code, a euphemism for "no foreigners allowed".
The cars were solid, dependable road barges. And, with an average curbside weight of just under two tons, they were surprisingly agile. They dodged out of the way of flying whiffle balls, Frisbees and other projectile toys, out of the way of boys, mostly. Perhaps a few girls ridiculed into either the role of tomboy or cheerleader. Out of the way of bicycles left in driveways and garages, tossed hastily aside by children with full bladders, empty stomachs or stricken with the fear of a swift, sweaty backhand across tender cheekflesh if they weren't "in the house this minute".
Everything, for the most part, was clean, white and ordered.
Outside.
Inside was a whole other kettle of fish. While the fathers and some of the more liberated and/or extremely poor mothers went off to become the bosses that sexually harassed their secretaries and the secretaries that tried to fend them off while desperately clinging to jobs they hated, the boys and girls of our sleepy village wrestled for purchase on the ship to adulthood. They tried with all the desperate effort and will they could muster to find their roles among the complex system of social strata that threatened to alienate and crush them. Such a system could be run only by the most charming, beautiful, talented, narcissistic, vacuous, vicious and superficial group of the cultural elite of this little burg. These were the Cultural Vanguards chosen by secret vote somewhere in the Machine who were entrusted with the further propagation and transmission of suburban culture.
Most were petty tyrants, greedily and sometimes unsteadily clutching at the trappings of their standing in the community: purple felt fezzes embroidered with Islamic symbols, ornate staffs, sashes and dinners for two at the local steakhouse run by the mayor. They would brandish these like those tiny plastic American flags on the 4th of July; clutching and waving them over their heads while simultaneously mouthing tropes of performed humility--"I don't deserve such an honor...", "I owe it all to my wife, Honey, come up here and say "hi" to everyone...", "If only my mother were alive today..."-- never once nodding to the obvious hypocrisy and irony oozing from their pores like flopsweat.
How do they ensure their way of life to the future? Progeny; little boys and girls that they raise--succeeding, for the most part-- to be just like them. You could see each and every little fascist-in-training in every less-than-humble 8 year old winner of the three-legged race at the local fair; he has just a bit too much swagger in his walk, she has too much beam in her smile. It’s like you can see them 10 years down the road on the day he completes the pass that wins the Homecoming Game or takes first in the Miss Suburb Contest. They are the Chosen Ones; they will be the ones having premarital sex on all their dates, the ones who'll transmit the culture.
If they can remember it.
You see, while they might be great at sports or sex or at using demagoguery to control others in their social group, they're also the ones who can't do long division, their own laundry or debate the relevance of Michel Foucault's work in the scheme of Social History.
They're idiots and they'll live their entire lives over and over again each Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the same people they hung out with in high school. They'll marry just outta school and be stuck with 2 kids in a--at best--loveless marriage to some shrew who starts drinking when her husband closes the door to go to work in morning or some neat freak body obsessed man-child who his wife'd swear has a boyfriend in the City. These are the Guardians of Culture. These are the leaders of Suburban Fascism. Pity them.
But don't pity the man we'll call Stephens. He's the Suburban Mussolini; too stupid to keep control of his power and too sane to rise to the rank of Hitler. Sure it wasn't beneath him to use Gestapo tactics, but the stupid are, in the end, only really dangerous to themselves.
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