\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe BIGGEST issue in America is what BIKINI I\u2019m wearing tomorrow,\u201d a gamine Florida Spring Breaker told Fox News\u2019s Johnny Belisario, on the most challenging assignment of his career. Times were equally tough for some young hunk who said that the elevator was out in his vacation condo and that he had to walk up 43 flights of stairs. When Johnny pressed these tanned, fit creatures about news trivia, one of the girls acknowledged she was devastated that Chuck Norris had died (fair), and one of the bros said, \u201cWhat\u2019s Ayatollah?\u201d (Also fair.)<\/p>\n
This video made the rounds on Twitter. Reactions ranged from: good to see that the youths are out having sex and getting drunk in the sun instead of getting caught up in the doomscrolling news cycle, to: typical Americans, awash in privilege and oblivious to the murderous consequences of our imperial government\u2019s decision-making. Both decent nodes of debate, but maybe the people spouting them don\u2019t regularly see, like I do, Facebook reels of young people at outdoor malls who can\u2019t name a country in Europe, think that Joe Biden is still the Vice President, and don\u2019t know how to tell time on an analog clock. News flash: Most Americans are barely literate, and the kids like to party.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t tell that to Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic<\/em> staff writer, whose name became somewhat famous in 2020 among people who talk about how much they like to read. Williams authored the Harper\u2019s \u201cLetter On Open Justice And Debate,\u201d claiming that the letter was necessary in an \u201cintolerant climate\u201d of \u201cpublic shaming and ostracism,\u201d but then got into public arguments with people who subsequently rejected the letter. Hohn hohn hohn<\/i>, he was absolutely appalled at what he witnessed in Fox News clips while reading X over his coffee and pan au chocolat<\/i>. Frankly, I\u2019m shocked he stoops so low as to mingle with the hoi polloi, even just in the virtual world.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the problems in the world right now can be explained by this video,\u201d he tweeted. \u201cFor one thing, it\u2019s a big reason why the US government is so unaccountable to public opinion. These are *college students.* A significant amount of the country is totally checked out and comfortable enough not to think it matters.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if Williams has ever been to college. That\u2019s not true. I do know, because his Wikipedia page tells me he went to Georgetown and has a Master\u2019s degree from New York University\u2019s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. But that isn\u2019t the college we\u2019re talking about here. This is the American public and\/or private university, where the most potent bomb remains the Jaegerbomb. The spirit of Delta House still stains the floors. As the fun-loving cartoon President once said in the classic Simpsons episode where Homer goes back to college, \u201cLighten up Bitterman! That youngster will make a perfect addition to my cabinet! Secretary of partying down!\u201d<\/p>\n But Williams, while not un<\/i>-American \u2014 we don\u2019t red-bait in my house \u2014 is still barely<\/em> American in the Spring Break sense. He\u2019s married to a French journalist and author, lives in Paris, and takes occasional breaks to teach at Bard College, where he\u2019s a visiting professor. He is so far removed from ground-level American culture that he floats above us on a cloud of ideas. He tweeted out as much during the Charlie Kirk Memorial service in September, which could have looked like a ceremony from an alien planet to someone who hasn\u2019t spent much time in Phoenix.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve spent half of my adult life living in one foreign country or another,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt so estranged from the surrounding culture as I am from the aesthetics and sensibilities of this movement. Not even a criticism, I just feel more at home in Greece than in these images.\u201d<\/p>\n In Greece? That bastion of intellectual activity? Unless Williams, like Indiana Jones, has a time-traveling device that allows him to visit Archimedes (who was actually from Sicily) or Plato in the Symposium, he can\u2019t possibly be having profound intellectual experiences in Greece. My wife and I visited Greece for our 25th<\/sup><\/span> anniversary last summer. We had a great time, and, sure, we absorbed the art and architecture of antiquity, saw the Caryatids and the Minoan frescoes, and lived the life of the mind on guided museum tours. But we also soaked up the sun, rode speedboats around the coast, and pounded a shot of raki at every lunch.<\/p>\n Last summer, as I\u2019m sure it will be this summer, Greece was full of partying college kids, many of them American, who didn\u2019t give a rat\u2019s butt about DOGE or whatever the outrage cycle was telling them to be mad about in 2025. The beaches of Crete, or Paxos, or Naxos, or Ios, or Santorini are a lot more like the beaches of Ibiza, or Panama City, Fort Lauderdale, or the Jersey Shore than anything that Thomas Chatterton Williams might possibly lecture you about at the Aspen Institute.<\/p>\n The kids on Fox News would have fit in fine in Greece, where everyone was partying. Because they, unlike certain people with intellectual pretensions (including, occasionally, myself), understand that not everything has to be about social justice and man\u2019s search for meaning. And there are a lot more bikini wearers than there are \u201cpublic intellectuals.\u201d If you can manage it, life is supposed to be dumb and fun. This is why we fight.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Neal Pollack, \u201cthe greatest living American writer,\u201d is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time \u201cJeopardy!\u201d champion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n