WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT OUR GOOD WAR & OUR WONDER WIDGETS??

It has been written -- perhaps by our genes or simply by our historical habit -- the young will protest and the old will protect. Makes sense, because the old have survived long enough to have a heritage to protect, while the young are eager to start their own heritage.

Which may be why there has been a spate of new books by young historians like Norman Davies questioning just how good the Good War really was. And why young authors like Jonathan Franzen question just how good our wave of new electronic widgets really are.

They each register compelling arguments. Although reading them as someone much older than them, there may be a tug of war between what you need to know and what you need to feel. In the name of all we deem factual and scholarly, these current broadsides can't be dismissed. Davies is right to argue the Western Allies' own lack of courage allowed Hitler to happen, and then they fought him in the name of power not morality. Similarly, Franzen is right to argue that our love affair with our new hand-held screens is a study in the narcissism of virtual power at the expense of actual relations.

And yet, what are we to make of today's indefatigable anti-authors...?

Clearly, the tornado of their criticisms has left behind a wasteland of protest. We look around and perhaps realize how right they are to have swept away our self-serving propaganda along with our self-promoting consumerism. But now what? Just as the victims of tornadoes from the sky must decide, so must the readers of these tornadoes of criticism,

In the decimated cities of Indonesia, Japan, New Orleans and Missouri, many intuitively begin re-building. Others -- usually the more elderly -- see so little of what they once knew, they sadly drift away. Perhaps as many of these readers will do once they are convinced they've been living a lie. The lie that hailed their generation as the "greatest," and the lie that these new instruments of communication endowed them with late-in-life new power.

There's something to be said for clearing away the rubble of yesterday in order to begin re-building a more honest tomorrow. So Miyako and Joplin may rise new and fresher than before. And yet, clean coats of paint and bright new streets can only take place atop what was there before. The tears and sweat, the vision and vigor, of those who first believed these places were worth believing in.

Is it too repetitious to counsel the slayers of myths to wield the sword of their words with much greater respect than their first instinct for facts may dictate....?