thrown upon our 60’s ideals are morernthan a little nervous that his coming-ofagernhas to occur in the White House.rnHe still has that shoot-from-the-hip,rnlaugh-at-the-elders quality that we oncernhad until we learned about complexities,rnunintended consequences, and thernlimits of idealism. How other than fliprnimmaturity, appealing in a rock star butrnscary in a President, can we view hisrnstatements that George Bush was cruelrnand callous to return a boatload ofrnHaitians and that he, unlike Mr. Bush,rnwas not obsessed with Saddam Hussein.rnHow wonderfully simple. How perfectlyrn60’s.rnThose of us who have outgrown thern60’s mind-set have usually been broughtrnto cold reality by defendants who werernguiltier than we thought, by employeesrnwho preferred government-sponsored vacationsrnvia unemployment compensationrnto work, by the devastation of youngrnpeople on drugs, by a standardless educationalrnsystem, and, in my own case, byrntenants who were less like Les Miserablesrnand more like creatures from PacificrnHeights. Like George McGovern afterrnowning a bed-and-breakfast inn, I havernlearned that small businesses can bernsmashed by well-intentioned but misguidedrngovernment edicts. Proud thatrnmy family and I have created a businessrnthat now employs 40 people, I was angeredrnby the continued pounding ofrnsmall business owners by Democrats inrngeneral and by candidate Bill Clinton inrnparticular when he denounced peoplernlike me for having “dumped their employees’rnhealth care on the rest of us.” Irnfelt excluded by the party of inclusionrnwhen they made business owners thernWillie Hortons of 1992. The only smallrnbusiness owner mentioned by Jesse Jackson,rnwho perhaps more than anyonerncould help his constituency by extollingrnthe contributions and benefits of smallrnbusiness, was the owner of a chicken factoryrnwho burnt his employees to deathrnby locking the back door.rnGeorge McGovern, for whom Glintonrnand I were both volunteers in 1972,rnmay be able to tell President Clintonrnhow quintessentially half-baked hernsounds to the business community whenrnhe and Robert Reich make sanctimoniousrnpronouncements that the minimumrnwage should be high enough tornsupport a family of four. Anyone whornhas run a pizza shop for six monthsrnknows more about business than thesernRhodes Scholars.rnPerhaps President Clinton now realizesrnthat the Haitian situation is a littlernmurkier, a bit more morally ambiguousrnand fraught with consequences, than hernhad thought. When Haitians beganrntearing down their homes to build boats,rnthings looked a little more complicatedrnthan just singing about huddled masses.rnQuestions about the character of exiledrnPresident Aristide have arisen, accusationsrnof his having “necklaced” peoplernand having tried to kill Haiti’s papal nuncio.rnDespite all of this, or perhaps obliviousrnto all of this, Mr. Clinton hadrnpromised that the United States governmentrnwould restore President Aristide tornpower.rnWith a bit of dread, I suspect thatrnthere is one other prevailing myth thatrnthe 60’s leftovers will need to unlearn. Itrnis that the United States is not the solernevil-doer in the world. During the campaign,rnwe heard a daily litany about whatrnall the other civilized nations are doing.rnMr. Clinton said our economy was “sornbad that wc had drug [sic] the wholernworld down with us.” Even SaddamrnHussein might be a warm fuzzy, smilingrnon the evening news, if it weren’t for thernUnited States and George Bush and ourrndisgusting appetite for oil. Some of usrnwho are no longer Blame-America-rnFirsters have discovered that there arernbad guys in the world. We have evenrnlearned at least one thing from our oldrn60’s nemesis, Richard Nixon. Nixon believedrnin the Madman Theory of scaringrnenemies into compliance with our versionrnof world order.rnSadly, wisely, and morally compromised.rnPresident Clinton will probablyrnlearn, like those before him, that yesterdayrnreally is gone. That’s what the Bigrnchill is all about.rn—Sarah ]. McCarthyrnDOWNTOWN MANHATTAN isrnswarming with groups of educated, creativernpeople bound to tell you who yournare. Last year, for example, when I triedrnto catch the thriller Basic Instinct nearrnUnion Square, a gay group refused to letrnanyone see the film. They shut it down,rnby heaving stink bombs into the theater.rnSome of the group’s female membersrnshouted heterophobic slurs at womenrnleaving the scene with men. (“Go homernand fake some orgasms!”) One of therngroup’s male leaders asked me my sexualrnorientation. When I bristled at thernidea of labeling myself, he stamped me arncloset homosexual. Last October, PennsylvaniarnGovernor Robert Casey madernthe mistake of going downtown to give arntalk on his opposition to abortion. Gaseyrngot told who he was, and where he couldrn8°-rnThe downtown mentality is largely responsiblernfor the fact that New York canrnno longer be taken seriously as a culturalrncenter. Major cities traditionally attractedrnpeople who, fed up with imposedrnidentities and labels, wanted to creaternthemselves. Farm boys and girls soughtrnto tear loose from the soil and the tyrannyrnof the elements. Small-town kidsrnbroke away from religious authority andrnprovincial pettiness. I can remember,rngrowing up in a small town, the peckingrnorder enforced with building blocks asrnearly as kindergarten. In a town likernmine, you were usually no more thanrnthe sum of your father’s assets.rnIn our increasingly ghettoized society,rnyoung people come to New York for reasonsrnopposite to those of their forebears.rnThey seek to escape the freedom of prosperous,rntolerant youth in places likernConnecticut and Ohio. In New York,rnthey will join a “community” of equallyrnintolerant middle- and upper-middleclassrn”artists,” “poets,” and “writers.”rnThese creative young people can thenrnembrace stultifying, one-dimensionalrnidentities and impose them on outsiders,rnwith jackboots. There is much talkrnabout the oppressed “other,” but it’srnreally about a tyrannical “self.”rnThe creative output of these anti-rnBohemians comes always with a tag andrna loyalty oath: the “gay” play (on AIDSrnand homophobia); the “feminist” poemrn(on those evil, straight, white males); thern”black” short story (the 20th spinoff ofrnBoyz N the Hood). The characters arernmade out of cardboard, the plots arernboiler-plate work, the language a series ofrncliches and slogans.rnDowntown, particularly the LittlernBerlin of the East Village, is an outgrowthrnof the I960’s New Left politicsrnand avant-garde. The former embracedrncertain groups based on their racial andrnsexual identity, while the other degeneratedrninto a fight against all restraint. Thernresult of such cultural slumming was thatrnsome groups received carte blanche tornsay or do anything they wished, includingrnbreaking the law, while oppressingrnthe rest of the citizenry. The irony of today’srnGreenwich Village is in its meetingrnof supposed opposites: it is patrolled byrnblack-clad skinheads—gay-bashers andrn8/CHRONICLESrnrnrn