Liberal Decadence & Third World FanaticismnShiva Naipaul: Journey to Nowhere;nSimon & Schuster; NewnYork.nby Henry L. Mason IIIni his is a book about Jonestown, andnanyone who thinks that Jonestown isnan unpromising subject for culturalnanalysis had better think again: in Naipaul’snhands the story of the Guyanansuicides becomes a grisly example ofnthe intellectual cancer caused by leftwingn”thought.” Naipaul is also a masternof add irony which is all the morendevastating for being consistentlynunderstated.nThe book is formally divided into twonparts. The first describes Naipaul’s investigationsnin Guyana, a society revertingnto primitivism under a miasmanof Marxist rhetoric. Its rulers are completelynincapable of halting the country’sncollapse:n[T]he golf course, a relic of the displacednplanter regime, was set amidstnthe cane fields. Before the sugar estatesnwere nationalized, the road leadingnto it had been well maintained.nSince then, nature had been given anfree hand …. and its deteriorationnhad been swift. Golf and those whonplayed it had no place in a society thatnwas rpoving inexorably toward socialism.n.. . The clubhouse was a modestnwooden pavilion. Gathered here withntheir aging cars and their childrenn(nearly all the children were infants:nmost of the older ones were safelynabroad) were the remnants of thenGuyanese middle class. Ruined peoplenin a ruined setting, seeking afternpleasures which could no longer benfound, pretending to enjoy themselves.nThe explanation for the collapse isnnot hard to find. The entire society isnawash in Third World slogans which,nMr. Mason is an attorney in Chicago.n*>9~.nf^f^tnChronicles of Culturenlike bad money, are not only useless innthemselves but drive out all attempts tondeal rationally with the country’s problems.nEven the declining political “opposition”nis infected and can offer noncriticism of the ruling party except fornthe sterile charge that it is “pseudosocialist”:nThey had, I was saddened to see, becomenpart of the Guyanese futility,nprisoners locked up beyond hope ofnrescue in the cages wrought by theirnMarxist ideology. Fifteen years ofnuseless battle had taught them nothing,nleading only to staleness and stagnation,nto the interminable repetitionnof bankrupt formulas They inhabitedna make-believe world, a sort ofnMarxist doUhouse, populated by Mensheviksnand Bolsheviks. . . . The parrotingnof textbook abuse and textbooknhope was worse than pointless. It wasnworse than pointless because it creatednfalse pictures; because the wordsndescribed nothing that existed andncould only lead Guyana further andnfurther away from any understandingnof its condition.nInto this society came Jones and hisnfollowers, “espousing a mixture of socialism,nbrotherhood and cooperativenagricultural enterprise—the statednideals, in short, of the Guyanese government.”nJonestown also was ruled byna “Third World” mentality, which manifestednitself in paranoid denunciationsnof imaginary persecutions together withnmegalomaniac claims of progress andnharmony:nEach tiny act [was] ruthlessly magnified.nThat magnification was necessary:nit concealed the paucity andnordinariness of their own achievements.nihe grimmest aspect of Naipaul’snanalysis, however, is neither his descriptionnof Guyana nor his account of Jonestownnitself. Far more chilling are thenoutside observers who, confronted bynnnunreason in its starkest forms, madeneager obeisance to it as a model of enlightenment.nIn Jamaica, for example,nthe “matted hair illiterates” who babblenthe inane dogmas of the Rastafarianncult are extolled by a Catholic priest asnpossessing a “critique of bourgeois societynwhich has much in common withnthat of the genuinely revolutionary politicalnforces.” And in the same waynJim Jones accumulated numerous testimonialsnfrom political and religiousnleaders in the United States. A Baptistnpastor wrote to the Prime Minister ofnGuyana:n'[L]ove of one’s brother and sister.nRadical MisogynynMale chauvinism rears its head in thenvery citadel of enlightenment. Here’snhow The Nation demonstrates that itnactually is a bulwark of misogyny:nFor the highest courtnin the land he [PresidentnReagan] hasnpicked a person, barelynqualified for thenpost, almost entirelynbecause of her sexnand not on the basisnof individual merit.nThe Nose as Sex OrgannThe nose has been dramatically upgradednin the hierarchy of human featuresnwhich are available and instrumentalnfor that boundless area of passionsnand impulses described as sexuality. InnNashville, Tennessee—home of countrynmusic and of the fugitive poets of then1920’s—a certain Dr. David Rabin, professornat Vanderbilt University, has developednnose drops, or a nasal spray,nwhich functions as a contraceptive. Thenprospects for an emergence of a multitudenof new feelings, satisfactions andn