The Catcher in the Rye isn’t the novel you’d expect from a writer only six years away from seeing five campaigns of hard combat in WW II. It was assigned reading in a high-school English class. I devoured it in a few hours at 16.

Pencey Prep and downtown Manhattan were nothing like the environment of Northern Virginia all those decades later. That doesn’t mean there was any shortage of “phonies” in the greater D.C. metropolitan area. It would have been phonier still to think local teenagers went around scarred or traumatized by any of them. We were mostly capable of our own subcultural brands of pretentious self-regard. Holding court at the mall served up human hordes for smug adolescents to look down upon. They could do it simultaneously with bitching about materialistic, egomaniacal middle-class values.  

Holden Caulfield’s emotional angst was remote and purely theoretical to every sympathetic reader I’ve ever heard from. Nobody who gushes about the book is anything like the square parents Elkton Headmaster Haas treats coolly. You never see a pair of Ross, Marshal’s, or Target shoes on the feet of Salinger fanatics. Knowing Caulfield’s story well is a status symbol in itself.

J.D.’s antihero was a male very much “in touch with his feelings.” That doesn’t place him anywhere close to real-world figures making the claim.

These days we’re told that people who don’t go on about what’s bugging them and take blows stoically are the “phonies.” Sometimes, maybe they are. Taciturn reserve is hardly an angle likely to succeed plying others though. People who “feel your pain” are not unknown to make it more acute getting what they want. The ones gushing about how much they care can never be relied on to put as much into the pool as they take from it. Skeptics, eyeing such exchanges suspiciously, tend to bear the brunt of greed accusations. If we had such a thing as a peer-pressure-ometer, the societal goading to be a sap would bust the dial off.

Have we passed the days of grifters, charlatans, snake-oil-salesmen and the commonest frauds even knowing what they are up to? Is it safe to eyeball anything passing itself off as “charitable” and “altruistic” without being relegated to the ranks of ogredom? Ruthlessly looking out for number one 24/7 and 365 is no way to go through life. But anyone who fails to place self-preservation high on the priority list is a danger to himself and others. People who literally reside on urban streets should provide all the examples necessary.

The business of “caring” has become a big one. There are now six-figure careers in fairness and fabulous remuneration running charities. Consumers get gouged everywhere. Whether it’s rent, turning on the tube, going to the beach, eating dinner out, seeing a show or sports event, fueling the car, getting medicated or trying to park. But if it makes you feel any better, corporate America is still giving till you hurt. That way the suits don’t feel so bad cracking a bottle that goes for two or three times a steep house payment while watching waves break each sunset.

As the scam reaches proportions that have cut deeply even into upper middle-class lifestyles, the media doesn’t seem to notice. How dare anyone evince concern about the price of the business of concern? If everyone would just get in touch with their feelings, noticing the food is slop, the digs are a hovel, the flick is an ordeal, and the daily travail is bleak becomes ever so petty. We are rapidly approaching the position of Cool Hand Luke when he says: “I wish you’d stop being so good to me, captain.” The response is a blackjacking from feds, BlackRock, Google, Facebook, CNN, the NYT, the World Economic Forum, and sherry sipping, tweeded academicians.

The fact is everybody’s bottom line is better off when guys puffing Havanas in corner offices focus on sales and production, when the prof pays more attention to a student’s performance than his sob story, when victimhood is not a route to hitting the lottery, when touchy-feeliness has no relation to job security and the cheesiest cons can be called out for what they are.

Self-esteem and human dignity are important to human well-being. Propping either up with delusions, that come at other people’s expense, is a short-term fix. Is there any benefit to telling a dead-weighted schmuck he’s wonderful? Being nice to non-performers always adds to everyone else’s load. In the end the biggest cost is usually borne by the person being humored.

No matter how you feel about it, the bulldog needs a feeding. Crude and callous treatment of those in distress is intolerable, but still more tolerable than enduring anyone in perpetual distress. The hardest snouted, trough-hogging porkers in the pen always pose at looking out for the piglets. They tend to be the sows that need to be watched out for the most. You feel me?

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