Tag Archives: America

Coronation weekend…

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It’s Coronation Weekend. As an American citizen, there’s very little logic attached to the affinity I feel for the Crown. I mostly blame a childhood love of history that effortlessly channeled itself into stories of the thin red line of heroes carving an empire out of the far reaches of the world. That led seamlessly into a more general love of royal, military, and political history mostly ranging from the Restoration through the Napoleonic Wars, with a healthy bit of dabbling in the Victorian Age.

In any case, I expect it will be all coronation all the time for the next few days… as this American ponders a past that could have been, but for some determined malcontents from Boston and a Virginia landowner who didn’t so much manage to win, but keep his embattled forces from losing through the long war of revolution.

I am entirely delighted to be a spectator, even if only from my sofa, at this first coronation of my lifetime. I’ll invite you to join me in wishing good health and long life to Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

God Save The King.

Moron…

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Lauren Bobert, the Republican representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, has gone on record as being in favor of giving up America’s centuries old experiment as a continent-wide constitutional republic in favor of adopting Christian theocracy as our fundamental basis of government.

Notwithstanding the Constitution’s First Amendment, which says, in part “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” Lauren argues that “The church is supposed to direct the government.” Apparently after careful study of the constitutional issues involved, she’s just “tired of this separation of church and state junk.”

I could go into the historical antecedents of why there is a separation between church and state in this country. I’ll spare you the details, but I’d start with the Pilgrims, then maybe move on to Maryland’s founding as a safe haven for English Catholics before discussing revolutionary era resistance to the established Church of England. Then I’d finish up with Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Those are just sort of the off the top of my head indicators of why Lauren is wrong. 

What the distinguished representative from Colorado is advocating is nothing short of an American Christian version of the Taliban, where we all live under whatever grotesquely perverted tenants of the faith a Pastor-in-Chief decides are going to be enforced on any given day. The very idea of it would be laughable if she wasn’t being applauded by so many kooks and weirdos who have slithered their way into positions of greater or lesser power – and the followers who lap up whatever goofy bullshit is laid out in front of them.

Lauren, based on her words and deeds, is obviously a moron who has absolutely no failsafe between whatever dumbass idea is rattling around between her ears and what comes out her mouth. As a sitting member of Congress, she took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. You’d think maybe she’d have taken the time to glance through the paperwork before signing off on it. Then again, maybe civics is just one of those things they don’t teach in Colorado until after the point she decided she had enough book learning.

It’s like a penis…

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A few months ago, I kicked around the idea of starting up a weekly limited feature focused on topics that some people might consider controversial, unpopular, or otherwise not appropriate for polite company. Nothing much came of the idea then, but it has stewed in my head ever since. This is the next of what I like to think will be a recurring series of Friday evening contemplations. If you’re easily offended, or for some reason have gotten the impression that your friends or family members have to agree with you on every conceivable topic, this might be a good time to look away. While it’s not my intention to be blatantly offensive, I only control the words I use, not how they’re received or interpreted.

I was raised Methodist, but as an adult the only interest I’ve really had in religion is an academic one. It’s hard, after all, to study any aspect of European (and by extension, American) history since the Romans pulled out without at least tangentially touching on the premise of Christianity and how it has been practiced and applied during the centuries.

My take is pretty consistently that religion, in spite of whatever uplifting and comforting elements it may have, has mostly been used as a cudgel against anyone who refused to live and die by its tenants. The Crusades, the European wars of religion, witch hunts, orthodoxy tests, and more laws based on “church teachings” than you could shake a forest of sticks at are just the most obvious examples. And that’s only including the violence-in-the-name-of-God delivered up under the auspices of Christianity. The rest of the pantheon is hardly less bloodthirsty.

Despite what the Moral Majority or whatever the religious right wants to call themselves these days says, the United States was not founded as a Christian country. I’m sorry. It just wasn’t. Saying that it was is simply presenting facts not in evidence. Actually, it’s flat out lying. The Founding Fathers went out of their way to codify the prohibition against establishing a state religion right there in the Bill of Rights. It follows directly from that prohibition that “because it’s what Jesus would want” is a singularly problematic reason to pass a law – it’s every bit as invalid as justifying your laws in the name of Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, or Ra. 

I know it’s a hard pill for the seriously religious to swallow, but it’s entirely possible to be an upright and honorable man without the threat of eternal punishment hanging over your head. In fact, if the only reason you’re “doing the right thing” is because you fear eternal hellfire, one might say you’re responding only to fear rather than any actual personal commitment to being morally upright. Being a decent person only because you’re under duress means you’re not, by definition, a decent person to begin with. 

I’m sure organized religion has many virtues for its practitioners. That’s fine. I don’t want to take any of those virtues away from them. They can rule their homes by the precepts of whatever God or gods they see fit. If they’re really feeling froggy, they can probably even gaggle up some like-minded folks and live their theocratic dream in a community setting. I am, however, going to insist that they don’t expect me to subscribe to and live quietly under some evangelical theocratic nightmare government they want to inflict on everyone else. I presume only the same liberty of conscience I extend to them. In fact, I insist on it… because otherwise, I’ll raise up and army myself and strike their tract-quoting, puritanical asses down.

As the poet said, “Religion is like a penis. It’s nice to have one and fine to be proud of, but don’t whip it out in public or shove it down someone else’s throat.” When you choose to ignore such wisdom, it makes it awfully difficult to see any significant difference between Christian extremists and the goddamned Taliban. The lesson, probably, is maybe try not to be some kind of asshole extremist and try some of that peace and tolerance that your God was so fond of talking about.

Exploration, conquest, and modernity…

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Once upon a time, not so very long ago, we studied something then called the Age of Discovery, or if you were feeling particularly froggy, the Age of Conquest. This was the period in history from the 15th through the 17th centuries when Europeans set out on a global search for faster trade routes, wealth, personal glory. It corresponded with a then unprecedented explosion in knowledge about the natural world. 

I’ve watched a number of reports over the last few days condemning Columbus as a genocidal maniac and all I can do is shake my head in frustration. I will never understand why educated people insist on applying 21st century morality to 15th century actions. If we “discovered” an unknown continent tomorrow, we wouldn’t approach it the same way that Columbus did in the 1490s. We wouldn’t approach it the same way the Great Powers of Europe approached Africa in the 19th century, either. We would approach it using our best judgment based on 21st century understanding of peoples and our modern sensibilities. Half a millennia from now, we would surely be criticized for our actions because they were not how some future observers would have managed the affair.

“But, but,” they say, “He killed all those nice natives.” Yeah, he did. Can’t deny it. What seems to be forgotten in the discussion is Europe in the 1400s was a regular charnel house. Between plague, pestilence, disease, and the Hundred Years’ War, sudden, violent death in the New World most likely didn’t strike anyone as an unnatural state of affairs. All of our contemporary assessments of Columbus come from a 21st century perspective that is at least a full lifetime removed from any real concept of mass die-offs caused by war and pestilence. The dying related to COVID-19 doesn’t hold a candle to what was experienced historically during times of social upheaval.

We lack a personal frame of reference for what “normal” was in the late 15th century. In a very real way, the past is a foreign country. Even as a student of history, I always had a problem with those in the business who feel the need to apply contemporary morality to historical events. History is all about subtlety and context… and both are completely lacking when we try to hold Columbus to the standards of modernity.

During the Age of Conquest, as the name implies, some nations and civilizations did the conquering and others were vanquished. It’s happened since the dawn of recorded time and was happening long before we bothered writing the stories down. As often happens with the vanquished, we don’t hear much about their history. Now as a student of history myself, I’m all about understanding their story, but I’m not about rewriting the entire age of exploration into an overly simple victim narrative just to make someone feel better. Likewise, I’m under no illusion that Columbus or those that followed were demigods. History is a more complex animal than that.

Hundreds of millions of people lived and died during the three centuries of the Age of Discovery. Aside from kings and princes, we remember very few of them by name… and for those few we don’t remember them because they spent their often-short lifetimes boohooing the world around them, but because they dared to do what was hard and dangerous. They’re derided in the modern world, I suspect, because so many now live lives that are unfathomably easy and safe based on any measure of historical precedent. 

In this household, Columbus and all the men who set out in fragile wooden ships from the Old World to lay claim to the New will always be celebrated.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Apologists. Several times this week, I listened to the chattering classes on television solemnly opine that “America is no longer seen as a shining city.’” They’ve been trying to sell that story for so long now that I think they’re starting to believe their own hype. While it’s true that the United States isn’t the Guevaraist paradise they’d seem to like, there are still gobs of people knocking down the door to get here, so they can get the fuck out of here with that fuckery.

2. The popular vote. The national popular vote means exactly nothing when it comes to electing a President of the United States. The “abolish the Electoral College” crowd – including many so-called intellectuals who are certainly smart enough to understand the founder’s logic in removing the election of the nation’s chief magistrate from the hands of a simple majority – is out in force on Twitter this week. They’re joined, increasingly, by a sub-group who want to abolish the concept of having two senators for each state in favor of (if I understand their generally disjointed argument) allocating senators by population in the same way seats in the House of Representatives is allocated. Personally, I like the notion that the power of “the people’s representatives” in the House is checked by the interests of the states in the Senate, that together as a Congress, they check the power of the Executive Branch and the Courts, and that the Court checks the powers of the other two branches. That the machinery of government is complex is a feature, not a flaw. I have far more faith in the operational framework built during the Constitutional Convention than I do in whatever goofy “improvements” the collective brilliance a bunch Twitterers manage to come up with.

3. Pollsters. If we’re going to continue to report pre-election polling, we’re going to have to come up with a way to make the tale they’re telling more than a wild ass guess about what might happen. For months, the favored narrative was of a “blue wave” that would give Joe Biden a legendary victory and carry huge numbers of new Democrats into Congress. As I write this, it’s entirely possible that the former vice president may get his shot at the big chair, but his election doesn’t appear to come with coattails. His party is on track to lose seats in the House and while the Senate remains a toss-up. It’s entirely possible that Democrats will seize all the levers of power, but let’s not pretend it shows some kind of grand national realignment. If it happens, it’s more a blue dribble than a blue wave.

Popular opinion is stupid…

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America has a long history of rushing to judgment atop a wave of “popular” opinion. 

Witness the fiasco of NASCAR leading the charge against person or persons unknown who allegedly hung a noose in the pit area. There was a popular outcry, a swift investigation by the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, a hue and cry from talking heads across the spectrum that racism in that business must be plucked root and stem. Of course it turned out to be nothing more than a knot in a rope pull that had been there for at least a year. It was the very definition of nothing to see here, but it was hopped on by the professional and social media as the great scourge of the age. Talk about a lie getting, ‘round the world before the truth manages to get out of bed. 

At least we’re behaving true to form. Far better to commit to a spectacular, emotional response up front and early than to take the time to do the work of evaluating what’s really happening and decide on a practical, dispassionate response. 

It seems that if left to our own devices, we have a collective tendency to see enemies under ever bed – and respond in an emotional furor. As far back as the late 1600s, we were committed to knee-jerk reactions under pressure from the mob. Back there and back then something on the order of twenty men and women (and several dogs, if memory serves) were executed for practicing witchcraft. 

In the 1950s we were fond of seeing Reds around every corner. The coercive power of and individual destruction wrought by the House Un-American Activities Committee still stands as a testament to the utterly misguided means deployed when emotion, rather than logic serves as the basis of action. 

Here we are in 2020 once again revisiting past practice and seeing perceived evil at every turn. Because emotion is running at a fever pitch – drummed up by those who benefit most from chaos – we revert to a form older even than our republic. Then again, tearing down has always been easier than building – and the emotion of the mob will always be more appealing than putting in the dispassionate effort to determined how to get there from here.

We’ve been at it now for over three centuries later, for all our advancement, I sometimes wonder if we’ve really learned a damned thing.

At the risk of falling victim to internet outrage…

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In the age of financial panic, COVID-19, and riots in the streets, my day to day experiences bear very little resemblance to what I’ve been watching on the nightly news. It’s very much like watching the whole thing unfold like an oddly scripted TV series where facts are made up and the plot is almost entirely nonsensical.

I’m getting up, feeding the animals, going to work, making dinner, and doing those million things a week that keep a household running. I think the so what here is that for every criminal cop, every window smashing rioter, and every grasping politician there are millions of people who are basically like me – focused more on whatever it is they do to get through their own day than whatever it is the news broadcasts and social media channels are spewing.

You’ll never see pictures of that, because people getting on with life isn’t flashy. It’s not newsworthy. It is, though, just about the most common thing in the world.

So if you want to hang your social media in black bunting, go for it. You want to imagine yourself a daring revolutionary standing tall among the barricades, that’s fine. Want to rend your garments because you hate wearing a face mask? It’s your funeral.

Just know that outside the echo chambers of social media and the news outlets there’s a vast swath of America that’s sick to death of fuckery in all the forms 2020 has decided to present to us… and it’s not that we don’t care about what’s happening so much as it is that while everyone else in the country seems to be able to spend weeks on end rallying or marching, a couple of us are still working and trying to manage the day-to-day.

Maybe some people won’t say it for fear of drawing the ire of the interwebs, but I’ve never posted anything for fans, or clout, or praise, but just because it’s what happened to be rattling around my head on any given day. Why should today be any different?

What I learned this week?

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I’m not usually one for buying into the wisdom of movies, but I’m a life-long watcher of people.

Back in 1997, Tommy Lee Jones played a no nonsense agent keeping the world safe from the aliens among us. He said “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

Watching my fellow Americans “planning” and “preparing” for COVID-19, the zombie apocalypse, or TEOTWAWKI, basically confirms that his lines ring out across the ages as the most truthful words ever committed to film.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Bathroom stall phone calls. Yes, you’re sitting down and probably bored, but the shitter in the public restroom really isn’t a conference room. And yet at least once a week I walk into the one down the hall from my little section of cube farm and there’s someone holed up in one of the stalls having a full blown conversation. First, it’s the one room in the building where I can mostly go to escape pointless conversation. Secondly, whoever you’ve got on the other end of the line doesn’t need to hear you dropping the kids off at the pool. Lastly, you can save the stink eye, because every time I walk in there and find you on the phone, I’m going to fart, belch, whistle a jaunty tune, and generally be as loud, obnoxious, and passive aggressive as possible… because I dare you to say something to justify yourself in the eyes of gods and men.

2. City slickers. In Paul Krugman’s recent screed in the New York Times, Getting Real About Rural America, his thesis seemed to be that things could get better if only people in rural America started thinking more like people living in urban America. The catch, of course, is that I’ve made the conscious decision to live in rural America precisely because it doesn’t think (or behave) like urban America. I could have just as easily decided to live in Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia but none of those places support the kind of lifestyle or the quality of life that’s important to me. If the capital “D” Democratic Party ever wants to make serious inroads into the vast swath of country beyond reliably Democratic voting cities and inner suburbs, they’re going to have to come up with a far better argument than “you should just think like us.” The day I declare I want to give up wide open ground, backyard wildlife, towering oaks, no traffic, and idyllic quiet for “everything the city has to offer,” consider this my written permission to begin proceedings to have me psychologically committed. 

3. Recognition. After spending the better part of six months mixed up in delivering a final product that’s “rolling off” the proverbial line next week, there’s nothing more cheering that sitting in a meeting where one of the Gods on Olympus turns to you quizzically and asks, “Ummm, why are you here?” Oh, no particular reason, I saw a meeting forming up and I didn’t have anything else to do this hour so I thought I’d hang. I don’t ever do things for public credit to see my name in lights – in fact I actively avoid those things. Still, though, sometimes it might be nice to know it’s recognized that I’m not just wandering the halls lacking anything better to do. You can just color my morale well boosted today.