Both Dog and Man

Dogs, too, have had their ancient liberties robbed of them, by the Yuppie class.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan #5

Andrew,

  Are you fucking joking? Steroids is such an overwhelming social force it
is here to stay, after all look at this anecdotal evidence from a wealthy
metropolitan gym? Spare me.

  You need to get out and deal with the People a little. That's right,
outside DC and NYC. Outside the middle class. Guess what: in the working
class, no one is on steroids; they don't go to the fucking gym, they
haven't got the money to be in a friggin' gym. They put bread on the table,
the kids on the school bus clothed and clean, and gas in the car for the
ride to work, and maybe take the wife and kids for an ice cream on Sunday.

  Your abuse of vanity-inducing substances is showing more clearly than
ever. That and your cossetted social milieu; you may think you're not a
Villager -- but you are of the Court, and not the Country: a truth
undeniable.

Sincerely,

Ben Cronin
Wareham, Mass.

p.s. To the guy who was ordered to get rid of his gut by the shallow
privileged girl or scram: should have taken the bus out of that fucking
incipient misery-marriage while it was still running! Best 'a luck with
Mrs. Stepford there.

A Ballad, In Broadside, on the Academics

Printed at Corn-hill in Boston, in Newe-England,

Oh! Academics ha' always got somethin' to say,
Words to complain, prestige to obtain;
 Whether you're Tranny or Lonely or Doggie or Gay,
 Academics say you must have somethin' to say!

 They do not love movies,  Or girls' starry looks;
 They love conf'r'ences so gloomy, and old Latin books:
  Above all else they do declare, they love Themselves
  And the praise of their Ceaseless and Useless Cares.

 Oh! Academics ha' always got somethin' to say,
 Words of critique, and critics so pique'd,
  They say you ought to go in the grave lay:
  But e'en there the Academics would ha' something to say!

 So Scholars, and Poets, and Orators to Come,
 Beware what yon Academicians Say:
 But heed well The People, work-worn and spare,
 When homeward from work, they say a few words: "bye-bye", "so long" -- and "take care!"

  But in the Still of the Night,
  When the night-birds take flight,
  And the people in their warm soft beds lie:
  Then, e'en then, the Academics will have Something to Say!

Remembrance Day

 I travelled once to the Commonwealth graves at Passchendaele, outside Ypres, in Belgium. It is a low, sad, green landscape. The weight of the ghosts is palpable. The farmers still plough up shells each day; some are unexploded cans of mustard gas. Some are duds. When you go to the graveyards, you find betimes a monument with an inscription marked at the bequest of the family of the late lad. This is one I saw, and never shall forget, until the end of my days:

        Son, 
   I Loved Thee So Deeply
   My Sorrow Shall Never Be Healed.
     Mother.

 War is sick and stupid, and I'm ashamed of myself for finding it interesting.

Is vs. Ought

     I've been having a lot of conversations lately with some of my fellow citizens on the farther end of the Left part of our political spectrum. Now, as a card-carrying northern Jacksonian member of the labor wing of the Democratic Party, this means I am to their right, despite, by objective measures of political preferences, being well to the left not only of the American people, but of the people even of Massachusetts, which is not Montana in terms of political coloration.
     So I think my interlocutors will agree that they do not (for the most part), and could not fairly, regard me as some manner of DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) Centrist, let alone anyone on the Right side of the aisle.
      Okay. Well then, it seems we must get to the nub of the problem: so we each give our respective answers to the questions: what is the problem? And: what is the solution?
      Now, if your answer to the first question is: what problem? Or: "government-run healthcare makes me sick!", I'm afraid there sha'nt be much of a conversation to be had. These answers indicate almost a sensory difference between us in the perception of the Times, of the Age -- die Zeit. So well you may be, on a personal level, a nice person -- you may not beat the dog (or tie him to the roof) -- but it doesn't seem to me productive to have a discussion with a person whose worldview is just thoroughly unmoored from the world of verifiable, observed facts. It could be about the carbon capacity of the planet or the math of social benefits, but a fidelity to a commonly-sensorily-perceived reality, with agreed upon (Newtonian or Einsteinian, or, you know, Arithmetical!) mechanisms, is a basic sine qua non to any kind of conversation that goes beyond the old Anglo-Saxon words. ("Tree", "Water", "Fight", etc.).
      So now: that I speak to those who agree that there is in fact a problem and that basic principles of modern empiricism ought to be cleaved to in the discussion thereof; now we go back to our two questions.
      1. What is the problem? The problem is modern capitalism and its consequences, especially its ecological consequences. The intersection of capitalism, population growth, and hydrocarbon economies is a disastrous one for the planetary future. Even the richest men must surrender to geologic time.
      I think most of my compatriots will agree with this, though not all. For political reasons, the President praises "free enterprise", and yes, it's good at 'wealth creation': but upon closer examination, irrespective of the distribution of that wealth, we can see that it was often simply stolen, as from India by England (how did the richest textile industrial region in the world go to buying cheap Manchester muslins in the space of 150 years? At the mouth of a Brown Bess musket). In other cases, it is simply borrowed from our unborn descendants, from posterity: I speak not, of course, of the strange fetishism among the Von Mieses types against government debt (or social security), which, in relying on the productive capacity of the economy in the future, has ever been a useful instrument of State in times of war or crisis -- a truth known, at least to some, since the 1690s and ratified even by Madison against Hamilton's restless shade after the War of 1812; no, I speak of our ecological borrowing, of our borrowing of the capacity of the atmosphere to sustain, not only to sustain our economic life, but to sustain our lives. At the very least, lives worth living. Lives not mired in the nightmare of +5C (or do we think, with the Cargo Cult of the libertarians, that the markets shall function, though the ports be under water?)
      2. What is to be done? Well, here we have another basic divide. The question is essentially Reform or Revolution, is it not? I am averse to the inevitable loss, shock, and sorrow of revolutions -- so let us see if reform can be our way. Is it too far gone to reform? Perhaps. But we shall only know if we try it. Why not reform first, then revolution?
             Moreover, and in a once and future republican society, the tools, the weapons at hand, in favor of reform, must inevitably be the greater. We have at hand the great institutions of State, of the Parties, of the labour unions, of the Press, of Public Opinion -- even, perhaps and if rightly tamed, of the great Industrialists (tho' never mere Speculators); ought we not use these, which are in the world-historical scale mighty swords and ploughshares alike at hand? Especially given the fact that this is exactly a global problem, the destruction of the institutions of State that would accompany any purely Revolutionary change would inevitably exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the Crisis of Climate. Or how are we to enforce our treaties if we are struggling for control of the police power? (Or what, more realistically, of the likelihood that White, with the Bigger Guns, may defeat Red -- and black and brown -- in any revolutionary war?)
         
          So that is my "for now" answer to my friends on the revolutionary Left. The dialectic of radical people's movements and popular left-center politicians has moved every reform in American history, from the Revolution through Abolition through the Establishment of the Social State by Roosevelt -- indeed, through no less a figure of left-wing opprobrium of Lyndon Johnson was the Civil Rights revolution effected.

          Come, my friends -- 'tis not too late to dream a newer Democratic Party. And if it be too late to prevent a rise of the global temperature, it is not so late that it might not be catastrophic -- but only if we act to move toward a carbon-neutral economy. And isolated screeds and contempt for public opinion -- whatever its deficiencies -- shall not get us there. The People will come to us when the facts are made fully and forcefully known.
      This is my affirmation; this is my belief.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan No. 4

Subject: Andy Pandy Have-a-fuckin-Shandy

Jesus Christ, you are an awful comrade; "I'm not sure if he has it in him [Obama]." He does. Your panic discredits you and demoralizes the troops. You ought to go do some canvassing if you're that scared.

  You move with the wind, lad; with the slightest passing airs.

  JBC

p.s. Enjoyed your poor-little-rich-girl whine about how slow the Internet is in ... MANHATTAN. Our self-parodic Pobresito....

Farms for the People

  If I were running for governor; or if I knew anyone doing so; or even anyone in the state legislature -- why, Novanglus, you sot, you ought to write this to the legislature! Or perhaps someone has already done something on it, one of those policy types....(ever have I wondered, how can Policy be a thing, reified, to study? Isn't it a form, in Platonic terms, rather than content? How can we have a school of mere forms? I don't know).

  Anyway. I would attach a community farm to every public school in the Commonwealth. Agriculture of, by, and for the People! Rooftop gardens and chicken coops would count. The Jockocracy in the suburbs would yield some of their fields for sport that the people might eat. In the country we could have cows and goats.

  Bear me out in it, O Agricolae!

Morning Thoughts (Andrew Jackson)

 I was going to entitle this one using German, because "morgen" (morning) is very pretty, but then I looked up 'thought' and it's 'denken', which isn't all that lovely. So use English, I figured, not only where you ought to, but also when it's prettier. You've got to love our totally sui generis "th-" sound, no one else in the world really has it. At least not Europe and its recreations.

 At any rate, I was just thinking, that if we in this country enfranchised people today the way they did in Jackson's America, we'd really see All the People of the country voting; that is, undocumented migrants and reformed felons, and all the other little folks that the great and comfortable consider uncouth and ignorant. And we'd be making every effort in the world to get Everybody out to vote. We'd have a national holiday (though liquor sales'd be banned until after the polls were closed) for Election Day. We'd place a damning fine on any boss who dared try make his workers labor through the very hours their quadrennial chance at the ultimate act of self-government came up. We certainly wouldn't make a bunch of overtly racist laws to combat phony abuses and keep millions of voters from the polls.

  And if we did that, a man like Andrew Jackson could get elected in today's America.

  As it is, the pundits, the Courtier Press, the so-called "Independents" among the populace (read: lace-curtain and can't make up their minds, or possibly just a f---ing fool), let alone the Money Power, would tear out their hair denouncing his partisanship, his 'radicalism', how he wasn't "centrist" or "moderate" enough. When they say these things, of course, in 1832 and 2012, what they really mean is that he dared to believe the Common person in this country had the same right to the Declaration of Independence as the wealthiest Bankers and 'best' people (at what we dare not ask) of the Yacht Clubs and Prep Schools. And he dared defeat them as the Champion of the many millions.

  Which is why, of course, they hate him.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan #3

Subject line: "He may even have lost the Election tonight"

Excitable Andrew, as per usual. Wouldn't want to have you reporting on the
Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. "I think we may have lost the war today;
Nazi invasion of England imminent!" Such conclusions might get some play
from your Boss Tina Brown and her Wreck of the Hesperus version of NEWSWEEK
as 'counter-intuitive' and 'edgy'. They'd also be wrong, just like you are
now.

 JBC


p.s. Doing any phone-banking or volunteer work for Obama? If not, why not?
I thought you wanted him to win -- or is that work for lesser people, you
know, people who don't have the time (or the inclination) to go blog to
thousands about how much they love their own dick. Or is it that your
Obama's-a-Tory is yet another position taken to be a step-and-a-half au
courant of the Conventional Wisdom as it courses through the DC-NY media
bubble? Forgive us, but Democrats in this country really ought to take the
words and prognostications of such a stalwart as yourself -- who supported
Clinton in '92, Dole in '96, Bush in '00, and Kerry and Obama in '04 and
'08 -- with a metric ton of salt. Old Tom Paine had a phrase that comes to mind when we contemplate your record: "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot."

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

Or, a Program of Government for Southeastern Massachusetts, Should Revolutionary Conditions Ever Return Here Once More

by An Old Republican

 

1. Immediate implementation of "Smart Growth" measures; moratorium on construction of new cul-de-sacs, developments, etc. Safeguarding of aquifers, wild-lands corridors, etc.

2. Seizure by the County Governments of the thousands of McMansions lately colonizing this land, with subsequent division into multi-family units. OR, were the late Yuppified residents of said McMansions to wish to pay a fee of twice the house's appraised value, for them to be allowed to stay in said McMansions, but to have to publicly abase themselves before the People in General Crowds Assembled.

3. The use of those fees, confiscated from the McMansion Aristocracy, to revitalize the hundreds of old mills lying in disuse (or worse, being turned into Yuppie Apartments) across southeastern Mass. These then could be tasked with the production of those manufactured goods we presently import into our country from abroad. 

4. A reintroduction of the arts of agriculture into these Counties, with a special focus on its introduction into the Common Schools.

5. The proscription and outlawing of Private Schools.

6. The proscription and outlawing of private Yacht Clubs and Country Clubs -- dens of class and race privilege.

7. The division of each incorporated Town into wards of c.100 people, each ward to be governed along principles of direct democracy. Maintenance of the traditional Town Meetings alongside this Ward Democracy (Jefferson's phrase). County legislatures to be elected by the Town Meetings.

8. The granting of some measure of justice to the Indians, with preferential choices on housing, milling rights, and agricultural locales. Public acknowledgment of the realities of Conquest in the 17th century. 

9. A tax on SUVs of 100% of their assessed value per annum.

10. An immediate movement towards renewable energy; investigation of possibilities of tidal power in our estuaries, of hydro-electric power on a micro scale on our many streams and rivers, wind power both on and off shore; solar power where appropriate. The closing and mothballing of that Atomic Bomb down the Coast , aka the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant.

11. Suggestions welcome!

The Old Colony Democrat No. 3

                     The Old Colony Democrat 

                                                                                     Vol. II, No. 3 Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012

                                     A Newspaper for the People, 

                  Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

 In the Open at Last: Plutocrat Romney Comes Out for The Money Power

        News comes to this County that our old acquaintance,  His Excellency Mitt Romney, has been exposed as a Prince crown'd by The Money Power, who seek together to reduce the citizens of this lately gain'd republic into a state of absolute SERVITUDE.
        The Boston papers and the New York packet as well report that Mitt Romney, late and regrettably the Governor of this Commonwealth, and today the most despised man therein this side of a convicted war criminal, has lain it open and in the clear that he runs for Chief Magistrate as the greasy Errant Boy of Filthy Lucre, as a Princeling of the Moneyed Aristocracy.
      Indeed, Romney so boldly spoke to his fellows in that cabal of Designing Banksters that, having outraged the kingly Commoners paid a pittance to serve them, these latter Friends to Equality saw fit to record what our would-be Executive had to say.
 Thus did he speak:

    "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. "

     And so, Friends and Citizens, I ask you: did ever you see The Money Power -- that very power which Old Hickory did smite with a righteous VETO -- assert itself so baldly? Have you ever seen Aristocracy assert itself so nakedly? 

    That's why you've all got to go out and assert your rights, and the rights of the People at large, this November 6th. For it is only through the majesty of DEMOCRACY that Aristocracy has ever been turned back from mastering this, or any other, Republic.

Quakers to the Left of Me.....

       NOVANGLUS is privileged to possess many friends on what might be commonly thought of as the decidedly Left end of the political spectrum; and on most days and most matters, he is proud to stand with them. For they assuredly are different from their opposite members on the Right: they are good people and they mean to make the world a better place.

        But on several occasions, over the course of the years, he has had to part ways with them, however personally fondly he may hold them, when their objections retreat into merely monkish rectitude, with no regard for the political currents that swirl about us, and thereby abdicate the dictates of duty to the demands of a Quaker conscience, and shrink from the questions before us, because they should have wished other, and better, questions, to be put to the People.

       This is one of those occasions. 

      For many on the Left today, some of them dear to me, refuse to vote for President Obama -- the People's President -- because he wages a small but nevertheless unjust war abroad: I speak of course of the Drone War. I, as the reader no doubts intuits, do agree with these critics on the unwisdom and injustice of the Drone War as currently waged. Though I am closely agreed with the President that those who would seek to do real harm to the United States (whatever their motivations) must be stopped, and sometimes brutally so, I do not think that this means we have to or ought to countenance the destruction of entire villages by flying robots. This, along with the nonsensical "Surge" in Afghanistan (do you remember, dear Reader, when that word signified merely a hyper-caffeinated soft drink?), are among the policies for which Obama will be judged most harshly.     
       But harsh judgement must also be reserved for those "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots" who hew to a cause only where it is most popular, only where it is unimpeachable, only when it has the common assent of all women and men. For those who, judging a cause solely on its most indefensible aspects, boldly proclaim their political innocence, deigning to dirty their hands in the common struggle against those that would rob All of the People of their ancient and hard-won liberties. For those who would tell you, in 1940, that they would not see this country take up the struggle against Nazism, because the British Empire was in so many places and so many ways a very unjust thing.    
      Friends and fellow citizens: these arguments are the mark of a dilettante, and one who is suited for the religious rather than the political sphere. And I declare as well: that in the Great Class War which now divides this nation, in which the candidate of the People, Barack Obama, does battle with the Prince of the Plutocrats, M. Romney (a dweller of French mansions, if not a sipper of French wines); that those who sit out this fight are as those Philadelphia Quakers, too lofty for this world, who sat it out betwixt America and Britain while WASHINGTON and his army shivered at Valley Forge. 
     Take heed, Citizens, and do not repeat their mistake!

Daisy Buchanans to the Right....

       Meanwhile, because I wish to illustrate the truth of this Maxim: that these friends to my Left are good people; and that so many in Romneystan (see how the Other 10% live!) are not, I shall relate the story shared with me by a good friend to this Paper, a scholar and a Democrat, who, because of her husband's profession, is a good deal wealthier than Novanglus and thereby gains access to some of the salons and dinner parties where such a Swamp Yankee as NOVANGLUS would be summarily tossed out and fed in the kitchen with the Servants and the Dogs. She does not speak her peace, but listens, like an Anthropologist truly.

       Mrs. H_____ told me the following:

      That she and Mr. H____ were invited to a party at a fine McMansion -- if the monstrous issue of unbaptised sloths can be called "fine" -- down the road belonging to a family that, though once, fifteen years ago, were infamous Irish thieves, felons truly and convicted, have now, through the purifying power of Plutocracy, been rendered immaculate in the eyes of those other, unconvicted felons who do occupy the other, lesser McMansions round about them.

     And many things she heard here, wondrous to tell.

     She heard that one of these elfin Principessas of pin-striped Privilege does heartily hate NOVANGLUS, for something he wrote in Josh Cutler's go-along-get-along rag ten years ago, The Duxbury Clipper (getting something of interest out of that sheet is like trying to get something of substance out of Candidate Cutler!). Something to the effect that it was his very great regret that the last piece of woods on Washington Street was cut down to satisfy the vanity of a McMansion-dwelling Aristocratic Junto. Well, it wounded her so! 

    Madam, NOVANGLUS would like to have replied: if it wounded you so, my mere words: what think you and your reckless actions these last three decades, your Marie Antoinette pride in taking MORE THAN YOUR FAIR SHARE of the Common Weal -- what harm think you they have rendered to the Body Politick? And of course, as the Scripture saith, she would answer not a word....
      But the very worst thing of the evening, Mrs. H______ reported, was a statement that shows you just what these blond mavens of towering Mammon say behind closed doors. For, in the midst of a long, strange line of braggery -- about how little she read, and how little she does remember, from her College years -- Mrs. Isabel, whose poor friend's feelings were made tender by the criticisms of NOVANGLUS; this Mrs. Isabel described how she once took a class on Eastern Orthodoxy, that oldest of the Christian churches.

      And then she said this: "It was weird and -- igh! -- and there were all these swarthy and hairy guys there in the classroom; there were no blondes like me...." And at this, her fellow Reichsleiters of McMansion Kingdoms did gloat and laugh.....

      Friends, if ever you forget what this election is about, come back to that quote from Mrs. Isabel. For we all know that one side wants "to finish the Temple of Freedom," and "to make it capacious within", as the old Lincoln campaign song has it. We want to make a place "for whoever seeks shelter, whatever the Hue of their Skin!" The other side -- well, just see what Lady Isabel had to say.

   Remember, all of you neither deliriously wealthy nor self-content in thine blondness: Vote Your Interests, Vote Your Conscience, and Vote the Straight Democratic Ticket!

Voting for Obama with You!

                                                                                                       

A new Ballad, in Broadside, sweeps Southeastern Mass.

Romney's Lament; or,
 The People's Reply

 A Ballad printed in Broadside, at Corn-hill, in Boston

To the tune of "The Outlandish Knight" (Child #4)

 "Come, Mittens, Come Romney,
  Come tell the Countrey,
  Tell us what your Plans might be;
   Will you be the People's President --
   Or for percentage fifty and three?"

   "Come farmer, come yeoman,
     Come listen to me:
     I'll tell you what my plans might be;
     Just as soon as you vote for me
     I'll tell you what my plans will be!"

     "Come Mittens, Come Romney,
        This ne'er will do;
       You must tell us oh! truthfully:
        Will you be the People's President --
         Or for percentage fifty and three?"

       "Come Young Men, come Women,
         Come  listen to me:
         I'll save you from Obamacare;
         Tho' I did start this very same thing,
          I'll use it the Slow Folks to scare!"

        "Come Mittens, Come Romney,
          Come tell the Countrey:
          Tell us what your plan might be:
          Are you for Orphans and Widows and Dogs,
          Or for merely the Fifty and Three?"

         "O People, Good People,
            Why do you ask me?
           Why ask you such foolish things?
           Am I not most like a KING you have met,
           From among the Fifty and Three?"

         "O Mittens, O Romney,
          Come down from that throne;
          We'll answer your questions three:
           You do act so Kingly to Us,
           That We Shall Not Vote for Thee!"

           "You do act so Kingly to Us,
            THAT WE SHALL NOT VOTE FOR THEE!"


       
   

The Old Colony Democrat, Sept. 15, 2012

                        The Old Colony Democrat                         

                                                                                                                          Vol. II, No. 2

                                 A Newspaper for The People

          Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

                                                                                                                    Sept. 15, 2012

World News: American Embassies Attacked; Dignified Response of the President, Sec. of State

     More dreadful news was brought to this County today of continued assaults on American diplomatic outposts in the Mediterranean, Near East, and South Asia. The Boston papers as well as word brought via the Providence coach to Plymouth tell of attempts to storm embassies in multiple Muslim capitals, from the Atlantic in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the East. However, the crowds are reported for the most part to be small, unrepresentative of local opinion, and even in some places -- such as Benghazi -- opposed by pro-American demonstrations.
    Meanwhile, to the strains of "Nearer My God to Thee", the bodies of those Foreign Service personnel murdered in the attack Tuesday in Benghazi returned home today. The President and the Secretary of State greeted them at Andrews Airforce Base in Delaware, and, after making remarks by turns somber and affecting, were moved to a rare moment of public affection -- a clasp of hands between long rivals, embraced alike, as is the Nation, by grief.
     Significantly, in Egypt -- after President Obama's description of the country as neither ally nor enemy in an interview with Telemundo -- the government of Muhammad Mursi reigned in raucous Salafist crowds and effectively defended the embassy in Cairo. Mursi himself, travelling in Brussels, was at last moved to denounce the attacks after initially hedging between the competing demands of Egypt's secularist military, the Islamist Right, and the government of the United States.
 Demonstrations against the embassies of Great Britain and Germany have also been reported.

The View from Buttermilk Bay
    
     A Ploughman from WAREHAM writes:

     Today friends I thought fit to write to the Old Colony Democrat to speak words of truth to certain of mine neighbors, men inclined to tipple early and often in the day, men, as they say, fortified with that liquid courage.

     For today, going to Charlie's to eat a fish sandwich, a few miles past the mouth of Red Brook, I was treated to the insalubrious and damnable foolish rantings of these "summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots" as they sat to their strong beer, and I thought I would publish them to all the world -- or, failing that, to you, the readers of this paper.

      These braggarts of the barroom thought it the finest kind of bravery that they -- in response to the deaths of actually brave men in the Foreign Service -- should call loudly, and without consequences, for the burning to death from the air of people they didn't know, and who hadn't harmed us a whit, on the other side of the Ocean. Ah! what martial skill! What students of military science! Indeed, so devoted must these men be, that they must be constantly tending temples to Mars (and sacred offerings burn't to the image of Megyn Kelly) -- for they were nowhere to be found when their country called them in 1970, having taken the pledge as VESTAL VIRGINS to their false and bellicose idol, and are nowhere to be found today as the call goes forth once more.

      Mark ye well, O citizens! Never trust a man who, never having heard the frightening song of musketry himself, endeavors so bravely and beerily to send other, braver, more worthy men into that unholy din.

                    -- PLOUGHMAN

 News From the Middle West: Rahm the Wrong Kind of Democrat

   A clergyman, known well to the publisher of this paper, sends word from CHICAGO on Lake Michigan of the bravery and decency of the Teachers of the public schools in that City, and of the perfidy of Corporate Democrats determined to rob of them and the community of their ancient and hard-won liberties.

    Chief among this latter clique of ambitious and designing men (well, let us not forget that there are some ladies among'st them) is Rahm Emmanuel, the Mayor of Chicago and a friend to the Banks and The Money Power. For indeed, it is widely and infamously known that Rahm is no friend to the honest workers of this and other lands, but rather to the men of soft hands and clean collars who believe they were set to rule over all us plain joggers of ploughs as MASTERS over a nation of SERVANTS. Men who never work a day in their lives, but rather engage in merest jobbing, growing fat off the accumulated moneys that other hands gathered: men such as these dare to tell a common schoolteacher that she is a layabout and a shirker. Yes, they really do say this, to the men and women who teach the nation's children not only the useful arts, reading and writing and figuring, but also the sublime Arts of Citizenship which turn us from beasts and creatures merely into reasoning humans and Citizens. Yes, these mere Stock-jobbers propose that, rather than their own malfeasance, it is the greed of the teachers, the greed of the Firemen, the greed of Policemen and Constables, that has mired the Nation in such Panic and Recession.

    Have you ever heard of anything more plainly absurd?

    For Mayor Rahm endeavors, not even with stealth, to undo the public schools themselves, on the grounds that they have yet to create that Earthly Paradise which evidently only the denizens of Business Schools may deign to bring us poor homely farmers and mechanics. A man might as well burn down his house because the roof has sprung a leak! 

    As every New Englander knows, the Common School is one of the crowning achievements of our civilization; and for men of avaricious and scheming minds to aim to Enclose upon it, as was done to our forbears in Old England, and give it away to the great and powerful private interests: this will not do. This was not what was bled for at Gettysburg and on the beaches of Normandy. This is not what Rahm's old boss OBAMA was elected for. And we shall be damn'd if such cowardly hearts as are men of finance will ever dare speak as a superior to those Hearts of Oak, the teachers of the Common Schools.

    Indeed, the superiority -- moral and intellectual -- is entirely on the side of the Teachers. It is only Filthy LUCRE which gives The Money Power any power.

            

                     -- Novanglus.

The Old Colony Democrat (Vol. II, No. 1)

                        The Old Colony Democrat

                                 A Newspaper for The People

          Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

                                                                                                                                       Sept. 13, 2012

 Purpose of this Paper

   Friends and Countrymen:

         The Nation finds itself precariously balanced between two political forces, one beneficent and one baleful, one thinking, moving, and acting in accord with the deepest principles of the republic and of the late Revolution, one suspicious of democracy itself, of the People themselves, of our Revolution itself: I speak, of course, of the contest between the Democratic Party and President Obama, and the so-called "Republican" Party (never such betrayers of professed principles has the world seen since Judas Iscariot; you might as well call the owner of a bar-room a Temperance Man as call the GOP "republican") under that most craven and oleaginous of sycophants, Mr. Mitt Romney.

        Thus, it is the intention of this paper to adduce the reasons for the necessity of President Obama's reelection, and the triumph of the Democracy; and to further inform the People of the low and loathsome character of his rival, Mr. Romney, a man without a state, a man without a home, a man without a conscience, a man without a heart, and a man without an understanding of what life is truly like in these United States during the Great Recession.

       This paper will include both news and opinion, and welcomes letters from its readers.

-- NOVANGLUS

Romney Steps In It, Shows Himself Unready for Highest Office      News comes to us from the Boston papers, and from the New York packet, that Mr. Romney (no true citizen of the Bay Commonwealth ought ever grace this mediocrity with the title he gave up years ago) spoke precipitously and recklessly about events in Cyrenacia, and in Egypt. The reader has no doubt heard of the grievous and wicked murder, by armed Salafist elements, of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the envoy of the United States to Libya. Ambassador Stevens, a true friend to his country, was murdered in its service; and before his very body was buried, before the next of kin of other murdered Americans were informed of their loved ones' deaths; before all of this, before all the FACTS were in front of him, Mr. Romney somehow perceived in all of this -- in his typically reptilian fashion -- a chance for political gain.
      Romney, say the papers in Boston, made false accusations against President Obama, saying he had "apologized" to the killers of our Ambassador. In fact (a troublesome category for our modern GOP), the President had done no such thing. Indeed, he had yet to address the nation on this crime in Benghazi, let alone issue some entirely fanciful apology.
     Yet none of this stopped the contemptible Mr. Romney from trying to play a national tragedy -- on the 11th anniversary of that most plangent national tragedy -- for his own partisan and personal gain.
     Many in this County, having known Mr. Romney when we had the misfortune to have him sit on Beacon Hill, were not surprised. Mr. Romney, we all know, is apt to move this way and that at even the slightest touch of air, to flap in the slightest trifling breeze; and he does so fear the rabid reactionaries and imperialists in his base, that he gestures and apes like the B-School Buffoon he is, dancing clownishly in a desperate play for Tea-Bagger applause, terrified that they -- knowing at least that he is not of them -- will abandon him at the slightest opportunity (which they will).
      Remember, all true democrats, and all true republicans: Mr. Romney is not ready to be President. He is a small man, and he is not fit for a great office.

 Paul Ryan: Government for Me but Not for Thee

     News comes to us from the papers in the country of the western waters that Rep. Paul Ryan (R- Ayn Rand's Hungry Ghost), besides being a proven liar on matters as diverse as marathons and Medicare, is in addition a consummate and thorough hypocrite.
     Congressman Ryan claims "Big Government" as his ultimate bugbear -- yet, when the time comes, and push comes to shove, Rep. Ryan is always glad to fight for federal cash for Janesville, Wisconsin. In the Stimulus Bill of 2009, Ryan fought for extra dollars to flow to Janesville, while in the enactment of Obamacare, Ryan eagerly sought more money for Medicare in his district.
      Remember: Ayn Rand fanatic Paul Ryan (just like his heroine) hates Big Government when it's for someone else, someone poor and far away; but when it's for himself and his constituents -- he loves it!
      We are reminded of the Book of Matthew: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." (Matthew 23:14, KJV)
      

A Thousand Shades of Grey

No, it's not a friggin' sex novel, fawned over by lonely suburbanites -- just the weather here in Old Matakeesett:
    Thick fog, light winds from the NE, 71.9 F (22.17 C). Pressure: 29.89", rising. Dewpoint: 71 F (21.7 C). Humidity: 96%.

    A fine maritime day.

What is Community? #1: Wendell Berry

 I talk a lot about communitarian ideas on this blog; I think that would have surprised the 2003 version of myself. Maybe not.
 At any rate, if I am to go on talking in such a fashion, I ought at least to give some tolerable definitions of what I mean. Now, I don't wholly endorse really any of these definitions; but each one contains what I consider a good starting point. The first is from Kentuckian, farmer, novelist, philosopher, and activist Wendell Berry (for whom I am indebted to my good friend, one Chuzzleby, of the Hudson Valley). 

 Berry writes:

  "The indispensable form that can intervene between public and private interests is that of community. The concerns of public and private, republic and citizen, necessary as they are, are not adequate for the shaping of human life. Community alone, as principle and as fact, can raise the standards of local health (ecological, economic, social, and spiritual) without which the other two interests will destroy one another.

   By community, I mean the commonwealth and common interests, commonly understood, of people living together in a place and wishing to continue to do so. To put it another way, community is a locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature. (Community, of course, is an idea that can extend itself beyond the local, but it only does so metaphorically. The idea of a national or global community is meaningless apart from the realization of local communities). Lacking the interest of or in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their 'right' to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the 'rights' of other individuals to act as they please." 

   (Wendell Berry, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community", p. 120, in Berry, W., Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, Pantheon Books, 1992).

   Berry reminds me of the fact, that, most viscerally, I feel "at home" in the place I have -- not always, but for most of my life -- lived. It feels right, the way your own parents' home smells right, when people don't pronounce most of their "r"s, when they use the long flat nasal vowels of New England, so that "orange" and "foreign" become "awwrunge" and "fawrin'", "worry" is pronounced "wuhrry", "four" and "sure" become "fow-ah" and "show-ah".

    But I do wonder where this leaves not only national and global communities, but even regional ones -- my own New England, or Berry's own Bluegrass Country, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta? Much to think about here.

    But what Berry gets truly, absolutely, just spot-on correct is his assessment of where our neoliberals leave us when they have at last realized their mad dream: that "there is no such thing as society" (Maggie T). Berry describes Paul Ryan's and Mittens Romney's vision of the country perfectly when he writes that, in the absence of "interest ... in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their 'right' to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the 'rights' of other individuals to act as they please."

     Against all this, we are still, as the Mayflower Compact held, "a civil body politick"; and that which was wrought over centuries shall not be undone by corrupt Reaganists in the space of decades.

Civic Patriotism and Town Meeting

 Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently about contemporary American liberals' discomfort with civic forms of patriotism, the patriotism of Lincoln and FDR, of citizen armies -- and, let us not forget, that Lincoln and FDR were about as left as you can get and still be elected President; I guess in national emergencies, we often make the right call in our leaders (yes, McClellan and Hoover, I'm looking at you, you perpetual jackasses -- and let us hope that soon we may add Mittensthwaite von Romney to your ranks!).

   But it occurs to me just now that this lack of civic nationalism doesn't occur only on the contemporary center-left; its also a persistent feature of their cultural confreres on the far Right, the Libertarian movement, which eschews not only civic patriotism, but the very idea of the polis whatsoever -- as though we were only so many disaggregated individuals, contracting with one another in a beautiful, rationalistic, and utterly fantastical ballet.

   Just what do I mean by a sense of civic patriotism? Let me explain.

   In New England we were blessed by the radicalism of our forbears, and the wisdom of their descendants, with the most directly democratic form of local government in the United States, if not the world, the Town Meeting (do I proclaim us a City on Hill? Perhaps -- but with the admonition not to seek our monsters!). The Town Meeting is the government of each of the Towns constituting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or the State of Vermont, or any other Town in the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island); unlike other parts of the country, county government is almost non-existent in much of New England, and nearly all functions of local government are left to the several Towns, themselves possessing an ancient sovereignty, from their 17th and 18th century origins, that precedes the constitutions of the six states. In fact, unlike states further west, there is no "county land" in New England (with the exception of Maine, where its northern wilderness is organized as the vast "Unincorporated Territory", where there is nominal county government, though this has little meaning in the North Woods). Instead, the entire territory of Massachusetts, for instance, which is typical, is divided up between 351 Towns (and 14 cities, which are defined as possessing a mayor-council type of government). If you leave the jurisdiction of one Town, you have by definition entered another Town; you will notice the difference in street signs, for instance.

   Most Towns are governed by the directly democratic Town Meeting (though some larger Towns that don't want to become cities have instituted the novelty of the representative Town Meeting). The Town Meeting, in which any adult voter can take part, is the legislature of each Town. It is run by a popularly elected Moderator, who is in many senses the Head of State for the Town; it is the most "elder statesman" of the various Town offices, above the more earth-bound and political world of the Selectmen. The agenda of the meeting is determined prior to the meeting: articles are added to the the agenda, or Warrant, by both the Board of Selectmen, who are the multi-person, popularly elected executive of the Town (usually three or five positions), and other Town boards and commissions, which are a mixture of elected (e.g., the School Committee) and appointed (e.g., the Alternative Energy Commission) positions. In addition, articles may be added by citizen petition. There are usually around fifty articles, and they deal with all aspects of a municipality's government in any given year: finances, the institution of new bylaws on everything under the sun, resolutions condemning nuclear power or praising the Red Sox, whether to replace the fire station -- just anything, really. The judiciary is represented by the Town Attorney, who advises the Town Meeting on legal matters. It is run according to standard parliamentary procedure, and motions can be brought from the floor. Debates are lively and to the point, as in the Athenian assembly. Votes are by voice; if the Moderator cannot determine whether the "Yeas" or "Nays" have it, he will send out the counters, who will count by section (many votes are unanimous, like "Will the Town consent to allow the beach to be opened this summer?", etc.) and give him the totals. To prevent skullduggery on the moderator's part, any citizen can call for a reconsideration of a vote, or can move that a previous vote was illegal. Because they were the product of an agrarian society, the meetings occur in the early Spring, when the snow was melting and travel became easier (many New England farm families were isolated from November through March, and the children did not attend school during these months), usually at the end of March. Usually the annual Town Meeting in March is the only one; special Town Meetings may be called for certain emergencies or pressing questions.

    This, as you can no doubt see, is a complicated system, and yes, sitting at Town Meeting for the two or three days it usually takes (meeting 9-5 with a lunch break in the high school auditorium or gymnasium, usually) can be boring. But, like church, which can also be boring, you leave -- after all the parliamentary maneuvering, after the impassioned debate, after either hard-won victory or a close defeat -- after all this, you leave with an uplifting feeling, also like church. Why, you think, we have just governed ourselves; we did not massacre anyone, we sought imperfect agreement over the just government of the public things (res publica), and no delegate or senator or president did it for us: we did it. And if we don't like it -- there's always next March.

     This is the feeling I mean by civic patriotism. And it is absent entirely from those liberalisms, of the left and of the right, that foolishly assert that we are the masters of our own stories, that we are individuals unmoored from communities, and that the highest end is, respectively, one's own pleasure and self-realization, or, the untrammeled tyranny of market economics. These are not what people bleed and die for -- they bleed and die for one another, for home and family and for actual and experienced liberties, not the abstract liberty of the Brooklyn set or the Chicago School Friedman types. For peace and bread, not for the gold standard or organic food. It is this abstraction in politics, and its takeover by sniping petty lawyers, mere solicitors of political sophistry, that makes it detestable to the common people, for they feel no part in it.

   But this need not be the case. Jefferson famously suggested the division of the country into units the size of New England towns, to be directly and democratically self-governing; he called it "ward democracy". And here, at the edge of a tragic and burning century, is it too late to move towards the realization of this seemingly distant vision?

    No! It is not! Indeed, it might be our only hope: for there is no power like the power of what Melville called "the kingly commons", and Jefferson was correct when he remarked that, in matters of morals, 'tis better to ask a common farmer than the most learned of metaphysicians. So, embracing democracy and our love of democracy, of our selves as a communitas, let us take back our land and fortunes from what Jackson so rightly called "the Money Power". It is not too late to dream a newer world.

A little Walt

Poets to Come

by Walt Whitman

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a

casual look upon you and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.

Old Colony vs. Bay Colony I: or, Newe-England Terminology

   Recently, I've noticed that even among my colleagues who are American historians, there is very little sense of the niceties and quirky particularities of early New England history. So I thought I'd provide a brief primer.


   So, early New England, or, Norumbega, to the eastern Algonquian peoples -- Wampanoag, Narragansett, Massachusett, Abenaki, Nipmuc, Pequots, and many others -- who lived here during the Era of Contact, did not resemble the current system of six sovereign, though federally united, states. Instead, a patchwork of polities, English and Indian, along with outposts of New France and New Amsterdam, covered this rocky, hilly, and chilly land (and almost preternaturally abundant waters).


   So, when I refer, in my profile, to my homeland as being "the Old Colony", this does not mean Massachusetts Bay. The Old Colony is Plymouth Colony, which was an independent colony from 1620 through 1691 (thus being a decade older than Massachusetts), with its own governor, its own legislature, its own legal system, and its own military. Today, the region commonly known as Southeast Massachusetts -- the counties of Bristol, Plymouth, and Barnstable -- is essentially the Old Colony. The only thing it lacked was a legal charter. The Pilgrims, after being blown off course by an autumn gale (probably a hurricane), had landed outside the area patented to them from the Plymouth Company, which was at the mouth of the Hudson. Instead they landed on the hospitable shores (irony alert) of Cape Cod in late November. The most important thing was to get a settlement started immediately, as it was already wintry. However, the fact that they were in lands over which no European state ruled made the colonists nervous; thus, the signing, in Provincetown Harbor, of the famous Mayflower Compact, agreeing that they were "a body politick".


   The only problem was that this had no legal force in the eyes of their sovereign, the English Crown. But, isolated for most of the 17th century by the British Isles' epochal political upheavals, the small colony made relatively lackadaisical effort to obtain a charter. It was poorer and far less populous than its immediate neighbor, Massachusetts Bay, so it had fewer resources to invest in such an effort. Moreover, it lacked internal coherence and the expansionist spirit of its Puritan -- as in, purifying the Church of England -- neighbor. Interesting enough, though, the more radical Protestantism of Plymouth dominated its colony far less than the marginally more moderate Puritanism of Massachusetts Bay. There were demographic realities behind this somewhat greater pluralism: the "Pilgrim Fathers" were actually a mixture of ultra reformed Protestants, on the one hand, called the Separatists (so called because of their belief that the Church of England was so wicked that only full separation from it was acceptable), or "the Saints" as they called themselves; and on the other hand, a motley crew of adventurers, rolling stones, weirdos and young men on the make, labelled "the Strangers" by their more religious confreres. This forced a kind of de facto pluralism in the colony that was absent in its more orthodox neighbor from 1630, Massachusetts Bay, or the offspring of Massachusetts, Connecticut, from 1636.


    However, after the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688, the new regime sought to regularize the colonial order. Plymouth's lack of a charter now became a major problem, and the colony lacked the influence to successfully obtain one. For a time, even ethnic and religious polyglot New York (an English possession since 1664) made a play for the Old Colony and its valuable offshore islands, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard (both a kind of Quaker-Algonquian borderland). However, the strong affinity of the Plymouth settlers for their ethnic, geographic, and religious  neighbors meant that the colony was incorporated into a new Royal Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, with a governor directly appointed from London, but with a legislature that remained the most democratic in the New World. Thus, not only did Plymouth never obtain its Charter, but Massachusetts lost its original Charter, by which it had elected its own governors, along with other ancient liberties.


     Of the then 12 colonies in British America, only Rhode Island and Connecticut kept their original charters (cf. "The Charter Oak", where it was hidden from Stuart absolutists, on Connecticut's state quarter.) Indeed, Rhode Island kept going under its original 17th century charter into the 1840s (!), when a political revolution, Dorr's Rebellion, forced radical change.


     Well, if you've stuck with  me this far, you'll be excited to know that the next installment will cover the differences between the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven, which were separate in the 17th century.
   

Calm are the delights...

    ...Of talking the best fishing holes,
     and all the beautiful bass ponds
     with a kind-minded Swamp Yankee,
     large of body and soul.

    Calm, too, the holy fragrance drifting
    Of sweet pepperbush, under the moon;
    Of bats swooping bugs, and the clear cold cry
    Of that splendid living ghost: the loon.

    So Swamp Yankees and loons,
    I number ye my friends,
    Not as friends today are called;
    But as friends did oncely howl
    In the far-lost days of Auld.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan #2, or,

A Missive to Marquess of Queensbury Mugwumps.

Dear Sir or Madam:

        Having engaged in some heated facebook controversy on the subject
of my natal Boston and Chick-fil-A, I thought I'd respond briefly to your
well-intentioned, though thoroughly naive, and frankly Mugwumpish,
position.

        First, cities and towns are still democracies, and if a powerful
private actor, in this case a large corporation, wishes the privilege of
operating within these polities while expending significant resources (as
in, money to anti-gay groups, not speech alone, which you neglect to
mention) to corrode the  very social and political mores that undergird
these polities -- in Boston's case, respect for the equal personhood of,
inter alia, LGBTQs -- it is fully within that community's right to refuse
permission to the corporation to operate within its borders. The 'free
market' (i.e., the imaginary world of Manchester School economics and
Milton Friedman) does not have any prior claim to the sovereignty of these
democratic polities. There is no universal right of opening franchises, and
if you seek to give material aid to bigotry against Group Y, and then find
yourself denied permission to operate within a city that is an oasis for
Group Y, you have no grounds for surprise. Polities construct and maintain
so-called "free markets", and polities may govern them as they please.

    Indeed, the idea that a self-regulating market must be the ne plus
ultra, the final arbiter of economic questions, is a relatively new one,
having only taken hold -- and then irregularly and as the result of
enormous violence -- in the middle decades of the 19th century. Before
that, and indeed, during and after that, both governments and popular
crowds had no problem telling commercial concerns deemed destructive of the
social and political order to take a hike -- for instance, the Michigan
Railroad War of the 1850s, or the anti-turnpike riots in England a century
before that. It is the supreme (small 'l') liberal arrogance to 1) assume
that any individual's right to profit supersedes that of the community to
its lifeways; and 2) to equate the poor injured business-owner, denied the
chance for even more money, with any number of put-upon minorities -- in
this case, the minority whose oppression the poor businessman seeks to use
his profits to finance.  You and Greenwald are both small-l liberals of
varying stripes, and so you presume these things; but not everyone in this
country is a small-l liberal, so I don't think your presumptions hold.

    Finally, in terms of practical politics, it is no surprise that a
supporter of the House of Lords would feel the need to blindly adhere to
Marquess of Queensbury rules -- but politics in this country is now the
inverse of Clausewitz; it is war by other means, and for too long we have
seen the polite center-left hold to your oh-so-fastidious rules of
engagement, and get slaughtered, while the Right sharpens its swords and
prepares for battle -- enough! If this 'bullying' makes business-owners
more afraid to use their power to attack gays, that is fine with me. You
are obviously not from a big northern city: this is small-fry stuff in
terms of political intimidation. You may be an immigrant and an Irishman
(by descent only -- what true Irishman comes out for the House of fucking
Lords?!), but you don't understand whatsoever the Boston- or Chicago- Irish
experience that politics is personal, and it involves throwing some sharp
fucking elbows. You may think of this as bullying; in reality, it is
fighting, which a comfortable fellow such as yourself may not be accustomed
to having to do. Indeed, you didn't have to fight precisely because guys
with the courage to engage in overt confrontation came before you and paved
the way for you: it's no surprise that Larry Kramer finds your entitlement
in this regard insufferable.

  This idea that we can all reason together with some tea-and-cakes is so
much middle class bullshit, of which you and Greenwald are representative
-- the Right and Left poles, as it were. The working class has long known
that politics is a tough and dirty fight, and the other side is playing for
keeps.

  There is a reason Malcolm Tucker emerges, in the end, as the most
consistently likable character in "The Thick of It" -- because he knows all
this, and his goal, unlike the careerists around him, "is to keep the other
wankers out of government."

  Just as libertarians free-ride on the liberal (US sense) political order
they so deride, so do you and Greenwald free-ride on the brawlers like
Larry Kramer -- or Tom Menino -- who fight your fights for you.

Signs You Are Not Dealing With a Serious Person

1. They tell you in all earnestness that Hitler was a socialist;

2. They cite the Heartland Institute [sic] as a legitimate source of information;

3. They insist that the availability of military assault weapons to lunatics has no relation to the frequency of massacres in the United States;

4. They say global warming is bad, but it would be even worse to stop it; after all, we must think of the poor Africans, who shall never get a chance to chow down on Big Macs in their Hummers if those cruel Scientists have anything to say about it;

5. When you point out that the poor Africans will suffer massive droughts and desertification because of anthropogenic global warming, they simply deny that such warming will occur, as though the stipulations of Microeconomics 101 (Milton Friedman edition) about how the world is supposed to work over-rule the Laws of Physics;

6. They talk bravely about the wickedness of The State, while drawing a salary and benefits therefrom;

7. They believe that openly carrying pistols around ice-cream shops and university campuses is a sign of deep civilization;

8. They insist that when private actors defraud the Commonwealth, it is the Commonwealth's fault for trying to prevent the fraud in the first place, on the visionary theory that if only we'd let these "job creators" alone, they would stop trying to screw us.

9. They blame schoolteachers, cops, and firemen for the current economic crisis;

10. They wonder whether 9/11 was "an inside job".

  This was another installment in "Life in a Post-Empirical Age!", in which the methods of deconstructionist postmodernism get taken and applied by the political Right (who could have seen that coming?).

Days like this

     On days like this, the only decent thing is to let electoral politics drop. So there will be no cut and parry fighting today; no rhetorical bar fights with various elements of the Right. Today, after the massacre in Aurora, a decent respect for our countrymen and our Country -- for the shared values and common history which bind the several nations of this federal Union -- impels us to stop with surficial things, and to gaze beneath the waves, into the deep, into dark, fathomless waters.

     Why is it that our nation so regularly sees this kind of violence? Why does our neighbor to the North, republican in all but name, and with equal access to guns -- why is it that they see this so much less frequently than we do? This is not to say there is not violence in Canada; there is. But why this gory succession of mass murder in America? There was Columbine -- a kind of satanic Star of Bethlehem, Lucifer's light truly, bringing warning of worse things to come; and then 9/11, a veritable sounding of Gabriel's awful Trumpet, calling all of world-civilization's wicked, cruel, and nihilistic urges to the gory field. But even before Columbine and September 11th, before Baghdad and Fallujah, before London and Madrid, before this all, there were the other, smaller attacks -- at Jonestown, in Arkansas, in 1998, and at Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, where children shot dead other children. I remember in my own time, in February, 1996, a day with lovely snow beginning flurries beginning preparatory to a Nor'easter, getting our report cards before February Vacation and then getting let out early into the snow and the stacking cordwood because someone in the Eighth Grade had brought a gun to school, causing Charlie Chandler and I to exchange disbelieving and quizzical looks while we found out whether we'd managed a B in pre-algebra. What was the meaning of that, this overwhelming desire for murder among our young people?

      I don't claim to have any special insight on the question. And yet, when we think of it, of the enormity of these massacres that toll in grim succession across all corners of our land, we must come to the conclusion that there is something awry in the national soul; something not unrelated to the political assassinations and racial violence of the 1960s, perhaps not unrelated to the epochal fratricide that forged the modern nation one hundred years before that. Perhaps, even, going back to the Old Testament scale slaughter, and Total War, of the Great Swamp Fight in King Philip's War, and the Pequot Fort at Mystic three decades prior.

    Where there has been violence in the past, we may only expiate it; when violence is currently occurring throughout and beyond our society, and in our own name, we may put a stop to it, and obviate the need for any future atonement. I cannot say, but I wonder if these massacres would cease, if, first foregoing the external symptoms of our national illness, we as a People could effect a transformation of the National Soul.

  What I mean to say is, we ought to cease supporting a government that is the greatest purveyor of violence abroad in the world today.

 We ought to cease supporting police departments that make everyday life for our racial minorities something out of an authoritarian nightmare, just as we ought no longer support a prison system that has become a racial gulag.

   We ought to no longer tolerate the vigilantes in our midst who seek to attack immigrants seeking a better life, or to intimidate Muslims seeking to peacefully practice their Faith.

     We ought no longer tolerate those persons, corporations, and economic interests whose irresponsible and grasping acquisitiveness makes of everyday life a place of violence for the poor, the unemployed, and the sick.

     We ought no longer tolerate the many cruelties built into our institutions of education, from the endemic sexual violence of universities to the subtler, but still violent, competitiveness which makes of learning a mere footrace, and of knowledge a mere mockery.

    Finally, we ought to look within ourselves, into our own souls, and to identify what is violent there; to identify it, and to root it out, with Lovingkindness, with Justice, and with Peace.

     Only then, I think, shall we find peace in this country and in our own hearts.

Finally...

... the return of normal New England summer weather -- 72, cool, and half-foggy here on the Gulf of Maine. I pray for the good people of St. Louis, with all their hot sorrow in the middle of the continent.

     I pray also that the voters of this federal, continental empire, will remember this typically troglodytic behavior -- http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/republicans-block-climate-change-hearing.php -- next election day.

   A fun final point -- the benighted and/or wicked Congressman who says that they won't hold any hearings on this extreme weather is none other than Fred Upton (R-MI), uncle of noted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover girl and twitter courtesan Kate Upton -- how's that GQ cover and photo-shoot for family values, Fred?! [see here:  http://i.huffpost.com/gen/651969/thumbs/o-KATE-UPTON-GQ-570.jpg?4 ] 


  In all seriousness, this is straight Ancien Regime stuff. Corporate hack legislator kicks the can down the road while his niece teases a Popsicle for the provocative titillation of all three Estates.... Meanwhile, thunder rumbles from the mountains, as we remember The Law, and the Prophets, and their truth: that, some day, justice must roll down like waters. Woe to the Uptons, and woe to Nineveh that makes such idols thereof!

Letter to Andrew Sullivan #1

 Today Andrew Sullivan links to Messrs.  Matthew Yglesias, Conor Friedersdorf and Daniel Drezner, et al., defending the greatness of outsourcing, complaining of the "ridiculous offensive[ness]" of Obama's campaign against Bain's vulture capitalism. Ah, lickspittles of capital, unite! You have nothing to lose but other people's jobs!
     Seriously, what is fucking offensive is that these people, who are by no measure possible working class, seek to defend the destruction of entire communities, entire swathes of the country, in the name of a false idol of economic efficiency; or, for the more bleeding heart among them, in order to better the lives of Chinese peasants (this is the actual sweatshop defending line of Yglesias). I thought we were Countrymen? Or are we only Countrymen when my family, friends, and neighbors go to fight the immoral and ill-considered wars these assholes cheer for?

     Jesus Fucking Christ.

     "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?"

A poem for getting back on Life's horse

ULYSSES

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Good cosmopolitanism

A gay Persian-British guy singing a song written by the American descendants of enslaved Africans.... good cosmopolitanism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmmTsEu19YM&list=HL1342493909&feature=mh_lolz

For bad cosmopolitanism, just turn on MSNBC.