Okay so instead of writing something meaningful after being accused of trolling on CLR and arguing with fundies on facebook I am posting all of my drafts because I still can't get my shit together and post a decent post.




Yeah the title really says it all. Not much of interest here, but if you're reading this then you already know that.

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Wikileaks rehashes cables that state the obvious, and we're now supposed to believe that this is somehow new information on old news? I mean for fuck sake, we all know the Provos did the Northern Ireland Bank job, we all know Grizzly Adams denies being in the IRA, and we all know that when it came to negotiations the Provos punched well above their weight. But somehow we're revisiting these issues without digging deeper into them for a deeper understanding.



What picques my curiousity is not whether or not PIRA carried out the bank robbery, but why? This has been something that has been conspiciously overlooked in most analysis. Most commentators were falling over themselves to smear shit on Sinn Fein. But it's like trying to teach Brer rabbit a lesson by throwing him into the briar patch. The Northern Bank job and the execution/murder of Denis Donaldson raise some questions that I have not seen fleshed out elsewhere, so I'll do it here.



After the first failed hunger strike in 1980 Margaret Thatcher stated that the IRA had, "played its last card". Suffice to say we all know she was wrong. It was not because they won that particular fight, they did not, but they kept going for almost another thirty years (with varying degrees of "success"). The point is that "secret armies" do not have the ability to come out and argue a case in the light of day. Like the subaltern (I am truly annoyed that I even know that word btw), PIRA for all of its sophistication in military operations and criminal activity must act out in order to find a "true" voice. We must also remember that in years preceeding this action and in the years since, the Provisionals were/are accused multiple times of having "sold the family farm" so to speak due to their inability to continue the armed struggle. Political careers and informers forming the corner stone of this political analysis. The Provos went out with a bang in '98 in order not to go out with a whimper like the ETA or the FARC have since then. To me the Northern Bank job was a statement from the Provisionals, more to the Republican community than to the various governments.



Because doing a massive bombing or sending a few boys home in union jack draped coffins was most definitely too taboo circa 2005, an extraordinarily complex and unprecendented "operation" would send the message to both the dissidents and the respective governments that PIRA was most definitively still in "business" or at least capable of pulling off things that were head and shoulders above anything that the dissidents could do at that point in time (or even now for that matter). But like my ironical use of "malcontent" while hanging off of some rebar twenty foot plus up it was met with blank stares as the message was lost on those for whom it was intended. The dissidents simply dismissed the operation as more financial opportunism from the Provos. The governments viewed it as either a sign that Grizzly had no intention of changing his stripes or that he had lost control of the army. In either case something that was intended strengthen their position did the opposite. Also of interest in the wake of this and then the "official" winding up of the armed campaign was Sinn Fein's "asks" in return, which was the Irish Language Act. This struck me as quite a shift in stead of dealing with the bread and butter issues of "On The Runs". Not that they didn't try this along the way, but that the ILA was the major issue. I don't know, just a thought.





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As for Denis Donaldson. His murder obviously raises many questions. Questions which quite frankly very few want answered, either in the Republican community or the security forces.


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Do Not Pray For Easy Lives, Pray to be Stronger Men

Well it's time to wrap up another year. We're still in a recession. It's getting worse, not better for most of us and I'm now back on concrete. But I have a job, (for now) so fuck it. But on to a deadly serious topic, video games. There were a bevy of great/solid games that came out this fall alone. I've got one semi-video post under my belt and it's odd that in my second outing I'm speaking almost exclusively about sequels to those games. This is in my mind indicative of the creative bankruptcy of the system in as mush as once they find a franchise that sells, they milk dry. Think about Ocean's 11 circa the Rat Pack visa vie the multiple sequel reincarnations of modernity to get where I'm coming from. That being said there's no reason not to enjoy the often time solid sequels.

First and foremost is the Treyarch follow up to its last output of Call of Duty: World at War, and following on the footsteps of the incredibly disappointing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. . that mini game alone justifies the sixty five dollar expenditure. A solid solo player campaign and a revamped multi-player experience just make one feel less guilty about forking over the cash. Though the truth is that I've had to ask for this game for Christmas as I can't justify the expenditure right now. That really does bring a tear to my eye, but since I've lost 2.00+ an hour I need tighten the belt a bit, and be an adult (something which I despise btw).

But something folks need to understand is that the undead have the ability unite man kind, as well as eating their flesh.

Seriously, this game even has something for Garibaldy in as much as Castro gets a role in the mini-game.

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On another note. As a rule I dislike modern remakes, and when my dad told me that they were remaking True Grit I about flipped my lid. Seriously I was about to start screaming when he told me that Jeff Bridges was to reprise the role of Rooster Cogburn. This calmed me down enough to say, "well maybe I should google the trailer to find out more". While I was doing that I asked who would replace Glenn Campbell as the Texas Ranger. When the answer came back, "Matt Damon" I gave an approving murmur. After I watched said trailer and saw that it was the Coen brothers who were making this film I was hooked.

Now technically the Coen brothers are doing an adaptation of the novel, but who the fuck are they kidding? Seriously? Your're going to do a remake of the novel whose orginal film adaptation won John Wayne his only oscar and whose memorable line, "fill your hands you sons-a-bitches" is a classic of Western film and then tell me it's about the novel not the film? I'm calling bullshit on that one. But it still won't dissuade me from going to see the movie.

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Also out this year is a follow up to Fall Out 3, entitled Fall Out: New Vegas. While specifically not a sequel and developed by a different company it uses the exact same game engine as Fallout 3. Though new complexities such as a factions systems allows you more flexibililty than just the old morals systems (ie you can only do some things if your moral ranking is low or high enough). The setting of the game in the west allows for throw backs to the orginal franchise and the inclusion of the New California Republic. Now I never played any of the original franchise so am unfamiliar with the many of the nuances

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I'm trying to work out the bright side of being kept up at two o'clock in the morning by a fussy toddler. If you're drawing a blank too, then you're good company because I would much rather be sleeping. But you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which gets filled first right? So I'm up.





Pearse Doherty has finally been elected to the Dail for the Shinners and actually managed to overshadow Gerry's parachute drop into Dundalk. Interestingly enough though not altogether shocking considering the constituency Pearse was handily elected over all others. There are many reasons for his electoral success which don't need to be repreated as they are irrelevant to our conversation here. What did strike me as interesting was Doherty's stance on abortion. Now everyone knows SF famously has a fence post up their ass on this issue, not nessecarily because is trying to pander per to both camps but (IMO) because the party itself is deeply divided on this issue.





Now this post isn't meant to be about abortion, right, wrong, or indifferent, but it is a great jumping off post for what has been on my mind. And what has been on my mind is the question, what defines rural proggessivism? Again, not sure if that's a word, but no one contested it last time out so I'm running with it. Personally I am pro-choice, coming from a pro-life stand point. That last line may need clarification, I am personally pro-life, but feel that it is not up to me to make life altering decisions for other people so say make your own choice and live with the consequences. I can't even get smug because I remember when my wife was pregnant that the doctors told us due to her ethnic background that she was at increased risk for a Down baby. Before the tests came back telling us our boy (we still didn't know the sex at that point) was healthy we had a scan and listened to the heartbeat. At that moment it hit me that my wife was carrying a living being inside of her and I told her later that with all of my fears and uncertainties (which had grown exponentially after realizing that everything they had abstractly warned us about could in fact be very real) that I couldn't give my support to stopping that little heart beat. And that is why I am pro-choice. Because at that extremely personal moment I could not imagine anyone else telling my wife and I what to do.





I have heard some extremely progressive people eloquently argue their beliefs both for and against abortion. To top that off we have Malcolm reminding us of the elected representative's responsibility to their constituents. I also think that many leftists have a particularly urban centric world view.

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Who stepped down where?







Okay so I go pheasant hunting Friday and the whole world goes to shit. I mean seriously, WBS's "I didn't see that coming" is a fucking understatement. Gerry Adams standing for the Dail is seriously a raised octave "What the fuck?". I thought about simply commenting on CLR but it's gotten to say the least, a little bit weird.





Recovering from the initial shock it does connect some dots. MMG being Deputy First Minister, GA's insistence on representing SF in the 2007 debates and his fixation on the leftist Southern body politic. It also fills out the real politik within SF. Replacing Our Beloved Leader for West Belfast MLA is a former Hunger Striker. By contesting a rural constituency adjacent to NI, SF seems to be acknowledging their own limits in as much they are realistically looking to eat at the edges of FF's support base being as how Labour has squeezed them out from the urban left. This is interesting I would be looking for a shift from hard core Labour supporters to SF as they are the only party in the Dail to fundamentally oppose the government approach of austerity. Any left types supporting Labour are likely to be as disappointed by Labour as progressives/liberals/leftists in America are by Obama. But to be fair to both Gilmore and Obama, neither are selling themselves as leftists, only "moderates" looking to correct the "excesses" and "mistakes" of the previous administrations.





While leftists in the ROI and NI are busy picking apart SF's left wing credentials they would do well to note that SF are (to the best of my knowledge) the only party in the UK or the ROI to fundamentally oppose the austerity programs of the respective governments. And by the only

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Haven't seen alot of analysis on the elections up North so far and this annoyed me. I mean fuck David Cameron, Tony Blair 2.0. And while I'm happy that Labor didn't totally melt down the fact that the rich got richer and poor got poorer during the Nu Labour administration kind of grates on me. Also I'm not a liberal so while I appreciate the social democrat aspect of the political spectrum the fact that both state houses and the governorship are controlled by Democrats hasn't stopped the contractors from locking us out in order to force an eight dollar pay cut on us. Kind of crossing threads there so we'll get to the point.



Baby Doc looks poised to take over the leadership of the DUP after a blind siding dethronement of the cuckold king, Peter Robinson. Both PR and Gordon Brown have to be feeling a bond of empathy as after years of loyal service they are both essentially defenestrated at the first Westminister election as head of their respective parties. Junior's main claim to leadership seems to be having kept the family feifdom, well in the family. But I have a hard time seeing him as leadership material and if the anti PR vote was largely influenced by the all too cozy relationship between the DUP and property developers. How is Junior going to rehabilitate that image? Other than the E. Belfast upset the DUP monolith plows on to almost total hedgemony of unionist NI. The UCUNF project lays in ruins, which is about where it started though not before much hype from the "Tory boy bloggers quintet" threw some smoke into things. Either they're still drunk trying to drown out the sorrow of it or too busy eating crow to comment at this time. But we'll get back to them later.



The upcoming DUP leadership battle. The top two are of course Nigel Dodds and Baby Doc. It's odd, both and neither of them are leadership material. I mean one could easily follow the flow of events up to this juncture and place them at the helm, but taking a step back you really wouldn't say if I was to pick a man to lead the totally dominant unionist party of NI...etc. etc. But this is where we find ourselves. I remember the last election where I was following the prospects not of Nigel or Peter, but of their wifes and how their battles for the Assembly would impact the leadership struggle. So it is odd after paying so much attention to things like that to see it all come down to 5 pounds and a butcher boy. Makes you scratch your head sometimes. So as I was saying, Baby Doc has fended off the the attack on the right flank from Jim Allister, but Nigel can point to fending off an attack from Gerry Kelly on the center. As Garibaldy pointed out last night over at CLR he says that the Provos have missed their chance but I have a hard time believing that. I don't think N Belfast is going into play anytime soon, but I think it will become a far more contentious set as the housing crisis in the estates comes to a head. I feel this constituency will become the face of the "Greening" of NI. More than the failure of a unionist unity candidate west of the Bann, the encroachment of nationalist into previously hardcore loyalist areas will be mark an entry to a more contentious stage in NI politics. Especially considering all of the centennial stuff coming up in the next few years this seems to be something that will come up but has not really been talked about at all. If MM does indeed pull off the feat of becoming FM I find it almost impossible to believe that a situation where nationalist families languish on waiting lists while "Protestant" houses sit empty and in decay. Not that Nigel has been a push over in the past but this development could lead to a much rockier relationship for the Assembly at Stormont and in my mind colors the upcoming fight for the DUP leadership.






Since neither of the two top contenders are really that dominant I think that the supporting cast will play a dispaportionate role in the process. Wilson, McCrea, and especially Donaldson are going to play a big role in garnering the support of the rank and file which are quite disparate. I especially see Donaldson leveraging his support to move up into the upper echelon of the DUP in return for his support of a candidate. Because lets face it, the DUP may be the house that Paisley built, but the additions that made it what it is today are due to the defections of massive numbers 0f UUP voters along with their totemic "leaders".





The UCUNF thing. Well I think we all had a feeling it would end like this. The aforementioned bloggers (some of whom I actually like) created enough hype to make it interesting, but in the end the DUP machine rolled them over. The question now is where to for the UUP? The civic unionists among their number will have a hard time making a go of it since in their first outing they supported the first pan-prod candidate in what, 25 years? If I'm not wrong I believe that the UCUNF lash up was for Westminster only, not the Assembly. Being that Cameron now has his hands full with the Lib Dems I don't see him spending too much time propping up a party that is not only of no use to him.











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Write with the door closed, edit with the door open...

or

Why I'm putting up a post about the Claudy bombing while intentionally avoiding Slugger

Over the past day or so the pic plastered over the BBC website has a blown up grainy black and white picture of a priest who may or may not have been involved with the 1972 bombing in Claudy, Co Derry. While purposefully avoiding Slugger I did of course venture over to Malcolm's Home Service and read his pieces on this tragedy and "new" revelations. However while over on the World Service Side (from which I jump to the Home Service site) I did read the tidbit entitled, "The lessons of justice for Claudy", with the feeder "Why is Claudy left forgotten and angry while Catholic Derry is elated by the Bloody Sunday report?".

Since I never posted anything on Bloody Sunday let me take a moment to digress. Claudy is "forgotten" because it was a massacre perpetrated by an amateurish (at the time, and that's important to note btw) grouping of avowed terrorists with little to no regard to public opinion and the democratic process. Versus a non-violent gathering of citizens demanding their rights within the state that claims jurisdiction over them only to see them murdered in broad daylight by an elite grouping of the Army. Something like Kent state, only alot more fucked up. I know everyone up to and including David Cameron makes the comparison to the provos, but the fact is that the only thing that would be comparable would if at some point the Free State or the ROI had shot down a grouping of Protestant marchers who were demanding their rights as Irish citizens in a very public way and then given medals to those forces which shot down unarmed civilians in broad daylight. That's the equivalent, to argue anything else is as sad as Chekov's post about the movie Hunger*

*It is odd as when I saw Hunger (some time later when it came out on DVD) I did not come away feeling that it was a political film at all. Very much a visual tour de force, I felt the content while apparently "accurate" according to "relevant" sources was nothing close to being a propaghanda piece for republicanism. I should also note that I was not impressed by one shot eighteen minute (IIRC) conversation conversation about the hunger strike between the actor playing Bobby Sands and the priest. I struck me as a rehashing of the activist nationalism (cue the allusion to the Church as some sort of outpost of non-violent liberation theology) visa vie militant republicanism argument, only with alot of chain smoking. Which to my mind is a false dichotomy, but that is neither here nor there. My point is only that an otherwise intelligent and entertaining blog chose to take an "easy" way out.

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On Hungary


As with so many other things in this blog. Instead of taking initiative I've sat on my ass until moved by some outside force. In this particular case the agent that put a body at rest into motion was O'neill over at A Pint of Unionist Lite. It has been the second time I've seen the Hungarian election referenced and the first time I've seen the fight with Slovakia discussed. So certainly hat tip to O'neill on that one. That being said I not only have to disagree with much of what O'neill says but I also feel I must call him to task for striking a tone condescending superiority.





Look I know that Liberal Unionists like to buy into this idea that they've moved beyond "tribal" politics, but seriously to sit back half a continent away and pass judgement (not to mention making snide comments is bullshit). Here's a fact. No one outside of Hungary gives a shit that almost a third of her "children" were lost to her. This isn't some bullshit 14th century battle that was lost to the Turks (but yeah, Hungary has those too). This was a dismemberment of country that my grandpa was alive to see and understand before he came to America. And for a point of reference, I'm under thirty.





It's odd, my wife obviously has dual citizenship and my son will too. We have discussed for me being that not only am I married to a Hungarian, but that my grandfather also was a citizen. For me I say "maybe". Because for all of my bullshit, I'm 100% American (emphasis on the annoying "can" part).

From My Cold Dead Hand Part 1.5

or

Critiques of American culture (guns and otherwise) on the tail of recent happenings...

(something I wrote the day after the Tucson shootings...)

In the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford I thought now to be an appropriate time to follow up on a post that I did awhile ago. This is in turn was from a post Malcolm did previously (I see he's already responded to the shooting) in which my comments do far more to stake out my position than any these posts ever could (the fact is that I'm always more collected in comments, responding than trying to craft an original post).

The story is obviously only half sketched at this point but so far it seems that six people are dead, twelve are wounded. One of the dead was a nine year old child. Representative Gifford is in critical condition etc. etc. The elephant in the room of course is the charged political climate and the seating of Tea Party backed politicians who have polarized the political atmosphere almost beyond belief. Perhaps that's an overstatement because I doubt anyone felt that something like this would happen. I have no doubt that whatever the shooter's political leanings he is a wing nut. But regardless of that, there can be no question of two things, one that the Tea Party folks are circling the wagons right now in order to deflect the already incoming political arrows and that two, politics crossed a Rubicon with the 2008 election.

From when an audience member asked McCain, "how do we beat that bitch?" (in reference to Hillary Clinton) to which he replied, "good question". The vitriol associated with the anti-Obama movement seems almost unprecedented. The continued likening of Obama to a socialist was pervasive and although it launched the second career of Joe the plumber any liberal can tell you that Obama is at best a centrist minded liberal. But then I've already lost the plot before I even started. The issue is not one of policy, it is one of psyche. The truth is that while we are most definitely in a real recession (trust me on that one), we are also, if I may paraphrase a badly timed quip, in a mental depression.

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Back in '08 I posted up a piece when I was trying to actually keep this blog afloat (something I've long since given up). It pondered the growing disconnect between traditional constituencies and the new political realities we find ourselves faced with. In particular my last few paragraphs have come back to me as a barometer of the discontent from that time, which has only grown since then.

Forget the responses we've heard today and those that will be forthcoming. The fact that this was an isolated incident perpetrated by an what is apparently a single disturbed individual does not and cannot negate the fact that we as Americans are losing the commons threads that bind us together. And I'm not really convinced that anyone grouping is actively trying to undo those threads as much as there is a convergence of things that coming together to affect that particular end.

I've highlighted what I believe to be the "culprits" a number of times.

From Malcolm's linked post in 2009,

"All the things I mentioned in my last post play important roles and need to be taken into account when dealing with gun violence. Death of community, de-industrialiaization and the casualization of the workforce, the increase in individual alienation, and the ever increasing rate of obesity and mental illness all play a role in this debate as well as the ever polarizing rhetoric of the most vocal gun rights advocates. All have a part in this, (unfortunately) mostly American problem"

From my last post,

"the new libertarianism is not a harbinger of by-gone liberties and community, but actually the death knell of communities and democracy, as business is granted apriori status over civil society"

And from my first "FMCDH" post,

"the belief in American individualism as it feeds into the myth that everyman is an island which obviously feeds back into the failure of needing one another in a moral sense.

"I noted in my commentson Malcolm's first post (yes from over a year ago!) the problems that accompany gun violence are far more complicated and nuanced than either side would give credit for. Before pronouncing predetermined verdicts we must actually ask honest questions with and actually listen to the answers we get back. This is also an opportunity which will probably the only time ever that I quote Bill Clinton and cite him for something reasonable when he stated the obvious, "words matter". "

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We'll leave it there.

In Memoriam: Pete Postlethwaite 1946-2011

This morning I saw the news on the BBC that Pete Postlethwaite had died. When I saw the link I didn't instantly recognize the name. When I saw his picture I knew him immediately. So I thought I would post these two short pieces from the 1996 film Brassed Off.

May he rest in peace

(Not so) Theological critiques of America: Part II

In the prior posting I dealt with the theological element of Burke's post. Yes it may have been muddled, convoluted and at times non sensical, but it was honest. So we'll leave it there and move on. And to be honest I didn't even really care about it until I wanted to respond to Burke, and felt that I had to respond to his quoted source.

The idea of the American narrative and modernity.


Hauerwas writes and Burke quotes,

"America is the exemplification of what I call the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people that believes it should have no story except the story it chose when it had no story. That is what Americans mean by freedom.

The problem with that story is its central paradox: you did not choose the story that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story."

I admit I had to Google Hauerwas to find out about him. He strikes me as impressive (at least he has his own wiki page), and a past in the building trades. His place of birth (Texas), well I'll try not to hold that against him and I often times share his fatalistic view of America. But I fundamentlly disagree with his concept that the American version of freedom is somehow tied up in inventing narratives of our past.

Though I must confess I can see where he gets his fatalism and how he comes to argue his point. While coming back from elk hunting I watched Glenn Beck while I ate a Whopper at Burger King. Truth be told, both the meal (though it was better than the McDonalds I ate in Vail) and Beck sickened me. I loathe the politics of fear, plain and simple. Beck, along with Tom Tancredo exemplify that lowest common denominator style of politicking (spelling?) that explemify the new libertarian Republicanism.

The problem with this new brand of libertarianism is the changed fabric of American life. Gone is the time of cooperative living amongst a community. The new American order consists of buying everything you need from Wal-Mart or Sam's Club. There's an excellent book by Robert Putnam which dissects and discusses the decay and collapse of American community. Where I live now there are still a few old Grange buildings left and there's still a co-op in my dad's home town (where I just got back from pheasant hunting). These endeavors and those like them are not inherently a harbinger of a distant rural past full of altruistic progressivism (is this even a word?). It is a reminder of a time when people had no other choice than to rely on one another. Yes there were/are progressive elements there, but to say that the underlying foundation was ideological rather than utilitrian is mistaken. Right now there is alot of soul searching going on in rural Colorado as the effects globalization make family/local grocery stores obsolete while at the same time showing the limitations of box chains like Wal Mart who can be located well over fifty miles away. This can mean literally having to go without food when highways are closed during winter snowstorms.

While full well acknowledging that the rural population is an ever shrinking segment of the population, their plight is endemic and to me a least a harbinger of our common futures and why the new libertarianism is not a harbinger of by-gone liberties and community, but actually the death knell of communities and democracy, as business is granted apriori status over civil society.

And though my blog has an ever shrinking readership from not posting for almost half a year at a time I am still unable to keep on track for even a single post. And Jesus wept....

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My main point of contention is the idea that we as Americans simply pick and choose in the most debasing of ways in order to simply create a narrative that suits us. I fundamentally disagree with this assessment in as much there is a difference between the ignorance of fucking idiots and the reality of a multi-generational, immigrant nation, that holds multiple and contradictory stories which are all part of the tapestry of the American narrative. One of the ones that springs to my mind as of late is the wave of forty-eighters who enlisted enmasse for the union and went into battle singing German socialist anthems which their commanding officers could not even understand. We often forget that until the civil war, the 1848 revolution was hot shit stateside (and rightfully so). But to that story let us next choose an easy narrative to comprehend with Frederick Douglass. Okay that one is easy enough. Those two narratives dovetail quite nicely. But shooting off of Douglasses narrative, what about the Irish shipyard apprentices who beat Douglass to the approval of a northern crowd? What about his old master? What about the multitudes of Southern soldiers who fought tenaciously to uphold a system of which they were not part of (ie owning slaves)? These are all part and parcel of the American story. Is it any wonder that people feel overwhelmed and simply pick out the narrative that suits them best?

Another part of the issue is the idea of assimilation and forgetting the old stories of where immigrants came from in favor of the American one. This is not hard to understand. One need only to look at the long and sorted history of anti-immigrant hysteria dating all the way back to the American revolutionary period to understand how many immigrants would deprive their children of their pasts in order to help their future in America. My own family is a great example of this as within a generation my family lost two out of the three languages spoke in our homes due to the desire to "be" American. It is funny because when recently visiting the graves of my great grandmother and grandfather (after whom my son is also named) it simply gave their dates and the simple inscriptions, "Born in Hungary". My grandfather who was also "Born in Hungary" made the choice during the cold war to not teach his kids his native tongue. And while it ensured that they were "good" Americans it also ensured that they were ignorant of much of their own stories. My uncle was nineteen when his father passed, and my own mother was only in her early twenties. How much was lost? Lord only knows. And how many snippets of conversation which make up so much knowledge of our families was lost due to the fact that my mother's generation were ignorant of the language in which the stories were being told? Again, the Lord only knows, but I think that this situation would be a fairly common thing.

If we as Americans "choose our own stories", it is often not because we choose to, but that we are forced to by the burnt bridges approach of assimilation. Left with only kitsch knick knacks, romanticized and idealized versions of the home country, is it any wonder we're in the state we're in?

Theological critiques of America: Part I

Burke's Corner has up a piece titled "America and the project of modernity: a theological critique". And while I was very tempted to post a short comment which would probably have consisted of some sentences tied together in a paragraph that may or may not make sense. That's about how it goes with me anymore. Some days I got "it" other days I just ramble. But seeing as how I had just done that on two of his previous posts I thought I would give him a respite and just troll around on my own damn blog.


I take issue with both the content of the post which Burke put up and the underlying point he's trying to make. The gist of the article that Burke links to is that Britains aren't nessecarily anymore secular than Americans according to Stanley Hauerwas. The thing is that when the British stop feeling Jesus in their hearts, they stop going to Church. When we (Americans) stop "believing" in God, we continue to attend church. According to Hauerwas this is because we have a belief in a "vague" God who needs only vagues prayers. This is all tied up in the "AMERICAN" narrative (or lack thereof) and modernity (OMG run and get the pitch forks!).

A brief back story here, if I may. I come from a mixed marriage between a now Northern Bapist and a Catholic. As is the case in most mixed marriages due to Catholic doctrine I was baptized a Catholic. Growing up I attended both Catholic and Baptish services. I learned and recited the Ten Commandments before dinner every night and said grace as well (a tradition that continues to this day btw). We did not go to Catholic school because the local school gave me parents shit over the mixed marriage thing. Since my teens I attended a multitude of protestant services and youth groups with various friends. Please don't ask me to explain why. I don't even know myself, but usually I thought, "why not" and went along for the ride. The topics of those things btw would make a great story someday, though rest assured it will never be written down by yours truly.

My mom left the Church over a multitude of issues, most of which would make sense to folks of the baby boomer generation (birth control, abortion, generally acting like assholes etc. etc.). My father never really left the Baptist church so much as the church left him as it split between an apparently "liberal" northern branch and a new conservative southern branch. We went back to Kansas and we discovered that the rest of the family had gone southern on us. My father was/is an old time conservative (as am I btw, with some caveats) and his beliefs are his business and as he would not want his beliefs imposed on, he would not impose his beliefs on others, which put him at odds with the Southern Baptists. Oh well, as they say, "que sera, sera"...

But back to our post! (that one is for Malcolm)

The idea that we as Americans are less "religious" because we attend Church without being 100% convinced of God in his multiple clothes is to me rather than being an endightment of America, is a testament to our faith. Let us remember that it is called faith for a reason. It requires an act of faith to believe. What Hauerwas is talking about is the commonly held Protestant belief that one must be "saved" by Jesus in order to achieve salvation. I have heard it multiple times in attending especially Baptist services. In northern Baptist services (at least metropolitan ones, the country ones didn't the last time I attended one), it's all hip and cool Jesus until the last fifteen minutes of the service (there's even rock and roll songs for the youngsters) and then bam! It's a choice of either really, and I mean really believing in Jesus and being saved or being damned to hell. Personally I like the Catholic version of good works, faith, and charity better.

That is not to say that you should be able to buy your way into heaven, but when I went and helped my elderly widowed neighbor after she had fallen and broken her elbow it should count on my heavenly ledger, not because it should be my sole ticket into heaven, but because it (hopefully) reflects my desire to help my fellow man when possible and to generally be a good person.

My relationship with Jesus and the Church is far more complicated. But I want, with a great deal of sincerity to believe in Jesus and that doing what is right, even when it is not easy, is the "right" thing to do, and that the idea of Christian charity is a reflection of how we would have God see us. I personally view my good works as half of my relationship to God. I am not ashamed to "talk" to God and at times ask him to help me. Perhaps that's the Protestantism in my blood as no Catholic would ever attempt to actually talk to God without going through an intermediary (I've done that too). My grandma regularly prays for me and my family, though doubting the rules and dictats of the Catholic Church.

In short, I'll take that impefect faith any day of the week and I think that God will too.

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Marha Jo

Awhile ago now WBS in his infinite wisdom enlightened me to what I had to look forward to as a parent. Not only did I hang my head and weep at such a dim prospect, but I also swore that I would never submit to such tyranny. How do they say it? "I am the Captain of my soul". Right, well I may be the Captain, but the first mate and cabin boy launched a mutiny and I found myself with no choice but to submit to their demands.

That is not to there was total capitulation. I am still not convinced by my wife's statements that our son only likes kid music as he claps along to Merle Haggard and Beast of Burden by the Stones sets him off dancing like there was no tomorrow. So I have been able to keep most of the Disney tunes out. Though I've let the Hungarian kid songs through as this is a good way for the kid to hear Hungarian. And to be truthful I like some of the songs. Because after having my wife translate some of them I realized rather quickly that are very few children's songs in English which include the lines, "I'll give you something to cry about". Totally innappropriate, but satisfying none the less.

My favorite song is by far the most inappropriate. It is entitled Mehemed Tehenek or roughly translated (that is all I can do at this point) Mehemed and the cows. In a nut shell, Mehemed is a Turk. He's never seen a cow and doesn't know what they are. So he introduces himself to a herd of cows. He then proceeds to count all of the different kind of cows, black, white and multi-colored. The being a stupid Turk he pulls on their tails and gets kicked in the head and sent flying. One hundred percent stereo-typical and demeaning, but still spetacular.

And here it is acted out.

A 357. snub nose, a 45. peacemaker & a Tyroler Hut

Upon reflection the only reason that the "This Weekend I'll be Listening To..." has gained any traction is that it has been a constant and allowed the readership to form a larger picture of WBS's preferences and tastes. Because as Oliver Sacks has shown, each person is different when it comes to what floats one's boat when it comes to music. For me that's country music. Not just the classic kind, though that's how I was raised and it remains the bar by which I new country. I'm a Johnny Cash man myself, my brother is a Waylon man, my father's more of a Roy Acuff kind of guy (who loves the fact that I have Bill Monroe doing Mule Skinner Blues on my iPod) and my mom can't stand any of it. My wife tolerates it and my kid loves it when I sing him Ed Bruce (or at least I think so).

We start with Jimmy.

and another because I love this guy

I was going to try to do a straight chronology of some of my favorites when I realized that it is simply quite impossible. Well probably not impossible, but beyond me at the moment and certainly it would tax the patience of even the most devoted followers of this blog. Because we come to the question of getting down what I like, what I was raised with, and what is considered country music orthodoxy. All three of those things weigh heavily on my mind as they are so closely aligned. So we proceed full well acknowledging that we'll leave some excellent artists out of the equation. Take these as acts of omission, not comission please.
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My dad always liked this song

For a long time I didn't believe that anything new could be quality. All the good country had already been performed and all that was left Christian rock with cowboy hats owned by lawyers.For the longest time I didn't believe that there was any new country worth listening to. I was wrong, there is. I suppose part of the problem is the fragmentation of the industry. As Malcolm once noted even George Strait is now labelled "commercial country". I wouldn't disagree, but I've got some respect for George, even if I wouldn't dream of buying anything from him. For starters there's country, bluegrass, old-timey, gospel and traditional. Deciding which fits into which can be troubling at the best of times. Let alone in the age of retro and alt. sub genres. So leaving aside confusing titles which no one but record store clerks and internet junkies care about I consider anything that I consider good, as plain and simple "country"

Of course it was Johnny Cash who showed me that wasn't the case after he signed with American recordings and produced multiple albums that I loved. Certainly the one most poweful songs was "Hurt" which to be honest, knocked me off of my feet and is one of the rare times I'll give a cover a higher rating than the original.

So while I'm finally warming up to the idea that not everything that comes out is pure crap (although 99% of shit out of Nashville is) I'm still mainly moved by the old standards. And I was thinking about that this weekend when the family was sitting around the table for lunch and my Dad was eating green onions and listening to the aforementioned Mule Skinner Blues. He then relayed to us how that took him back to his youth in rural Kansas where his grandfather had a big swinging chair and a onion patch where they would spend summer evenings swinging, eating green onions and listening to the music. And I suppose that's what country is to me as well.

Music and memory hold a special place in my heart and I think about them both fairly often. Iris Dement did a great song called Mama's Opry which tackles the exact same thing. The enabling has been disabled, but the link is well worth checking out. Music and memory aren't always positive things, but powerful never the less. Guy Clark wrote a song about his grandmother's boyfriend who showed him the way of the world in rural Texas during his boyhood/early manhood. Jerry Jeff Walker (who wrote Mr. Bojangles) later had a minor hit with it. Guy is the first man singing, Jerry Jeff is the guy with the cowboy hat.

My father was always reflective about this song. When asked why, he answered that as a young man he used to have to drive his father around to the bars in LoDo (an old ghetto now gentrified beyond belief). One of the bars he used to take his his dad to was called "The Green Frog Cafe". Far from being "one of the heroes of this country" the song reminds my dad of his father's alcoholism.

Though this is simplistic of course as my grandfather was "one of the heroes of this country" for his service in the Second World War, serving with distinction with the United States Marine Corps throughout the Pacific campaign. He never talked about his time in the Corps to his children. After his death a one of his comrades filled my father in on some things and my dad overheard a conversation once between my grandfather and the aforementioned member of his unit who survived the war with him. Their unit suffered 98% casualties from the beginning of the war, meaning that my grandfather and his friend were the sole surviving members of the original unit with the rest of the unit being made up of replacements. He had been in training to become a Baptist minister before the war, but found himself unable to continue after. He was a combat engineer during the war, demoted twice for fighting. It was left to him and his units to clear and seal the caves with flame throwers and dynamite (amongst many other tasks, because as we all know, "Every Marine is a rifleman first"). Forty years before vegetarianism came into fashion my grandfather refused to eat meat because he couldn't stop himself from wretching at the smell of searing flesh. Imagine how well that went over in Garden City, Kansas (Seriously, read Omnivores Dilemma as it's the only time you'll ever read about Garden City, Kansas in popular print).

And that is country music in a nutshell. Stories within stories. What I just related was one story amongst three generations of the same family that gives a deeper meaning to one good song.

One story leads to another as two albums that were formative during my youth were Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Stars and Stripes Forever, and Willie Nelson Super Hits. SSF was the first album I heard Mr. Bojangles off of and learned what it was to be a "cosmic cowboy"

And though I've mentioned being a little gonzo before I thought illuminating it a bit would help. To help us with is a very gonzo country singer, Ray Wylie Hubbard who wrote L.A. Freeway and Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother amongst others (he has a new album out) to explain the origins of Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother and a performance from the seventies which differ significantly from the latter performances where one might misconstrue the roles.

And of course we all know to thank Bob Wills for the horn section.

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Next up, talking 'bout my generation.

PS

Now please nobody comment on the fact that I left out Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Merle, Don Williams etc. Because trust me they haven't been forgotton and that's leaving out the singing cowboy tradition of Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey. Just saying his thing is long enough as it is...Though obviously feel free to throw in your country favortites.

PS

Okay I just had to throw a few more in here. What dan I say other than I love watching these tunes.











This is a badly recorded cover but I feel that it somehow adds to the gravity of the song.

"the richer got richer and the poor got poorer and to me it didn't seem right" amen brother