Leon Uris published an historical novel in 1984 which he entitled The Haj.
The protagonist is a boy, Ishmael, who is growing up in a Bedouin Arab village, Tabah, in Palestine, now Israel.
Ishmael was a son of Ibrahim, the Muktar of Tabah; he had been born during the Palestinian riots of 1936, which were a violent resistance against British occupation of their land, and especially against the British policies which were allowing immigration of many Jews from Nazi Germany into Palestine.
The character Ishmael recalls political developments soon after World War II, in the mid-1940s, when he was about eleven years old. Here is an excerpt from page 157:
"
One night, just after the war ended, Radio Damascus broadcast news that death camps had been discovered in Germany and Poland. Many millions of Jews had been gassed to death by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In the following days all the newspapers were filled with the revelation and every night on the radio it seemed another new dath camp was discovered. Radio Cairo said that Churchill, Roosevelt, and the holy Pope in Rome had already known about the death camps during the war but kept quiet about it and let the Nazis kill the Jews without protest....
I was still going to school at the time and in Ramle there were street celebrations over the death camps led by members of the Moslem Brotherhood. Mr. Salmi read surah after surah from the Koran to prove to us that the death camps were the fulfillment of Mohammed's prophecy of the Day of the Burning of the Jews. It was all in the Koran, Mr. Salmi reasoned, so Mohammed obviously had a magical vision from Allah, and it proved the major point of Islam; what would happen to nonbelievers.
"
-- from Leon Uris' novel, The Haj, published in 1984 by Doubleday and Sons
Glass half-Full
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The burden of King George VI
On May 12, 1937, the archbishop of Canterbury placed a crown on the head of a young prince. In that act, the Church of England, a religious authority much stronger and older than any one man, proclaimed George VI the anointed King of Great Britain and its dominions. After the disruptive abdication of former King Edward, the restoration of British royal authority into the hands of a willing sovereign was a welcome relief for the English people. And all was once again well in the realms of the British empire, or so it seemed.
Couple years later, and all hell was breaking loose; the world was falling apart. Britain was fighting for its life to prevent Hitler and his crew of thugs from taking over. The Teutonic madman had usurped governmental authority from the whimpering sovereign of Hohenzollern of Germany,and was running roughshod over civilization, bent on conquering Europe and probably the world if he'd had half a chance.
King George VI of England ultimately had to lean on the common sense and fortitude of his vigorous people, their army, the RAF, and Winston Churchill's fierce resolve to prevail against the heathen horde that had sought to subdue them.
It was quite a severe burden to bear for a young king with a stutter. But King George managed, by God's grace. to pull it off. Cheerio!
Glass half-Full
Monday, January 24, 2011
Church was bombed, Birmingham 1963
We do not fathom the power of innocent blood crying out from the ground until years later. The grievous force of such injustice reverberates in the lives of those whose grief runs deeper than the evil that inflicted it.
Terrorism is counterproductive. A terrorist who inflicts, by the planting of bombs, violence and death on innocent victims might as well shoot himself, and his cause, in the foot. The extreme iniquity of such irresponsible acts serves ultimately to harden the resolve of surviving victims whose lives were affected by the atrocity.
I realized this today in a new way while listening to Amy Goodman interview Danny Glover on the radio, on Democracy Now.
They mentioned Angela Davis, and the fact that she had been raised in that volatile atmosphere of Birmingham in 1963, when local racists had set a bomb beneath the 16th Street Baptist Church. The bomb had killed four innocent children--little girls attending church.
Little did those reprobate terrorists know, but their irrational atrocity cut a deep slice of potently productive grief into the 9--year-old soul of nearby resident Condoleeza Rice, whose friend Denise McNair was killed in the bombing.
Our former Secretary of State of the US later had this to say about the tragic incident:
"I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed."
– Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004
I lifted that quote from Wikipedia.
Ms. Rice's richly productive life attests to the truth that the destructive efforts of KKK terrorists had not deterred a tender-hearted 9-year-old girl from rising to great achievements. In spite of the heavy deck of hate and discrimination stacked against her, Condi went on to overcome the evil that had killed her childhood playmate. Later, as a scholar, concert pianist, and Secretary of State of the United States of America, she disproved, convincingly, the errant prejudicial irrationale of her community's attackers.
Terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.
And unpredictable. Even as a bomb's deathly remains and its victims cannot be predicted before the explosion, neither can the effects of such bloody deep wounds on the heart of a community and its diverse members.
While young Condi was later motivated to excel mightily in scholarship and diplomacy, another former resident, Angela Davis, of that Birmingham neighborhood charted a very different course
to overcome the injustice of Jim Crow. Angela was ten years older than Condoleeza; she was studying in Paris when she recognized the names of young Birmingham victims in a newspaper. Her stringent understanding of that putrid white supremecist tide was propelling her toward radicalism, advocacy of violent resistance, and ultimately a life of eloquent speaking and teaching, the aim of which was to educate others about the evils of racism.
Angela and Condi were two very different women, with powerfully contrasting paths in this life. But as disparate as their two testimonies are, both lives are persuasive evidence that death-spewing terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.
But the cry of innocent blood is powerfully dynamic in the lives of the survivors, and just as unpredictable as the bomb itself.
Glass half-Full
Terrorism is counterproductive. A terrorist who inflicts, by the planting of bombs, violence and death on innocent victims might as well shoot himself, and his cause, in the foot. The extreme iniquity of such irresponsible acts serves ultimately to harden the resolve of surviving victims whose lives were affected by the atrocity.
I realized this today in a new way while listening to Amy Goodman interview Danny Glover on the radio, on Democracy Now.
They mentioned Angela Davis, and the fact that she had been raised in that volatile atmosphere of Birmingham in 1963, when local racists had set a bomb beneath the 16th Street Baptist Church. The bomb had killed four innocent children--little girls attending church.
Little did those reprobate terrorists know, but their irrational atrocity cut a deep slice of potently productive grief into the 9--year-old soul of nearby resident Condoleeza Rice, whose friend Denise McNair was killed in the bombing.
Our former Secretary of State of the US later had this to say about the tragic incident:
"I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed."
– Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004
I lifted that quote from Wikipedia.
Ms. Rice's richly productive life attests to the truth that the destructive efforts of KKK terrorists had not deterred a tender-hearted 9-year-old girl from rising to great achievements. In spite of the heavy deck of hate and discrimination stacked against her, Condi went on to overcome the evil that had killed her childhood playmate. Later, as a scholar, concert pianist, and Secretary of State of the United States of America, she disproved, convincingly, the errant prejudicial irrationale of her community's attackers.
Terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.
And unpredictable. Even as a bomb's deathly remains and its victims cannot be predicted before the explosion, neither can the effects of such bloody deep wounds on the heart of a community and its diverse members.
While young Condi was later motivated to excel mightily in scholarship and diplomacy, another former resident, Angela Davis, of that Birmingham neighborhood charted a very different course
to overcome the injustice of Jim Crow. Angela was ten years older than Condoleeza; she was studying in Paris when she recognized the names of young Birmingham victims in a newspaper. Her stringent understanding of that putrid white supremecist tide was propelling her toward radicalism, advocacy of violent resistance, and ultimately a life of eloquent speaking and teaching, the aim of which was to educate others about the evils of racism.
Angela and Condi were two very different women, with powerfully contrasting paths in this life. But as disparate as their two testimonies are, both lives are persuasive evidence that death-spewing terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.
But the cry of innocent blood is powerfully dynamic in the lives of the survivors, and just as unpredictable as the bomb itself.
Glass half-Full
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Corporatist yin with Statist yang
The great American experiment with liberty and free enterprise has outgrown this world's capacity to sustain it.
Its glorious inception had been nurtured in a virgin-land seedbed of 18-century humanist enlightenment. Yoked, ever so curiously, with a steadfast puritan work ethic, this has become our quasi-mythical heritage of creative capitalism.
Industrious yankee microcapitalism coupled with burgeoning agricultural productivity produced a bold, energetic continent-wide economic expansion. The magnitude and speed of its development was unprecedented in the history of the world.
But that diligent capitalist impulse has since devolved into a bloated postcapital opulence. Now, our overfed mega-corporate superstructure, based on safety in numbers and risk-dispersal through immensity, is divesting itself of its historically free-enterprising creative base.
It has become what I call the Corporatist economic system. And yes, it is degenerating into a sort of decline these days, though not irraparably so. All human institutions in the history of the world must endure this devolution and must eventually devise strategies for renewal. This includes the institution with which I most strongly identify, the church. The church's long-term strategy for renewal is ultimately Resurrection, but that is another matter entirely.
Back on the worldly horizon of 21st-century development, we see Corporatism as yin to the yang of Statism.
For the sake of clarity, I'll offer two oversimplified definitions of these two.
Statism is an attempt by an educated elite to govern from the bottom up, with rhetorical emphasis on equal opportunity and income redistribution. In its benevolent expressions, statism is socialism and democratic politics. In its malevolent form it degenerates to Stalinism.
Corporatism is management of society from the top down by a wealthy elite, in which their corporations control what the people buy and sell. Its benevolent manifestation was turn-of-the-20th-century expansionist capitalism and republican politics. Its malevolent degeneration would reduce it militaristic fascism.
Statism operates, in theory anyway, on trickle-up economics. Corporatism is, of course, a trickle-down thing. In their long-term effects, the two are shown historically to be not much different, with the net result being in both cases society-wide procurement of security at the expense of liberty.
In the Statist model, zealous idealism coupled with politics is generally the source of heirarchical advancement; in the Corporatist scheme, money fortified with politics is the source of wealth.
In 20th-century terms these polarized operating principles have played out as Soviet-Chinese communism and European-American capitalism.
The communist model originally envisaged by Marx, Lenin, Mao and others degenerated into Stalinist gulags and Maoist perpetually-revolutionary humiliation. The capitalist model is presently devolving into what we see today-- counterproductive overdependence on a usurious financial sector, and the disappearance of unregulated business. The system enslaves what was historically an innovative spirit to market-neutralized mediocrity, rendering enterprise impotent to do what really needs to be done. This is one reason why Evergreen, the solar panel company from Massechusetts, has been constrained to move its manufacturing to China.
Speaking of China, their Statist model now evolves on the detritus of that old heavy-handed communism. It idealizes, in an exploitative way, the common man's laborious role in the Great State. Party policies and funds are doled out through government/party agencies, from the bottom up, sometimes now (since Deng's reforms) through state-owned enterprises.
In the USA, this statist strategy takes shape through democratic politics in make-work projects for infrastructure, welfare, and entitlements. Bureacrurats rule, or they think they do anyway.
The American-European Corporatist structure, of which the statist impulse is just a part, has metastasized upon on a residue of the old robber-baron capitalism. It mythologizes the entrepreneur and executive functions of the Great Company. Money is ostensibly distributed by banks through boards of directors. Employees make the wheels of finance and industry turn, even if those machinations are increasingly cumbersome, inefficient, overpaid, and predictably redundant.
During this pos-industrial environmnet in which we live, the Chinese model is in exuberant ascendancy. A State Party subsidizes and controls pseudo-enterprises. Although touting an official rhetoric of equality for all people, the channels of power are strung along a technocratic elite whose basis of power is politics and rule-keeping. The system is a potent communist-capitalist hybrid, a la the Hegelian dialectic synthesis. Its mega-capacity to accumulate resources propels the People's Republic toward dominance in the world economy.
The American wealth machine, rusty from age and greedy entropy, is a government hamstrung by Corporatists. The corporations control congressional pursestrings, funding and regulating a hyped-up stock market for self-absorbed investors. The lackey government generates pseudo-corporate structures, like Fannie and Freddie, so that smart, over-educated nitpicking technocrats have something to administrate. The system is a hybrid that is different the Chinese one, insofar as the myth of wealth creation through raw free enterprise is the rhetorical basis for advancement. It enables a financially-adept elite to perpetuate control by wealthy folks. That's a myth different from the eglitarian myth that facilitates Statist creeping.
Between the constrictive powers of these two economic superstructures--the Chinese Statist one and American Corpartist one, all possibilities for classic, creative free enterprise are diminishing.
If independent business is to survive on planet earth, we must get back to small-scale, local market-based, risk-taking businesses that originate from the grassroots up. This is where the developing nations have an advantage, because their microcapitalism is raw, undiluted by statist rules and capitalist hype. Real people solving real problems in their own communities is where its at.
.
Land, food, minerals, and value-adding labor are ultimately the only sources for true wealth. Beyond that its all systematic hype convoluted by human vanity and exploitive power-grubbing.
Glass Chimera
Its glorious inception had been nurtured in a virgin-land seedbed of 18-century humanist enlightenment. Yoked, ever so curiously, with a steadfast puritan work ethic, this has become our quasi-mythical heritage of creative capitalism.
Industrious yankee microcapitalism coupled with burgeoning agricultural productivity produced a bold, energetic continent-wide economic expansion. The magnitude and speed of its development was unprecedented in the history of the world.
But that diligent capitalist impulse has since devolved into a bloated postcapital opulence. Now, our overfed mega-corporate superstructure, based on safety in numbers and risk-dispersal through immensity, is divesting itself of its historically free-enterprising creative base.
It has become what I call the Corporatist economic system. And yes, it is degenerating into a sort of decline these days, though not irraparably so. All human institutions in the history of the world must endure this devolution and must eventually devise strategies for renewal. This includes the institution with which I most strongly identify, the church. The church's long-term strategy for renewal is ultimately Resurrection, but that is another matter entirely.
Back on the worldly horizon of 21st-century development, we see Corporatism as yin to the yang of Statism.
For the sake of clarity, I'll offer two oversimplified definitions of these two.
Statism is an attempt by an educated elite to govern from the bottom up, with rhetorical emphasis on equal opportunity and income redistribution. In its benevolent expressions, statism is socialism and democratic politics. In its malevolent form it degenerates to Stalinism.
Corporatism is management of society from the top down by a wealthy elite, in which their corporations control what the people buy and sell. Its benevolent manifestation was turn-of-the-20th-century expansionist capitalism and republican politics. Its malevolent degeneration would reduce it militaristic fascism.
Statism operates, in theory anyway, on trickle-up economics. Corporatism is, of course, a trickle-down thing. In their long-term effects, the two are shown historically to be not much different, with the net result being in both cases society-wide procurement of security at the expense of liberty.
In the Statist model, zealous idealism coupled with politics is generally the source of heirarchical advancement; in the Corporatist scheme, money fortified with politics is the source of wealth.
In 20th-century terms these polarized operating principles have played out as Soviet-Chinese communism and European-American capitalism.
The communist model originally envisaged by Marx, Lenin, Mao and others degenerated into Stalinist gulags and Maoist perpetually-revolutionary humiliation. The capitalist model is presently devolving into what we see today-- counterproductive overdependence on a usurious financial sector, and the disappearance of unregulated business. The system enslaves what was historically an innovative spirit to market-neutralized mediocrity, rendering enterprise impotent to do what really needs to be done. This is one reason why Evergreen, the solar panel company from Massechusetts, has been constrained to move its manufacturing to China.
Speaking of China, their Statist model now evolves on the detritus of that old heavy-handed communism. It idealizes, in an exploitative way, the common man's laborious role in the Great State. Party policies and funds are doled out through government/party agencies, from the bottom up, sometimes now (since Deng's reforms) through state-owned enterprises.
In the USA, this statist strategy takes shape through democratic politics in make-work projects for infrastructure, welfare, and entitlements. Bureacrurats rule, or they think they do anyway.
The American-European Corporatist structure, of which the statist impulse is just a part, has metastasized upon on a residue of the old robber-baron capitalism. It mythologizes the entrepreneur and executive functions of the Great Company. Money is ostensibly distributed by banks through boards of directors. Employees make the wheels of finance and industry turn, even if those machinations are increasingly cumbersome, inefficient, overpaid, and predictably redundant.
During this pos-industrial environmnet in which we live, the Chinese model is in exuberant ascendancy. A State Party subsidizes and controls pseudo-enterprises. Although touting an official rhetoric of equality for all people, the channels of power are strung along a technocratic elite whose basis of power is politics and rule-keeping. The system is a potent communist-capitalist hybrid, a la the Hegelian dialectic synthesis. Its mega-capacity to accumulate resources propels the People's Republic toward dominance in the world economy.
The American wealth machine, rusty from age and greedy entropy, is a government hamstrung by Corporatists. The corporations control congressional pursestrings, funding and regulating a hyped-up stock market for self-absorbed investors. The lackey government generates pseudo-corporate structures, like Fannie and Freddie, so that smart, over-educated nitpicking technocrats have something to administrate. The system is a hybrid that is different the Chinese one, insofar as the myth of wealth creation through raw free enterprise is the rhetorical basis for advancement. It enables a financially-adept elite to perpetuate control by wealthy folks. That's a myth different from the eglitarian myth that facilitates Statist creeping.
Between the constrictive powers of these two economic superstructures--the Chinese Statist one and American Corpartist one, all possibilities for classic, creative free enterprise are diminishing.
If independent business is to survive on planet earth, we must get back to small-scale, local market-based, risk-taking businesses that originate from the grassroots up. This is where the developing nations have an advantage, because their microcapitalism is raw, undiluted by statist rules and capitalist hype. Real people solving real problems in their own communities is where its at.
.
Land, food, minerals, and value-adding labor are ultimately the only sources for true wealth. Beyond that its all systematic hype convoluted by human vanity and exploitive power-grubbing.
Glass Chimera
Monday, January 17, 2011
Mahalia Jackson helped change the course of history.
On today's Fresh Air, Clarence Jones describes to Dave Davies the moment in which Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. departed from his text while addressing the marchers at the Lincoln Memorial. That inspired decision by Dr. King turned out to be an improvisation that would implant a dream in the hearts of an entire nation.
Dr. King's Legacy
As a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I'd like to share this song, which I recorded in 1978. The message is based upon an experience about which Dr. King spoke. Another great historical leader, Moses, also testified about a Mountaintop revelation from God.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Great American Divide
Although I have lived in the cool Blue Ridge mountans for thirty-five years now, I was raised in a place that is hot, humid and flat--Louisiana. Perhaps I ended up living here on the eastern continental divide because of an intensely wonderful travel experience I had at the tender age of nine years. In 1960, my parents had taken me and my sister on a cross-country road trip from our Miss'sipi-River delta home all the way across the Rockies to Washington state. What a string of vivid memories that westward trip has proven to be.
At the time of that journey, my father was bound for an international convention of foresters in Seattle. We took four days to drive a light blue Ford station wagon across Texas, the prairies, the Rocky Mountains, California, and up the west coast, then four days back again. This impressionable boy from Baton Rouge emerged from the long road trip with a vivid memory file that included seeing the morning snow-capped pinkness of Mt. Rainier, and an elk-horn hut in Wyoming, as well as a ride with a cowboy on his horse through a herd of cows that had blocked our mountain road.
Funny how the mind wanders sometimes. Somewhere in Colorado or Wyoming near that cowboy memory stands a wide wooden road sign that reads: Continental Divide.
And this is what I thought about yesterday while reading Paul Krugman's "A Tale of Two Moralities," in the New York Times.
It prompted me to share some personal experience with you. Everybody has a story to tell, and I'm going to tell you part of mine, as a roundabout way to get to a point about our Great American Divide.
In the first half of the last century, my dad's folks had come out of the Mississippi woods, but had settled down in Baton Rouge in the thick of the petrochemical industry. Many of my young years were spent growing up in the shadow of a gargantuan Esso (now Exxon) refinery, which was said by locals to be the third largest oil refinery in the world at the time; it was three blocks from our house. I'll never forget that acrid smell in the air, although some said it was from the Kaiser aluminum plant further up the River. Probably both.
Maybe five or so miles away, near downtown Baton Rouge stood the state Capitol, tallest bayou-state building not located in New Orleans. Huey Long had built the 34-story monolith back in the 30s. If you ever go up to the top of it, you'll see, dominating the northward view, the huge, smoke-belching Exxon refinery, kingpin of Louisana industry.
My grandfather on mama's side had occupied an office in the Capitol; he was a math-brain, and served as assistant Secretary of State under four Louisana governors, including the infamous Huey Long. The other grandfather demonstrated a more visceral, mechanical expertise. Hard-working Scots-Irish Miss'sippi man that he was-- he had become a foreman down at the Esso refinery. My dad used to tell me that grampa had worked himself into a job where "wasn't a valve or wheel in the whole damn plant that didn't turn without Louis Rowland's order."
As far as I had been told, the unions had nothing to do with my grampa Rowland's rise to productive authority in that super-size oil refinery. And that pertains somewhat to this Great Divide thing that I'm a gettin' to. But hold your horses. Go watch a video somewhere if'n you don't have time to do some personal-type historical reading.
My daddy, you see, had tried to start a forestry-supplies business back in the 60s. But it didn't work out, and so he wound up his working life as a civil servant, in industrial development and recruitment for the State of Louisiana. (Hint about the Great Divide: Entrpreneur of State employee?) His office was in the complex of state guv'ment buildings that mushroomed 'neath the shadow of Huey's skyscraping Capitol.
At the time of my father's job there, Huey was, of course, long-since dead, having been shot at the Capitol building one September night in 1935. But Huey had been a horse of different color. Some folks down there say that if he hadn't been assasinated, he would have challenged Mr. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in '36. Of course, we'll never know. Huey's politics was raw and agrarian, and near as I can tell, even more "liberal" than President Roosevelt's New Deal, which would have placed him on the leftward fringe of Democratic politics then or now. One of Huey's slogans had been, "every man a king," which might seem to have landed him in the self-reliant camp about which we hear so much today from the so-called libertarian wing of the Republicans. But since Huey's other major plank was "sharing the wealth," that would throw our categorization of his politics into the income-redistribution, quasi-socialist wing of the Democrats. Like I said, he was a horse of different color; there are a few of them buckin' around in every generation.
He was, after all, you know, a Democrat. And that brings me closer to this oncoming perspective on the Great American Divide.
I was raised in a (at that time) Democratic state, in that state's politics-obsessed capital city. That heritage had cast the prevailing political machinery largely into the mold of Huey Long, the firebrand orator who had come out of the piney woods of north Louisiana. Part of Huey's share-the-wealth, every-man-a-king legacy is, these days, a state guarantee that students who prove to be diligent enough can get free tuition in state colleges and universities.
It was after I graduated from the state's flagship University, in 1973, that I left Louisiana never to return, except for visits. It's a great, proud state, but too hot and flat for me, so I ended up, after a brief Florida period, in the mountains of North Carolina. Back to the earth and all that. Ha!
Thirty-five years ago my quest for cool mountain livin'-- a la that trip to the Rockies when I was nine--found its resting point here in the Appalachians. And now, after all this time, my view from the eastern Continental Divide--only a few geographical miles from our house--reveals that I landed, unbeknownst to me at the time, in the middle of a stubborn, self-sufficiency-touting, fundamentalist mountaineer culture, decidedly libertarian and mostly Republican (except for the thriving academic, typically humanistic community at nearby Appalachian State University.) So it seems that my life's journey has taken me from one side of the Divide to the Other.
I'm just now figuring out what happened. I started out fifty-nine years ago on the left side of the Great Divide, and am now winding down on the right side.
From this perspective, I can see, as Mr. Krugman has so adroitly identified, that the two poles (polls?) of American philosophy gravitate down to this definitive question:
Am I a contributing part of a great Nation-State that is taking care of every citizen, with every citizen taking care of it?
Or,
Am a self-reliant individualist who prefers to swat the government nuisance out of my way?
Which way do you lean on the Great Divide?
Glass Chimera
At the time of that journey, my father was bound for an international convention of foresters in Seattle. We took four days to drive a light blue Ford station wagon across Texas, the prairies, the Rocky Mountains, California, and up the west coast, then four days back again. This impressionable boy from Baton Rouge emerged from the long road trip with a vivid memory file that included seeing the morning snow-capped pinkness of Mt. Rainier, and an elk-horn hut in Wyoming, as well as a ride with a cowboy on his horse through a herd of cows that had blocked our mountain road.
Funny how the mind wanders sometimes. Somewhere in Colorado or Wyoming near that cowboy memory stands a wide wooden road sign that reads: Continental Divide.
And this is what I thought about yesterday while reading Paul Krugman's "A Tale of Two Moralities," in the New York Times.
It prompted me to share some personal experience with you. Everybody has a story to tell, and I'm going to tell you part of mine, as a roundabout way to get to a point about our Great American Divide.
In the first half of the last century, my dad's folks had come out of the Mississippi woods, but had settled down in Baton Rouge in the thick of the petrochemical industry. Many of my young years were spent growing up in the shadow of a gargantuan Esso (now Exxon) refinery, which was said by locals to be the third largest oil refinery in the world at the time; it was three blocks from our house. I'll never forget that acrid smell in the air, although some said it was from the Kaiser aluminum plant further up the River. Probably both.
Maybe five or so miles away, near downtown Baton Rouge stood the state Capitol, tallest bayou-state building not located in New Orleans. Huey Long had built the 34-story monolith back in the 30s. If you ever go up to the top of it, you'll see, dominating the northward view, the huge, smoke-belching Exxon refinery, kingpin of Louisana industry.
My grandfather on mama's side had occupied an office in the Capitol; he was a math-brain, and served as assistant Secretary of State under four Louisana governors, including the infamous Huey Long. The other grandfather demonstrated a more visceral, mechanical expertise. Hard-working Scots-Irish Miss'sippi man that he was-- he had become a foreman down at the Esso refinery. My dad used to tell me that grampa had worked himself into a job where "wasn't a valve or wheel in the whole damn plant that didn't turn without Louis Rowland's order."
As far as I had been told, the unions had nothing to do with my grampa Rowland's rise to productive authority in that super-size oil refinery. And that pertains somewhat to this Great Divide thing that I'm a gettin' to. But hold your horses. Go watch a video somewhere if'n you don't have time to do some personal-type historical reading.
My daddy, you see, had tried to start a forestry-supplies business back in the 60s. But it didn't work out, and so he wound up his working life as a civil servant, in industrial development and recruitment for the State of Louisiana. (Hint about the Great Divide: Entrpreneur of State employee?) His office was in the complex of state guv'ment buildings that mushroomed 'neath the shadow of Huey's skyscraping Capitol.
At the time of my father's job there, Huey was, of course, long-since dead, having been shot at the Capitol building one September night in 1935. But Huey had been a horse of different color. Some folks down there say that if he hadn't been assasinated, he would have challenged Mr. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in '36. Of course, we'll never know. Huey's politics was raw and agrarian, and near as I can tell, even more "liberal" than President Roosevelt's New Deal, which would have placed him on the leftward fringe of Democratic politics then or now. One of Huey's slogans had been, "every man a king," which might seem to have landed him in the self-reliant camp about which we hear so much today from the so-called libertarian wing of the Republicans. But since Huey's other major plank was "sharing the wealth," that would throw our categorization of his politics into the income-redistribution, quasi-socialist wing of the Democrats. Like I said, he was a horse of different color; there are a few of them buckin' around in every generation.
He was, after all, you know, a Democrat. And that brings me closer to this oncoming perspective on the Great American Divide.
I was raised in a (at that time) Democratic state, in that state's politics-obsessed capital city. That heritage had cast the prevailing political machinery largely into the mold of Huey Long, the firebrand orator who had come out of the piney woods of north Louisiana. Part of Huey's share-the-wealth, every-man-a-king legacy is, these days, a state guarantee that students who prove to be diligent enough can get free tuition in state colleges and universities.
It was after I graduated from the state's flagship University, in 1973, that I left Louisiana never to return, except for visits. It's a great, proud state, but too hot and flat for me, so I ended up, after a brief Florida period, in the mountains of North Carolina. Back to the earth and all that. Ha!
Thirty-five years ago my quest for cool mountain livin'-- a la that trip to the Rockies when I was nine--found its resting point here in the Appalachians. And now, after all this time, my view from the eastern Continental Divide--only a few geographical miles from our house--reveals that I landed, unbeknownst to me at the time, in the middle of a stubborn, self-sufficiency-touting, fundamentalist mountaineer culture, decidedly libertarian and mostly Republican (except for the thriving academic, typically humanistic community at nearby Appalachian State University.) So it seems that my life's journey has taken me from one side of the Divide to the Other.
I'm just now figuring out what happened. I started out fifty-nine years ago on the left side of the Great Divide, and am now winding down on the right side.
From this perspective, I can see, as Mr. Krugman has so adroitly identified, that the two poles (polls?) of American philosophy gravitate down to this definitive question:
Am I a contributing part of a great Nation-State that is taking care of every citizen, with every citizen taking care of it?
Or,
Am a self-reliant individualist who prefers to swat the government nuisance out of my way?
Which way do you lean on the Great Divide?
Glass Chimera
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