I love it when Joe R. Lansdale gets a little weird, or a little kinky. In The Ape Man’s Brother we get both. And we get some excellent writing in a first person narrative almost devoid of dialog.
First, it’s a novella, only 103 pages in a pretty large font and a few full page line drawing images to boot! This ain’t no epic yarn. Second, the link to the Amazon offering (by which I might make a few pennies if you buy) offers the deluxe hardcover for something like $28.00 despite the fact the inside cover says it’s $20.00. That’s probably Joe Biden’s fault. And I found at least three glaring typos inside. Harrumph to their “special edition.” (BTW, I just re-red this paragraph and found a typo.)
I give nothing away when I say the narrator purports to be the real life inspiration for Cheetah of Tarzan-and-Cheetah. It’s a wonderful trope to talk about nature/civilization and savagery/acculturation. That Lansdale is a clever fellow.
The narrator, whose name is given in the book but is unpronounceable, is a remarkable twist on the premise of the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady story on one hand and a connoisseur of Hedonism on the other.
The last thing I’ll give away is the narrator possesses the legendary senses that living in nature gives to all wild creatures. It plays into the plot nicely. Especially the sense of smell. But enjoy this list of sensory language until you get your own copy: “(He)…grabbed Red’s arm. There was a cracking sound, like the weight of heavy ice breaking a rotten limb,…” or this weird visual image of blood, “…like a geyser full of red plum juice had erupted.” or, back to the ears, “You could hear flesh ripping like someone tearing old bed sheets.” or, again, “I could hear helium leaking from the zeppelin like a slow fart from a grandma.”
Do yourself a favor—don’t read the jacket cover until after you read the book. You’ll like it better. Oh, and do yourself one more—Re-read chapter One immediately after you finish reading it. You’ll thank me.
I recently joined a FaceBook group called “Haiku for a global pandemic.” Once or twice a day I drop a haiku in that group. I’m going to keep a little collection of them here as well. I’m sure mostly they will be my own, but I’ll put up ones I like with author’s permission. This will be a growing collection through this period of isolation.
4/13/20
Cold Michigan wind
the morning after Easter,
trails strands of somber.
–Steve D. Marsh
4/10/20
My highest highlight:
The most yellow daffodils
Telling Death to wait.
Sometime between the fall of 1958 and the fall of 1962 I learned the lore of hard cider, at least as it applied to Marsh men going back three generations in my family.
We often drank apple cider in my family when it was in season. I don’t know if it was cheaper than milk or not. I’m pretty sure it was not cheaper than Kool-Aid but despite the tight food budget we stayed on for years, cider was still allowed on the grocery list when it was in season. I speculate that it was a rare indulgence of my father’s that the rest of us got to share in.
In the fall of 1958 our house was small. It was the first house my parents owned. It was just a couple of miles outside of town on a divided highway. Since then, the house and in fact, the whole highway are gone. I can point out the approximate location on a drive by, but I’m never exactly certain. Odd to think of having spent my formative life there and not know today exactly where it was. But I remember some things with clarity.
We rarely used the front entrance to our house. There was no walkway from the dirt and gravel drive to the front porch. Instead, everyone used the back door. The driveway turned into parking places under two spreading black walnut trees where there was a short walkway my mother installed with used red brick. That led to the back door which was on a little enclosed porch. It was very small with space enough to get out of the weather and close one door behind you before you opened the kitchen door to come inside.
The milk company still delivered milk in those days. We had an aluminum-clad box in there for the milkman’s deliveries. It was insulated to keep the milk from freezing on cold winter mornings. But for about 6 weeks in the fall, that was where Dad kept the sweet apple cider too. He rationed it out slowly. His argument was that too much apple cider would give you the runs. That was probably true, but we never got to learn that life lesson on our own. His direct regulation was why.
The thing about apple cider back then was that there were never any preservatives in it. It contained fresh apple juice and that was all. It was pretty usual for cider to begin to “turn” before Dad’s parsimonious distribution ever came close to emptying the jug. Turning involved naturally existing yeasts beginning to ferment the liquid. Most of the time, that meant a little bit of alcohol in the mix, but sometimes it would be bacteria that fed off the alcohol and generated vinegar. The point was to keep the cider long enough for it to ferment a little but not so long that the “mother of vinegar” developed in the bottom of the jug and converted the hard cider to vinegar.
Dad was the one who most liked hard cider. He told me stories how his grandfather, Gary, my great-grandfather, made applejack from the apples he grew in his own small orchard. I can’t tell you how much truth there was to the story, but the way Dad told it, there were always enough details to make it believable.
Generally, to make apple cider into applejack one added brown sugar and raisins to raise the amount of fermentable sugars in the juice and then to keep oxygen and other bacterial contaminants out of the concoction, you stretched a balloon over the neck of the jug. In the morning, Dad would let the night’s build up of CO2 out of the balloon and when he came home from work in the afternoon, he would remove the balloon, take a couple of healthy swigs from the neck of the jug, declare it “not-quite-ready” and return the balloon to the neck and set it carefully on top of the milk box. The fermentation process needed the heat from the sun coming through the little window on the south side of the entryway and the storm door on the west. This was a crudely effective way to keep a ferment alive for many days.
The historical story also included a part where Dad’s grandfather used to sneak my father sips of the applejack. It was a secret he and grandpa shared. Makes a lot of sense to me now, more than 50 years after he told me the story. So I don’t know if my father liked applejack or if he liked the connection to his grandfather from many years before, but there was always a jug growing a balloon in our entryway in the fall.
There were two issues here. I knew about the “purloined sips,” and I knew the recipe. I want you to know I was never caught in this first part of the surreptitious applejack production. A kid could sneak a sip or two of applejack if his timing was right. My timing was thus: Dad got up to go to work. He released the carbon dioxide from the balloon and left. I, however, did not have to go to school until a while after that. The trick was to be the first one or the last one out to the bus stop. I would come through the breezeway, remove the balloon, tip the jug up on one shoulder, take several pulls off the sweet-bitey liquid. Then replace the liquid I drank with fresh cider from the milk box and Dad was none the wiser. The balloon filled all day while Dad was at work, when he came home he took his turn and recycled.
But eventually, he would complain that the recipe didn’t seem to be working right. He made a big production about explaining how the mixture needed more brown sugar and more raisins. He recharged the jug and I watched. That was the most powerful raw hard cider ever. I wonder how many morning classes I slept through in late autumn.
Here is the way it ended. Once, late in the season, it had gotten very cold overnight. The milk and the cider in the milk box were just fine. They were insulated from the cold, but the applejack maker was sitting on top. It froze, all but a couple of big glugs of rather clear-ish liquid in the neck of the jug. What I didn’t understand back then was that certain liquids have different freezing points. What we had in the jug was about 125 ounces of frozen apple juice, raisins and brown sugar and about three ounces of pure-ish ethanol. It is called freeze distilling and it was a technique employed by ethanol lovers for generations.
But what was a young boy to do without that information? Down the hatch! Replace the balloon and go to school. No, I didn’t get sent home from school. I just cruised through. But when I came home, the apple jack generator was gone. Dad said it had produced all it was going to, that when he sampled it when he got home it had hardly any kick to it at all and that’s when he threw it out. I didn’t tell him anything, but obviously I remembered the family recipe.
When we moved into town, we no longer had an entryway nor an aluminum-clad insulated milk box. The world was getting more modern and we didn’t have a milkman at all. I don’t remember much cider in that house, sweet, hard or otherwise.
I still make cider when I can. I have a small press and three apple trees. I also have a wife who puts up with the sticky mess it always becomes. And two grandsons who have declared Pop Pop’s Cider the best in the world, “even better than the Dexter Mill,” according to Teddy.
I made hard cider a couple of years ago, but it never tastes exactly right. I probably need to add some raisins and brown sugar. And maybe I need some kids around here to help me more often. I promise if that happens I won’t let them drink homemade apple moonshine. But if you hear me complaining about the quality of my apple cider, check Teddy. Smell his breath.
God didn’t expect us to be this smart. He had gone down the intelligence path for hundreds of thousands of years already and the best he had done was Neanderthal—Modern Man 1.0 They had feelings and language and aesthetics and tools and fire. They even had tools to make tools. And they had art. But when God spent time on homo sapiens, spinning the genes that supported these big forebrains, he just had no way to understand how far he had gone. He thought he was making Free Will. Turns out that Reason is so much more.
When it was our turn, homo sapiens, being simian and excellent mimics, sought immediately to seek behavior that seemed to be evidence of reason or intent in others. With our own children we begin immediately to seek the connection of intellect. We primordially need to spark curiosity, intrigue, interest into our offspring. For what seems to be turning out to be 300,000 years or so, homo sapiens have made stupid faces at their children to make them smile and laugh. We turned to other species and tamed/domesticated/taught them behavior to demonstrate choices. And our lore began to collect stories of secret knowledge and sudden illumination of the mind. Tales of Atlantis, a scientifically advanced civilization that sank into the sea. Stories of prophets and oracles who could see outside of this realm. By the time we got to the ancient Greeks, language had many words for different kinds of intelligence. Literature and history are rife with stories proclaiming the accolades of human brilliance in every endeavor.
Machinery earned human’s first efforts at artificial intelligence. And often, those early machines made possible what, until then, had been disablingly dull or physically impossible for humans. The first notable invention was the Jacquard Loom which used a series of wooden punch cards to replicate weaving patterns. The system allowed designers to program very complex patterns and to never make a mistake. They were tools to extend a person’s will. The Jacquard loom, is the earliest example of the most rudimentary of a machine built for the express purpose of decoding and operationalizing a set of instructions written in a language a machine could comprehend. The wooden punch cards had holes drilled in specific patterns to permit only certain heddle harnesses in the loom to rise upon command. It physically blocked certain harnesses from rising, thus creating a pattern in the weave. The pattern was subject to certain structural considerations, but that was what the master weaver was for. The master, understanding the structure of the weave, created punch cards for any individual treadle combination one could imagine. Once the coding was done, any number of copies of a pattern could be made using either the labor of children or, eventually, levers, cogs and gears.
To make the argument that the Jacquard Loom was the first computer, it would need to meet some obvious standards. Is there hardware? Yes, the loom itself and the devices that fed the data punch cards into it are task-specific instructions. It is the “device.” It would also need software. In this case there were technically three different pieces of software: the operating system was the concept that punchcards could determine which heddle harness rose and which did not. It was a binary decision; either yes, it could rise or no, it could not. The programming software included the cards and the knowledge of which punched hole allowed which heddle harness to rise. The application software was embodied in the order of the punchcards and the ability to repeat the order exactly. In this case there was an IRL visual display in the pattern as it emerged. And there was ample storage on the cloth beam. All the pieces were there.
Sometime in the 1830s, one pretty intelligent homo sapiens named Charles Babbage conceived of “the Analytical Engine.” It was cogs and gears powered by steam, inspired by the Jacquard Loom, and it could calculate up to 31 digits. It was a wonder of thought and engineering but it was not yet intelligent. It also wasn’t properly fashioned for decades after the detailed drawings had been made.
I, like many of you, have been consuming the Olympics. I’ve been delighting in Mr. T’s tweets. I’ve grown a strong new respect for figure skating. And then…and then…and then someone’s nipple was exposed! Her discipline and focus prohibited her from stopping the routine to put the costume together again. And yet, if you have never heard of French ice dancer Gabriella Papadakis before, odds are pretty good you peeked at her boobie this week.
I think it kind of exposed that old Victorian (or worse, Puritan) attitude of many Americans. We want to flirt with the idea of nudity but we so want to judge the nude. I decided to take the opportunity to resurrect an old poem’s audio to try to re-teach this lesson. Everyone’s body is just variations on a theme.
Looks Blue
(6:28)
Yeah, I know. This is an older piece. Kind of makes me think of hippies and beatniks. Not quite enough to consider hep cats or zoot suiters.
The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
I have always been a defender of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. I have also been a defender of all the other Amendments as well, especially those that confer rights to the people…but my manner of defense is evolving as is my thinking. (If you keep thinking after you get old, that can still happen, hint.) I am having a hard time reconciling my defense of gun rights and the continual abuse of that right by irresponsible (or evil) individuals in our country. After the latest mass shooting in Florida by Nikolas Cruz, I have had an epiphany. I hope you can join me.
There are other things we have learned, but these are the crux of what I think we should focus on.
There are two wildly extreme positions being publicly promoted in this country. The first, from the left is “GUNS BAD> BAN GUNS.” It leads to weird hype and false claims. For example, this. The other, on the right, is “THE PRICE WE PAY FOR FREEDOM.” Both are bullshit, of course. Americans do not sacrifice the health, lives and welfare of our children on the alter of gun rights.
I have long been one who advocates for the proper use, training and responsibility around guns and ammunition. I own guns. I shoot semi-regularly. I believe in my ability to defend myself and my family with these weapons. As I age and I lose credibility as a physical force, I take solace in the perception that a gun helps me to even the field. I am responsible. I know the law, what I am allowed to do, under what circumstances and what I am not allowed to do. I also know how to store and secure weapons and ammunition so that any minors in my house can not access them for any reason.
But along comes a rash of school shootings, shaking all of these foundational beliefs. On top of that, we hear “thoughts and prayers,” outrage and a dozen examples of how banning weapons will lead America toward Nirvana. Those are also bullshit.
Can nothing be done? Well, nothing will be done if we continue to have this stupid debate. To be clear, the debate over gun rights and the future of guns in America is not stupid. The debate we are currently (not) having and the people screaming the loudest right now are stupid.
I’m going to propose a radical change in the way we perceive guns in America and try to offer an incremental improvement in the real-world conditions we face. Much has been made of the dozen or more school shootings we have already experienced this early in 2018. And I do not dispute these numbers if “school shooting” means “the discharge of a firearm at or near a school regardless of whether anyone was hurt and regardless of whether the discharge was accidental or not.” Those many events happened. Nothing gets the left more riled up and simultaneously makes the right sound more ridiculous than dead kids. But does the rash of gun events in schools mean Americans are incapable of handling guns responsibly?
Who is doing the shooting in schools? Everytown has kept some interesting statistics over a period of time. One of the most revealing bits of data is that in shootings at k-12 schools, where our most vulnerable victims are located, the perpetrator is (statistically) under 21 years of age (77%), or under 18 (56%). This is the data that provided the Eureka! moment for me.
So, do (mostly) men over 21 kill people (mostly men) over the age of 21. Yes, they do. Should we stop that if we can? Yes, we should. But let’s look at a significant and elegant partial solution first. I believe the lasting cultural changes will eventually ameliorate some of the gun assaults later in life. But for now:
Let’s make gun and ammo purchases and ownership illegal for anyone under a certain age. I can live with either 18 or 21, although 18 is easier to rationalize in my mind because we permit kids of 18 to enlist and thus gain access to guns and ammo.
A natural Constitutional question–Are constitutionally protected rights other than gun rights in America restricted by age? They certainly are.
First Amendment. Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, right? Wrong. All kinds of speech limitations exist for underage kids. Freedom of the Press? Check the rules about high school newspapers. Right to assembly? Also limited (often to adults as well). It seems only religion is free to be practiced by children, even though it is unlikely you will find many 13-year-olds changing churches.
Second Amendment? It says the “right of the people.” Yes, I know about the “militia” standard as well. It adds to my argument later. Militia was the prime driver of (or excuse for)the 2nd amendment. How old do you need to be to join the militia? Even in nascent America, you didn’t call on every person to provide defense. One had to have reached a certain age, degree of responsibility. Not many six-year-olds provided for the security of a free state. There is no guarantee of a minor’s right to bear arms in the second Amendment and a good case can be made that only military aged folks ever had that right. In our current culture, where adolescence is being expanded even into our 20s, the opportunity for this kind of legislation seems appropriate.
Third Amendment protects adults/home owners. etc.
The point is that the Constitution and its Amendments are meant to enumerate and guarantee certain rights for ADULT citizens of the United States. Do kids have rights? Of course, just not as many nor are they as strong.
Proposal: It shall be illegal for anyone under the age of (18/21) to own, possess or purchase firearms and/or ammunition. In order to protect those victims of school shootings, I would be willing to see the age limit be 21. By the time you are 21, it is unlikely you will return to a school to take out the kids. I suspect at least some/many/most of the over 21 year old shooters in k-12 schools are disgruntled former employees intent on harming other adults or other adults with personal issues against another adult (boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses, etc.)
Further: it shall be considered legal for those under the age of 18/21 to be in possession of and to use firearms if accompanied by another person over the age of majority who will take responsibility, legal and financial, for any damage inflicted by the underage shooter. You can go hunting with your dad or your uncle or even your big brother, as long as they are prepared to accept legal responsibility for your actions.
We could also make some additional limitations on the storage of guns and ammo in all households where children may come in contact with same. So, buy all the guns you want, but lock them up and keep the kids away from them. No more Glock under the pillow or shotgun behind the refrigerator. At least, not if there are kids in the house.
Should we expect blowback by the right over these kinds of restrictions? Sure. But the list of rights and privileges restricted by age in this country is pretty long. This is not a significant deviation.
Drinking, smoking tobacco, pot, etc.
Driving
Voting
Signing contracts
Enlisting in the military
Traveling across state lines
Working
Running for Office
And yet, we never hear anyone say, “You can have my right to vote when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” Imagine if the right placed the same kind of restrictions on gun ownership it places on the ability to vote. The world would be different, for sure. This is not a “pure” ethic on either side of the argument.
What might we expect out of such legislation? Well, of course, uproar from the right, but in truth, the impact on the lives of shooters is likely to be little changed.
Beyond that, in the short term, we will see resistance from the right and a statistically insignificant impact on the gun market. I’m guessing here, but I don’t see the market even able to register the lost proceeds. For one thing, now Dad will make the purchase instead and that’s not bad. For another, the number of sales to minors is likely pretty small already. So the argument is only symbolic and likely of the “slippery slope” variety.
What might be the result?
In the long term, we might just re-institute a healthy respect for responsibility around the ownership and use of firearms. That could edge us away from the direction in which we seem to be headed. Would the requirement to secure your weapons around minors change anything? I don’t know if the impact would be large or small immediately, but if it became an ethic among more gun owners, we would not be hurt by that.
The impact on the statistics surrounding school shootings is where I have my focus. Is this kind of action likely to stop school shootings. No. I fear that there may be nothing we can do to eliminate this senseless action. But I have no doubt that it would make things better. There would be fewer incidents committed by minors if we could effectively separate minors from unsupervised access to firearms.
It might give us a new tool to go after those White Supremacists for their “training” too. If you are concerned it will merely drive it underground, I would argue that is an improvement in our condition as well.
Also note, many states already have enacted this kind of legislation regarding minors ownership of handguns. It is not a completely new idea. Only applying the law to long guns would be new. The impact on gun culture is therefore minimized and it addresses the left’s concern about who needs access to a semi-automatic rifle.
Might it save some lives? Yes. Might it not save all the lives? That is certainly true, too. But, for this new convert, it seems to be a reasonable step designed to put gun laws more in line with the new condition of our culture. If the bad guys are assaulting the walls of my settlement, I want every man, woman and child capable of firing a weapon to answer the emergency call. When it comes to my kids’ and grandkids’ school rooms, I don’t want individuals without fully formed brains and personalities in there with firearms. Let’s look at this as a small, first part of the puzzle.
Except for federal politicians dependent upon the NRA lobby for re-election funds, I can’t think of too many Americans I know who wouldn’t want to do something to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” I’m for that. And I believe all Americans are. Let’s start with these values as core values and build from there.
A couple of Historical notes:
It is transition that is hardest for all of us. I enlisted at 18 and I could drink on base all the while I was in the Marine Corps. When I left active duty, I was still only 20, so when I came home I was no longer of legal drinking age. In the meantime, the Michigan legislature had decided that 18 was the new drinking age. So I was a legal drinker at 21 on September 29, 1971 and my 18 year old sister became a legal drinker on January 1, 1972. Then in 1978, voters overturned it and those who were legally drinking at 18, 19 and 20 were, at the stroke of midnight one night, suddenly illegal. Transition takes time. It is bumpy and people whine, but eventually these kinds of changes become footnotes. Let’s not panic too hard about what might freak someone out in the short run. Is this what we are willing to do to help shape the arc of our culture moving forward? Quite a few will not be willing to make the transition. We will likely hear from them.
I was doing some mindless thing and so I asked Alexa to play Doo Wop. She hit me with the Shirelles. Now, that was great but I had to confront a small streak inside me that had not ever considered them “Doo Wop” and it didn’t take long to discover it was solely because of gender. (This is not a chat about feminism.) I loved every minute of a different song.
Then Alexa played The Drifters and I almost settled back into the ways of my reptile brain. Instead they threw me a huge curve ball with “When My Little Girl is Smiling” I must confess that when this song came out, I was 12 years old and it served as kind of a foundation of expectation. I took a little too long to learn it was an impossible standard when I tried to relate to women. And yet, today, it is the best song to listen to and think about the “girl” as your three year old grand-daughter (before any of you shits get after me for that, shut up). So, I had a magic moment thinking about how much she has me wrapped around her little finger. I must confess it is true. I’ll do an awful lot to see when my little girl is smiling.
Well, this is supposed to be about technology and how easy it is for anyone, but especially people of a certain age, to whine/snark/rant about it. But really, if you are reading this you are living a life of lies. Look what has happened in my life time.
In 1962, Doo Wop was what was happening. To get a copy of the song in the link above, I would have had to get a ride to town (we lived in the country), walk to the Record Store on Main Street, hope it was in stock and fork over a dollar for the 45 rpm record. Now, that’s a 1962 dollar, an actual silver certificate. A 12 year old had to work hard to get a whole dollar. Getting it to you would have been just as hard.
But today, you pushed a couple buttons hours, or days or years after I pushed buttons to write this and instantly my thoughts of February 11, 2018 get sent to you at the speed of light and I have the visual audio portions of that nostalgia to send along to you as well.
How you gonna snark that?
And while I have been writing this, I have had youtube playing Doo Wop in the background. I’m having a tough time concentrating on the language on the screen. It seems I only have eyes for you, dear.
Our semi-permanent three-generation family is a blessing. I do not comprehend why America decided the multi-generation family under one roof was a bad idea. I get how it happened; but I neither understand why we stopped, nor endorse its decline.
Case in point. As a writer, words are important to me. Both my wife and I have long held for our own children (and now for our grandchildren) that there are no “bad” words. It is essential to understand that the meaning is not in the word, but rather in the perception of the word, thus, some language should not be used in school, or at the dinner table or in front of certain sensitive individuals. But, as for me, you had better be using the word correctly. Beyond that it’s all about nuance.
Example. Hanky has been having a bully problem at school. Hanky is probably going to have a bully problem for quite a while. He is smallish in stature, smart beyond his years, bookish and artistic. Bullies are going to find him. He’s under some kind of protective order at school right now from the unwanted attention of “Colin X” (not his real name, because you have to protect the abusers these days).
Hank said he wanted to call Colin a name but he thought he’d get in trouble. And the truth of the matter is that he WOULD get in trouble, because, you know, saying “shithead” in the second grade is a far greater crime than hitting, slapping, teasing, spitting, forcing someone to eat grass, etc. I said he should call Colin a “jacknapes.” Hanky and younger brother, Teddy both laughed. Of course they thought it was another word for jackass. I had to haul out the big dictionary, Volume I, to help him understand that it was a perfectly legitimate thing to call an eight year old bully. It would satisfy the need without a big yield of fallout.
I showed him the various definitions of the word, stroked the nuances affectionately and presented the word to Hank to use as his own whenever he needed it. Then…the question.
“Are all the words in there?”
“Yup, every one.”
“Even the bad ones?”
“Yup, even the bad ones.”
He dropped his voice to a more conspiratorial level and whispered, “Even ‘ass?'”
I flipped the pages. I let my finger slide down the column over the boldface words until we arrived at “ass.”
Hank looked at the word, his eyes bugged out, his neck and shoulders did a kind of strange, disjointed contortion and he giggled. Loud and clear and distinct eight year-old boy giggles rang out upon learning that a book has all the dirty words in it.
He looked at me as though the world of language had suddenly revealed itself. I was a proud Pop Pop. I was the guru as his language development took a sudden leap forward.
“What about ‘butt?'”
“Yup, it’s in there.”
Teddy just turned six. He, too, is advanced for his age. It is hard to remember he is in kindergarten because of his skills with language and the fact that he is a pound or two heavier than his eight year-old brother and just as tall. Teddy is unlikely to have bully problems in his life.
Teddy asked, with the same enthusiasm and wonder in his voice, “What about “pee-hole?'”
I do not know if the Oxford English Shorter Version has an entry for “pee-hole” or not, but I fearlessly confirmed that “pee-hole” was in Volume II. Wonder, awe, amazement prevailed.
Later that night, as we were watching some sixty year old Looney Tunes, I said something Wiley E. Coyote was doing was “ridiculous.”
Hank giggled again and said, “He is reDICK! Haha, reDICK!” Teddy took up the chant.
And then his three year old sister just started laughing and shouting, “He’s a DICK! He’s a DICK!” And Teddy and Hank both positively tittered. I didn’t say “tittered” to them. We had already had the best language day possible.
It came to me in a flash this morning. I know exactly what formative experience I’m tapping every time I feel enraged by this Clown Administration, this collection of nodding mimes in the Senate and the House, or the cadre of lunatic robber barons called Governors across our land. And weirdly, it’s not exactly what is being said, although what is being said is disgusting and offensive in any age. It is more how it is being said. And how pitifully smug they think they are appearing while they deal below the table right in front of us. We are supposed to just smile and be grateful for whatever scrap is tossed our way and not only, NOT report them for outright crimes, but to ADMIRE them for their cleverness in dealing with a corrupt system. “I’m a great businessman.”
When I was fifteen, I worked as a busboy and dishwasher at the local country club. It only had a 9-hole course, but it was well-maintained. Our small town had about 10,000 people back then, so I’m guessing membership in the club was not strictly limited to the 1%ers, but generally, it is unlikely there were many outside of the top 5% of the social strata who could claim inclusion. And from my experience in the lower third of that system, it was clear that members wanted a bright and shining line between Members and help. Even inside the “help” categories, there was stratification. Top guy was the Club Manager, and oddly, the Number Two was the greens-keeper. He and his staff of one were on the payroll. All the golf-related jobs were off payroll. The Members contracted with the Pro for lessons and help and he supplemented that with a commission on whatever was sold in the pro shop. Caddies worked on tips and below them were the guys who worked in the fitness and shower areas. They worked on tips too. Odd thing. A caddie might get a $1 tip on nine holes of bad golf, or he might score $50 when your dad’s boss had a good round. Caddies were almost always the sons of Members and/or players on the high school golf team. Guys in the locker room were related to the cooks in the kitchen.
Those of us on the other side had a hierarchy too. Kitchen Manager (not chef!) was the boss. He was salaried. He worked in the kitchen. The bartender worked below him for minimum wage and tips. Waitresses, almost always came from among the popular girls in school but not often the daughters of Members. They were inevitably “cute and perky.” Those who cooked were, oddly for our nearly completely white community, usually Mexican, many of whom shared surnames with those in the locker room. Some of these men were so recently from Mexico as to be without much working use of English. I’m sure they were simply paid in cash, and not very much. Below all of the above was me. The busboy/dishwasher was the bottom of the heap. I could have done the job all summer, nonetheless, if I wanted to.
My pay was the lowest, minimum wage and no tips. I had to punch in and out. On Thursday (Friday was too busy), the Club Manager would hand me a check. As a “convenience” to me (and the cooks, I suppose) he would cash my check on the spot. I didn’t think much of it at the time. It was kind of convenient to get cash on my way out the door. (In fact, my next job in town paid in cash too.) Not until years later did I come to understand that if the check showed the deductions to me and I cashed the check with him for the remaining cash, all he had to do was to destroy the check, void it out of the check register and it would be like paying me in cash below the minimum wage. I don’t know if he did that or not. But back then, not a lot of 15-year-olds made enough money in a year to have to file taxes. I didn’t know of any.
Fridays were the busy nights in the restaurant and bar. And it only took a couple of Friday nights to figure out the patterns that had probably been repeated since the place opened. Husbands bring the family in. It is not exactly subdued in tone. I have been in the kitchen for about an hour already making sure every glass, plate and piece of tableware is clean, dry and ready for delivery. When the first Members arrive, I am ready. I keep watch to see when to clear the first round of dishes. I have an appropriate looking outfit, complete with a white long-sleeved shirt and a bleached white folded towel tucked into the front of my belt. From that first clearing it was a steady rise in intensity in the busboy/dishwasher business. Clear, haul, spray, load, unload, stack…clear, haul, spray…. without a break until the dining room began to clear. The ones who lingered were always the ones who kept you from punching out for the night. And they were the ones who usually lingered over drinks. If they started on drinks before dinner too, well, there was no telling how long they’d hang around. And, they were Members so no one was about to tell them to go home.
Through the course of the night, my white shirt and bleached, folded towel always accumulated the detritus of the table as well as the splattering of the dishwasher. It’s why most respectable places won’t let dishwashers clear the tables. Some nights I would swap out the folded towel half way through my shift just to try to uphold some air of appearances. I didn’t on this particular night.
The guy at the table had a name. I don’t need to name him now. He’s dead and I’ve gotten over most of it. But this guy happened to be an officer in the local savings and loan. And he was a drunk. He had come in and sat at the bar for a few with a couple of his work buddies while I did my kitchen prep late in the afternoon, left for a little while and came back with his wife. They sat at a table and had a couple before the meal, ate pro forma with a bottle of wine and then lingered over Manhattans until the room was empty. All the dishes were done in the kitchen. The cooks had shut down and left. The only staff left were the bartender, the waitress and me. So, I approached the table and asked if I might clear it for them. I suppose it was a clumsy way to try to prod them into leaving, but at 15 I had no better tactic.
When I asked, Mr. S&L froze in place. Visibly froze and held still for about 2 or 3 seconds just staring at the table. I saw a look in Mrs. S&L’s eyes as she waited for what she knew was coming. I didn’t know.
Mr. S&L turned toward me and it was the first time I had ever seen a grown man with fury in his face. I had seen plenty of men and boys and women and girls angry. Some angrier that others, but this was fury. And a look I cannot logically explain. I was standing by his right shoulder, he was still seated but somehow he was able to look down his nose at me with contempt and said: “If you interrupt me again, I will see that you are fired. I am a Member of this club and I sit on its Board of Directors. You will treat me with respect.”
I was dumbstruck. I finally sort of stammered something like, “Of course, Mr. S&L, I was only trying…”
“Enough! Go back to the kitchen and wait until we are finished here.”
I did. I didn’t say anything. I was embarrassed. These years later, I speculate that his wife may have been more embarrassed than he. Maybe not. Maybe she was used to speaking to the help that way. I wasn’t used to it. I wish I could tell you that I quit that job that night. Or that I thought about it overnight and I came in to quit the next day. What actually happened was I showed up for my shift on Saturday and the Club Manager informed me that I had been fired. Fired from my first job. That didn’t speak highly for my future. Clearly I was destined to live out my life on those lower rungs of the social and financial ladder. There was to be no “bootstrap” operation from busboy/dishwasher to Member in America.
This is precisely what I am feeling today on the national political scale. I feel like we have somehow awarded all the power and glory, all the money and voice to a bunch Mr. S&Ls with long noses and fury who can and will lash out at others under any provocation, real or imagined. Who will say anything they wish, whether it is true, or based on a story they heard, or a made-up narrative erupting like a boil from their fetid imaginations, or someone else’s fetid imagination in alt-right publishing.
Mr. S&L, I see your Mrs. with her eyes carefully shielded so as not to disclose any tic of emotion or even a shade of compassion. I see brief flashes of real fear in the faces of those around you. And I think I know what that reveals about your character.
I see your knowing looks and your secret handshakes with your cohorts. I see how you use coded language between each other so that you can claim that those of us drawing the sheet off the corpse of democracy can be dismissed as having misunderstood or misquoted or taken your words out of context. I hear you telling the people in the kitchen that the only people they can trust to tell them the truth are the people writing and cashing checks.
I see the look of desperate ambition upon those who are now in your elite club but whose starts were somewhere closer to the clubhouse kitchen. All of those men who have something to prove. In America we love drive, guts and determination. You see those traits in a few of your sycophants and nod in their direction to trigger actions that shape the lives (or the deaths) of hundreds or thousands. When they act, you praise. If they fail to act, you excoriate them. This is not the America I know. It is not the America I want to leave for my kids and grandkids.
In my America, drive, guts and determination are admirable character traits but they are not the goal of character development. In my America, a stronger union is formed on the back of ambition. Ambition is not best used in service to the self. It will take many ambitious Americans to stand up to the divisive politics used cleverly, if nefariously, by those in the National Country Club. We have found our ambition in resistance. We will resist your personal ambitions to transfer all of the wealth to the Membership. We will resist your narrow and very white version of a national culture. And we will keep spitting in your soup until it is over.
(Today is “Defining the Problem.” Later this week is “What to Do About It.”)
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This is commentary by Steve Marsh. Nobody else is responsible for it. You may leave moderated comments here or look me up on facebook.
The Oxford Dictionaries define fascism as “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.”
This is a little misnomer in terms of current American politics. It says “right wing” and automatically Americans say “Republican.” Sadly, that is no longer historically accurate. Bill Clinton broke the traditional concept of right/left last century with his “triangulation” of the middle. That was after Reagan broke the traditional concept of “Right” in the ‘80s with his Reagan Democrats and hard turn toward conservatism.
Famously, Jimmy Carter pronounced the American system of politics to be “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery…” Rolling Stone Magazine quoted him as saying, “The same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
Many of us who have been around in both centuries were heard to say, “Well, duh.”
But, as much as I’d like to bask in Carter’s courage to say so, and my beautiful, prescient mind for perceiving it, I’m stuck with acknowledging that this observation alone is not enough. In my estimation, the confluence of oligarchy in America with the populist wave that put Donald Trump in the most dangerous chair in the world means we have now passed on to full Fascism. I do not blame Trump alone. And not even those who voted for him, although any number of them would be happy to put on jackboots. What is left of Democratic voters have been as guilty. I hear my liberal friends recoiling in horror and denial. So let’s take this kind of slow.
It seems that you can find a definition of fascism that will say almost anything you want it to say. Or you can confound a definition with a lot of political language designed to obfuscate. So, how do I know we are in a Fascist Oligarchy instead of just a regular old oligarchy? I found a website that identifies what fascist states do: http://www.fascismusa.com/ The thing this website attempts to do is to define what has been undefinable and implies that we should define the cheetah by her spots.
What does a fascist state do? This site identifies fourteen Cheetah Spots. Here we go.
1. Is America currently affected by Powerful and Continuing nationalism? Well, of course she is and before you get all excited about how we are now going to bash the Trumpsters (and we should) think back to summer 2016 and the images, especially on the closing night of the Democratic National Convention. Do you remember the multi-screen projections of HRC, dressed in stark white, parading in front of dozens of American flags, calling on neo-con General John Allen to assure “our enemies” that “we will pursue you as only Americans can.” Later that night she was joined on stage by Bill in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie and her VP candidate (what was his name again) in a blue suit, white shirt and a red tie and Chelsea in a red dress of the exact same hue as Bill’s and VP Whatsisname’s ties? Mrs. Whatshisname was dressed in blue, same as the suits, same as the balloons. And down came seemingly millions of balloons, all red, white or blue or big blue ones with white stars. And some big white ones and big red ones too. That is not a party issue. Republicans were weeping that night, discovering aghast that the Democratic party had staked out the patriotism corner for itself in this voting cycle. There was, apparently, enough American Exceptionalism for us all. Nationalism? Check.
2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights. That has been true of America since President W decided that it was appropriate for us to engage in prophylactic warfare and fed us all the false data necessary to whip America into a blood lust unimaginable even ten years before when his daddy was the boss. Gone were the restraints against torture, preemptive assassination, striking families and neighborhoods with the most amazingly destructive weapons possible. Back home, the stroke of a pen was all it took after Congress capitulated on the frighteningly Nazi-sounding creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Trumpsters say bring back torture. Trump himself is quoted by CNN on December 3, 2015 as saying: “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.” But further, did Obama prosecute anyone for water-boarding, even as he stopped its use? No. Did we ever get out of Guantanamo? Lack of human rights? Check.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and bad hombres. 9/11, Iraqi attacks (even though the vast majority of participants were Saudi), add Afghanistan to get Osama, add Pakistan because they were hiding Osama, add Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Immigrants = Mexicans but Immigrants also = Refugees from the wars on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And then….and then… home-grown terrorists. Self-radicalized individuals. Now the enemies are everywhere and they are brown. Muslims are proudly hated by at least a large plurality of Americans. And now Mexicans, and it spills out to Sikhs and…just Google “mistaken for terrorists in US.” Enemies named and pointed at? Check.
4. Supremacy of the military. Let me parse this one out a little. It says supremacy of the military. It does not say support for military families. It does not say health care for wounded veterans. It’s all about active military and missions. Look at T’s proposed budget. Military +$54 billion, Department of Homeland Security +6.8%, Department of Veterans Affairs +5.9%, National Nuclear Security Administration +11.3%. And literally, just about everything else is cut, including the chief tool for diplomacy, the Department of State -28%. Yup, that is an intentional hard-power budget. Supremacy of the military? Check.
5. Rampant sexism. Beyond normalizing the word “pussy” and demonizing all of women’s health care on the back of “abortion,” the number of women in the cabinet is self-evident. Even his supporters can find a quote or two they are happy to chant denigrating women. Every day, every newspaper in America carries this story or worse, exhibits this story. Rampant sexism? Check.
6. Controlled mass media. How many supporters of T are now firmly convinced that CNN stands for “Clinton’s News Network?” How many say “fake news” about any article with a headline that even obliquely challenges their world view. All sources of news are false, except the two or three sources the central personality deems to be “not fake.” This has been underway since Roger Ailes (ahem, speaking of rampant sexism) opened Fox News for business but now we have reached a new vista in media denial. The Executive Branch Press Secretary has taken to isolating the news source they approve of to hold conferences and to go on lengthy defensive rants if anyone asks a question perceived as offensive. Control the mass media? Check. (at least well on the way.)
7. Obsession with national security. ISIS and illegal immigrants. These stories continue to cycle at the top of lists. They get conflated and mixed up too. Don’t let in any refugees fleeing the chaos created by our enemy ISIS because those people could be ISIS disguised as refugees. Don’t let Mexican (rapists and murderers) come in because they are “bad hombres” and ISIS is probably coming into the country by smuggling themselves into Mexico too. Let’s look at Iran next month and N. Korea this week. National security, keeping you safe from all the danger, danger, danger. Obsession with National Security? Check.
8. Religion and government are intertwined. Fascists use the most common religion to manipulate opinions. If there were more Catholics in the USA, we would see a slightly different version of what is going on. This movement has come and gone over the course of our history but got its biggest burst of power under Reagan. The emergence of the religious right under the moniker of “Moral Majority” has now twisted itself into something far more insidious. What is the advantage to them? LOTS. Normalizing home schooling and getting federal education dollars for religious schools via vouchers and similar programs. That insures the concepts are self-perpetuating through another generation. It makes it easy to demonize the political opponent. Obama, for example was both non-American and non-Christian. Those are long tentacles. And remember it was the religious right who impeached Clinton. Not for a blowjob but for a lie. Religion and government intertwined? Check.
9. Corporate power is protected. Citizens United (what a great lie right in the title), “Corporations are people, my friend.” Gut the EPA, deregulate Wall Street, roll back 40 years of auto emissions regulations, states deferring taxes on corporate owned property, and restrictions on labor is outlined below. But this is the most dangerous trend in my lifetime. There used to be a time when corporations had natural restraints too. To get access to the American market, corporations had to use American labor. Well, just like those two big oceans don’t protect us militarily any longer, they also don’t protect us economically. Many corporations are larger than many countries. That is not hyperbole any longer. Add to the power to do what they want to the power to avoid taxes on the profits they secure in our markets and you have a pretty perfect storm. Corporate power? Check.
10. Labor power is suppressed. Right to Work (another great title lie), opposition of raising the minimum wage, demonize public servants (except cops and firemen…you need them for the riots), permitting two tiered hiring practices, gutting union shop laws, and importantly, long term economic downturns to erode stability and expectations in the work force. Depress the markets for young people generally and black young people specifically and you now have a ready market for people to be recruited into the military. Labor power suppression? Check.
11. Disdain for intellectuals and artists. Gut the NEA, gut PBS, pass laws forcing teaching creationism as alternative to evolution (see #8 above), the culture wars of 20 years ago has “leveled up.” Schools are now deficient if they don’t teach “marketable skills in the work marketplace.” Let’s add some more catch phrases: “I know more than the generals.” Active scrubbing of federal websites in regard to climate change and other scientific research. Fox News says global warming research is a con to get federal dollars for false research. Tweet: “Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.” Schwarzenegger. Disdain for intellectuals and artists? Check.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment. First, think of what he, the T, wants to do with “leakers.” Second, as the states move to legalize the use of medical and recreational cannabis, the new Attorney General says, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” Trump notoriously says the murder rate is the highest in 48 years while in fact it is less than ½ of what it was 48 years ago. Crime, both violent and non-violent are actually down in the nation, but the administration is fundamentally invested in scaring people to make them think they are not safe, that they can blame some other kind of people and that we should lock those “others” up in for-profit prisons. Crime and punishment? Check.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Why are so many former executives of Goldman Sachs in the cabinet? It is hard to keep track of that number. Connections to Russia and the political oligarchy there? Plenty. Only took days to start booting folks out of the cabinet for obvious cons involving receiving huge sums of money from Russia and Turkey. How many? Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court? Sure, his mom was the EPA head from ’81-’83 under Reagan. What did she try to do? Slashed its budget 22%, rolled back clean air and clean water standards, prevented the EPA from bringing protection suits to the DOJ. Then she resigned. Why? Mismanagement (you put your own word in here, what does “mismanagement” mean, anyway?) of the Superfund program. This is not a new thing. More on that later. Or this from yesterday: Kellyanne Conway’s husband will be tapped to lead the Justice Department’s civil division. Another import from the Wall Street law firms. Cronyism and corruption? Check.
14. Fraudulent elections. This one scares me deeply. I think it has been going on for a long time. Both political parties are claiming it is ongoing. I think Republican redistricting efforts at the state level have effectively eliminated the democratic concept of “one man–one vote.” The number of federal elections and state elections affected has skyrocketed. And now Trump is blowing smoke over his trail by claiming that millions of illegal aliens voted against him and cost him the popular vote. I have never seen the winner of an election claim it was fraudulent before! The institution of the Electoral College has played into this strategy by the Fascists too. Smear campaigns, armed “poll watchers,” the list goes on. Courts are supposed to be the check here. HEY, COURTS! HELP. We are hanging by a fine thread. Fraudulent elections? Not 100% certain yet but something smells very bad about Russia and the unconscionable voter restrictions going on in communities of color. I’m not willing to put a check here yet, but reconnect with me next week.
So, that’s all fourteen functions, or at least 13 and a half. Do you think we are a Fascist Oligarchy? Well, look at that thing waddling and quacking down the road. I do believe it some kind of waterfowl.
