Jul 12
Cinderella Sweeping Up
“Grandpa, tell me what it was like back in the old country before the fall.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“I dunno. What was it like just before the fall? Did anyone know what was about to happen.”
“Oh, I think some people did. Back in ‘08, Grandma and I went up to Gold Country for a little trip.”
“Were you looking for gold?”
“No, no. We were just going to a place with a little history to celebrate our anniversary. We’d been married for five years at that point.”
“History? Like how old?”
“Well, the first night we stayed in the oldest hotel in Placerville. It had been built in 1857.”
“Grandpa, that’s not old! Everything here in _______ is older than that.”
“Not everything.”
“Just about.”
“Anyway.”
“So you really weren’t looking for gold?”
“I mean, we joked about it a little, but all the gold mining novelty shops were sold out of equipment. Too many other people were trying to find it.”
“What’s ‘novelty’ mean?”
“Hm. It’s like a knick-knack, or a little trinket. Something you don’t really need, but you buy because it’s cute or you just impulsively want it.”
“That’s weird. I’ve never heard of that.”
“Yeah. I guess not. Huh. There used to be shops full of them in America, before the fall. But not so much right before the fall. Most of them were closing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. On that drive up to Gold Country, we passed all these half-deserted towns and suburbs. There were all these signs saying ‘For Lease’ and ‘Space Available’. But they looked like they were in the middle of nowhere. Places people had built thinking everything was always going to grow and expand. But then… it didn’t. And there were just shells of buildings.”
“Kinda like Gold Country, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Old buildings and old towns that were kinda deserted. People moving on. I guess the difference is that no one knew where to move on to in the suburbs. Back in Gold Country days, there was always more opportunity just over that mountain.”
“Or so they thought.”
“Yup. So maybe it was the same.”
“When did the banks start failing? That was a big part of what started it, right?”
“Oh definitely. Let’s see, that was… huh. That morning, actually. I’m almost positive. I’d brought the laptop up to Gold Country and checked the news that morning and it said IndyMac had failed. That was the first one. It didn’t seem like much at first, but people knew then that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going down too. And they were half the housing banks.”
“Why’d people choose such funny names for banks? They sound like people.”
“That’s a good question. I guess they wanted to sound friendly and helpful. ‘Like a good neighbor,’ that was one of the old slogans an insurance company had. Just like some regular Joe on the block who’s helping you out when you need it.”
“But can’t balance his own checkbook.”
“That’s pretty much exactly right. I’m not sure anyone in the old country knew how to balance their checkbook at that point. It was pretty clear that nobody really cared. Until all the banks started failing and then everything changed.”
“When did you and Grandma get out?”
“Of Gold Country or the old country?”
“Old.”
“Probably not soon enough, dear. Probably not soon enough.”
Jul 8
Ducking Behind Pillars
I’m not exactly the world’s most social person. This is a bit of an understatement.
Much has been made lately at my place of work of the classic old Myers-Briggs personality tests and their typologies. I have to smile wryly when people ask if I know anything about personality tests. But in those, as can be imagined, my needle is sort of buried in the “I” (Introvert) as opposed to the “E” (Extrovert). Still struggling with why Thinking and Feeling are considered distinct, but boy am I buried in the I.
There’s another letter, though, that probably plays just as much into this particular anecdote, which is “J”. Judging. As opposed to “P”, Perceiving. This burial of the needle toward one side is far less extreme than the old I/E dichotomy, but there’s a whole lot of J goin’ on. And the IJ combination creates not only a lack of prioritization toward the social, but a good deal of dismissal of those one isn’t interested in.
Which leads me to ducking behind pillars. I did it today, and it almost shocked me when I realized that my quick-walk high-tailing it out of the Powell Street melee was, in fact, the proverbial ducking behind a pillar after all. And boy did I need to duck, since I was wearing a blatant Brandeis sweatshirt, making any possible confusion regarding identity impossibly moot. It was not till I boarded the train that I realized the person in question was ducking behind pillars in my presence as far back as when we shared the same school. Mutually assured ducking.
For the unfamiliar, the ducking behind pillar question is a not-too-distant metaphor for indicating people one would rather avoid talking to than ever interact with again in one’s life. I don’t think this is nearly the harsh judgment to levy on past participants in one’s life that most people seem to. The etymology is relatively obvious: who would you, if seeing someone across a room that happened to have a conveniently placed pillar between you, duck behind said pillar to avoid speaking with? For whatever reason.
This exercise emerged from a conversation between Fish and I about this question regarding our high school class. I once estimated, outlandishly according to Fish, that I would duck behind a pillar to avoid roughly 75% of our class of 1998 peers. A later name-by-name analysis we conducted revealed 75% to be a conservative estimate - the actual number was closer to 85%. (Editor’s note: I am still considering attending my 10-year high school reunion this September.)
But before any drastic conclusions are reached about what this implies and how much I must have hated high school and my classmates, I should note my particular reasons for ducking behind pillars. Often it’s simply to avoid the type of conversation that emerges from chance bumpings-into. The person may be completely neutral, or even slightly positive, in general and/or in one’s memory. But the nature of making obligatory small talk, separated by years or even decades from any real contact with said person, is often aggravating enough to turn a good person into a bad interaction. One that leaves one with slightly tainted memories of said individual, souring what otherwise wouldn’t have been given much thought.
It’s often much the same interaction as one has on IM conversations, which is why I haven’t logged into IM (with a couple of weird purpose-specific exceptions) since college. “Hi.” “Hey.” “How’s it going?” “Not bad and you.” “Fine fine.” “Good.” “So… whatchya up to?” “Not much, y’know. Same old same old. You?” “Yup, about the same.” Repeat, repeat, repeat.
And you’d think a distance of years would change this pattern. But it really doesn’t. Often, it exacerbates it. How to even begin to explain the last 8 years of one’s life? One can’t, and doesn’t attempt. Or how to even begin to explain how dull and predictable the last 8 years have been? One can, and doesn’t want to. It’s all the same fucking day, man. (Editor’s note: Janice Joplin)
And yet I’m Facebook-friends with some of these people. Nothing to say, nothing to catch up on, no good times to relive. Just wampeters and granfalloons. (Editor’s note: Kurt Vonnegut) Grand wastes of everyone’s time.
It must be stressed here that I am just as much a waste of their time as they are of mine. This is not some egotistical elevation of my time, energy, or efforts over others’. They should duck behind pillars if they see me first too. I prioritize my time only in as much as I personally make judgments about other people that they, in turn, should be making (Editor’s note: my opinion) about the people they have nothing to say to. If everyone did this (Editor’s note: Immanuel Kant), we’d all be free of those awkward, neck-scratching conversations and be all the more reassured that those speaking to us were really truly interested in what we had to say. (Editor’s note: …or, I suppose, really insecure. Or attention-starved. But mostly interested.)
And about that reunion. Our reunion hosts have made the somewhat dubious decision to have RSVP’s made public in real-time on a website. Presumably this is to create some sort of critical mass and move momentum toward more and more people participating because they just have to see so-and-so and they’ll definitely be there! Of course, I really think the impact is much more to the contrary. Something about having to actually face those names in monochrome on a computer screen. Curiosity can’t get the best of awkwardness in an era where one can just Google anyone with a distinctive name to see what they’re up to. And considering that at least two people who I’d push a pillar on top of rather than have to speak to (Editor’s note: not really) have RSVP’ed in the Yes column, it’s looking like my decision is more and more made up.
Strangers reading this blog are just never going to e-mail me after this post, huh?
Jul 2
Waving the False-Flag
“There was an exodus of birds in the trees
’cause they didn’t know we were only pretending
and the people all looked up and looked pleased
and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending.”
-Ani DiFranco, “Independence Day”
People like to tell themselves stories about themselves. A big priority is put in our society on one’s ability to sleep at night, and thus people have to imbed fiction in their own minds in order to get to sleep. After all, the only person we really ever have to permanently live with is ourself. Why not make oneself a cooler, more moral, more reasonable person than one actually is? As Oscar Wilde said, “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
Countries like to tell themselves stories about themselves, too. They like the citizens of their country to be able to bed down for the night with cozy thoughts of jingoist pride. Wrapped up in beseeching their deity of choice for a new television should be thanking said entity for plopping them between these particular borders, no matter what actually happens there. Why not make it a cooler, more moral, more reasonable country than it actually is? As Adolf Hitler said, “The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
The United States has led the world in a lot of things, but instilling this sense of jingoistic pride on an ongoing basis is perhaps its most sustained accomplishment. It is hard to imagine imperial Romans or Spanish or British believing in themselves this sincerely, fervently, holistically – not just as superior people, but as a superior set of ideals. And surely the disconnect between espoused ideals and actual actions has never been so great: indeed, this is the grand invention of the American enterprise. The Romans made no bones about the barbarians being expendable. Spain and Britain cared little for heathens, except occasionally as servants or objects of conversion. Even Hitler’s propaganda state made it pretty clear how they felt about their chosen scapegoats. But America cares. Really. Believe them. They do.
And thus, whenever America has had (“had”, mind you, not “chosen”) to use violence to defend its freedom (can you imagine more pejorative language?), it’s always been able to paint itself as a hapless but powerful victim whose choices are to take a beating or stumble up and hit back. And yet, of course, careful examination of these events reveals a track-record of pathological dishonesty. The Maine. The Zimmermann Telegram. Pearl Harbor. The Gulf of Tonkin. 9/11. All events claimed as catalytic and unprovoked attacks. All done with the knowledge and/or complicity of the United States government.
This phenomenon, recently labeled as the “false flag” scenario, is as old as the hills. Yes, even Hitler employed this one too, dressing up some Germans in Polish uniforms and having them attack a farmhouse on the German side of the border. What’s so great about these events is that control can be complete, since it happens on your own territory. There’s no mess. And the country is so blinded in its outrage at this unprovoked aggression that it will lash out, just as an individual punched in the solar plexus without warning will knee-jerk into swinging their fist right back.
But these events never make any sense. History finds ways to try to explain or give a context for why small countries (Spain, Vietnam, the Taliban) or empires barely scraping by (Germany in 1917, Japan in 1941) would want to go up to the baddest, meanest, most powerful guy on the block and punch him in the solar plexus once. But no matter how much spin goes on it, it never really quite makes sense, does it? They hate us? Really? Do they hate themselves more? Because they know what’s going to happen when they do this… unending death and destruction. The full force and destruction of the United States government. Are people really continually this stupid?
But we believe it, don’t we? Despite the evidence and the logic, most Americans go around thinking that America just keeps getting stronger, more powerful, more justified, and pipsqueaks keep trying to bonk us on the head for no reason.
Well insanity is oft defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. So, kids, when the economy is slouching toward depression, the last couple wars aren’t going so peachily, the administration is death-defyingly unpopular, and unemployment is skyrocketing…
What would you expect?
Given the history, what do you think is coming?
And what better day or season to renew our jingoism with the blood of self-inflicted victimhood than on our already chosen anniversary? Two-hundred and thirty-two years of learning how to better manipulate its own people that they will never again get so angry over a little taxation. Iran is already playing its part in this little play: standing up and talking trash to the bully, defiantly thumbing their nose at the tough guy just to save face, praying all the while that they don’t actually swing.
But something has changed since the so-called American century, part of it in the wake of the stinging defeat in Vietnam. American force and capacity to conquer has been steadily diminished in the ensuing infeasibility of a draft and unpopularity of killing. The US hasn’t actually managed to win a war outside of the Caribbean in some time.
Knowing this, it would have to be something so massive as to reinstate old questions long since cast off. Could we have a draft again? Could we fight six wars at a time? Could we suspend the election?
People have been predicting this, on and off, for a year. There are always prior rumblings. The Lusitania. “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States”.
If you need me on July fourth, I’ll be under the bed.
