Knock, knock, knockin' at your own back door
Not to put too fine a point on it, but our Founding Fathers weren't nuts about dumb-asses either. In fact, the stupidity problem was one they recognized early on in pre-Revolutionary times and wrote long quarreling letters about it in their gorgeous curly handwriting. Sam Adams, an uncomfortable precursor of Glen Becks everywhere, thought that the Howling Mob, as it was characterized, could be put to noble service by siccing the rabble onto Loyalists and redcoats. Cooler heads, like John Adams, however, saw a lot to be wary of, like, f'instance, some rabble might be mongoose crazy and get all scary and unpredictable, and it was just possible they could get out of control completely. Which, of course they did, several times and to no one's benefit.
Thomas Jefferson thought that, in the interests of democratic thinking, one should mix with the dumb-butts and even, as he said, Lie on their stinking cots. But Jefferson had his trippy moments and who knows how he truly felt. He didn't lie on any reeking beds, that's for sure. He was mostly home at Monticello slugging down part of a truly exceptional cellar. George Washington wrote a little etiquette book in his twenties that was like many of the time: obsessed with the presentation of the self and with self control, plus exhorting his readers not to blow their noses on their fingers in the drawing room and not to pick lice out of their hair in church. On the mob side of things, I think we can vote him a quiet shudder.
So it's curious to me that we even give these poor teabagging souls a glance. Another blogger, The Rude Pundit, said that the 9-12 demonstration was the Special Olympics of protests and I tend to agree. Except that I can't overlook the fact that the howling mob is a part of America, as is their unvarnished racism. I don't know if their anger can ever be quelled, I don't know if they can be made happy; this country, even during its most somber midnights, has never done much for them. They are often constricted and deformed by poverty, whether it's a poverty of the soul, poverty of education or, the least ruinous type of poverty, financial. And yet, every so often, some strange personage arises from them, like a fabled feathered creature. Like Andrew Jackson say. Or Sam Houston. Or, in many ways, LBJ.
I've never been a believer in abreactive therapy: that it does a body good to blow his cork. Anger just begets more anger and its expression doesn't release anything, it just intoxicates. So I see these groups egging one another on and, I believe, no good will come of it. I know I'm not particularly good with idiots and it's better for me not to get furious about them, with them. But I think somehow they need to be engaged, and recognized as the part of America they've always been. It's the expression of that recognition I'm searching for.
Maybe George Washington's etiquette book has a clue.
I'm not seeing anything else that does.
So it's curious to me that we even give these poor teabagging souls a glance. Another blogger, The Rude Pundit, said that the 9-12 demonstration was the Special Olympics of protests and I tend to agree. Except that I can't overlook the fact that the howling mob is a part of America, as is their unvarnished racism. I don't know if their anger can ever be quelled, I don't know if they can be made happy; this country, even during its most somber midnights, has never done much for them. They are often constricted and deformed by poverty, whether it's a poverty of the soul, poverty of education or, the least ruinous type of poverty, financial. And yet, every so often, some strange personage arises from them, like a fabled feathered creature. Like Andrew Jackson say. Or Sam Houston. Or, in many ways, LBJ.
I've never been a believer in abreactive therapy: that it does a body good to blow his cork. Anger just begets more anger and its expression doesn't release anything, it just intoxicates. So I see these groups egging one another on and, I believe, no good will come of it. I know I'm not particularly good with idiots and it's better for me not to get furious about them, with them. But I think somehow they need to be engaged, and recognized as the part of America they've always been. It's the expression of that recognition I'm searching for.
Maybe George Washington's etiquette book has a clue.
I'm not seeing anything else that does.
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