Here Be Dragons

Sun   31 Jan 1999   16:31 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

Who can predict the ultimate outcome of current events? It may have been fairly simple to predict that the Denver Broncos would win the Super Bowl (he wrote, with the game still being played), but who can say how events will play out surrounding, say, the approaching reckoning in Washington? Pundits and Democrats have been saying for months that without 67 Republicans in the Senate there would never be a guilty verdict in an impeachment trial. But before that they were saying there would never be an impeachment trial in the first place—and before that, that there would never even be an impeachment, much less a trial. Who could have anticipated two years ago that a casual act of presidential perjury, committed in casual contempt of a citizen’s civil rights, would lead to this decidedly un-casual point? Back then the buzz was about campaign corruption and abuse of executive orders to benefit Chinese and Indonesian interests at the expense of companies owned and run by U.S. citizens. Who could have guessed back then that a television network would elevate an impassioned and openly avowed pro-Clinton partisan to host two separate regular shows on which to defend the President? Who could have guessed back then that this same network would record, and then spike, an interview with a woman who claims that the President raped her when he was Arkansas’ state attorney general? Who could have guessed that the sleaziest man alive would become the most visible defender of the President’s morality—by airing innuendos against his critics? Who could ever have guessed two years ago that William Jefferson Clinton, then newly inaugurated as President after his 49-percent popular vote re-election victory (a record for him), would sink to such depths? Who among them would have been believed? Those who claim that Vince Foster was murdered, are frequently dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorists. Those who circulate the lists of people close to Clinton who have died under mysterious circumstances, are laughed off as fanatic Clinton-haters taking a vacation from their surveillances of Area 51. And perhaps rightly so. But aside from those types of people, who would have foreseen the spectacle that Clinton 1999 would degenerate to? After all, these are the ones who have made the most noise about those purloined FBI files. These are the ones who have followed the Clinton scandal front since 1992, who believed Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones the instant their stories broke. And these are the people at whom Clinton’s defenders point in this hour of desperation, to explain why they stay with him. As Andy Rooney put it, they like Clinton’s friends more than they like his enemies. His enemies, therefore, cannot be allowed to be right, not even when the evidence actually comes down on their side of the story. It’s as though Clinton called up all of his high-profile supporters in Hollywood and the media, and demanded, “Who are you gonna believe, me or a bunch of right-wing facts?“ In their hyper-politicized world view, even truth has a political spin to it, and when the spin goes against their way of thinking, it has to be denied, disparaged, demolished and despised. To the rest of the world, truth and facts are neutral, and only the actions and words of men and women carry a spin. If the facts say that Clinton is a felon and unfit to hold office, the bad reflection is not on the facts, but on Clinton. And people to whom this is clear, have a hard time understanding those for whom politics, and especially Left-wing politics, is more important, and more pure, than the truth. The recent past, up to about this time last year, seems in hindsight to have been as easy to anticipate, seven years ago, as the outcome of today’s football game. After his 90-percent post-Desert Storm approval ratings blew over, President Bush suffered from the more durable memory of his “no new taxes” betrayal, and from the unprecedented partisan spin of television news reporting surrounding the 1992 election campaign. Bush ran a lackluster campaign, and tried ineptly and belatedly to pander to his base—which only played into the spin of the hostile media while offending the Right (which unlike the Left does not appreciate being pandered to). Meanwhile Clinton’s character issues were passed off by the same media as being irrelevant to the campaign. Character didn’t matter, we were told. Today these same media voices allow that maybe character does matter after all, while more die-hard Clinton partisans argue that policy lip-service matters more than the trustworthiness and mental stability of a man whose finger rests on the nuclear button. (Perhaps that button seems less dangerous today than ten years ago, but what of North Korea? What of Saddam Hussein? Can we afford to keep a President who makes Saddam look positively sedate and predictable?) But today, no one can guess what will happen tomorrow. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has concluded, rightly I think, that he can indict a sitting president—but he hasn’t decided whether he will. The pundits having assured us that witnesses would never be examined in the impeachment trial, perhaps we could have guessed at what has proven to be the case: there will be witnesses. The Juanita Broaddrick story is said to have influenced wavering House members to vote for impeachment in December, and now it reposes like a powder keg on the shelf at NBC News. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Events of the past have been converging on this point, from long before the 1960s. Historical trends set in motion by occurrences before the Vietnam war, before the Kennedy assassination, before the birth of Billy J. Blythe, have developed a momentum that will contribute to an unfathomable crescendo some time between now and the end of the century—and even lifelong observers of the political, cultural and social scene are at a loss as to what to expect. We are entering into terra incognita, where all the lessons of the past seem useless in preparing for what is to come. If there we find dragons, who will be surprised? [I expected a crescendo before the end of the century—was I only off by nine months?]

The Cowardice of the Senate

Tue   26 Jan 1999   7:05 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [My Two Cents]

There is a trial balloon floating in the Hall of Wind—er, I mean, the Senate chamber—aiming to attract Senators into voting to convict President Clinton on the articles of impeachment, without having to remove him. This proposal is based on alleged ambiguity in the Constitution relating to impeachments. Here are the relevant provisions: Article II, Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.“ Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 7: “Judgment in all Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shal nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment, and Punishment, according to law.“ The provision in Article II clearly declares that the minimum that the Senate may do upon convicting an impeached official, is remove him or her from office. The provision in Article I says that the maximum that the Senate may do upon convicting an impeached official, is remove him or her from office and disqualify him or her from ever again holding an office of honor, trust or profit under the United States. Ambiguous? Only to a spineless wimp of a Senator who’s scared nuggetless of doing his or her Constitutional duty. Many of these Senators have tried impeached officials before (e.g., former federal judge Alcee Hastings, now a member of the House of Representatives)—this is nothing new for them. They know what the Constitution says and means about impeachment trials. The only thing different here is that the official in question is a President whose defenders are in possession of over a thousand raw FBI files. By seeking to evade their obligations in this trial, the Senators are conducting a self-impeachment trial on themselves, and lining up in their eagerness to self-convict.

The State of the Civilization

Wed   20 Jan 1999   6:23 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

It’s hard not to think malicious thoughts about some of the players in this impeachment business, but it’s a temptation to be resisted at all costs. Everything we’ve tried in hopes of overcoming the cult of personality surrounding Bill Clinton, has failed. The Omnibus Broadcasting System—with its subsidiaries ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN—has made use of its influence over the passive majority in our country to keep his popularity high despite everything. Truth has made no impact on the people largely because it hasn’t been told to them. And even if we had the means to reach them, they’ve been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they would refuse to listen to it, rejecting it as propaganda rather than truth. Clearly if there is to be a happy ending to all this, we’re not capable of writing it into the script. We are faced with a test of forebearance, a lesson in the folly of pride. All through the century that is about to end, we as a civilization have convinced ourselves that we can understand all that needs to be understood—that we can learn all that is to be known. We’ve decided that we can set our sights on any goal and achieve it through the determined application of will and know-how. And this is where it has gotten us. Having been warned that the Devil can quote Scripture to suit his purpose, we are nevertheless eager to debate him when he reminds us about turning the other cheek, judging not lest we be judged, and not casting stones if we are not without sin. We forget that Jesus also said, “Cast not your pearls before swine.“ How can we make sense of this without judging the character of those to whom He referred? The point of His comment was that there are some whose hearts we can never hope to turn with words, and that it would be a waste, not to say a sin of pride, to preach to them rather than to those whose hearts and minds are open. In our Information Age, words fly like bullets and bounce off the Kevlar that OBS has thoughtfully placed over the ears of the narcoleptic majority. Having placed our faith in The People, we find they have feet—and heads—of clay. Faced with such futility, we are tempted to give in to malice. That part of ourselves inherited from long-dead pagan ancestors whispers to us that if we can’t persuade them, we must destroy them, or at least wish them ill. After all, the voice points out, we already are seeking to punish their leader. Why not also wish to punish those who support him, for their work in trying to shield him from justice? When the hogs trample the pearls into the mud, do we get angry at them? Do we blame all hogs everywhere, and campaign to have them all slaughtered? The matter is beyond our best powers of persuasion. We can’t turn the hearts of those determined to avoid doing the right thing. God alone can move them, and if He chooses, He will. It’s out of our hands. Maybe it always was.

Where Is the Love?

Sun   3 Jan 1999   6:49 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

Shortly after winning the 1996 presidential election, Bill Clinton told a gathering of fellow Democrats that his opponents constitute a cancer on American politics, and swore to excise them from the political scene during the next four years. Before that, he claimed that our Constitution is “radical,“ and that its authors may have set aside too many freedoms and rights for ordinary American citizens. On the evening of Dec. 31, 1998, a reporter for CNN Headline News named Candy Crowley was talking about the dimming prospects for a Senate censure of the recently impeached Clinton, in the face of insistence from “conservatives” that the Constitution requires that the President stand trial. Crowley bemoaned the fact that censure, “a popular, mainstream idea,“ was going down in flames on Capitol Hill. Political discussion (and “reporting”) throughout 1998, and indeed since 1992 by some odd coincidence, has been brim-full of such indictments of conservatives and the things we hold dear. We’re “extremists,“ they say. We revere a “radical” Constitution and use it to shoot down “popular, mainstream” ideas. One might be excused for getting the impression that those speaking don’t like us much. Indeed, they despise conservatives and conservatism. They hold the Constitution in contempt as an obstacle to their imposing on us uneducated, unenlightened, unwashed masses the kind of shining bureaucracy on a hill that they believe will bring about Heaven on Earth. So much for the separation of church and state. But what’s most disturbing to someone like me, someone who though young at the time nevertheless remembers quite well the message of the New Left in 1968, is that the price of one Summer of Love seems to be a decade-long Winter of Hate from the same bunch. Of course, the Summer of Love was only one face of the Boomer Left—that same splinter of American society also gave us the terrorist Weather Underground, the thuggish Students for a Democratic Society, and the murderous Black Panther Party (ask David Horowitz if you don’t want to believe me). The gentle, dope-smoking hippie popularized in those songs by the Mamas & Papas, or in “Hair,“ was simply the benign face that the movement’s darker elements found useful to win acceptance of their agenda by once-mainstream liberals and their successors, the moderates. The Summer of Love icon remains strong with many in politics and media who have rationalized the devastation caused by their “ideas,“ and by their constant suppression of opposition, on moral grounds rooted in the presumption of their own moral unimpeachability. After having gained ascendancy preaching that “the end does not justify the means,“ they have come around 180 degrees to the certainty that any means, however foul, are justified if they help to keep themselves on top and their opponents in the gutter. After all, their opponents are, by definition, evil; they want to stop The Anointed from carrying out their mission, which would be divine if there were a god, which of course there isn’t, but it’s still a moral imperative that brooks no dissent. Thus their slavish devotion to The Impeached One. In their view, he stands like a colossus, between us e-e-e-e-e-evil conservatives and the people at large, blocking our message with an unprecedented talent for distraction, and co-opting any ideas that threaten to be popular with the hoi polloi on whose goodwill his power depends. His interests may have nothing real in common with those of the true Boomer Leftists, but he frustrates us conservatives, and that’s enough. Since we have no claim on the Summer of Love heritage that he and his supporters have wrapped themselves in, we are by definition hateful, and therefore fair game for their own hate. At the same time they tut-tut over the vengefulness of capital punishment, and argue that “an eye for an eye” is an outdated ethic, in politics they return real hate for perceived hate, real evil for alleged evil. And when the bombs are being dropped by their guy, and promise to derail efforts to punish him for his crimes, suddenly it’s a “good” war. They don’t want Albert Gore, Jr. to be president before 2001—and many of them don’t want him at all. They know that he does more damage than good to the Green agenda with his lack of knowledge, his rhetorical clumsiness, and his lackluster persona. They know that as president Gore would be unable to carry off the kind of hate campaign on which Clinton has thrived. Where Clinton comes off (God help us!) as a good-ole-boy trying to do right, Gore would be perceived more accurately: as a hack politician trying to manipulate public opinion for his own benefit. Where Clinton has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest nightmares, Gore would be the conservative commentator’s dream. And with Clinton no longer in the spotlight to distract the people, Gore would be recognized instantly as the reality that is the flip side of Dan Quayle’s reputation. And so they are afraid. And fear is a primal emotion, far more basic than love. The modern face of the Boomer Left is that of a prince past his prime, soured on life and bereft of his ideals, blaming his misfortunes on those whom he once claimed to love—and plotting their destruction in revenge. And that is where the love went.

McThought

Tue   29 Dec 1998   7:16 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [My Two Cents]

We live in a world where it is considered better to be nice than to be kind. The difference should be obvious if you think about it—the trouble is that no one does. The truth is that some of the cruelest people in the world are also among the nicest. In the language of therapy, they’re called “enablers.“ In contrast, much of life’s greatest kindnesses are done without a smile; there was a phrase a few years back: “tough love.“ And all too often these days if you try to do a friend or loved one a necessary kindness, others will accuse you of being mean. We can’t correct a child’s unacceptable behavior because it’s mean—better to be cruel and let him grow up to be a criminal or a social outcast. We can’t imprison a criminal because that’s mean—better to be cruel by exposing him to possible revenge while he’s running around loose after his token (and utterly fake) show of contrition. It’s mean, and therefore unacceptable, to remove people from their jobs after they’ve trampled the code of conduct implicit in the employment agreement—better to be cruel and let them believe their untrustworthiness isn’t a handicap in either their business or their social relationships. All of these reactions (they’re unworthy of the name “opinions”) are widespread, and that’s a sign of why our civilization is in such dire straits. If people were to think things like this through, they would realize that these reactions are wrong; the trouble is that thinking is optional in the late 1990s. Just as many of our meals come to us without our having to cook them, too many of the “opinions” held by Americans today have been cooked up by others in a mass-production line, and handed over fully formed without the customer knowing anything about what’s in them. The conventional “news” outlets that reach the most people—those untextured, creamy smooth (and utterly indistinguishable from one another in any meaningful way) TV network news operations at ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN—have long since metastasized into dispensers of fast-food opinion. McThought. And so similar are the results that we might as well refer to them all together as a single entity. Perhaps “Omnibus Broadcasting System”—whenever I catch one of their newscasts I’m constantly shouting those initials… The standard OBS position on any issue is based on the idea that what Americans want more than anything, at least in matters of substance, is niceness. Substance is good, as long as you can’t taste it, smell it, or feel lumps in it. Texture and flavor are for the mind candy the entertainment division offers during prime time—especially the texture and flavor of sexual innuendo or, as is increasingly the case, out-uendo. The closest any television entertainment comes to discussing real substance is on a network I don’t really include in the OBS conglomerate: Fox. Unfortunately for Fox, its entertainment “substance” is mind candy for conspiracy theorists. But at least they’re not afraid, in either their entertainment division or the news operation, of suggestions that the government isn’t 100% nice. If the OBS news division had a similar point of view, President What’s-His-Name would have been gone months ago. In a day and age when people are utterly obsessed with nutrition for their bodies, they rot their brains with intellectual junk food and consider their minds well-fed. And it’s not as if there were no alternatives! So here’s my suggestion for a New Year’s resolution: Enjoy life; indulge moderately in foods that are bad for you, as long as your diet overall is well-balanced. But swear off the mind candy completely. Restrict your intake to solid ideas—stuff you can sink your mental teeth into. And spread the word.

Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston Resigns

Mon   21 Dec 1998   5:46 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [My Two Cents]

Big Media didn’t show the context of Rep. Bob Livingston’s resignation announcement. Livingston was in the well of the House, and suggested that President Clinton could end the “long national nightmare” by resigning. The Democrats, in a typical show of what passes for decorum among the “bipartisan,“ lifted up their voices in howls of rage, and Rep. Maxine (“Shallow”) Waters called out that Livingston (who had just a day or two before admitted to having had an affair) should resign. Livingston couldn’t have orchestrated it better if he had tried. Perhaps he just knows his colleagues across the aisle. You may have noticed that the House chamber was silent as Livingston announced his resignation. Perhaps there was a whisper from Barney Frank: “Maxine, you and your big mouth!“ And then Bill Clinton went before reporters and said Livingston should stay, intimating that by resigning he does damage to the country. This is what the Clintonistas can’t abide: The Good Example. If we parse the President’s comments about Livingston, we find that when Clinton says the Speaker-designate’s resignation damages the country, he means that it shows him up, makes him look bad, and increases his risk of conviction in the Senate. The Clintonistas have been pursuing a “scorched-earth” policy—but on Saturday it was their man who got scorched.

Making History and Being History

Sat   19 Dec 1998   20:08 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

He is, officially, the 42nd President of the United States. He is the 41st man to hold the office, but only the 36th to be elected to it. Four presidents succeeded upon the deaths of their respective predecessors and never won election, including Andrew Johnson; a fifth, Gerald R. Ford, succeeded upon the resignation of his predecessor and failed in his 1976 election bid. And Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms, is counted twice in the official tally. Like all of his predecessors, he has achieved certain firsts. He is the first Arkansan ever to become president. He is the first ever to have been born after the end of World War II. He is (I believe) the first left-hander ever to be elected to a second term. In this half of the 20th Century, he is the first president to see his party gain seats in the House in off-year elections during his second term. He is not the first president to have had his name changed—in his case, from William Jefferson Blythe to William Jefferson Clinton when he was adopted by his stepfather Roger Clinton. Leslie Lynch King, Jr. was adopted and renamed after his adoptive father, Gerald Rudolph Ford. And Ulysses S. Grant’s real first name was Hiram; his name was changed in a clerical error at West Point. He is only the third president ever to be the subject of articles of impeachment placed before the House of Representatives. With the House today approving two articles, he becomes only the second ever to be impeached. That presidential impeachment has occurred only twice in the 209-year history of our Constitution, is encouraging. That impeachment articles were generated twice in just the last 25 years, is not. Regardless of whether this exercise forces him from office before his term expires, Bill Clinton’s presidency must be seen as a symptom rather than a cause of what has gone wrong with our country. Just as abuse of power wasn’t ‘cured’ when Richard Nixon resigned, it will not pass into oblivion with Clinton’s departure. It is axiomatic to say these days that Clinton’s legacy will be a negative one, but that would be an oversimplification because it’s not entirely his own. The negative legacy that many will attribute to Bill Clinton was not created by him. It was allowed to create itself during this century—and to a great extent that phenomenon occurred before he was even born. Members of the “Baby Boom” generation aren’t altogether to blame for the generation’s faults, only for the evils each of them has committed. Nor were the radical 1930s socialist college professors altogether to blame for twisting the Boomers’ world view into such a mess—after all, the Boomers’ parents allowed it—but the profs are guilty of teaching falsehoods to millions of young skulls full of mush. At every step in the process that created this sad moment in American history, men and women made choices of their own free will, and in nearly every case it was a choice to trade what was right for what was easy, convenient, or personally beneficial. This is what it means to be created in the image of God. Each of us chooses between salvation and perdition. Nor is it a choice made in some kind of tremendous, earth-shattering moment, what has come to be referred to as “a religious experience.“ The choice is made in the smallest of ways, with the wrong choice being easily rationalized: “I need it more than he does.“ “It’s such a trifle, it won’t make any difference.“ “I’m too important to take the consequences for such a small thing.“ “It’s not sex if she keeps her clothes on.“ On the very eve of the President’s impeachment, support for impeaching him was found (in a poll) to be still less than a majority. It’s almost certain that the margin of victory in the House consisted of members who did the right thing only because they found that, politically, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. If there is any lesson to be drawn from this, it is that sometimes people will do the right thing even if they don’t want to. Even if they’re afraid. Even if, given the chance, they’d do the wrong thing if it’s easier, more convenient, or more personally beneficial. This is what it means to be born of ashes and dust. Bill Clinton is not a self-made man. His place in history may fit him like a glove, but he didn’t create it without help. If he continues to make wrong choices and do wrong things, the Senate should convict him of at least one of the two articles under which he was impeached today. They should remove him from office and ban him forever from holding the public trust that he has so grievously abused. They should add to Bill Clinton’s list of firsts: First president to be removed from office through impeachment. The Senators have the choice: do the right thing and make history, or…

Heritage and History

Sun   13 Dec 1998   5:33 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

When I first became interested in learning about my heritage, I knew next to nothing about McGehee lore, but had a decent respect for historical fact and the relationship of events to one another in time. As I sought out knowledge of my ancestry, I discovered that a large number of amateur McGehee genealogists were in the reverse predicament—knowing much about family lore but having little or no concept of how events in history relate to one another in time. I was told that our presumed common ancestor, James MacGregor, had been a supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, who had in fact died in 1587, 58 years before the Scottish Civil War in which James actually fought as a very young man. I was told that the MacGregors were outlawed because of their involvement in that war, when in fact the proscription on their name dates back much earlier, to April 3, 1603—just two days before King James VI of Scotland—Mary’s by-then grown son—left Scotland to take the throne as James I of England. And those are only the most glaring errors. As usually happens as a century comes to its end (and for reasons I don’t fully fathom, even though it happened to me too), people become more interested in genealogy. With the help of the Internet, the late-20th-Century upsurge in interest is accompanied by a greater potential for success than ever before—yet this potential for success comes at a time when regard for history is at an unprecedented ebb in America. The post-modern mindset denies the importance of learning from the mistakes and successes of dead people; the only experiences worth learning from, supposedly, are our own. “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.“ But the guy who said that is dead, too. Many post-modern amateur genealogists are into the pursuit for the same reason many of their counterparts 100 years ago were into it: to find famous people in their ancestry. And so those who merely discover, for example, the McGehee lore of 100 years ago and look no further, find Robert the Bruce and Charlemagne as their direct ancestors. That they take pride in these findings (which are based on inaccurate information, by the way) is odd, since these personages are also dead. But at least people they know have heard of them, and if the Bruce’s reputation was tarnished slightly by the movie Braveheart, at least he was a character in a movie that people they know have seen. That way, he’s not really dead; he’s a celebrity, albeit a minor one because Mel Gibson didn’t play him. It’s as though, instead of history infusing amateur genealogy with its positive influence, the reverse has taken place. Now we want history to be filled with celebrities, not real people who lived real lives and had a real impact on events. That’s what history means today, when it means anything at all: not heroism, not romance, not overcoming harsh conditions and building a civilization. It means a whole crop of dead celebrities who can be portrayed by living celebrities in movies or on television—people whose names we can bandy about as though knowing their names means we know something about them, their times, and their deeds. Is it any wonder, then, that so many regard the upcoming change of century with so much superstition? The road maps of the past, which could tell us so much about the present and help us to prepare for the future, have been locked away and become dusty and brittle, with no one willing to re-copy them for later generations. One of the great benefits of civilization, the availability of vast amounts of stored knowledge in written form, has been cast aside as irrelevant to our own lives. If it’s not about the latest music, the best place to shop, or some other means of self-gratification, it is guilty of the most heinous crime imaginable: it’s boring. These are the horns of the dilemma on which both sides in Washington, D.C. now find themselves. The Republicans appeal to history, to the founding documents, to truth and right—and the people don’t care. Yet now as the House Judiciary Committee sends articles of impeachment to the full House, the Democrats find that (as has been pointed out in the past week) apathy cuts both ways. Even history in the making, before their very eyes, is too abstract for post-modern America. Whether the President is What’s-His-Name, or Does-He-Have-a-Pulse, or even Look-at-the-Size-of-those-Ears, the music still plays, the shops stay open, and the pizza still tastes good. What’s-His-Name has apparently been doing such a great job as President that most Americans wouldn’t even know he was gone. As horrible as the situation has seemed for those few who still believe in truth, there is some cold comfort to be had in the thought that the First Fondler, one of the foremost history-haters of our time, may very well be hoist on the First Petard. But I’ll believe it when I see it, and not a moment sooner.

The Center

Sat   5 Dec 1998   20:31 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

There’s a widespread notion in post-modern America, largely thanks to popular culture, that great heroes stand always in opposition to great villains. I contend that the phrase “great villain” is an oxymoron. In this century we have towering examples of real-life villains who are supposed to have been “great” because of the magnitude of their crimes—Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin for two examples. Hitler built a third German empire on hatred, ignited a war that would engulf the planet, and inspired his followers to commit murder on a massive scale in a most cold and technocratic—one might almost say bureaucratic—manner. And Stalin ruled Russia (misnamed at the time as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,“ which is soon to be no more than the answer to a trivia question) on the basis of fear, his own fear that those around him in the seats of power in his empire were enough like him that his life was in danger at their hands every minute of every day of his 29-year rule. During those three decades, he engineered the starvation deaths of millions of his own people whom he feared would attempt to overthrow him, and sabotaged his country’s war effort by purging the military of those he deemed suspect. The magnitude of their deeds is profound, but the villainy itself is shallow. Hitler’s evil was rooted in the smallness of resentment, not the greatness of whatever is supposed to motivate a “great” villain. Stalin simply feared for his life, whether justified or not. What enabled them to commit their crimes was a combination of personal charisma on their own part, and a willingness on the part of others to share and reflect the evil traits they bore. The opposite of great heroism is not great villainy, because there is no such thing. There is only meanness, smallness, crudeness—albeit sometimes on a massive scale. The old saying has it wrong: It is mediocrity that is the root of all evil: the unwillingness of a man or a woman to aspire beyond the levels of conduct, of thought (where applicable), of morality which they already have reached, perhaps were born to. Hitler’s hate and his charisma, no matter how well combined, could never have amounted to anything if thousands of Germans had not been too lazy about themselves to see through him. And this leads to another point about evil. Whereas great heroes generally are lone figures, rising above the terrain of history to make their mark, massive villainy requires mass support. Heroism is individual; evil is collective. Yet the charisma of the chief villain in a moment of mass evil often causes confusion, because it enables him to seem to rise above the mob and become the center of attention, even when the true atrocities are being done by faceless members of the mob. We should bear in mind when confronting such characters that they are not the source of villainy, but simply its temporary focus. Eliminating the leader doesn’t eliminate the evil; it will rise again the next time someone of his stripe, suffering his defining flaw, begins to sound the call once more. Crass motivations can never be bred out of humanity, short of a miracle—and shouldn’t expecting a miracle from the government be considered a violation of the separation of church and state? Hate and fear are only two of the drives that have led to an eruption of evil in the 20th Century. Think of other base reasons people have long had for victimizing one another: greed, lust, pride… And then there are the truly puerile drives, such as the uncontrollable desire to be the center of attention, whatever form that attention may take. Jack Kevorkian certainly seems to suffer this flaw, given his recent “60 Minutes” performance. In fact, in a civilization where, according to some dead guy who once sculpted a soup can, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, it follows logically that there would be those who would crave more than their fair share. The extreme archetype in popular lore is the guy who stages his own death before a live audience—that way he never has to hear the applause die down. More banal are the shock comics, who go out of the way to say outrageous things just to enjoy the knowledge that people will be talking about it for days. The best thing to do is try to ignore them; if enough people tune them out, consistently enough and long enough, eventually they’ll decide to get a real job. But that’s only acceptable for people who don’t hurt anyone with their antics. A medical doctor who kills cannot be tolerated. And Dr. Death knows it, so he will continue to do it until he is stopped, or until one day he inadvertently administers the lethal service to himself. What, then, do we do with a President who thrives on being the center of attention, whose entire political career has been based only on his need to be forever in somebody’s spotlight, even if it’s the light the cops used to shine in a suspect’s face during questioning in those old gangster movies. Like Kevorkian, he constantly brings the attention around to himself by doing outrageous things—flashing a state employee in a hotel room and asking her to “kiss it;“ baldly lying to the nation, to a grand jury, and to Congress, none of whom are in any remote fantasy going to believe him; using transparent ploys to try to manipulate the process to his own advantage. He keeps doing these sorts of things because he’s sure he can keep getting away with them, but why does he do them in the first place? For William Jefferson Clinton, it’s not enough merely to be the President. He has to be THE President, every minute of every day of his tenure. He has the charisma to pull it off, and he has a willing audience that consists of more than just his supporters, and not a few of his opponents. He needs the attention, and deep down he can feel the truth: that when people stop talking about him, when they forget about him, get a life, and move on (for real), he will not only cease to be the center of attention, he will, in every way that matters to him, cease to be. So even if he is impeached, and convicted, and removed from office, rest assured that this man will not go quietly. All the while complaining of the media circus that his trial would be (assuming Al Gore wouldn’t be even more stupid than he usually is by pardoning him), he would do everything in his power to make it that way, the judicial event of the millennium, with him as the star. Even before opening arguments end, people would be saying, “O.J. who?“ “Put it all behind us”? That’s the last thing he wants. And maybe he’s not really hurting anyone except those whose reputations are trashed by the faceless members of his mob, but the American people have not yet begun to see the ugly face of scandal fatigue. That boy’s just getting started.

Cheap at Twice the Price

Sat   28 Nov 1998   21:31 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Our Times] [In the Wilderness]

Family togetherness during holidays is, I suspect, a phenomenon of the modern world. It’s hard to imagine the ancient Romans celebrating their winter-solstice festival of the Persian war-god Mithras at home, gathering around the idol and singing Mithras carols while little Julius, Jr. looks just too cute for words in his brand new jammies. Nor were the high holy days of the early Christian church likely much of a family event. Hanging with the homefolks was what people back then did every day, and when they needed an excuse for a reunion of the extended family, usually some elder obligingly kicked off, or one of the newly married-off daughters had a newborn that needed baptizing. Our use of holidays has evolved with our civilization. Family life is at a premium now, so the holidays give us the opportunity for some intensive “quality time.“ This is usually invested through mass excursions to the local mall, whereupon money is doled out to the various family members and they are admonished, “Remember, we all meet again back here by nine o’clock!“ Then each scurries in a different direction to buy gifts for one another. In a thousand years, archeologists piecing together these vignettes of family life in the twilight of the 20th Century will either be utterly baffled, or nod sagely to one another and say, “This explains everything!“ It used to be that when someone stood up to say, “Let’s not forget what these holidays are about,“ there was some novelty to the idea that we needed to be reminded. It was a jolt that actually made us stop and think on ... what these holidays are about. Today it’s just one more in a long list of holiday cliches that we’re all supposed to appreciate with a kind of sardonic chuckle. Well of course we have to remember what these holidays are about, it’s part of the tradition! Just like Dad slipping off the ladder while he’s stringing the Christmas lights on the front of the house, or Aunt Mildred overindulging in the egg nog and getting sloppy under the mistletoe with everyone who passes within reach. Animated TV reindeer with incandescent noses, Jimmy Stewart contemplating suicide, and a solemn moment during a rerun of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” while Linus recites the second chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke. It’s all of a piece. Even when the Peanuts characters decry “commercialism,“ it’s between commercials—touting this or that “perfect holiday gift”—that (ahem) are paying for the cartoon characters’ anti-commercialism sermon. The ending of that Peanuts special was so effective that not only is something like it indispensable to every holiday TV special created since then, but it invaded non-holiday culture as well (part of the novelty of “Seinfeld” was that it never resorted to such an ending), and even the presidency of Bill Clinton seems headed for such a “warm and fuzzy” denouement despite everything. All together now: “AWWWWWWWWWW!!!“ Just a few days ago, America sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, which has become sort of a pre-game show for the Christmas get-together. And as with Christmas, our cultural guardians (the same ones who insisted that “Ellen” was a television event of high cultural significance, but I digress) remind us what it’s really all about: that Thanksgiving “is about giving thanks.“ They don’t say to whom, but they consider themselves so integral these days to the proper functioning of our civilization that perhaps they fear a possible violation of the separation of church and state. They don’t go so far (yet) as to suggest that we’re supposed to give thanks, as the Pilgrims are now supposed to have done, to the Indians who are supposed to have kept them from starving en masse during that first horrible winter. Well, of course most of us know that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks to God—but there’s more to it even than that. Those of us who attend church at least more often than twice a year get opportunities to give thanks to God more often than once a year. Thanksgiving isn’t about giving just any old thanks. It’s not just about counting your blessings and saying, “Hey, God, you done right by me after all! Good show!“ The Pilgrims had been through an ordeal the likes of which only the rarest and most unfortunate 20th-Century American has ever endured. Most of them died during that first winter, not just because of foul weather and disease but because of a disastrous experiment in collectivism, the abandonment of which helped ensure, more than any help from the Indians, the bounty they celebrated the following autumn. What they had survived could easily be regarded as a morality play of straying, privation, repentance and reward, and so they did. Under the circumstances, they were right to do so. The thanks they gave at their harvest feast was a big one, for a gift that they had firsthand reason to appreciate more than ever. More than just about anyone alive today can do. Economically and culturally, our holidays have become cheap—and each year the morals of our civilization become cheaper. Our president has actually set the price of redemption for one of the most fundamental forms of human betrayal, as a few crocodile tears shed in public and a few throwaway comments about private pain, supposedly to make up for all that “private” pleasure. Not that such pleasures have really been private these last few years; even broadcast primetime television has become as explicit as it can be without earning the “hardcore” label. All the more hypocritical then, when the Four Horsemen—Peter, Dan, Tom and Bernie—deplored the “salacious detail” included with Kenneth Starr’s Lewinsky referral. Funny thing about cheapness. It always comes with all those hidden, unexpected, unwanted costs, the ones that don’t hit until much, much later.

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