SURRENDER TO POLITICS

I thought I could manage a blog that was friendly, substantive and apolitical. That was foolish because I already knew the truth in Gloria Steinem’s now famous line, “Everything personal is political, and everything political is personal.” If you think you know of a fairly important arena of social interaction (or lack of it) that is apolitical—that is, meaningfully without political motivation or consequence—please create an argument that supports your view. Give examples.

Here is a questionnaire. I hope you will actually copy and paste your answers and send them along. I’d be very interested to see them, and I’ll most likely post them here if I receive more than a couple. Otherwise, maybe this is a useful tool for self-diagnosis or talking with friends or adversaries.

Though we might like to think we are as individual (and delicate) as snowflakes, and therefore too complex to be labeled, that is more or less, in general, on the whole, almost certainly, a delusion of grandeur. So listen to your heart and identify yourself politically as:

far left, left, center, right, far right


For each sentence below, provide the number (1 is low, 4 is high) that tells how strongly you agree with the sentence.

White Liberals are motivated by white guilt. 1 2 3 4

White guilt is neurotic and illogical. 1 2 3 4

Minority liberals hope to climb
the socioeconomic ladder the easy way. 1 2 3 4

Advocates for strong unions hope to climb
the socioeconomic ladder the easy way. 1 2 3 4

Liberals have a genuine interest in social justice. 1 2 3 4

Conservatives have a genuine interest in social justice. 1 2 3 4

Compared to Liberals, Conservatives are motivated by greed. 1 2 3 4

Compared to Liberals, Conservatives are more motivated by anger. 1 2 3 4

Conservatives do not care about a level playing field 1 2 3 4
in terms of social or economic justice.

The percentage of Conservatives who were 1 2 3 4
born into the lower or lower middle class
is significantly smaller than the percentage of Liberals.

Conservatives do not try to imagine the lives of those
born into a less empowered situation. 1 2 3 4

Liberals do try to imagine that, or actually were 1 2 3 4
born into a less empowered situation.

I have two or more friends significantly more 1 2 3 4
liberal or conservative than I am.

I have two or more friends whose race or religion 1 2 3 4
is significantly different from mine.
(Methodist vs. Presbyterian is NOT significant;
Methodist vs. Muslim IS significant)

This questionnaire was more fun than not. 1 2 3 4

This questionnaire was somewhat or very useful to me. 1 2 3 4



About leaving comments on this blog: Although I'm seeking conversation or debate in every post, pleasee remember that all visitors own what they say, and your comments are subject to state and federal law.
To leave a comment go to the end of the post and click the underlined word, "comments" or "post a comment." A white box will appear, where you can type in your comment. Below that, click "Name/URL" to leave a name for yourself (if you do not have a Google account).

yellow warbler

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch
Consider beauty a sufficient end . . .

Yeats, "A Prayer for My Daughter" 1921

CITIES AND THEIR TEAMS, revisited

Pic to the left: "Urban Scene"

Here are some random Sunday thoughts, some drifting clouds. Am I the only one who thinks about such things? The city and sports items come from the first Banjo52 post, back in March. I continue to think of those subjects as both fluff and heft, mind candy and soul meat.

Hey, those last metaphors are pretty good, don’t you think? Are they actually mine? As far as I know, they are . . . .

Let's say you can afford a long October weekend in only one of the following cities: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh. Which do you choose and why?

Consider sports as tribalism, or even nationhood. How many of the players have anything in common with you? How many—and who?—would you keep in your tribe? How many of the fans? And in case I need to say it: Why?

Do you care if a pro sports team somehow captures the character of its city? Or is winning the only realistic, reasonable concern? For example, should it be ordained that no matter how good their quarterbacks and receivers are, the Steelers shall be known for linebackers and tough running between the offensive tackles, while it's okay for the Cardinals, Seahawks, or 49ers to be passing teams—flashy and dramatic, frilly and inconsistent? They might as well wear pink.

About leaving comments: Although I'm seeking conversation or debate in every post, I must remind you that all visitors own what they say, and your comments are subject to state and federal law. To leave a comment go to the end of the post and click the underlined word, "comments" or "post a comment." A white box will appear, where you can type in your comment. Below that, click "Name/URL" to leave a name for yourself (if you do not have a Google account).

MORE PICTURE THAN WORDS.

I feel trite being ga ga about cardinals and finches. But why not? Besides, I gave you an owl a few days ago, so be nice.

About leaving comments: Although I'm seeking conversation or debate in every post, I must remind you that all visitors own what they say, and your comments are subject to state and federal law.
To leave a comment go to the end of the post and click the underlined word, "comments" or "post a comment." A white box will appear, where you can type in your comment. Below that, click "Name/URL" to leave a name for yourself.

HELMETS, A CULTURE OF CAUTION. APHORISMS. CAPTIONING CONTEST.

For today's photo, how about the title, "Size Matters."

Moving on . . .

Out my window, a little girl on a plastic Three-Wheeler just pedaled by on the sidewalk, her too-thin mom strolling behind her. The child was wearing a helmet. I cannot logically argue against such caution, yet it saddens me to see it.

Ditto for helmets on adult bicyclers and skateboarders. Double ditto when I see my reflection in the window, my helmet perched like a runt black turtle atop my buffalo-sized head. So much for dignity (which has always been overrated anyway).

To me, all this protection looks silly, unnatural, and wrong, even as I’ve become aware in recent years of the label, “closed-head injury.” It’s brain versus gut, and my gut is bigger.

Conversely, I silently rail at motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets. I expect to see their brains strewn across the pavement, and I resent having to live out my days with that image recurring in my brain.

Also, I expect that I’ll have to deal with the mess in some way. As a former smoker who was often reprimanded for the cost of my habit to other people’s insurance premiums and to taxpayers, I could also raise the issue of what Easy Riders do to my insurance rates and the portion of my taxes dedicated to medical care for the uninsured.

But it’s a pretty morning, and I won’t go there. We all do things that others will have to pay for. Shame on all of us.

Moving on >

According to Webster, an aphorism is a “concise statement of a principle; a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment.” Among the synonyms are: adage, axiom, rule, moral, truism.

Until I read the scholar-poet James Richardson’s book, Vectors a few years ago, I thought of aphorisms as the zippy, phony wisdom on most bumper stickers and fortune cookies. Instead, I’ve learned that there is an ancient tradition of aphorisms as legitimate forms of thought and expression, and Richardson’s own modern formulations are anything but simple (I highly recommend the book).

So in trying to emulate a writer I admire, I’ve come up with a few (dozen) aphorisms of my own. Sometimes I have a hard time staying serious about them. I’ll offer one or two per post for a very short while.

Re: “Daughters and Finches” on June 17:
My beagle can beat up your beagle.
Or, Wisdom is a house of mirrors.


Moving On again >

I’m opening a contest here, a competition for the best caption from any of you for any photograph on this blog (I’m the “photographer” for all the pics).

First Prize is the letter A, for Enormous Satisfaction. Ditto for Second and Third Prizes.


About Visitor Comments:

In every post, I'm looking for conversation or debate. To leave a comment after any of my entries, go to the end of the post and click the underlined word "comments" or "post a comment." A white box will appear for you to type in your comment. For your identity, choose one of the four options. If you do not have a Google account, the best choice is "Name/URL." There, you may create a name for yourself or use your real name. You may click "Anonymous," but complete anonymity makes the conversation much less interesting--how shall someone else address you? Also, complete anonymity might encourage irresponsible remarks, which I'll choose not to publish. Thanks for stopping in at BANJO52.

HISTORY AS HEADLINES and UNKNOWN CITIZENS

In today's paragraphs maybe I'm only adding a random footnote to the conflict between the Great Man theory of history and its opposite, the people’s history. However, it seems worthwhile to revisit the ways we look at past and current events, the ways we do and do not see or talk about certain subjects—ourselves, our heroes, turning points in their history and our own.

If there’s anything like a thesis here, it might be expressed in the conclusion of W. H. Auden’s poem, “The Unknown Citizen.” The lines are also worth re-reading in their own right for their ironic wisdom about regular folks—you and me:

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard

So, our notables in history: were they free? Were they happy? Is the question absurd? And what about the non-notables?

What do ordinary Americans think about today? Do we see ourselves as unknown
citizens? The explosion of blogs, Twitter, My Space (Mine, Mine, Mine—I have space; I have territory; I say who can come in; maybe you'll make the cut, maybe not), Facebook, and Face Lift (oops)—do these forms of communication amount to a need to be known, seen, and understood,especially among the young, perhaps?

And that might relate to history, our reluctance to learn it, or at least to learn from it. We're too busy studying ourselves in various mirrors to care about history, especially a history of ordinary people--after all, we're not ordinary, are we. What could be worse than being ordinary?

Does our our lack of interest in history boil down to this obvious, icky point: as young people, we were, or are, too hyper, horny, and self-centered to care about days of yore, possible explanations of how things came to be the way they are, and where each of us and each culture stand in relation to history's stream of events?

2

But there’s also the fact that for a long while, family, church, and school suppressed unpleasant information and sugar-coated or flag-coated the tales they did tell. It was a good time for the Great Man theory.

Were parents and institutions trying to avoid getting the kids riled up or scared poop-less? In the 1960s and 1970s, television coverage of the U.S. war in Vietnam and our Civil Rights movement took care of that, as mass media came closer than ever to revealing hideous events in almost real time. Mirrors were everywhere. The world refused to let us fail to see ourselves and our culture-- as imperfect and vulnerable, among other features.

I hope it’s old news by now that history courses and polite conversation “back in the day” could be labeled “History as Headlines”—centered on “his-story,” as “told by the winners,” which translated to adventure, invasion, war victories, treaties and politics. Those are probably some of the deficits of The Great Man theory of history.

The day-to-day lives of ordinary people of all stripes weren’t newsworthy. No one seemed to be asking, for example, about the young Americans who were not called to combat in World War II. Nobody asks, "What did you not do in the war, Daddy." Only recently did I hear about the number of non-combat military personnel—the unknown citizen-soldiers—required to sustain one soldier in combat. The figure was somewhere around 16 to 1, and I think I've heard that the ratio was similar during our war in Vietnam. Was it a vacation in the sun? Does no one want to know what life was like for a military mechanic or cook in the Philippines?

On a more everyday, domestic, but still heroic note, TV series like Lonesome Dove and Deadwood were too realistic to appear until fairly recently (they surely would not have appeared in the 1950s). Although there was still some nobility, some heroism hanging around, especially as portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall, who knew that the great American cowboy was so devoted to whores and whiskey? On the other hand, how could we have failed to guess it?



About Visitor Comments: Although I'm seeking conversation or debate in every post, I must remind you that all visitors own what they say, and your comments are subject to state and federal law.

To leave a comment go to the end of the post and click the underlined word, "comments" or "post a comment." A white box will appear, where you can type in your comment.

For your identity, choose one of the four options. If you do not have a Google account, the best choice is "Name/URL." There, you may create a name for yourself or use your real name. You may click "Anonymous," but complete anonymity makes the conversation much less interesting—how shall someone else address you? Also, complete anonymity might encourage irresponsible remarks, which I'll choose not to publish. Thanks for stopping in at BANJO52.