Per my Catholic friends, today is the Feast Day of one of the reasons I love being a medievalist: St. Thomas Aquinas. My firsthand engagement with his work began through my research into the Seven Deadlies, and those Mondovillians who have endured my course in the 7DS will confirm that I remain a fan.
Aquinas is the patron of schools, colleges, and students, and he strikes me as a good friend to have, even if I’m on the far side of the Tiber.
“Got to pay your dues/ If you want to sing the blues/ And you know it don’t come easy.” — R. Starkey.
As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I was born in Nashville, spent my first thirteen years (less six weeks) there, and returned for large portions of my summers until I was 21. My friends and I were in bands pretty much from elementary school on, and all of us still do music in one form or another. I can say the same of the people I hung with in high school and a lot of the folks I knew in undergrad and my first trip through grad school.
Now of all those people, only one does music as his sole means of support. He’s still based in Nashville, and music has not only been his living, it’s meant he’s had a taste of stardom-by-proxy, as he spent a few years in Gretchen “Redneck Woman” Wilson’s band at the height of her career. As for the rest of us, we plug away, weekend warriors, bar banders, and some for whom it’s something close to a second job.
I’d like to gather all those people together, go to New York City, and beat the hell out of Abner and Harper Willis. These two brothers, ages 22 and 25 respectively, are the core of Two Lights, an unsigned indie band, and the authors of one of the more irritating things I’ve read in a while — and remember, I read e-mails in academia.
The brothers have authored a piece for Time, in which they kvetch about how expensive it is to be them — although since Abner is finishing up at NYU (which ain’t cheap) and Harper works part-time as a freelance writer, they seem able (in Dorothy Parker’s words) to keep body and soul apart.
They itemize their (and their parents’) expenses (training since childhood, gear, rehearsal space, performing travel, promo, etc.) and announce they’ve spent about 100 grand chasing their dream of rock stardom. I think my favorite part of their list is this bit:
Living in New York City. Our cousin Abby lives in Atlanta in a house — a house! — with a couple of friends. They pay a third of what we pay for our combined living spaces. New York is absurdly expensive — but the band’s future demands that we live here rather than, say, our hometown in Maine. All told, we estimate that decision costs us an extra $1000 a month. Cost to date: $18,000.
Isn’t that precious? The band’s future demands that they live in an obscenely expensive location — Heaven knows they couldn’t possibly launch a music career from someplace like Iowa or Nebraska or Georgia or Michigan.
But even more charming is their explanation of how easy it used to be to achieve stardom (ellipses in original):
Once upon a time, the suits at the record labels funded the enterprise. Your band would play local clubs in a major city, make a buzz, and an A&R (artists and repertory) guy would sign you and write you a blank check. …These days, you have to build your own following first: Produce music, and prove you can sell it. Then maybe someone will kick in some cash. …Meanwhile, you have to pay your own way.
At this point, the guys with whom I grew up are either laughing hysterically or booking flights to NYC to join in the curbstomping. Had I only known how easy rock stardom was when I was playing in toilets in Lexington, KY and Cincinnati, I’d be typing this from my Gulfstream while singing duets with hookers and eating scrambled eggs off of Wayne Newton’s chest (the drugs would have addled me by now). But alas, my friends and I didn’t know just how good we had it.
Ah, well. As the saying goes, “To be beautiful, one must suffer.” Stay beautiful, Willis brothers.
Stuff I’ve been listening to this week includes:
The Ides Of March — “Life Has Been So Good To Us”. Not the famous one-hit Chicago-based band that did “Vehicle”, this was a snotty teen combo from Essexville, Michigan. I love the earnestness here, and the fact that the band pretty much trainwrecks the start of the second chorus (around 1:55 in), but just keeps going. This fulfills the garage rock motto: “Second takes are for sissies.” Frontman Tim Ward released one album a few years later under the name “Timmothy.”
The Len Price 3 — “Rentacrowd”. This is one of the Spawn’s favorite songs, and a frequent feature on drives to and from school. They hardly bother to file the serial numbers off the Who’s “Substitute”, but that’s part of the charm. These guys don’t just wear their influences on their sleeves; the drummer even looks a bit like Moonie. And no one in the band is named Len Price.
Pearls Before Swine — “Surrealist Waltz”. The final track on their first album, One Nation Underground, this song resonates with me like snatches of Richard Eberhart’s poetry, as wondrously fragile as a glass carousel. Strange, and I think beautiful.
Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic puts in his take on last night’s clip show SotU, and while I don’t go for everything he says, I think he makes an interesting point toward the end. He quotes the President:
All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.
So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.
Friersdorf’s response:
This is deeply wrongheaded.
Yes, we’re bound together as Americans in certain tasks, like defending the homeland and seeing that those who cannot care for themselves are provided with what they need. And there is agreement on certain broad goals: better educated children, safer infrastructure, etc. But a nation of 300 million free people doesn’t share a common purpose, nor should it; government’s role is to facilitate our ability to live as we see fit, not to bind us together like Navy SEALs on a military raid ordered up by our commander-in-chief. This nation is great because it affords such a diverse polity the opportunity to pursue happiness, not because “we built it together.”
(We didn’t in fact build it together.)
How can Obama say that the Bin Laden mission “only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back,” and add, “so it is with America”? It just isn’t that way with America. Lots of people within our polity mistrust one another, as is inevitable; in the post-WWII period of prosperity that Obama earlier invoked, there was segregation and the Red Scare and all manner of Americans short on mutual trust, and while there isn’t anything wrong with calling for less unfounded paranoia, positing that only a trusting nation can succeed fundamentally misunderstands our past and our future.
The strength of our system — the free markets, the best of our regulations, our very culture — is that it brings about progress even if the leader doesn’t himself know what energy investments will pay off; if we maintain the system, we’ll prosper even if the federal government doesn’t adeptly line up the economically efficient community college training program with the right applicant and employer; folks will find jobs even if we never develop the single perfect web site for job searches; we’ll thrive even if our diverse passions and values create mistrust and infighting.
What I hear (and what I suspect Friedersdorf may hear), is the President’s effort to give his agenda a boost by invoking a militaristic solidarity in the name of some “moral equivalent of war”, a term the President didn’t use, but which the rhetoric seems to suggest — call it the emanation of a penumbra, if you like. At this point, I’ll turn to a 2008 column from the Major (Ret.)’s favorite columnist, covering some ground he explores in more detail in his book:
Ever since philosopher William James coined the phrase “moral equivalent of war,” self-described progressives have sought to galvanize the masses for collective purposes. They have loved the idea of war-without-war precisely because they want a public that follows in lockstep and individuals who will sacrifice their personal ambitions for the “greater good.” This is what John Dewey, James’s disciple, called the “social benefits of war.” Dewey, later a famous pacifist, supported WWI because he believed it would usher in an age of collectivism and crush laissez-faire capitalism.
The yearning for a moral equivalent of war is an understandable desire, perhaps even noble in its intent. But it is not democratic. It is fundamentally authoritarian[.]
And indeed, we have here a leader who encourages us to unify under a militaristic, authoritarian model (an interesting inversion of e pluribus unum) for a domestic agenda. What could he use as a symbol? Perhaps a bundle of sticks, which bound together is stronger than any individual stick? Meh… I think it’s been done.
I don’t really think the President is a fascist — but I do think Friedersdorf has a point in the title of his article. I think there are things the President fails to understand about the nature of the American idea. Last night was just the latest example.
… is this 2005 interview with Walter Williams. It’s like a QotD goldmine:
[M]ost people around the world—unfortunately including the United States—have contempt for the principles of personal liberty and private property rights. I think they believe that one person should be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another, and they believe that they have a right through the government to impose their wills on others. So I’m out of step with most people in the world.
or
There is probably no idea that has an older history in human existence than the idea that one group of people ought to be able to control what another group of people do. It’s an idea that accounts for the ugliest parts of human history.
or
[I]f you look through history, government has been the enemy of the people. [...] The evidence of human history shows that government is one of the greatest sources of evil, and so it always makes for a good topic because the essence of government is coercion. The government doesn’t say: Williams, would you please do such and such, would you please refrain from doing such and such? No, no, they say: Well, if you don’t do what we say, we’re going to put you in jail, or ultimately kill you. And that’s the essence of government, including our government.
Go give it a read. It’s old, but not dead.
The prize, of course, is the admiration of the real and virtual Mondoville community. So here you go:
Mickey’s the one on the left.
And a classic from Ace: The Top 10 Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad.
Richard Weaver was once accused of being “a rhetorician attempting to do the work of a philosopher.” By that standard, I may be a medievalist with a background in rhetoric attempting to do that work. Nonetheless:
We all have some amount X of life. When I work, say for Mondoville College, I am selling some portion of that X to the College in exchange for compensation (some financial, some psychic, and some [I hope] spiritual). When the government lays claim to some of that compensation in the form of taxes, it is therefore taking possession of a portion of my life (as expressed via the medium of money). Insofar as these taxes pay for things I want and/or need (the U.S. Army, for example), it’s a fair (or at least acceptable) trade. However, when those taxes are spent on stuff like loan guarantees to Solyndra or funneling guns to narcoterrorists, my labor (and by extension, my life) is being directed into service against my will. At that point, a question of self-ownership comes into play. (It’s my understanding that the government has skirted this question through the fiction that I can assume my taxes are going to buy nukes, while someone else — say, the Major (Ret.) — is paying for Obamacare. But of course, this is a fiction.)
Question: How, then, is the government’s determination of how much money it is appropriate for me to own/accumulate/surrender to the government that different from the government’s determination of, say, what is appropriate sexual behavior between consenting adults? That is, is there a real difference between what we might call personal rights and economic rights, in that both are based on a principle of self-ownership?
So, as I was taking the Spawn to school this morning, my car decided it had had enough. The brake and battery lights came on, and the car died at a stoplight. I put it in neutral and coasted backwards into a gas station parking lot.
As I was calling Mrs. M, a colleague who happened to be driving to work saw us, and graciously took the Spawn to the institutional learning facility. Meanwhile, as I figured it was poor form to block the entry to the gas station, one of the local citizens and I pushed the car across the crown of the street to coast into a much larger parking lot, where it now sits. (As a side note, my back was already twingy and spasmed some last night. After all the car pushing, I can already feel it tightening up — my back, not the car.)
Mrs. M showed up and brought me to the office, where I called the local garage guys, who will be calling me to arrange the pickup of my keys here so that they can get my car at the parking lot, take it to the garage, and fix what I suspect is an electrical problem. Fortunately, my house is a mere 4-minute walk from the office, so getting home won’t be a problem. Meanwhile, Mrs. M will fetch the Spawn this afternoon. My survey classes get a two-day reprieve from discussing Wordsworth’s Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads.
And while all this proves to be a pain in the back (and somewhat lower regions), it also reminds me of some of the good stuff about Mondoville life. The college and the community are small enough that you can count on someone who knows you showing up most of the time, and they’re willing to help — so thanks to my colleague, who was a blessing. But it’s also a place where people who don’t know you — like the fellow at the gas station — volunteer to give you a hand when you need one. Mondoville doesn’t have a movie theater or an Indian restaurant — I have to go to Real City for those — but it has people who’ll help you without being asked, whether they know you or not, and that makes up for a lot of trips for curry.
Because I’m a klutz, I’m a lousy pool player. I know this, however, so I’ve adopted an old saying of an old college friend, who said, “The objective of pool isn’t to win, but to look cool why you play.” But I still lose — and if I played for money, I think there’s little less cool than forking your cash over to the winner. I think that may be at the heart of the current GOP upheaval.
The Major (Ret.) tweeted a little while ago:
I’m rooting 4 Gingrich now (previously 4 Mitt)-Must say I’m pretty pleased w/ choice between moderate Mormon & guy Obama will trounce in GE.
It’s that last part that interests me. I’m interested in how many of my colleagues on the right seem to think that the object of the 2012 election is to win debates — particularly an as-yet-unarranged series of debates between (ostensibly) Newt Gingrich and the President.
I’m less than thrilled by that prospect, myself. You see, what I want is for Obama to get fired. Embarrassing him in a series of debates would be nice, and might help in the service of my larger goal, but it isn’t in itself sufficient. On top of that, aren’t the Gingrich debate cheerleaders presupposing that the President will cheerily acquiesce to (theoretically) getting embarrassed repeatedly? This isn’t pro wrestling — Gingrich can’t burst into the Oval Office with a folding chair while screaming that he wants to face the president in the Omni. (And if Obama were to pass on some proposed debates, I suspect that the cries of cowardice would be drowned out by the sound of people settling down to watch Big Bang Theory without worrying about its being rescheduled.)
Again, I think we’d do well to remember the example of 1964. Barry Goldwater was both a passionate, articulate defender of conservatism and a man without Mr. Gingrich’s personal history. His ideas went on to influence numerous stalwarts of the right. However, he got his head kicked in, and none of those stalwarts have been able to repair the damage LBJ did with his Great Society. That’s not a performance I wish to see repeated.
And that brings me to my point. The prospect of a second Obama term fills me with dread, as I think it might put us irretrievably further toward euro-style social democracy and a nanny state. I’m not interested in whether a candidate is impressing a blogosphere concerned with debater’s flash and inside-baseball point-scoring. I’m much more interested in seeing the GOP field a candidate who doesn’t appall enough of the electorate to buy us four more years of President Zero. I’d much prefer an ugly win to an inspirational loss — even if I could look cool while losing.
A few minutes ago, commenter Dave S. pointed me toward Adam Davidson’s striking article in the Atlantic that examines what we sometimes mistakenly call the decline in American manufacturing. In fact, what we mean is a decline in jobs for Americans in the manufacturing sector, and that decline, Davidson discovers, has happened for very good reasons: because of machine-related increases in productivity and the market’s pressures on manufacturers, there are fewer opportunities for relatively unskilled workers, and the definition of “relatively unskilled” is far broader than we might imagine.
Much of the article is set at an auto parts plant about an hour from Mondoville, and it follows a couple of workers, one skilled (in the terms of the manufacturer), and one less so. Both are hard workers, bright, highly motivated, and eager to do what they could to advance themselves. However, a key difference is educational — the unskilled laborer is a mother, and is unable to take the classes that might help her rise to a more secure position. Davidson notes that, and observes that both Democrats and Republicans support subsidized job training an similar programs.
But my question is darker. Even if we assumed everyone is as motivated as the workers in the article (a false assumption, but that merely furthers my point), they aren’t all as bright or as capable, as much as we might like to pretend they are. As Davidson observes:
In older factories and, before them, on the farm, there were opportunities for almost everybody: the bright and the slow, the sociable and the awkward, the people with children and those without. All came to work unskilled, at first, and then slowly learned things, on the job, that made them more valuable.
But we see — both in Davidson’s article and in the world around us — this path has become illusory. Just as tools that were once good enough no longer are, or are replaced by more efficient machines, so it seems that many workers are becoming obsolete as well. And those newer machines and more efficient ways of working free the rest of us to do the things we do; after all, because I’m not a subsistence farmer, I have time to read, write, and teach. But a human being — even a lazy one, even an uneducable one — is not a tool. What is the future for an obsolete human being?
