Occasionally, I give up on certain things actually making it to print publication. That does not mean I’m not proud of those particular works, but, because they’re too obscure or interesting or whatever, the print journals all pass on them.
And, if they’re not satirical either, I’m sort of at a loss as to what to do with them, and they end up sitting in my desk drawer collecting errant cat fur.
So I’ve decided to blog a select few, just to annoy virtual passers by and jostle, if not stoke, the few remaining embers of an ego I have left. Here’s the first:
Hot Rod
“What we came to understand
of what the Russians wanted
was to do it themselves,
to build up their own economies
and schools, their own tractors
and farms. Like the old days
only better.†So said Ron,
my friend from the State Depart-
ment. He’d been a junior staffer
before he found The Lord. He
said “I’d like to think I’m
a little like them,†as he
pulled the intake off an old
flathead Ford. The Offenhauser
looked light in his hands. He’d
been a Baptist minister awhile, by
the time he gave it up too at 35:
“Apparatchik,†described his time
there, “a marketeer for God,
a propagandist.†Ron snorted.
The wrinkles had begun to show
on his temples, pointing to ashen
hair. Now he runs a shop, turns
wrenches: “There’s a soul even
in a machine.†The Jesus-fish
hangs still over his shop door:
“To set the Faithful at ease.â€
This was his ride, a purple
Deuce Coupe, a retro-rod. He
found it sitting in a barn,
where it had been for 40 years.
He took it home. “Listen,â€
he said, and the crows caws
bounced off the toolshed. “That’s
God calling.â€
–Lael Ewy
We can think of war as a highly ritualized form of human sacrifice.
The justifications for war are, as often as not, as far-fetched and fanciful as those put forth by past cultures for the ritual killing of virgins or criminals, daughters or sons. Whereas human sacrifice used to be practiced to assure good harvests or keep volcanoes from erupting or otherwise appease the gods, modern warfare sacrifices humans, many of them perfectly innocent, for the sake of such abstractions as “justice” or “freedom” or even “communism” or “capitalism.” There is just as much scientific evidence that modern warfare achieves these ends as that the ancient rites achieved theirs.
In fact, by waging a “war against terror” in Iraq, the U.S. appears to be making the situation worse by creating more terrorists and more anger and hostility worldwide. In an attempt to explain the seeming lack of a connection between the wars we wage and the goals we seek, skeptics come up with more practical suggestions: we’re in Iraq to secure future oil reserves, or we fought in Vietnam to somehow colonize the region. These explanations, while seemingly good ones given historical precedent, fit neither the rhetoric nor the facts. As in Saudi Arabia, an alliance with a dictatorial power is actually quite a bit better for securing oil supplies than self-rule, which could bring to power officials who are not quite so enamored of American policy. Dictators, as a rule, can be bought or curried-favor to, as the U.S. did with Saddam Hussein himself while he waged war with Iran in the 1980s. Democracies are subject to the vagaries of public opinion.
Likewise, actually owning a backward and war torn nation in Southeast Asia would have merely been a burden. The Vietnam war has the distinction of being one of the only wars fought over a theory, even more than it was fought over an ideology. That the “domino theory” of the International Communist Conspiracy completely failed to materialize and Soviet-style communism more or less collapsed under its own weight is beside the point. We went to war in order to serve our faith in the theory. We “bomb[ed] them into the stone age” with equally outmoded notions of what needed to be sacrificed (people) for our theory to adhere.
Nazism is both the most clich̩d and the most clear-cut of these cases. With few pretexts other than a nationalism pursued with a religious zeal, Nazi Germany proved that the most pure form of warfare, and the most systematic genocide yet attempted, fit neatly into the notion of ritualized brutality and murder. It may just be that ideologies themselves, and dogmas even more, require ritualized human sacrifice to prove their worth. This can come either in the form of martyrdom (Jesus being the archetype here, but many religions and political movements boast at least one or two) or those sacrificed fighting either for or against the cause. If the war is lost, those who died sanctify the cause with their blood. If the war is won, those enemies killed in its waging serve to prove the cause was blessed or spiritually justified to begin with Рif god were not on our side, how could we have won? The story of Jericho from the Judeo-Christian tradition is a good example of the latter, in which god is depicted as reinforcing the chosen-ness of the nation of Israel by its victory and by the completeness with which the enemy allowed itself to be destroyed.
The ritualization of war as human sacrifice extends into its accouterments, with the traditions of parades and medals, uniforms and strict codes of behavior and rank. This is reflected back into the non-warrior classes through yellow ribbons or gold stars or, more recently, military fatigues as fashion statements. Even declarations of war are occasions for ceremony: although the modern presidency has virtually unlimited power to wage war, a blessing from Congress is sought to make war “official.” The ritual of civilian approval, even though technically no longer necessary, still serves to justify mass killing through proxy social approval. Poll numbers are far more important in a practical sense, however, and lately they have indicated a vast and deep desire for this particular form of human sacrifice. If we cannot for one reason or another actually die ourselves for our cause, we can certainly apotheosize those we choose to die for us.
Thought of this way, the most important question to ask about war is not whether or not it achieves any kind of military goal, but whether or not it meets its social and/or spiritual end. War practiced as ritual human sacrifice need not lead to victory, nor capture or defeat a foe, as long as the culture that wages it feels somehow cleansed by the blood spilled.
After reading Lewis Thomas’s wonderful essay from 1974 called “The Technology of Medicine,” I have come to the disturbing realization that perhaps health care costs are rising out of control because the medical industry simply does not want them under control. As long as insurance picks up the bill, health care providers have little interest in capping costs. More telling, as Thomas points out, basic research into the causes of disease often leads to relatively cheap treatments and cures. Too many cheap alternatives would destroy the health care business, so there’s little incentive even to do that.
Thomas presents the now-alarming example of how antibiotics that targeted tuberculosis shut TB hospitals down. In 1974, this was still considered a good thing, but can you imagine that happening now? The health care lobby would scream. My home town, a city of about 300,000 people, has several hospitals that provide award-winning cardiac care. But it is also home to a private, for profit cardiac specialty hospital. With the price of the average bypass at about $80,000, you can imagine how much the for-profit hospitals would stand to lose from a cheap and effective treatment for coronary artery disease.
Basic research has big initial costs too, of course, and part of the reason nobody but cheritable organizations like the American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society want to fund it is that there is little immediate payoff. The market model makes R&D, especially “R,” a bad bet since markets figure success a quarter at a time and not over the course of years or decades. But if Thomas’s thesis has any merit, and treatments that go to the cause of disease tend to be fairly chep in the long run, then there’s even less reason for the health care industry to pursue basic research into the origins of illness since it counters their goals of making a profit.
We can see this directly in this fall’s flu vaccines crisis. Flu vaccines are relatively expensive to make, but are, more importantly, a one-shot-a-year proposition. Unlike Viagra, the use of which depends on the mood of the male user – and, let’s face it, males will use it every chance they can get – or Celebrex, which is used to treat chronic pain, or the many cholesterol-lowering drugs out there, which may be used over the course of 15 or 20 years, a measly little vaccine does not garner many dollars. So those who still make them only make just enough for the expected demand, and if any becomes contaminated, as happened to Chiron, the needs of thousands of potential flu sufferers will not be met.
The case gets somewhat more complicated when politics enter the picture. Will politicians that receive substantial donations from the health care industry or get attention from their lobbyists be willing to move toward more basic research when it may substantially lower the profits of that industry? And with Senate leader Bill Frist’s deep ties to the health care business, how can we expect any movement toward cheaper, more caused-based treatments? When profits are so tied to expensive measures that fail to treat the origins of disease, the cost of medical care has nowhere to go but up.
When I think about the possibilities of sin and transgression, I often think of women’s underwear. Panties, to be exact, and generally not the sexy kind they sell at Frederick’s or Victoria’s Secret. I’m talking about good old fashioned white cotton ones, or maybe some sportier-looking Jockeys.
By the time we reach the level of Merry Widows and bustiers and garters and stockings and such, we’ve pretty much gone beyond everyday sin and gotten into the rarefied air of decadence, or, as likely, into the less frowned-upon regions of the middle-aged married trying to spice things up.
Maybe my fantasy life is just too darn practical, though that’s probably not the case: threesomes are generally not practical. But it seems to me that the chance encounter, the real, passionate, out-of-control sinnin’, is more likely to occur when “date†underwear is not planned for, when the black, lacy number is still in the bottom of the drawer.
Now, I like a fancy get-up as much as the next person, the four-or five-fold ramping up of desire as all the belts and straps are loosened, the sensual sound of silk or satin sliding free from flesh. I’m no Elvis in his later years, only able to get off by peeks of white-cotton beneath cheerleader outfits, fixated on bobby-sox and idealized nubility. I’m much more likely to get my nut off over a slightly zaftig secretary in her mid-30s than a pop-star Lolita.
But what secretary would wear her leopard-print bra to work unless she was expecting some action anyway – and where’s the fun in that?
Sin, I suppose, is over rated as an incentive just as much as it’s over rated as a disincentive. But we’ve always been of two collective minds about it. Part of the problem is, of course, Puritanism, which is hopelessly confused on its stance about sin, redemption, forgiveness, and faith, or at least faith as a means of salvation. Rejecting Catholicism, with its insistence on sacraments and confessions and, most importantly, 10% of your income, Protestant Puritans would seem to favor works; that is to say, they would seem to favor a metaphysics in which what one does to be holy and good (or doesn’t do in the case of sexual transgression) is more important than if one has grace or faith. The former is perfomative, the latter a state of being.
Catholicism allowed works to make up for a lack of grace. So if you went around sinning, you could confess to a priest and were given spiritual tasks like saying Hail Marys and praying the rosary to absolve yourself. Or back in the old days you were charged tithes or indulgences to pay your way out. Pretty slick: The Church gets the involvement of its members (and cash on the barrelhead) and the sinners get clean consciences.
Of course I’m way oversimplifying things, and of course you shouldn’t have been sinning in the first place. But when the Reformation threw that all into question, it also messed with our fundamental ideas about how you get to Heaven and how you get forgiven. The Puritans contended that that was all up to God: if you had grace, you were among The Elect, and if you were among The Elect, you would necessarily do good works. If you weren’t, you probably wouldn’t. Your best bet to save yourself was to repent and hope God had mercy on your poor, wretched, disgusting soul. There was no priest to absolve you of sin, no spiritual task to keep you out of Hell. It was all up to a God who in the Old Testament proved Himself to be wrathful and jealous beyond the norm.
There’s not much room here for screwing up, and certainly not much room for human frailty. Sin meant not just that you were human, but that you may not be among the Blessed, and if you slipped once or twice – well, what does that say about you?
The heavy Puritan influence on our culture has served to make temptation pretty honking problematic. Since we are all tempted, since we all sin in our hearts, the salvation of each of us is in our minds seriously in doubt. Our Quixotically human response is to either tie ourselves so tightly in the fetters of righteousness that our lives are pure misery or to just give up and be the sinners we know ourselves to be.
It’s no wonder, then, that here in the so-called “red†states we have a higher rate of divorce than in the more liberal “blue†states. The Bible-thumping inhabitants of America’s heartland are fundamentally (all puns intended) schizoid about their sexuality. Either redeemed or iniquitous, they can’t settle into the comfortable imperfection that goes with less rigid notions of sin; they can’t forgive themselves or their partners for a wandering eye, and they can’t deal with temptation honestly enough to not let it creep into married life.
In my secretary fantasy, part of the pleasure is in the social transgression of anonymous sex with a virtual stranger in an inappropriate setting. And part of the pleasure is the moral transgression of anonymous sex with a virtual stranger in an inappropriate setting. By allowing myself the fantasy and contending honestly with the guilt, I have, perhaps, a better chance of never actually acting on my impulses. And by understanding them as impulses, perhaps I am able to see myself as more fully human: flawed, yet capable and worthy of forgiveness.
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