421. Poem: The History Major

Drunk with poetry I urged a friend into the streets quoting the flaming words but he said no that's only half the story and another friend said here's the other half and another friend flaming said no here's the other half and another said right but here's at least a sixth of it you've got to fit in and we were all drunk and fighting like the Irish slamming with words until Pete got the idea of slamming with facts no one fact a small fact just enough to wipe the satisfied look off Arnold's face so he takes it to Victor the history major and Victor says to Arnold no it wasn't the way you say here not in this part of the story and Pete says see but Victor says no it wasn't your way either not quite not here and both say to Victor godalmighty how the hell was it and Victor says complicated too complicated for a poem and seeing their falling faces he says complicated but simple enough in places for me to tell you how it definitely wasn't and Arnold says well that's something and Pete says enough I hope for you to check with Victor before you go shooting off your mouth and Arnold says you too buddy.

420. Poem: Sorry, kid, I'm going gentle.

No matter what you hear rage rage from the crazy Irishman your English prof loves no matter what you hear around caskets oh he was a fighter no matter how many expressions of man's indomitable spirit are held up to you in anthologies Ahab that idiot taking a whale's natural slash personally even cosmically while the instructed hearts of the students go pitty-pat over a man a mere man but our man standing up against a hostile universe while the instructor pale but young and so far from the last intravenous drip beams at the even younger fellows of his noble species I say OK it's a battle and what does a sensible human being do when he contemplates battle a general or a country he figures his chances and if they are very much against him he doesn't fight and what are his chances here zero kid zero so do you expect your old man to fight and go down like an idiot?

419. Post-Hearing Wish List

I wish Christine Blasey Ford had not read "I am terrified" from a script.

I wish Brett Kavanaugh had showed everybody how courts had to look at such a case, seeing it, after all  the convincing, heart-wrenching testimony, after all the coincidence with the great cause of abused women and the tawdry cause of Trump Republicans, as still a she-said-he-said problem, even-steven until somebody could produce corroborating testimony.

I wish that Brett Kavanaugh, if he had to go into his emotional plea, would have waited until after he had ended his judicial analysis with a demonstration that there was no corroborating testimony — to the deed, not to anyone's feelings.

I wish that the prosecutor had held to the one relevant line of questioning, "Does it corroborate or give outside support in any way?"  If, for example, Ford had remembered who the driver was of the car that took her home after she had run down the stairs in distress, that person could have given support to her story  — "Yes, she was in a distressed state."

418. Ian Buruma and the Closing of the American Ear

Jian Ghomeshi, the publication of whose article got the editor of the New York Review of Books fired, agrees with his critics that he was "a world-class prick."  I want to listen to what a world class prick says about his prickhood.  Just as I wanted to hear what a world class pedophile, Humbert Humbert, said about his pedophilia.  I am a grown-up, educated person.

But no, if the moral bullies now riding the crest of feminism have their way, I won't have the chance.  Editors giving me the chance will get fired.  As the editor of the leading feminist journal nearly did for publishing a contrarian article.

What did my open ears hear that might have endangered the cause of sexually harassed and abused women, as good a cause as ever was voiced?  I heard words that showed me how a privileged male thinks, and words that showed me how that very wrong male (as wrong in his eyes as in any) gets wrenched right.  I learned what he does in his shame (curls up in a ball in the dark and contemplates suicide).  I learned how much to trust his words.

Ian Buruma, the fired editor, thought that learning would be good for me, that it would contribute to my, and any educated reader's, always expanding education.  But no, a strong hand covered my ears and a strong arm threw out speakers who might educate me into doubt.

Leaving me one gift: a perfect illustration of Hebraism, the elevation of doing right over seeing clearly.  Buruma paid the price for trying to further Hellenism, elevation of clear-sightedness, in Hebraic times.  It's not often that the meaning of Matthew Arnold's terms is exemplified so clearly.

417. Things Well-Meaning People Have to Avoid Meaning

No, no, Nike, think about what you're putting on the defiant Kaepernick poster.  "Believe in something.  Even if it means sacrificing everything."  Something.  Any damn thing?  Come on. 

Your statement covers the guy who believes that a God who loves him guides his stock market choices.  He sacrifices his savings, his car, his house.   He's under your tent, Nike.

You're like the well-meaning preacher who so believed that "we should love people who are different from us" that she had us rejecting Paul in the Bible.  He made money-making soothsayers, people who had to be distinguished from true prophets, as unlovable as he could.  Made them demons who had to be cast out in Jesus name (Acts 16-19).  But no, said the well-meaning preacher, the demons had to be loved.  They came under the tent of "difference."  (See Post 207.)

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416. Gratitude for Memory

I remember this:

    a maid tipped out water for their hands

from a golden pitcher into a silver bowl,

and set a polished table near at hand;

the larder mistress with her tray of loaves

and savories came, dispensing all her best.

I am looking at this:

young women from the college moving from table to table bringing cake, then ice cream, setting pink punch at the side, and water, "if you want it," bending to hear our feeble answers.

I remember that those serving maids served also their masters' beds, which, if they betrayed, brought death on them from the master, as witness the returned Odysseus's ready noose.

I am looking at women working for degrees in social work or geriatrics, getting a part-time job to help with the tuition, glad to get one that fits their ambition and their instinct to care for the weak

I am remembering where the maids who served Homer's men came from: possession by other men or upbringing in the household after their mothers' possession by other men, the transfer, the post-battle transfer, rendered, for once, from the woman's point of view, the woman bent grieving over the preceding man, feeling "the spear, prodding her back and shoulders."  You're mine now.

I am looking at women who have, or have not, at their choice, taken a lover.

I am remembering a John Manifold poem I loved for another reason, the calm Australian's acceptance of his fate as, with his platoon marching toward their troopship, he sees a girl:

She ran down the stair
A twelve-year-old darling
And laughing and calling
She tossed her bright hair;
Then silent to stare
At the men flowing past her —
There were all she could master
Adoring her there.

It's seldom I'll see
A sweeter or prettier,
I doubt we'll forget her
In two years or three,
And lucky he'll be
She takes for a lover
While we are far over
The treacherous sea.

             

She'll choose the lover.  Not be presented with one determined by her parents (recent past) or by battle (distant past).  Matter-of-factly assumed here, but not noticed until the memory takes in a larger swath of history and literature.  Women's years of being able to choose are so few, so recent!  Seeing that takes a while.  Not many are allowed enough years.

415. Confusion About the National Anthem

When we show respect for the anthem and the flag we are not showing respect for people we are showing respect for laws, the system that protects, among many other things, our right to protest, to peaceably assemble and speak out — as NFL players are doing.

They do this without the risk of being thrown in jail, as in other systems they might.  Here it's just a matter of etiquette where they are legally free not to stand and I am legally free to call it bad manners and confused thinking.

It's a deep kind of confusion with a long history.  Socrates' friends were confused when they wanted him to escape prison because the people who put him there were so wrong.  Socrates won't do it because it would break, and therefore injure, the laws of Athens, which he has enjoyed the benefits of.  Those who convicted him wronged him, made him a victim, as many of our juries do to people, but they were acting within the law, as our juries are.  Socrates patiently shows his friends that he is "not a victim of laws but of men."

As many rightfully aggrieved blacks in our day are.  As, to my understanding, the blacks in Jefferson were.  The laws about police behavior were OK; the still-white police force in a majority black community simply hadn't caught up to them.    

It would be much easier to avoid confusion if the victimized  would avoid the expression "institutionalized racism."  That's a big charge (it takes in our laws), it's much harder to nail down (I have yet to see that done), and it shouldn't be made without specifying the institution and showing how it is racist. Leave it vague and you let careless readers think their victimization is much deeper than it is.  And much harder to end.