Twilight of The American Empire

If anything can be said to characterize this period in the history of the American Empire it is the faint sweet smell of decay, the aroma of something barely nosed out behind the curtains of our public and private lives. It is the way an Empire in decline begins to smell.

As a people we have become spiritually feverish and anxious, only dimly aware (if at all) that we are sick yet, somehow, responding to that half-sensed odor by questing after distraction and emotional excitation. Thus we hide ourselves from the truth.

Americans have never been a particularly introspective people; our thought has always been directed outward, toward the world. We have been engineers, pragmatists. According to the the myths we employ to understand others it is the French to whom we attribute the inward turning of thought: Think Descartes.

When I look about today I can’t help but think of Rome: Bread…circuses… and Caesar’s royal circlet sold to the highest bidder; political destinies sold to the corn merchants.

Some weeks a go a friend looked up from his coffee and after a pause in our conversation said, “There is no honor any more.” Then just a few nights ago someone looked up and asked, “Don’t we care about facts anymore?”

If there is a public life without honor, then action in public life is without limits; and in a public discussion in which facts are less important than emotions, anything you say with conviction becomes true—and chaos ensues.

Emma

Emma Goldman Lives

The Sons of Anarchy started slowly and built a reputation on word-of-mouth until it became a Tuesday night TV powerhouse that rode over even Jay Leno’s ratings.

I’ve been watching the first season on DVD and found it as seductive as any daytime soap opera, with its large cast of characters and complicated relationships all playing out in a basic plot structure that led some wit…possibly French?…to call the show “Hamlet on a Harley.”

SOA belongs to the “bad guys with hearts of gold” school of pop entertainment, and these guys, all members of The Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club, can be pretty bad. Immediate and violent reprisal by fist and gun is their preferred method of conflict resolution.

The ‘hearts of gold’ part is that the brothers are a vigilante group, protecting their town of Charming, California, from being overrun by drug gangs, neo nazis, and rapacious developers.

The club runs a legitimate car and bike repair business and an extensive illegal gun running operation.

And why are the brothers called the Sons of Anarchy? Perhaps the answer lies in a quotation that our hero, Jax Teller, finds in the club founder’s (his father’s) note book. It is from Emma Goldman:

“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property and liberation from the shackles of restraint of government. It stands for social order based on the free grouping of individuals.”

An interesting appearance by an old anarchist in a Fox network show.

For plot summaries and info about the show click here.

Never heard of Emma Goldman? Click here and here.

Still Needed?

Something like twice a year (or is it only once a year?) six pounds of scrap paper are delivered to my front gate in the form of telephone directories. I take the old ones out to the recycle bin and slip the new ones onto the shelf under my desktop.

Six months later I take them out to the recycle bin. I have needed them as much as a moose needs a hat rack. Instead, I use my computer or my cell phone and Google up the info I need. Of course there’s always checking  the on-line version of the telephone book, which I find easier to use  and better organized than the dead tree version.

Time to do away with the dead tree version.

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Thinking about telephone books has reminded me that they were always present (often with the page you needed torn out) in every public telephone booth. Anyone remember public phones? There used to be a public phone booth in every drug store in America, in the back corners of some bars, and in all airports, railroad stations and bus terminals.

They are gone now, of course, as a result of the spread of the cell phone. The disappearance of public phones is what drove me to join the cell phone gang in the first place. Now I am a confirmed addict and devoted texter.

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It occurs to me that back in the day there was an equivalent to the text message—a challenge to say all that you wanted or needed to say in ten words. It was the telegram, and the Western Union messenger was a common figure in office buildings.

Of course the arrival of a Western Union messenger on your front porch was always fraught with either anxiety or eager expectation. Telegrams announced both the great good things and the sorry passings…always more serious (and more expensive) than today’s text messages.