The Ironic Federalist (#6)

from The Federalist No. 11 (written by Hamilton)

I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America -- that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.

Further reading: "The Arrogant Empire" by Fareed Zakaria (especially "Part IV: The Way to Buck History"), in itself a kind of historical document now.

Know Your (Fascist) Onion

For the second semester in a row, I'm teaching a writing class using depictions of terrorism in film and literature. But this semester has been a rude awakening for me as I realize the shocking lack of knowledge my students have about current and historical events. Just last week, I realized (after asking them) that at least half of my students had never heard of Guantanamo Bay or what the United States has been doing there for the past five years. On another occasion, I found myself having to explain the experiments performed on African-American men at Tuskegee. And last Thursday, a student interrupted my discussion of fascism as it is presented in V for Vendetta. She did not recognize the term.

Most of my students were, I realize with a shiver at my advancing years, only junior high students in 2001. But does that excuse what I can only assume to be a willful ignorance about what has been done in their names in the ensuing five years? It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to dismiss statements such as these, which I read in a student paper this evening:

"Rock and roll didn't come around until Elvis made his first song. Before him was only country music."

"You have to understand that this song [Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."] is saying that we went to war, and committed rape while we were there. These women get pregnant [and] give birth without the father around."

"Vietnam was before my time, but from what I understand we were helping and didn't have to be in that country at all. We were sticking our nose in affairs when we shouldn't have."

All of the preceding statements come from a paper that criticizes the Dixie Chicks for making what the student calls "extremely unpatriotic" statements about George W. Bush. The student concludes:

"I think that people will still take chances [by] making stupid comments in public. . . I feel that bands [giving] their opinions of politics and taking the chance of being 'dixie chicked' [the student's term for having one's career ruined because of negative public reaction to unpatriotic statements] should just shut up and play the music that made them popular."

Here is a student who knows nothing of the background of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (or the history of popular music, especially the kind performed by black folk), who advocates blind patriotism, and would curtail the right of free speech to entertainers. This student's sentiments are not unusual among his classmates, most of whom have (I assume) graduated from high schools in rural areas of the southwestern United States.

But I will give him credit for this: he knows a thing or two about fascism, and is a model student for the next New Order, whose soundtrack will be provided by our Wagner for the 21st century, Elvis Presley.

Books Read in 1986

Ah, for those heady, unfocused days of minimum wage jobs, minimum responsibility, and maximum reading time. I wonder if I will ever be able to read as much again. Maybe retirement. How fucking depressing.

The notebook pages on which I originally kept track of my reading are beginning to fade. I have no memory of the plots of some of these books, including most of the Frederik Pohl novels. But I was reading voraciously, and only occasionally for content.

There is only one more year left in my reading archives, and then I will jump back to 2002 and list the books I have read since then. I know the suspense is maddening, but try to contain yourself.

Total number of pages read (including Doctor Who books not listed): 17,757
Pages read in 1987: 11,496
Pages read in 1988: 9058
Pages read in 1989: 5892
Pages read in 1990: 7743
Pages read in 1991: 4870
Pages read in 1992: 5395
Pages read in 1993: 7568
Pages read in 1994: 4441
Pages read in 1995: 5417
Pages read in 1996: 4268
Pages read in 1997: 6890
Pages read in 1998: 6546
Pages read in 1999: 4324
Pages read in 2000: 8639
Pages read in 2001: 12,542

The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Thinner by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
Night Shift by Stephen King
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Amulet by Michael McDowell
The Auctioneer by Joan Samson
The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven
Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson
The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Black Star Rising by Frederik Pohl
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bearing an Hourglass by Piers Anthony
The Natural by Bernard Malamud
The Many-Colored Land by Julian May
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Days of Grass by Tanith Lee
Demon in the Skull by Frederik Pohl
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The Hampdenshire Wonder by J.D. Beresford
Contact by Carl Sagan
War by Gwynne Dyer
Tom O'Bedlam by Robert Silverberg
Terror by Frederik Pohl
The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl
Glitz by Elmore Leonard
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree, Jr.
SS-GB by Len Deighton
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
Books of Blood, Vol. One by Clive Barker
Doctor Who: The Early Years by Jeremy Bentham
The Inhuman Condition by Clive Barker
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John LeCarre
Herzog by Saul Bellow
The Scarlatti Inheritance by Robert Ludlum

In addition to these titles, I also read 21 Doctor Who novelizations in 1986. I had an elaborate reading system for these novelizations, based on my knowledge of the program's timeline. I would divide my reading of the novels (which averaged about 150 pages each) into the same number of episodes that the actual program contained, reading the equivalent of one "episode" per day. This seemed very important to me at the time. Some years ago, I traded my Doctor Who novelization collection into a used bookstore in Ogden. On my last visit there, most of the novels were still on the shelves. Apparently, I am the only one who loves them. Someday I will return for them, though I doubt I would ever read them again.