Bells are Ringing

One of the many pleasures I enjoy while sitting on my back porch (among now-struggling herbs and tomatoes, undoubtedly deceived by the last gasp of Indian Summer, which is supposed to come to a thundering close in the next day or so, according to the weather gurus) is the sound of church bells at various times of the day. And I've gotten pretty good at identifying, when conditions are right, which bells from which church are ringing at any given moment – the ones across the valley and the ones up the road being the most prominent. I might add that in this, perhaps the most unabashedly Catholic city in the country, all of the bells are rung (or broadcast, if electronic) by Catholic churches as far as I know, although I also have to add that the Episcopalians are no slouches in this matter, if one includes the change ringing at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – a bit of tradition in a Gothic edifice more often given over to secular humanism. (This custom persists much to the delight of traditionalists and aesthetes alike, and undoubtedly much to the dismay of the neighbors on “Cathedral Hill”, although I have yet to hear of anyone dropping a dime and complaining to the D.C. Noise Ordinance Ministry.) Well, holiness is where you find it, even if it is inadvertent.

It happened again today (Oct. 14), under a cloudless sky with the temperature topping 80 degrees, on the centennial plus one day of the Dance of the Sun in Fatima, Portugal. And what is the message of the bells? Because, like the rain, the sound of the bells falls upon the just and the unjust alike. It is, among other things, a way of asserting not only the presence of believers but of belief itself -- the reality of the spiritual dimension of life – a dimension that is typically lost in the daily shuffle of politics, controversy, and the endless struggle between belief in God and belief in “ideas” -- the latter based on the premise that the observable world is all that there is, and all that is worthy of our concern. The message of the bells is: “No, wait! There is something more.” -- and as that master lyricist Jon Hendricks, who set words to countless Count Basie classics, inscribed on my ancient LP jacket a few years back, “Short Jazz Poem: 'Listen!'”

Another way of putting it is that it represents hope in the midst of chaos – and of uncertainty and despair. For the secular/materialist/humanist project which has been in full swing since at least as far back as the French Revolution, while it seems to have a goal – it is “progressive”, after all – is ultimately a recipe for frustration. The perfectibility of man and of society is a will-o'-the-wisp in a fallen world, and those who pursue it are on a fool's errand. And this is not to say that life cannot be made better in the material sense, through advances in medicine, nutrition, technology, and the whole panoply of things that constitute “progress”. But small, incremental advances are not enough for those whose entire world view is limited to the material, and who see man as, basically, a small, insignificant creature scuttling around between “the sky above and the mud below”, to borrow the title of a French documentary film from 1961. The premise seems to be that “progress” -- whatever that means – will free humankind from the fetters of mere earthly existence, and create a new man, and even a new species. In this is their hope, and in this they trust – and no skepticism or gainsaying will divert them from their course, which inevitably requires more control, more pigeonholing, and ultimately totalitarianism and tyranny. To save the human race from itself requires, basically, the abolition of humanity, starting with the human spirit, which is inexplicably attracted to what Freud called illusions – religion, faith, belief in the unseen.

And it's not even just about bells. Two years ago, on a trip to the Near East, I stayed a few days in Bethlehem, a holy city for Christians which is populated mainly by Muslims and under the watchful eye of Jews – thus, the uneasy dynamics among the “People of the Book”. At certain times of the day the Muslim call to prayer could be heard coming from a nearby minaret – amplified, no doubt, but nonetheless having an ancient and alien (to me) sound. It would start as a kind of low rumble, and I was uncertain, at first, what it was or where it was coming from. But then it became clear that it was, in a sense, the equivalent of church bells in the Christian world. It was, again, a kind of assertion; in a place of so much strife the spiritual was not only real, but paramount.

It is said that bells serve to drive the Devil away. But even he is capable of “cultural appropriation”, as witness the AC/DC classic “Hell's Bells”. So bells are a marker – for good or ill. They tell you that that there is more to “reality” than what simply meets the eye or tantalizes the senses... that something's up... that the day of reckoning is at hand (even if “at hand” in cosmic time still means many millennia in our time). But they can also be reassuring -- an intervention of sorts into our oft-dreary material existence. For without them, what would be left to get our attention? If I lived in a place where bells could not be heard I would feel that something had been lost – that a cosmic alarm clock had been silenced because humanity had been reprobated and given up to its fate.

Statuary Rape

It's a truism – but true, nonetheless – that the most dangerous enemy is one that has nothing to lose. The Confederacy was – and continues to be – a defeated nation. And “nation” is what it was; let's not quibble about that. It did exist, for four short years, and the Civil War, AKA The War Between the States, was not so much a “civil war” as a war between nations. Why do we call the South “rebels” but accept without question all of the other “separatist” movements and their resulting nations (think: South Sudan) as perfectly reasonable historical events? Why are we not exerting pressure on Russia to do something to “preserve the (Soviet) union”? (Heaven knows, they'd like to, and they have, in fact, made moves in that direction.) Why do we not wax nostalgic about the long-lost glory days of Yugoslavia? And how did we manage to let Czechoslovakia break in half after all the effort we went to to unite the Czechs and the Slovaks? And why aren't we all over England's case when it comes to Scotland and Wales? And so on.

But as William Faulkner said in so many words, to a Southerner the Civil War is not so much history as current events. Because the battle rages on, and in our time the battle is heating up again, for the umpteenth time. For the inconvenient truth is that defeated nations do, in fact survive – culturally and in spirit at least, as well as politically, and even economically.

The lesson is that winning is not always winning, and losing is not always losing. In the long, or very long, run, surprising things happen. The Ottoman Empire was supposedly reduced to a faint memory after World War I, and yet here we are nearly 100 years later dealing with an alleged caliphate in the form of ISIS. The intrusions of Islam into Europe were turned back by events like the Battle of Vienna (1683 – again, current events) but the descendants of the Ottoman forces are now flooding into Europe (and the U.S.), propelled by not only economic forces but by sheer demographics, i.e. “population pressure”. It turns out that people who are willing to reproduce beyond their “replacement numbers” can, in fact, not only come back to life but constitute a dominant force – and it doesn't have to be about sheer firepower. Turkey was once termed “the sick man of Europe”, but it has now become a freeway for a “soft invasion” of countries which can now be called “sick”, simply because of their lack of political and spiritual willingness to survive. They contracept and abort, and the Moslems just keep having kids. The term “suicide” for what's happening in Europe is not too strong.

Call it what you will – invasion, immigration, migration, whatever – the point is that the powers that be – the global elite with their headquarters in Western Europe – are now reduced to hunkering down in their ancient stone fortresses (or Brussels highrises) while the Moslems take over large sections of their large (and not so large) cities. And all of the traditions and cultural history of Western Europe are turning out to be no match for this human wave; what's remarkable is that what is happening now didn't happen sooner.

Likewise, we are experiencing our own human wave, namely that from Latin America. But no one ever asks, why now? Why not sooner? After all, Latin America has always been there – or at least since the time of Columbus. And there have always been, if you'll pardon the expression, “wetbacks” who have braved the mighty waters of the Rio Grande in order to gain a foothold in the Southwest, and reclaim what was lost in the Mexican War. So why this sudden flood of humanity? The answers, of course, are many – and debatable. Economics, of course, is at the top of the list (no, not “ideas” or “freedom” in general) – people looking for “opportunity”, but also fleeing violence and chaos in their home countries – much of which can be attributed to “drugs”. But why are “drugs” such a big deal all of a sudden? Well, where are these drugs headed? Who are the customers... the buyers? Americans, of course, and everyone wants a piece of that ever-expanding pie. And it's not just about the cities, or about the “inner cities”; the Middle South is becoming a wasteland of drug addiction, with opioids replacing moonshine as the substance of choice. And what is addiction, after all, but an expression of despair – and the more dominant the drug culture becomes, the deeper the despair becomes. But what causes, or at least contributes mightily, to despair? Hopelessness... alienation... desperation... a feeling of being left out, of having been bypassed on the road to high-tech Utopia. When an individual is declared a non-person, or a group is declared “deplorables”, they tend to act accordingly, unless they have sufficient resources and self-esteem to overcome bigotry and persecution by the ruling elite. People are highly suggestible, after all – especially in the aggregate. Pronounce a given group “victims” often enough and they start to agree with you, and think of themselves as victims; this is the essence of victimology – the politics of division, of divide-and-conquer. The East and West Coasts sit fat and happy while the heartland appears helpless and depressed. You don't need outright cultural genocide to get this effect; the gradual erosion of identity and self-respect is enough. The Middle South is the inner city writ large, but with different skin tones.

To draw a bright line between the Civil War, and its aftermath, and the current pathologies of the American South is to oversimplify, certainly. And yet the South's own spokesmen over the years – think not only Faulkner but Tennessee Williams, and many others – were perfectly willing to draw a line of this sort, if only indirectly by implication. Ever since the conclusion of “the late unpleasantness” -- which was anything but a “conclusion”, but only the start of a new stage – the South has been on the defensive – politically, economically, and culturally. Much has been made of “the New South”, where, thanks to migration from the North (not to mention air conditioning) the South has remade itself into a respectable ally in the inevitable drive toward a socialist paradise, where (to paraphrase St. Paul) there is no South vs. North, no black vs. white, no rural vs. urban – where we are all united in the ongoing pursuit of American exceptionalism and hegemony. (An interesting sidebar to all of this is that the U.S. military, particularly the Army, is still, in many ways, a Southern institution, thanks to a military tradition that predates the Civil War but that persists, nonetheless, to the present day.)

But the truth is far different, as we are, once again, seeing. It's no longer simply a matter of racial integration – that battle was won in the courts a couple of generations back, and eventually “hearts and minds” followed suit, by and large (or the older generation died out, which has the same effect). Economically, the South and the North are joined as never before; you don't have to go through customs to travel on an odd-numbered interstate highway in either direction. Politically, it can be argued that the South has, at various times, more or less taken over Congress, not to mention the presidency, which has been blessed (ahem) with a sorry gaggle of Southern governors and other politicians (LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and Bush II).

But what is it that has stood fast, and has remained as the last redoubt of Southern pride? Tradition, basically (cue Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof”). And what constitutes that tradition? Patriotism, but of an odd sort – the patriotism of a defeated nation, and of those who identify and express solidarity with it, for whatever reasons. And it's precisely because they were defeated – and defamed, mainly but not exclusively because of slavery – that this patriotism, this pride, has survived pretty much intact up to the present day. “The love that dare not speak its name” has become the love of, and pride in, place -- “blood and soil” -- something the perpetually restless and money-grubbing North cannot fathom. And it's not as if the North doesn't have these things; they just don't put much stake in them. For Northerners (of which I am one, by the way) it is enough to seek one's fortune wherever the odds favor it; “place” is secondary, and “blood” is strictly forbidden as a source of anything honorable. So we have a “nation” of, basically, (1) perpetual gypsies and migrants ever on the quest for the almighty dollar, and (2) people for whom the land -- “place” -- is everything, which explains why they persist in staying in “poverty pockets” in the Appalachians and elsewhere. Poor land is still land, whereas you can't grow corn or raise pigs in a stock portfolio or bank account.

So there is a profound lack of understanding, not to mention empathy, between the two – a lack that no politician or national leader has yet managed to remedy. (And yes, that includes Southern presidents.)

(It bears mentioning that the location of the nation's capital was chosen explicitly as a meeting place between North and South – the idea being that, with that strong a symbol, the two preexisting cultures would there find common ground. And this was, needless to say, generations before warfare broke out between the two.  And I have always found it amusing that while Washington, D.C. was firmly in the North – and well-defended – Alexandria, Virginia was firmly in the South, just a few miles down what is now U.S. 1. Yes, there were forts between D.C. and Alexandria, the sites of which remain, in many cases – unless they've been obliterated by housing developments.)

So, yes – the Old South is truly “gone with the wind”, and the Confederacy is the Lost Cause. No one can realistically argue about that. However, it is one thing to declare peace and work for reconciliation, and another to drive a stake into the heart of the losing nation/society/culture. The North, AKA the U.S., AKA the preserved Union, was at least smart enough to leave the South with its memories, its pride, and its icons – military and political. There was considerable tolerance for the remaining symbols of the South as well – flags in particular. (And what is it about flags? Well, that's a discussion for another time.) We could all chuckle indulgently when someone said, at least half in jest, “Save your Confederate money, boys, 'cause the South will rise again!” And – unless I'm sadly mistaken -- “Dixie” was a permitted song in music class in my (New York state) public school, because... well, it was historic, after all. In fact, if memory serves, we even had a perfectly courteous North/South debate in junior high social studies class. Try that these days! You'd have a SWAT team breaking the door down in five minutes, followed by an army of social workers, grief counselors, and facilitators toting teddy bears and Play-Doh.

The fact remains that for believers in the Lost Cause, just about all they have left is iconography, the first and foremost of which is – you guessed it – statuary. It's the only tangible, and public, record of that which was, is not, and is never more to be – of a dream that died. Now, we can debate all day and into the night as to whether slavery was an essential element of antebellum Southern culture. It was certainly key to the Southern economy, no doubt – and a major factor in politics, especially on the national level, where Southern legislators had to trek to Washington and be beat over the head on a regular basis by the abolitionists. But I'm talking about culture here – about the self-image of a people... a highly complex matter that includes, yes, “blood and soil”, but also traditions from whatever source, customs, approaches to government (recall that the Confederacy was much more libertarian than the Union, even at that time, not to mention ever since), religion (and yes, the South had a different mix of denominations then, as it continues to have – possibly the most stable remnant of former times), dress, manners, class structure... you name it. The South was another country then, not only literally for four years, but figuratively – as it continues to be, but only in the pale, ghostly remnants that Tennessee Williams was so fond of putting on stage. The Middle South – the “border states” -- were a kind of hybrid in many ways, as I found out when I lived in Missouri for a few years. And as such, they had, and continue to have, a kind of identity crisis – and it bears noting that many contemporary dysfunctions (like opioid addiction) seem to have inflicted the Middle South much more severely than the Deep South. One might say that anyone born and raised in the Deep South is a Southerner, without a doubt – whereas a person born and raised in the Middle South has a choice. They can adopt, and immerse themselves in, the Southern way of life (such as it remains in an increasingly cosmopolitan, rootless society), or they can be more like Midwesterners, or even Westerners; the choice is theirs. But with that choice comes, potentially, disorientation, and a frustrated search for identity.

But to have, or adopt, the “Southern” point of view is not simply a matter of geography, either. Witness the fact that there are “country-western” radio stations in every state of the union; this is, among other things, Southern pride asserting itself wherever its proponents may be, and in public, no less – and in a forum that the Regime seems indifferent to (the same way they don't harass NASCAR about its “carbon footprint”). And of course “Southern” also correlates highly with “Scotch-Irish”, with the Appalachians, and with – dare I say it? -- being white. So to celebrate, or take pride in, being of the South, and to memorialize the Confederacy and its key figures, is pretty much automatically to express white pride, if not outright white supremacy (or at least wishing for it). And white pride is something that must be banned, banished, crushed, and stamped out at all costs, according to the masters of the political, media, and entertainment universes. Southerners have to be kept on as the butt of jokes and satire, but to take them seriously would be a great breach of P. C. etiquette.

And after all, since when do we allow the losing side in any war to celebrate... anything? Do we allow aging Nazis to chant the Horst Wessel Song with weak, quavering voices? To we allow the Japanese to raise cups of sake in celebration of the Bataan Death March? Not bloody likely. A defeated enemy is still an enemy, basically – no matter how much rehabilitation has gone on in the meantime. Any hint of the mindset that led to war must be quashed without mercy, even if it is only one small element of overall national history, pride, and remembrance.

And likewise with the Confederacy. It is a particular mark of totalitarianism to give no quarter... to tolerate not the slightest deviation from the party line, either in word or symbol... and to allow no breaks, no days off, no truces from the ongoing and perpetual hate that must be expressed at all times, through all channels and media, by all right-thinking people. This has characterized repressive regimes throughout the 20^th Century, and now characterizes our own in this one respect, at least – that the Confederacy has become, in retrospect, the Great Satan, and deserves no recognition for anything other than having been totally and irredeemably evil. Which means, as far as all forms of nostalgia for the Lost Cause or for what it represents in the present day, game over – no more flags, no more statues, no more names on buildings, bridges, highways, etc. -- no more graves (!) -- no more anything. History is not being rewritten, it's being destroyed. And who feels the pain the most? Basically, those who have adopted the Confederacy and its Lost Cause as a symbol of their own cause – as a group and as individuals. And yes, these are the same “deplorables” who voted for Donald Trump, and who saw him as their last, best hope for preserving some self-respect against the assaults of the larger culture and the Regime, as embodied in that which lies “inside the Beltway”.

When an entire people has been declared anathema and beyond the pale, and their culture is assaulted on all sides, and they find themselves economically disadvantaged for whatever reasons, and they find themselves exploited by ever newer and more exotic drugs, and they are treated as buffoons and laughingstocks by the popular culture... what do they have left? Symbols, basically. Flags and statues. The flags have been banned already, so the statues are all that's left, and they are, in many cases, being actively defended by those who at least believe in not tossing greats chunks of our collective history down the memory hole.

So how are they supposed to react? The election of Trump certainly gave them an at least temporary feeling of empowerment – at least as long as it takes for a few thousand of them to be put in uniform and sent over to Afghanistan – but did it improve their lot in any tangible way? Not that I'm aware. Not unlike the election of Barack Obama, which was supposed to be such a boon to the black community, but which seems only to have aggravated its problems, the people who voted for Trump had high expectations – finally “one of us” in the White House! He'll stand up for us, even if no one else (including mainstream Republicans) has. Of course, expectations like this are bound to run up against cold political realities, not to mention personal ones, like – through what fantastical thought processes did they end up with the idea that a New York City billionaire was one of them? But for the time being, nonetheless, there is an assertiveness afoot that has the Establishment going literally mad.

And it's not as if Trump truly “represents” any given grievance group, from the “alt-right” on down to much lower life forms. What counts (again, as with Obama) is that people think he represents them, and that will lead only to frustration when their collective lot doesn't change. But again, statistics and “bean counting” by clerks in Washington, D.C. wearing green eyeshades don't really express the essence of this issue, or any other. One can be poor but have pride, or rich but in despair. What sustains a culture – as we should know by now – is not material prosperity; in fact, that can actually hasten a culture's demise by causing a shift in priorities among its members. And it's not technology or being more “in touch” with the “modern world”. It is, after all, tradition (Tevye again) – and that tradition can be obvious, out in the open, and celebrated with great gusto, or it can be more like a quiet stream that permeates daily life and is expressed most clearly in rites of passage, or it can become a kind of subversive element – a sign of rebellion (or of the failure thereof). But it might be said that the smaller the remnant, the more zeal with which people cling to it. Would statues and flags be as important if the Confederacy still existed? It seems unlikely, because there would be so many other things sustaining the culture as well (hopefully not including slavery). But as a gesture of defiance they loom large, and so the reaction of the ruling elite, with their commitment to totalitarianism, looms large as well.

You can snuff out the symbols if you snuff out the people first; that's called genocide. But to snuff out the symbols while the people remain is fraught with risks, and the establishment won't know what those risks are, or their magnitude, until it's too late.