Mentor: Rare for Sons to Be Like Fathers

By Robin Bates | Published: December 30, 2019
Charles-Joseph Natoire, Telemachus Listening to Mentor

Monday

Son Darien and grandson Alban have been here for the holidays, a visit that includes lot of tennis and some wonderful father-and-son talks. Discussing identity struggles with Darien meshes with my rereading of The Odyssey, which looks at the difficulty of father-son relations. We learn from Telemachus about the difficulty of growing up within a famous father’s shadow.

Not that I’m a famous father. But fathers of any sort cast a long shadow, as I can testify from my own experience. I idolized Scott Bates for much of my childhood to the point that I even wanted to share his infirmities, such as poor eyesight and inner ear problems. (I was granted the former.) It took me 15 years of college teaching before I decided that it was okay to be a different kind of professor than he was. He was a world-class researcher whereas I excelled in popularizing the research of others. While this made me an excellent teacher, for the longest time I regarded myself as a bit of an impostor.

In this regard, Odysseus’s son Telemachus has a daunting challenge. Over and over he is informed how great his father is. Athena, speaking through his mentor Mentor, doesn’t help matters:

Telemachus, you will be brave and thoughtful
 if your own father’s forcefulness runs through you.
 How capable he was, in word and deed!
 Your journey will succeed, if you are his.
 If you’re not his son by Penelope,
 I doubt you can achieve what you desire.
 And it is rare for sons to be like fathers:
Only a few are better, most are worse.

Then, however, she adds:



But you will be no coward and no fool.

You do possess your father’s cunning mind,

So there is hope you will do all these things.

Athena then proceeds to set up a number of leadership projects for Telemachus. She prods him into calling a community council meeting, and although it’s a bust, Telemachus has still has put himself forward. Then she persuades him to gather a group to young men to visit Nestor and Menelaus. The suitors don’t think Telemachus has a dangerous sea voyage in him, and once they realize he has pulled it off, they determine he’s a legitimate threat and must be killed.

The journey is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Telemachus learns to put himself forward and interact with legendary figures like Nestor and Menelaus. On the other hand, these figures keep telling him what a remarkable man his father was. They all but ask him if he’s willing to do what Orestes did, i.e. kill those (including his mother) who overthrew his father.

But they also speak to his potential. Here’s Nestor after he sees how Telemachus is aided by Athena:

Dear boy, I am now sure that you will be

a hero, since the gods are on your side

at your young age. This was a god, none other

than great Athena, true-born child of Zeus,

who also glorified your noble father.

Menelaus is impressed by how Telemachu tactfully rejects a gift of horses, which would not be appropriate for Ithaca:

My boy, your words are proof of your good blood. 

I will give different gifts, just as you ask.

I will give you the finest piece of treasure

of all the hoard I have piled up at home…

After Odysseus returns home, 19-year-old Telemachus is relegated to second place, confirming our fears. Tennyson picks up on this in his poem “Ulysses,” where the father essentially dismisses his son as a bureaucratic drudge:

         This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
 To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone.

And then, with thinly-veiled contempt:

He works his work, I mine.

No sailing beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars for junior.

But this differentiation allows me to make the point I’ve arrived at. Telemachus could well be a superb administrator, and to all appearance Ulysses—at least as portrayed here—would be a lousy one. So yes, it’s probably best for Ulysses to be off.

My father, my sons, and I each have our own special strengths. To say that we should all be the same kind of hero is to reduce heroism. The purpose of our lives is to identify those strengths and develop them.

To our credit, Bates fathers have done a good job in supporting their children in their quests.

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What Would Jesus Think of Christmas?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 28, 2019

Spiritual Sunday

Luci Northcote Shaw has an interesting take on the symbolism of the infant Jesus. The schmaltz of Christmas—“our picturesque traditions, our shallow sentiment”– robs the Christian message of its punch, the exasperated poet complains.

If “Jesus the Man” rather than Jesus the child were to stride into our lives, he might start overturning cash registers. Certainly, he would demand

                much more

than the milk and the softness

and the mother warmth

of the baby in the storefront creche…

Shaw ends her poem with lines from a Christmas carol so she doesn’t turn her back on the season entirely. She’s just trying to return it to Christ’s message.

It is as if infancy were the whole of incarnation
 
 One time of the year
 the new-born child
 is everywhere,
 planted in madonnas’ arms,
 hay mows, stables,
 in palaces or farms,
 or, quaintly, under snowed gables,
 gothic angular or baroque plump,
 naked or elaborately swathed,
 encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
 garnished with whimsical
 partridges and pears,
 drummers and drums,
 lit by oversize stars,
 partnered with lambs,
 peace doves, sugar plums,
 bells, plastic camels in sets of three
 as if these were what we need
 for eternity.
 
 But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
 We are too wary, these days,
 of beards and sandaled feed.
 
 Yet if we celebrate, let it be
 that He
 has invaded our lives with purpose,
 striding over our picturesque traditions,
 our shallow sentiment,
 overturning our cash registers,
 wielding His peace like a sword,
 rescuing us into reality,
 demanding much more
 than the milk and the softness
 and the mother warmth
 of the baby in the storefront creche,
 
 (only the Man would ask
 all, of each of us)
 reaching out
 always, urgently with strong
 effective love
 (only the Man would give
 His life and live
 again for love of us).
 
O come, let us adore Him—
Christ—the Lord.
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Lit that Championed Chimney Sweeps

By Robin Bates | Published: December 26, 2019
Photo from Jane Humphries’s history of child labor during the Industrial Revolution

Friday

Having forgotten to have our stovepipe cleaned last summer, we required an emergency intervention recently to avoid a chimney fire. After experiencing an unusual amount of smoke, I learned that creosote had so clogged the flue that only a tiny passage remained.

The good news is that we no longer condemn young boys to death to fix such situations.

I’m not exaggerating. In the 19th century, black lung disease and other ailments kept chimney sweeps from living past their childhood. Although theoretically apprentices, these children were the only apprentices whose parents were paid for their services. Instead of being taught a vocation, in other words, children were essentially sold, with “apprenticeship” functioning as a grotesque euphemism.

We get a grim description of the business from Oliver Twist, where the protagonist barely escapes becoming a sweep. The villainous Mr. Gamfield tries to buy Oliver from the orphanage Board of Directors, who want to rid themselves of the boy for his having asked for more gruel:

‘This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to ‘prentis,’ said Mr. Gamfield.

‘Ay, my man,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a condescending smile. ‘What of him?’

‘If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in a good ‘spectable chimbley-sweepin’ bisness,’ said Mr. Gamfield, ‘I wants a ‘prentis, and I am ready to take him.’

‘Walk in,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. Mr. Gamfield having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head, and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the room where Oliver had first seen him.

‘It’s a nasty trade,’ said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again stated his wish.

‘Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,’ said another gentleman.

‘That’s acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley to make ’em come down again,’ said Gamfield; ‘that’s all smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain’t o’ no use at all in making a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that’s wot he likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen’l’men, and there’s nothink like a good hot blaze to make ’em come down vith a run. It’s humane too, gen’l’men, acause, even if they’ve stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes ’em struggle to hextricate theirselves.’

 It turns out that the Board, rather than displaying humanity, is just trying to bargain Mr. Gamfield down, using his unsavory reputation as leverage. Only the intervention of a magistrate, temporarily rendered humane by seeing Oliver’s terrified expression, saves our hero.

Blake is no less savage than Dickens in describing this reality. His “little black thing among the snow” is so young that he cannot yet pronounce his “s’s,” so calling out his services comes out (appropriately enough) as “weep! weep!”:

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? say?"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe

And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

These pious and patriotic Christians can be seen as the forerunners of Donald Trump’s white evangelical supporters, who are willing to countenance his child separation policies and food stamp cuts for the gratifications he offers them.

On a more positive note, the young men who came to clean our chimney had a wire brush that they attached to a rotator and pushed down the stove pipe. They added extensions as they worked their way down and were careful to wear masks whenever the occasion called for it. They were proud of their work as they explained to me the chemistry of creosote. No fires were lit under them to make sure they worked faster. (Note: I wonder if Mr. Gamfield’s horrific incentives were the origin of that expression.)

One of them noted to me that many stoves still have an unnecessary shelf in the back, which is what sweeps used to stand upon while cleaning. It’s a vestigial leftover from a darker time.

A bad as things are, they used to be worse. Literature played an important role in ending child labor.

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Welcoming the Stranger

By Robin Bates | Published: December 25, 2019
Pieter Lastman, Odysseus and Nausicaa (1619)

Thursday

Even as he sings his own praises as the guardian of Evangelical Christianity (“No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close”), our president plays the role of King Herod when it comes to immigrant children. Thousands are spending this Christmas in stark conditions, separated from their parents with little hope in sight. At least seven have died while in custody.

Meanwhile, the plan’s main architect, Stephen Miller, has been exposed as a white nationalist. In any other administration, he would have been long gone.

I’ve been reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, which I’ll be teaching in Sewanee’s “Representative Masterpieces” course, and am struck by how Homer handles the treatment of strangers.

With each island, the wandering Odysseus must figure out whether the inhabitants will be friendly or hostile. Sometimes he encounters cannibals, like the Laestrygonians and the Cyclops, with the former raining boulders down upon his boats and then spearing the Ithacans like fish. (The one-eyed giant Polyphemus, meanwhile, bashes Odysseus’s men against rocks and devours them raw.) On the other hand, the Phaeacians treat strangers with respect.

To be sure, even they have an instinctive wariness of foreigners, and they have reason. Odysseus and his men are themselves fully capable of being the “rapists and murderers” that Trump warns us about. We have from Odysseus how he and his men treat the inhabitants of the first island they encountered:

A blast of wind pushed me off course towards

the Cicones in Ismarus. I sacked

the town and killed the men. We took their wives

and shared their riches equally among us.

Even with Polyphemus, the men are only too ready to steal the giant’s goats and sheep before he returns. In the epic’s other story, meanwhile, Telemachus is asked by Nestor,

Strangers, who are you? Where did you sail
from?

Are you on business, or just scouting round

like pirates on the sea, who risk their lives

to ravage foreign homes?”

The Phaeacian king’s daughter, the first person Odysseus encounters on the island, coaches him on how to circumvent her father’s potential hostility. To show he is no threat, he must approach the queen first and then abase himself in the ashes.

Once he does so, a senior advisor speaks up for him. From him we hear that Zeus “loves the needy”:

                                    Alcinous,
 you know it is not right to leave a stranger
 sitting there on the floor beside the hearth
 among the cinders. Everyone is waiting
 for you to give the word. Make him get up,
 and seat him on a silver chair, and order
 wine to be poured, so we may make libations
 to Zeus the thunderlord, who loves the needy.
 The house girl out to bring the stranger food
 out from the storeroom.

The king agrees, saying to the wine boy,

                                    Go and mix
 a bowl and serve the wine to all our guests,
 so we may offer drink to thundering Zeus
 who blesses those in need.

In the other story, Menelaus says something similar when asked how Telemachus should be treated. The guard speaks first:

“Your Majesty, there are two men outside,

strangers who seem like sons of Zeus. Please tell me,

should we take off the harness from their horses?

Or send them off to find another host?”



Flushed Menelaus shouted angrily,

“You used to have some brains!

Now you are talking like a silly child.

We two were fed by many different hosts

before returning home. As we may hope

for Zeus to keep us safe in future times,

untack their horses! Lead them in to dine!”

Earlier when he is still in Ithaca, Telemachus too models hospitality, welcoming a stranger at his door—who, as it turns out, is the goddess Athena in disguise. One never knows the gifts that a foreigner may be bringing you.

Homer distinguishes the civilized and uncivilized by how they treat strangers. At times in its history, America has been big-hearted like Nestor, Menelaus, Alcinous, and Telemachus, at times tribal and insular like the Laestrygonians and the Cyclops. A rich network of mutually beneficial relationships arises out of the first. Polyphemus, by contrast, lives alone in his mountain cave:

                        There
lived a massive man

who shepherded his flocks all by himself.

He did not go to visit other people,

but kept apart, and did not know the ways

of custom. In his build he was a wonder,

a giant, not like men who live on bread,

but like a wooded peak in airy mountains,

rising alone above the rest.

This isn’t far from Trump’s view of America. Like the Cyclops, he sees us as towering above the rest of the world in solitary splendor. Like the Cyclops, he regards all visitors as potential threats and treats them accordingly.

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Ring Out Ye Chrystal Spheres

By Robin Bates | Published: December 24, 2019
Bronzino, Adoration of the Shepherds

Christmas

I’ve never shared John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” before because it’s such a long poem, but I include a few stanzas today. Written when he was 21, it’s a bit formal for modern tastes but still has some delicious images. In the opening stanza, the poet celebrates the happy day:

This
is the month, and this the happy morn,

      Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,

Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,

      Our great redemption from above did bring;

      For so the holy sages once did sing,

            That he
our deadly forfeit should release,

            And
with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

 I can’t help but see the second stanza through the lens of Paradise Lost. There we see God and Jesus watching as Satan advances toward Eden, with God predicting that the archangel will succeed in corrupting humankind. Jesus then volunteers to become human and take the crime upon himself:

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
       And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
 Wherewith he wont at Heav'n's high council-table,
       To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
       He laid aside, and here with us to be,
             Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
             And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Nature is so humbled, Milton writes in stanzas five and six, that rather than strut her extravagant summer months, she covers herself with snow to hide her faults:

It
was the winter wild,

While the Heav'n-born child,

         All meanly wrapt in the
rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to him

Had doff'd her gaudy trim,

         With her great Master so
to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.



Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

         To hide her guilty front
with innocent snow,

And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

         The saintly veil of
maiden white to throw,

Confounded, that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

To reassure Nature, God sends the dove of peace, who promises “universal peace through sea and land”:

But he, her fears to cease,
 Sent down the meek-ey'd Peace:
          She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
 Down through the turning sphere,
 His ready harbinger,
          With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
 And waving wide her myrtle wand,
 She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
 
 No war or battle's sound
 Was heard the world around;
          The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
 The hooked chariot stood
 Unstain'd with hostile blood;
          The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
 And kings sate still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

A few stanzas later Milton describes the angels singing, as experienced by the shepherds:

When such music sweet
 Their hearts and ears did greet,
          As never was by mortal finger strook,
 Divinely warbled voice
 Answering the stringed noise,
          As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heav'nly close.
 
 Nature, that heard such sound
 Beneath the hollow round
          Of Cynthia's seat, the Airy region thrilling,
 Now was almost won
 To think her part was done,
          And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
 She knew such harmony alone
 Could hold all heav'n and earth in happier union.

It’s as though they are hearing the music of the spheres:

Ring
out ye crystal spheres!

Once bless our human ears

         (If ye have power to
touch our senses so)

And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,

         And let the bass of
Heav'n's deep organ blow;

And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full consort to th'angelic symphony.

For all the promise of the celestial celebration, however, the grim truth is that the crucifixion will need to occur before humanity begins to step into possibility. The poem proceeds to go into humankind’s grim history (just as Paradise Lost does) before returning, in the final stanza, to the hope of the present occasion:

But
see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest:

         Time is our tedious song
should here have ending.

Heav'n's youngest-teemed star,

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

         Her sleeping Lord with
handmaid lamp attending;

And all about the courtly stable,

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

While I appreciate Milton’s grand trumpet-and-organ poetry, I must admit to preferring, say, Christina Rossetti’s simple Christmas poems (such as “In the Bleak Midwinter”).  But in some ways, the contrast is between Handel’s Messiah and Christmas carols. Each celebrates Christ’s birth in its own way.

So with that in mind, Merry Christmas.

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Feeding Birds in the Bleak Midwinter

By Robin Bates | Published: December 23, 2019
Finches feeding

Tuesday – Christmas Eve

Over the past few cold and rainy days, chickadees, goldfinches, titmice, and nuthatches have been swarming out feeders, bringing to mind one of my father’s Christmas poems. I first posted it nine years ago.

I excerpt a portion of previous post, only adding that (this in response to the allusion to Hermes Trismegistus) I considered the name Trismegistus for my youngest son. In doing so, I would have followed the example of Tristram Shandy’s father in Lawrence Sterne’s novel.

Believing that giving a child the right name assures his future, Shandy wants to name his son after the ancient philosopher whose hermetic writings contributed to alchemy, astrology and theosophy. Shandy regarded Hermes Trismegistus as “the greatest…of all earthly beings—he was the greatest king——the greatest law-giver——the greatest philosopher——and the greatest priest.”

Thanks to a misunderstanding with the midwife, his son instead receives the name Shandy detests the most. Mercifully, paternal will was thwarted in my family as well, and Toby was named after another character in the novel, Tristram’s kindly uncle.

I must admit that taking Walter Shandy as a model wouldn’t have reflected well on me, given that Walter lives exclusively in his head. (He spends all of Tristram’s childhood writing a child-raising book while altogether ignoring his son.) In any event, Trismegistus is connected with magical transformation, which is how his name gets used in our poem for the day.

Originally posted Dec. 16, 2010

My father has been writing Christmas poems annually for years. He sends them out in the family Christmas card and also publishes them in the Sewanee newspaper, which my mother founded and ran for years. In addition to being a fine poet of light verse, my father is an enthusiastic bird watcher, and the poem below combines his passions.

Seemingly straightforward, “The Bird Watcher’s Christmas Dinner” is about mystical transformation. Multi-colored birds, drawn to a feeder, turn a cedar into a Christmas tree.   Partaking of a feast that appears miraculously, the birds themselves become a feast for the soul.

The transformation occurs “trysmegistically,” Hermes Trismegistus being an ancient philosopher associated with the Greek messenger of the gods. Hermes moved between heaven and earth, opening up concourse between the mystical and the mundane. The poem describes the birds as angels, and one thinks of the Edmund Sears carol about Christmas angels “bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.” Here we see them “feasting and flying and doing a show/For watchers on the earth below.”

We watchers, struggling through cold, dark days, live in hope that the world will be mystically transformed. “Peace on the earth, good will to men” (and women): that is what midwinter rituals like Christmas are all about.

The Bird Watcher’s Christmas Dinner

By Scott Bates

You can’t exactly call it greed
 When birds at feeders feed and feed
 On endless quantities of seed;

It’s sleeping in the cold all night
 And doing prodigies of flight
 That gives a bird an appetite.

They wait their turns with impatience
 Perched on the cedar by the fence
 Like so many Christmas ornaments,

Cardinal, goldfinch and chickadee,
 Turning it, trismegistically,
 Into an ancient Christmas tree

With angels hurrying to and fro
 Feasting and flying and doing a show
For watchers on the earth below.
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The Tradition of the Yule-Log

By Robin Bates | Published: December 22, 2019

Monday

Yesterday I mentioned the syncretism involved in the nativity story, with images from a wide variety of traditions contributing to the manger scene. While the yule-log, which I write about today, is not connected with the manger, it was an integral part of many Christmas celebrations before central heating. The long-burning log affirms light in the season of darkness.

Incidentally, Jesus in all likelihood was not born on December 25. The date, fixed upon in the 3rd century, is probably based upon two seasonal moments of ancient significance. The Annunciation or conception of Jesus coincides roughly with the spring equinox, Christmas with the winter solstice. The promise of new life in the case of the first and light at the darkest time of year in the case of the second is so entrenched in Christian imagery that I doubt Christians would change course even if they suddenly discovered that Jesus was born in, say, May or October. The symbolism, I suspect, would prevail over historical fact.

Back to the symbolism of the yule-log. In “Yule-Tide” William Kean Seymour points out that the yule-log has roots in Mithras, an Indo-Iranian deity associated with light that was worshipped by Roman mystery cults; in the Greek fertility goddess Demeter, who celebrates the return of her kidnapped daughter Persephone each spring; in druidic fertility religions, which celebrate the same seasonal cycle; and in Roman Saturnalia, a time of merry making and gift giving dedicated to Saturn, a Roman god associated with “generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation” (Wikipedia).  Saturn supposedly ruled during the lost Golden Age.

While the yule-log is mostly associated with northern Europe, I remember as a child reading a Harriet Tubman biography that described her as having the strength of a man and helping her fellow slaves drag in the annual yule-log. Apparently Maryland slaves didn’t have to work for as long as the yule-log burned, which meant that they selected the biggest log they could carry and then soaked it for days. Its connection with celebrating the birth of one who came “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners” and “to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18) is doubly appropriate. Light at a time of darkness indeed.

While religious fundamentalists complain about syncretistic elements and attempt to strip various symbols out of Christmas, for me the effect is to impoverish the occasion. The Christmas images carry weight precisely because they have been appropriated from older traditions. People attempting to touch the face of God borrow freely from what seems to work. They don’t care where it comes from.

Yule-Tide

Roman Saturnalia,
    Christian Adoration,
 Ivy wreath of Thalia,
    Druid exaltation.
 
 Spruce and fir and myrtle;
    Mithras, God of Light;
 How the yule-logs spurtle,
    Blaze for Christmas Night!
 
 Yule, or Jul (from Caesar:
    Others claim Demeter--
 Hymn they sang to please her,
    Every graceful eater);
 
 Giul or hiul (for wheeling
    Winter orb of light):
Shadows wreathe the ceiling,
    Dance on Christmas Night.
 
 Ritual Germanic,
    Gothic and Moravian,
 Persian and Romanic,
    Greek and Scandinavian.
 
 Oel (or ale in plenty),
    Yule-log blazing bright:
 Dolce far niente, 
    Joy this Christmas Night.
 
 Pagan Saturnalia,
    Christian Adoration.
 Christ—and Sun—the Savior,
    Hear our Salutation!

An additional poem:

I don’t know whether Seymour’s poem influenced my father, but here’s his own syncretistic Christmas poem, written in response to various legal battles about Christian creches in public spaces. My analysis of the poem can be found here:

Christmas at the Courthouse

By Scott Bates

The wise-men are Egyptian,
The virgin birth, Antique;
The evergreen is Roman
The manger scene is Greek;

T’is the Saturnalian Season
When solar gifts are cool,
So Happy Birthday, Horus!
From our Multiculture School.
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A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nativity

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2019
The Master of Vyssi Brod, c. 1350

Spiritual Sunday – 4th Sunday of Advent

I am of two minds about running the following Christmas poem by my father. On the one hand, it captures the hope that Jesus represents, along with some of the syncretism involved in the manger drama. Every religion combines elements of previous religions in its symbolism, and the birth story draws on multiple traditions.

On the other hand, while the poem captures Advent darkness, it doesn’t capture Advent hope. In that way, it reminds me of a stanza from the song “Rock Island Line,” as sung by the Weavers:


Jesus died to save our sins,
Glory to God, we’re gonna need him again.

Bates’s poem ends with a variant of the classic Mafia threat, “Nice little place you got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” We can regard his message, however, as a reminder of what hope looks like, whatever the planet’s environmental prospects. My father’s sense of playfulness turns bleak prospects into a humorous wake-up call.

The Nativity Plot

By Scott Bates

“Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger, but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits…” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

As in earlier times
 we were alerted . . .

As for example when (with
 tremendous foresight
 and incredible organizational ability)
 those two remarkable animals
 the Ox and the Ass (crudely referred to
 in other contexts as “Mithra” and “Dionysus”)
 carefully arranged and supervised
 a quiet little coming-out party
 in the middle of the night in a central location in the
 Middle East
 in an attempt to raise the ratio of basic intelligence 
in the universe
 (The operation had been carried out under the direction 
of the Dove “Isis”
 who had personally delivered the main invitation
 while assorted sheep goats camels sheepdogs etc.
 rounded up kings and shepherds for publicity)

It had been quite a success
 and brought about a number of needed reforms
 but that was a long time ago
 and since then a lot of people have blown it
 and a lot of other people haven’t even gotten the message
 in spite of everything the dolphins and others
 (like rats chimpanzees great auks and Galapagos finches)
 could do to straighten us out

Too bad
 It was a nice little planet
 and in the meantime we’ve been wondering
 what those cockroaches have been
 holding mass meetings about
 in our kitchen . . .

Other Christmas Poems by Scott Bates

A Solution to Nativity Scene Battles
Holly & Ivy Dance to the Music of the Moon
Night before Christmas on the Moon
Move with the Wind, Sleep under the Snow
Midwinter Transformation: A Poem
An ABC of Children’s Books
The Divine Comedy, Doggerel Version
Books Unleashed in Christmas Carrels
Epiphany Sunday and the Arabian Nights
Epiphany from a Camel’s Point of View
A Roc for Christmas (Annual Bird Count)
Christmas Eve (Updated)
Christmas Bird Count from Santa’s Sleigh
Letters from Mrs. Santa Claus
A Season for Miraculous Breakthroughs
The Divine Enters through Imagination’s Holes
The Quest of the Marvelous Tree
Where Are the Fathers of Yesteryear?
Moving through Death’s Doorway

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GOP Epitaph: “He Loved Big Brother”

By Robin Bates | Published: December 19, 2019

Friday

The House may have impeached Donald Trump Wednesday night, but Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has a point when he says that Trumpism prevailed. That’s because Trump has managed to turn most of the GOP into a version of himself.

Republicans have, as I noted the other day, learned to love Big Brother.

Once upon a time, the GOP had some vestige of integrity. Once Republicans called out frauds and lies. Once South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was saying, “I’m not going to try to get into the mind of Donald Trump because I don’t think there’s a whole lot of space there. I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.”

How much has changed! On Wednesday, Republicans were all but arguing that war is peace, slavery is freedom, and ignorance is strength. Milbank describes the scene:

Wednesday’s 10-hour impeachment debate on the House floor and the party-line vote that followed proved that Trump’s multiyear campaign against the truth — 15,000 lies and counting — has succeeded. Republicans, united, didn’t spend much time defending Trump on the (unfavorable) merits. Instead, in an appalling spectacle of mass projection, they took turns accusing Democrats of the very offenses Trump committed — with Trumpian language and disregard for reality.

Democrats are the ones, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said, who committed a “stunning abuse of power.” Democrats are the ones, Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) said, who “colluded with Russia and Ukraine.” Democrats are the ones, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said, who engaged in “the largest and most massive coverup of such a list of crimes against our country.” Democrats are the ones, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said, who committed an “assault on the Constitution.” Democrats are the ones, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said, who are “interfering in America’s election.” Democrats are the ones, Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said, who “have dangerously shattered precedents.”

It was as though Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson had taken over the House floor. Even during the most solemn constitutional ritual, Republicans were auditioning for an audience of one — and outbidding each other with conspiracy theories in hopes of scoring a favorable tweet from the boss.

What does it take to turn former foes into cult worshippers? In 1984, Big Brother threatens Winston Smith with his deepest fear, which he correctly predicts will prove more powerful than love. Because Winston has a phobia about rats, the dictator fills a cage with starving rodents and straps them to his head. He has but to flip a lever and the rats will burrow into Winston’s face.

Winston’s love for Julia doesn’t stand a chance:

The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless….

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then–no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment–ONE body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

‘Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’

I’m not sure that Orwell proves anything useful here. Few people, I suspect, can stand up to torture or the prospect of hideous death. The GOP, however, does not have this excuse, which leads us to ask what has led to their Trump capitulation.

Do they fear the systematic ostracism that happens to those Republicans that stand up to the president? Do they fear Trump’s tweets and the tweets of his followers? Do they fear losing their seats in Congress? Do they fear a multicultural America, with white men no longer calling all the shots?

Or is something more nefarious at work? To explain what I have in mind, I turn to a rediscovered Harper’s article that appeared in August, 1941—which is to say, after Germany had invaded its neighbors but before Pearl Harbor. Many Americans (including Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford) supported Hitler in those days, and Dorothy Thompson, imagining a cocktail party, tries to figure out which of the guests will “go Nazi” and which will resist. In other words, what personality types are susceptible to fascism.

Her conclusion is that those who don’t have a deep foundation or a strong sense of self are vulnerable to an autocrat’s blandishments:

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi…. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t–whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

If the current GOP had a deep core, it could resist Trumpism. Because it has been hollowed out and behaves as the wind behaves (to quote Eliot’s Hollow Men), it can be turned by an unscrupulous con man. Worse yet, it feels an exhilarating sense of power to be so turned. Suddenly it doesn’t have to worry about truth or responsibility or any of those factors that complicate our lives. It has only to talk and act like its dear leader.

At the end of 1984, Winston feels nothing so much as a deep sense of relief:

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

The House GOP has won the victory over itself and proved its love. Will Senate Republicans do the same?

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