Whether he ever really said it or not, for a long time I've taken as my father's chief piece of advice that above all else it is a good idea to cultivate cheap tastes. There you have it, a three-word summary of all the wisdom that a boy could expect of his old man. This paternal proverb may have greater staying power in my father's impressions on my psyche than any walk along the beach, game of catch, or airplane glue-addled time hunkered over a plastic model of a B-29 ever could have.
Becoming a man has meant putting away childish things in small increments, seemingly unnoticeable without some sense of time. Finishing college was not the end of all depravity, but merely the beginning of more responsibilities that get in the way of the depraved times I'd grown accustomed to. Getting married didn't change much, but it had eons of symbolic baggage attached to the rite, so much so that even if the average symbolic suitcase weighs as much as a feather, their combined weight places a pressure on many newlyweds great enough to create the very diamonds so often at its center. Having kids will require many of the childish things I cling to to be passed on to the next generation, leaving me to find new, fatherly things to take on.
Being a married (as yet childless) man as I am it's no wonder then that thoughts of my father grow ever prevalent in the daily cycle of musings that passes for conscious life here in my head. This evening I found myself in a bar on the shores of Lake Huron in eastern Michigan about 3 hours north of Detroit. Taking my order of foodservice grade chicken tenders and fries, the bartender remarked that he'd never had Pabst Blue Ribbon before, the beer I was presently swilling. He was a young guy and could be excused for having never tried one of America's, perhaps the world's, greatest beers. I offered my wholehearted endorsement for the beer to the guy and finished my second. In earnest midwestern fashion he said he'd try it this evening.
That advice to cultivate cheap tastes echoed back to me over the bad classic rock and chatter. I imagined my father, who is very much alive, along side Yoda, Obiwan Kinobi and Anekin Skywalker beaming on as I tilted my head back to work on my can of beer. The music almost changed to Ewok celebration. I was really enjoying Pabst Blue Ribbon to the core of my being; not out of any sense of self-sacrifice, but as something that I'd choose above most plasuible alternatives, taking price out of the equation. I had really cultivated a cheap taste. It isn't the only one.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Conservative Cosmology
As a dreamy observer at night I gaze into the political cosmos. I am now old enough to make my own astronomical observations. I've been around long enough to see some familiarity in the passing of political movements over grounded points of reference like the tides of the news cycles, and the deeper patterns of mid-term and presidential elections. I've watched parties pass through elections changing their positions from the last time they were in full view. I've seen the meteoric careers of politicians soar overhead, burning themselves out. I've watched the brilliance of primary candidates be eclipsed by something bigger and closer.
Of course, this is a metaphor... knowing where a stellar body is going to be this time next year is a different thing from knowing the outcome of an election.
But consider the conservative movement as a star. In the 50s and early 60s, scattered particles of thought began to coalesce into one region of political space. A gaseous object was formed. As the 60s wore on and the clusters of leftist thinking was pulled apart by its own mass, those particles gravitated towards the increasingly massive body of a political movement. The old political coalitions from the New Deal wore down to elemental hydrogen, floating in a torrid vacuum through the 70s. Somewhere in that epoch, the movement reached critical mass, fusing into a blinding star, releasing energy even as its mass grew to ever greater proportions. And the mass of past brilliance continued to drift towards the Conservative Star.
By 1980, the Conservative Star was fast on its way to red supergiant status. Whole planets of belief fell into its influence. Christian fundamentalist particles fused with free marketeers and civil libertarians.
The 80s was a period of runaway growth. But a challenger came into view around 1992, another stellar body began to orbit in a binary fashion, taking some of the Conservative Star's mass for itself, grabbing votes at the center. But galactic catastrophe struck our region. The political pieces all fell into the Conservative Star's gravity well, some of them not so conservative. A tipping point was reached. The coalition was too big. Deep in the hellish core of the star the original members felt marginalized and began to bubble and vibrate furiously. The red supergiant swelled, charring and consuming planets and interstellar dust as its diameter grew to precarious proportions.
If my observations are correct there will be a supernova in November of 2008. From where I view it, a political object can only get so big before it destroys itself, only to create something new. It's a force of nature that cannot be prevented. Once the Conservative Star casts off its mass and energy in a brief blaze, an angry brown dwarf will remain; a stubborn group of Ron Paul zealots and fundamentalists without a political home. Their energy will one day be subsumed into some other stellar body.
A universal truth is that our region of space will continue to knock the same particles back and forth. We'll continue to hear the same arguments over moral issues like abortion, economic ones around public or private investment, and basic cultural forces separating urban existence from suburban and rural, rich from poor. Energy will shift from one star to some future object to gravitate towards, but the mass and energy in the system will remain. The law of conservation of matter and energy means that conservatives and conservative ideas will not go away with a massive loss, they'll just lose coherence and influence only to reform with different constituent parts at some later date.
To borrow a line from Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.
Of course, this is a metaphor... knowing where a stellar body is going to be this time next year is a different thing from knowing the outcome of an election.
But consider the conservative movement as a star. In the 50s and early 60s, scattered particles of thought began to coalesce into one region of political space. A gaseous object was formed. As the 60s wore on and the clusters of leftist thinking was pulled apart by its own mass, those particles gravitated towards the increasingly massive body of a political movement. The old political coalitions from the New Deal wore down to elemental hydrogen, floating in a torrid vacuum through the 70s. Somewhere in that epoch, the movement reached critical mass, fusing into a blinding star, releasing energy even as its mass grew to ever greater proportions. And the mass of past brilliance continued to drift towards the Conservative Star.
By 1980, the Conservative Star was fast on its way to red supergiant status. Whole planets of belief fell into its influence. Christian fundamentalist particles fused with free marketeers and civil libertarians.
The 80s was a period of runaway growth. But a challenger came into view around 1992, another stellar body began to orbit in a binary fashion, taking some of the Conservative Star's mass for itself, grabbing votes at the center. But galactic catastrophe struck our region. The political pieces all fell into the Conservative Star's gravity well, some of them not so conservative. A tipping point was reached. The coalition was too big. Deep in the hellish core of the star the original members felt marginalized and began to bubble and vibrate furiously. The red supergiant swelled, charring and consuming planets and interstellar dust as its diameter grew to precarious proportions.
If my observations are correct there will be a supernova in November of 2008. From where I view it, a political object can only get so big before it destroys itself, only to create something new. It's a force of nature that cannot be prevented. Once the Conservative Star casts off its mass and energy in a brief blaze, an angry brown dwarf will remain; a stubborn group of Ron Paul zealots and fundamentalists without a political home. Their energy will one day be subsumed into some other stellar body.
A universal truth is that our region of space will continue to knock the same particles back and forth. We'll continue to hear the same arguments over moral issues like abortion, economic ones around public or private investment, and basic cultural forces separating urban existence from suburban and rural, rich from poor. Energy will shift from one star to some future object to gravitate towards, but the mass and energy in the system will remain. The law of conservation of matter and energy means that conservatives and conservative ideas will not go away with a massive loss, they'll just lose coherence and influence only to reform with different constituent parts at some later date.
To borrow a line from Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.
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