Snarl

 

Photo by Yosef Ariel on Unsplash

During times of economic hardship, the word “Utopian” emerges, usually spat out as a curse. The idea of a harmonious social and political order has devolved into a contemptible pipedream of radicals and revolutionaries. When I recently suggested that the enormous taxpayer funds spent to reinvigorate the economy might be better used helping the now insolvent common man—the taxpayer—with his upside-down mortgages and in retraining him for new and emerging technologies a listener responded with a snarl, “That’s utopian!” His loathing for my proposal was evident: his posture threatened combat, his face contorted in loathing. “Utopian” was evidently, to him, not a pleasant concept. How did a word suggesting a place of political, social, and economic perfection come to such low regard?

Sir Thomas More invented the word, loosely translated from Greek as “No place,” for his imaginary city in his book Utopia in 1516. Five hundred years later the rugged individualist American acquires his disdain for all things Utopian from the welfare state described by More and Utopian dreamers before and since him. We are more comfortable with the heroic stature of an Ayn Rand protagonist than with the idea of the citizen as a minor function in a vast socio-economic machine. A lone person struggling against great odds to amass wealth and fame is a worthy hero to a culture coming of age in an environment of war and celebrity. In that mindset, a contented drone is nevertheless a drone. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), describing a dysfunctional utopian future, continues to sell while his Island (1962), chronicling a near-perfect society on a remote south-seas island, remains an out-of-print book discussed only among bibliophiles and daydreamers.

Plato’s Republic, written 2,000 years before More’s work, did nothing to promote perfect social order as an attainable goal. His perfect world, ruled by a philosopher-king who was a model for Ayn Rand’s heroic industrial magnate, fares better among readers in the western world, though his handling of women as state property and the use of slaves leaves many readers squirming with unease. His was a Spartan world where a socialist economy prevailed, children were wards of the state, and art censored. The Republic served as Plato’s personal fantasy. It benefits the philosopher-king but is no Utopia to women and slaves.

Saint Augustine, too, promoted a Utopian vision. His Heavenly City on earth led to the founding of religious settlements seeking a perfect society of like-minded pilgrims, but those harmonious colonies soon disbanded, or deteriorated into villages and towns as messy and disordered as the ones we live in today or ended in disaster like the Jonestown Massacre. A common vision and shared belief, it seems, are not enough to maintain perfection.

Ursula K. Le Guin has experimented with the utopian ideal more than any other writer. In 1971, she published a short story describing a perfect society in “Those Who Walk Away From Omalon.” She sets up the reader with a pleasant world of carefree living, and then reveals the terrible price paid for the perfect society. Those who walked away from Omalon preferred the imperfect world of strife and insecurity over an easy life lived in guilt.

Huxley’s Island, James Hilton’s Shangri-La (from Lost Horizon, 1933), and Francis Bacon’s 1626 New Atlantis represent earthly paradises distant and isolated in time and place, and therefore of minor interest to modern utopists. However, to the casual reader they are pleasant fantasies, an escape from the monotonous grind of daily life in a dystopian reality. The desert island-hidden valley utopia rarely dwells on social-economic-political details, and that brand of utopian literature reads more like escapist fantasy than serious political discussion.

The collapse of the world economic system, ongoing culture wars, and the growing evidence of greed as the fuel that drove the good times have brought utopianism back into the political discussion as we seek a means to bring about “a more perfect union”-- a more stable economic environment. The depression of the 1930s brought socialism into the debate. Earlier economic crises, called “Panics” in their day, introduced such proletarian institutions as the labor union, the end of child labor, and migrations from agricultural to industrial centers. Each advance of socialist values has met resistance, often violent resistance, by mainstream society. The recent rise of utopian discussion fares no better.

Business and government leaders call for patience. They repeat with metronomic frequency the mantra that, when the bank vaults are full and failing industries revived, the benefits will trickle down to the rest of us. To which a growing number of Americans snarl, “That’s utopian!”

 

Suggested Reading

The Republic, Plato, 3^rd century BC

The Confessions of Saint Augustine, c. 400 AD

Utopia, Sir Thomas More, 1516

New Atlantis, Francis Bacon, 1626

News From Nowhere, William Morris, 1890

Island, Aldous Huxley, 1932

Lost Horizon, James Hilton, 1933

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1963

The Dispossessed; An Ambiguous Utopia, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1985, 1986

 

The Richmond Letters

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Fort Washington had fallen and thousands of our best were killed or captured there, leaving the remnants of our routed army to flee across New Jersey, a hotbed of Tory support. Those who survived Fort Washington and Brooklyn heights suffered from wounds and smallpox. The Revolution was surely lost.

Longacre’s bayonet wound hobbled him. I carried the greater part of his weight in flight from the British mercenaries, making our escape tediously slow. As we fled across New Jersey, at every high place, I left Longacre to his suffering to ascend for a look for Howe’s pursuing troops or for the remains of our own army, but saw neither for two days. We could not seek aid at the farms we passed; any of them might be the home of a Loyalist who would hold us at musket point to await the arrival of the British. We ventured on, limping through woodlands and skirting cultivated fields except for those from which we pilfered food to sustain us in our flight.

On the third day, we came upon a wooded encampment of about eighty Continental troops led by a pockmarked and grizzled officer, Lieutenant John Martin, of Philadelphia. A surgeon dressed Longacre’s wounds while Martin interviewed me for his after-action report. I thought it noble of him that he continued to conduct himself as a soldier, to hold his miserable band of patriots together with military discipline and a harsh way with any who talked of home.

With the interview complete I asked, “Sir, what is to become of us?”

“We will rejoin His Excellency-- if he has not been taken or killed at Brooklyn Heights. In any event, I expect we will likely escape across the Alleghenies to engage the enemy in a war of posts.”

His unselfconscious remark shook me. The troops were aware that His Excellency, General Washington could not be killed in battle, though likely to die young. Yet this officer spoke of Washington’s death at war as a likely possibility.

“A war of posts?’ I asked. As a mere corporal, though hardened by battle, I knew of tactics, but nothing of strategy. That I left to the officers.

“To engage the enemy in small raids in which we inflict the maximum casualties, and then flee before he can muster an appropriate response.”

“But the British will avenge themselves by burning our towns and farms.”

Lieutenant Martin responded with a silent nod and dismissed me.

 

I wrote to my wife and children a letter of despair that if surrender could not be negotiated swiftly, our defeat in New York would result in rapine and torch. I instructed them, in that event, to flee westward into Ohio, to await reconciliation with Parliament.

 

Others joined us in the following days. We grew quickly to three hundred, of which more than fifty suffered smallpox. Many had no shoes; others, no coats; and some had no muskets or powder. Those who lacked sufficient clothing, we made as comfortable as our meager resources permitted. Too often men fit for fighting abandoned us to return home, to their farms and shops to await the British yoke. Some traveled to Trenton where they offered themselves to the king’s cause.

There came to us a report that General Washington was alive and assembling his troops near the Delaware River, dangerously close to the massed British lines.

Longacre had recovered from the worst of his wound. Lieutenant Martin ordered us to move as a fighting unit out of the woods, to rejoin the Continental Army. Those suffering with smallpox and crippling wounds remained in camp with the surgeon’s ointments and bandages. We crossed New Jersey again, not in flight this time, but again facing the enemy.

Our arrival in Washington’s camp increased his strength to 2000, many of them ill equipped, sick, and wounded. New recruits and straggling veterans joined us daily. Militiamen quit their posts to join us. Men recovered from wounds and disease. Yet, our ragged army was no match for the thirty-thousand regulars and mercenaries of the well-trained British army and navy that separated us from the northern colonies.

Rumors swept across our cold and miserable camp: On one day, it was said that Ben Franklin, in Paris, was instructed to negotiate our surrender. On the next day, Washington was to offer his sword to General Howe, surrendering himself and his army to Howe’s mercy. That we were to engage in one last suicidal attack, a maniacal plunge into the heart of the British Army, that we would retreat to engage them in a harassing war of posts; and that we were to be disbanded to return to our homes. Each day offered a new version of our fate.

Then, one day in mid-December, Lieutenant Martin ordered us assembled at his tent. Our orders, he said, were to prepare ourselves for an attack against the British winter quarters at Trenton, to come at dawn on Christmas Day.

Our defeat is certain. I have written my wife and children in Richmond, leaving them to the benevolence of God and the civility of their British masters.

#

 

Pirate Radio: A movie review

Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS from Pexels

Will it ever go away—that eponymous decade that Baby Boomers refuse to let die? Just when we had thought the 1960s might finally disappear into the dustbin of Golden Oldies, along comes writer-director Richard Curtis’ Pirate Radio. The movie attempts to tease us back into those lost years of sex ‘n drugs ‘n rock ‘n roll with a romantic comedy about a motley crew aboard a ship broadcasting rock music into stodgy old England and in violation of the BBC’s outdated three-pronged format of jazz, culture, and information. His attempt gets watered down in the American version, in which the drug scenes have been cut and sex is implied or off-screen—the only nudity is a scene in which chunky Nick Frost, as the womanizing DJ Dr. Dave, appears in full-frontal. Of the decade’s sex ‘n drugs ‘n rock ‘n roll credo, only rock ‘n roll remains.

At first glance, Pirate Radio appears to contain so many faults that not even Philip Seymour Hoffman in a starring role can save it. Though Rock music lies at the heart of the movie, some of the music is anachronistic, having been recorded after the movie’s 1966 setting. The characters do not grow and change. The ending is predictable. With a cast that includes film icons Philip Seymour Hoffman as scruffy American ex-pat DJ “The Count,” Bill Nighy as the effeminate ship’s master, Tom Sturridge, and Emma Thompson, Curtis’ efforts should have produced a blockbuster instead of a commercial flop. Yet, I enjoyed watching it. Pirate Radio is a romp, nothing more. It has no pretensions to high art, moral underpinnings, or philosophical depth. And let’s face it: the music of the 1960s was pretty good stuff, wasn’t it?
The aging ship Radio Rock, anchored off the coast of England, broadcasts rock music into a country whose rigid politicians seem mission-driven to keep decadent music from the masses. In a scene in which uptight government minister Alistair Dormandy, played by Kenneth Branagh, sets off the action by taking on the task of assassinating rock music, he mutters between clenched teeth, “The nice thing about being in government is that if we don’t like something, we can make it illegal.”
Aboard the ship, Young Carl (Tom Sturridge) has been kicked out of school. His mother Charlotte (Emma Thompson) sends him to his godfather Quentin (Bill Nighy) aboard Radio Rock. Quentin’s greeting sets the movie’s tone:

Quentin: So... expelled?
Young Carl: That's right.
Quentin: What for?
Young Carl: I suppose smoking was the clincher.
Quentin: Drugs or cigarettes?
Young Carl: Well, both.
Quentin: Well done! Proud of you. So your mum sent you here in the hope that a little bracing sea air would sort you out?
Young Carl: Something like that.
Quentin: Spectacular mistake.

Pirate Radio’s wry humor and the characters played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nighy have the film stand out from the parade of 1960s nostalgia movies and the soundtrack makes the movie a must-see for rock ‘n roll fans. Nitpickers who take pleasure in finding fault in movies will enjoy it, too.

Pirate Radio
released November 2009
Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi34800409?ref_=tt_pv_vi_aiv_2

Omega Dogs

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels

Omega Dogs

 My new wife and stepson had a couple of dogs, Tasha and Sherman. Tasha was a big, muscular animal with a golden coat; a mongrel descendent of some noble working breed- a boxer and a retriever, maybe. Sherman was a nervous, little gray rodent of a mutt, from something like a Chihuahua and a miniature dachshund. Tasha was showered with affection, Sherman was largely ignored. Tasha posed and postured, aware she was watched and loved. Sherman hung onto the edge of the room, waiting for the inevitable petting and cooing over his housemate, then he’d come forward apologetically to beg a piece of Tasha’s action.

I asked my wife why she ignored Sherman, though the dog obviously was hurt by it. She said she felt bad that she didn’t like Sherman, and she wished she could feel more generous toward him, but she just simply did not like mousy little dogs. She only had the dog because she felt sorry for it when a friend’s emergency required that Sherman go to the pound, where he might be euthanized. She had saved his life. That should be enough.

In the spring I developed a garden in what was no more than a clothes yard at the rear of the 1940’s-era house. I heaved stones for a flower garden border, turn compost, and tilled planting areas with Sherman close by, watching my activities with real interest while Tasha basked in the sun.

I’m a consummate conversationalist, so I talked to Sherman as I worked, sometimes turning to look directly at him, just to let him know someone cared. The monologues generally ran toward what I was doing, why I was doing it, and to relate my understanding of the dog’s life and trials. In a language that avoided baby-talk, I told him that there would soon be flowers to pee on, herbs to nibble, and butterflies to chase. Sherman sometimes lifted his ears and cocked his head as though I had given him cause to ponder. We bonded, while across the yard, Tasha turned over, like a super-model on the beach, to let the sun do its work on the other side.

Sherman came to be my dog. I came to see this neglected mongrel as having a keen intelligence and a warm heart. He sat by my side as the family watched television in the evenings. We took walks around the neighborhood. Where once his manner was meek, his head hung and his tail drooped, both were now raised high into the air. Tasha began to show signs of jealousy. This new member of the household had altered the center of gravity. She cast agitated glances at Sherman when I petted and talked to him. She tried to situate herself between us. She got angry once that he was getting the attention that she felt was rightfully hers. She snarled at him, showing bared teeth. I reprimanded her, and she slunk off across the room where my sympathetic stepson stroked her faltering ego. Sherman, to his credit, did not respond to the threat but looked down at her from his perch on the sofa as though he was an aristocrat dealing with a particularly bothersome serf. Such is the politics of dogs.

An acquaintance, in town for a weekend, sold his ten-speed bicycle to me. He had carried it in the bed of his pickup from his farm out in East Texas, near the Louisiana line. I was excited at having a racing bike- I’d wanted one for some time, but was put off by the prices in the bike shops. I bought this one for less money than it would take to replace a chain sprocket.

I took to riding it around the neighborhood and down to the convenience store near the White Rock Lake spillway. Sherman ran along beside me. Regardless of his short legs, the dog was a born runner. He ran with blissful abandon, favoring the street side where his joy was not interrupted by sidewalk cracks, trees, and overhanging shrubs. Rather than being exhausted by those full-gallop outings, he was energized by them.

The political situation at home intensified. Sherman became haughty toward Tasha; Tasha became morose. I made attempts to appease her with an occasional petting session and baby-talk, but it didn’t work. She knew my affection was fleeting. Sherman treated these occasions like a benevolent host sharing his good fortune. Tasha cowered, uncertain of how to handle this violation of universal order.

One fall evening Sherman and I were out on one of our bicycle excursions under a star-studded sky. There was a hint of chill in the air that, with the early arrival of nightfall, signaled the coming winter. This might be our last bicycle run until spring.

Whenever headlights glowed behind us, I’d give the command for Sherman to get over to the sidewalk. He was always reluctant, but he always obeyed. He didn’t like the break in his ecstasy to drop back, move over, increase speed, and drop back again to get back on the street. He wanted to run, without thinking about running.

Headlights came up fast behind us. I pointed to the sidewalk and commanded, “Get over, Sherman.” He fell back and moved to the right. The headlights moved to the right, keeping Sherman in their beams. In an instant I knew what was happening- someone was running Sherman down. “Get over, Sherman!” I yelled in a panic, just ahead of the thump and the crack of bone. A beat up pickup truck swerved back into the street and roared away.

Didn’t I hear laughter from the cab of the truck? A couple of yokels, emotionally retarded and intellectually crippled, out for a good time?

I dropped the bike to the ground and rushed back to my smashed dog. I knelt down to stroke his head. One eye rolled up toward me. He gurgled a sigh, and died. Did he hang onto life for those few seconds so that he could see me one more time, to know I was there? I like to think he died knowing he had finally, though briefly found the love that dogs crave so. I sat on the curb and wept alternating tears of grief and rage.