Armistice Day Thoughts

So it is once more The Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month. The day the Guns of August fell silent and the killing stopped for a time. A day to reflect. A day of regrets.

I have dreamed of a military career since before I can remember. At first these were of course childish dreams. But as time progressed the dreams changed, grew more mature and more specific. As a child I read Tom Clancy novels and war memoirs. As a college student I scoured the BuPers website to gather information on what it was like to be a junior officer in the three communities which most interested me (Naval Flight Officer, as I did not have the eyes to be a pilot; Intelligence because spying always intrigued me; Surface Warfare because I'm a son of a son of a sailor, Destroyermen all, and have hungered in my soul to conn a Destroyer or Frigate in a storm at sea since I was eight). I bought the Naval Officers Guide (it taunts me from a shelf behind me now), read the Service Etiquette Guide, got a subscription to Proceedings. I even took the entrance test for Officer Candidate School and blew the doors off. But through it all, the desire, the hunger, wasn't enough to make me get off my ass and not be fat. I came close, once, at the end of college. But I faltered then like I always do, blamed it on a bad break up when it was really my utter lack of any moral backbone, and chubbed back up. Even 9/11 couldn't get me to man up, and I hadn't even gained most of the weight back at that point. My country has been at war for nigh on a decade, was attacked on our home soil, and that was insufficient to shake my lethargy. And so I wonder. Deep down, am I a coward? Is that why I could never stick to it, never lose the weight. Because then I would have no excuse but cowardice. That questions haunts me. The answer matters little. In practice I am a pathetic thing, might as well be a coward.

Samuel Johnson says "every man thinks meanly of himself for never having been a soldier, or never having gone to sea." I suppose it counts double for never having gone to be a solider on the sea? That quotation could be my epitaph. I think very meanly about myself. I just got a big promotion at work, a validation of my efforts. But it tastes of ash in my mouth when I see a soldier in uniform on the street. There goes a better man than I will ever be I think to myself. What I do doesn't matter, doesn't change anything. I serve no higher purpose than feeding my overstuffed face. God gave me great gifts, and I have squandered them.

Art cont'd

To further elaborate, I do not mean to imply that purchasing art to purchase social standing is in any way new. That particular practice has an ancient pedigree. Most of the Greek sculpture which survives is in the form of Roman-era copies of Greek classics, often marble copies of bronze originals. There was a thriving market for fancy portraits of Tudor New Men. Clearly this is not a recent trend. The difference is, in the past the market was small enough and dispersed enough that artists couldn't work "on spec" with the idea that whatever they produced, someone could be found to buy it (once they had enough of a reputation to attach social cachet to their works, though there is a fairly sizable market for art in general, as there is a social cachet to having original works, even if of dubious intrinsic worth). Instead, artists would seek wealthy patrons and solicit commissions from them.

A question about Art

I was once told "commissioned art is always bad art." Granted, any saying which contains "always" is a prime suspect for exceptions (notice how I avoided always there. . .) but this seems to me a particularly objectionable example. In sculpture, can you name any great works that aren't commissions? Phidias, Michelangelo, Donatello; their whole careers are based upon commission work. Really, most any physical art (in other words, leaving out literature & music composition, the starting line was directly in reference to visual art so I don't feel bad leaving them out) dating from before the nineteenth century is a commission. Prior to that society didn't generate enough surplus wealth to create a speculative art market, and those with enough income to avoid the need to work to live were restricted to the upper classes where being an "artist" as a way to while away the time wasn't socially acceptable. A warrior, a clergyman, a scholar, a poet? Yes. Though most often a combination of several of these. A painter or sculptor? No. For the overwhelming majority of human history, art IS commissioned art. The artist who can create a living simply because he is an "artist" and a ready stream of faux-intellectual nouveau riche twits wish to purchase high culture street cred is a product of the industrial revolution as surley as interchangable parts, trade unions, and smog.

Andrew Jackson and Kings under mountains

I was given Jon Meacham's American Lion for my birthday and started reading it yesterday. For those unaware, it is a Pulitzer-winning biography of Andrew Jackson centered on the years of his Presidency, written by an editor at Newsweek. I'm only fifty pages in, so I cannot really comment on the book itself, but it has made me think a bit about our seventh President.

The first thought, and the one which names this post, is the notion of Andrew Jackson as America's King under the Mountain. The King under the mountain (or in the mountain) is a legend common to a great many cultures, mostly Northern European, wherein a mighty folk hero (often but not always a historical figure) is not dead, but merely sleeps (usually in or under a mountain, thus the name) awaiting a great crisis to befall his country. At the hour of greatest need he will awake and save his people. Arthur is a common example for the Welsh/English (amusingly enough as Arthur gained fame as a war leader against the Anglo-Saxons, but I digress), Charlemagne and Frederik Barbarossa for Germany, Olaf the First for Norway, and Constantine XI for the Greeks (last Byzantine emperor, died in the fall of Constantinople and body never identified). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_in_the_mountain

A fun diversion I occasionally entertained with friends, but admittedly more often with myself to stave off boredom, was the question if America was to have a King under the Mountain or sleeping hero myth (much less grand and romantic sounding that the former), who should get the nod?

I am restricting this to Presidents, so Zombie Patton and his Undead Armored Corps of Doom can wait in the hall.

George Washington of course always comes up, but I always felt he was a little too distant, too pleased to at long last rest with Martha at Mount Vernon to end his repose. Though he is it goes without saying an honorable and acceptable choice. I just think that, if left up to him, he'd be willing and able to rise and save us but would much rather we picked someone else.

Thomas Jefferson comes to mind as the second most likely Founder-President, but I don't think he's the man we'd want in a crisis. Jefferson was a great thinker rather than a great doer, and in a situation grave enough to raise heroes from the dead we would want more than a well written essay I should think.

I have heard FDR, Kennedy, and Reagan mentioned, but all are, to my mind, too recent and too divisive.

This leaves a final troika of strong candidates: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson.

Like Washington, Lincoln is a strong choice but, for reasons I cannot pin down, he leaves me a bit cold. I suspect it is simply my Southern upbringing. Similarly, I recognize that W.T. Sherman was an exemplary general but I simply can not feel for him the way I do for R.E. Lee. Perhaps I am letting my biases show and allowing emotion to cloud my judgement. I'll call it striking my blow against the creeping and continuous homogenization of our culture and more on.

Theodore Roosevelt is a very strong candidate. He has one heck of a life story (riches to rags to riches; was a successful politician, a cowboy, and the author of a standard study of the naval war of 1812 all before he was thirty; his only rival for the title of most intelligent President is Jefferson; read Latin authors in the original while conducting cattle drives; was shot int he chest but still delivered his speech with the bullet inside him). I have a feeling that he would dearly love to be America's Arthur, if only because he never got a war (the Rough Riders were only a regiment, and before he was President). Wilson wouldn't let him into the First World War for fears of what that would mean in the 1920 elections. If given the chance he would shout "Bully!" and leap on the nearest horse. He also lacks the darkness that laps around Jackson. TR never created a Trail of Tears, never bought or sold slaves.

But that very darkness is part of what gives Jackson the edge, to me. He was an indisputable SOB, but he was our SOB. He had a love for the United States that can only be described as vehement. As an orphan, he came to view the US as his surrogate family, and God have mercy on those who would threaten his family for Jackson would have none. If the US faced existential threat, sheer cussedness could raise Jackson to personally horsewhip who or whatever was responsible. When the you-know-what hits the fan, I'd kinda like for America's own Darth Vader to come to the rescue.

Getting Started

I rather doubt anyone will ever read any of this, but thought it might be nice to write down and preserve some of the random thoughts that fly through my head. On the off chance you have stumbled across this, welcome. I hope you enjoy it.