poliphilo | Tennysonian Thoughts

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Tennysonian Thoughts

The Sussex Downs are a range of low chalk hills running parallel to the English Channel. I went to school at Lancing College- a nineteenth century foundation that nestles in a fold of them. Depending on your politics and aesthetic sense, it's either a neo-gothic gem or a carbuncle.

It educated mid-level functionaries and soldiers for service in the British Empire- and lots and lots of priests. Also Evelyn Waugh and- so recently that I remember him as a nervy, god-like prefect- the leftist playwright David Hare.

The Downs above Lancing are a great place for thinking big thoughts. The wind blows hard. On a clear day you can see beyond Brighton to the Seven Sisters- the great white cliffs that defied Napoleon. And the sea is simply huge.

Over there, among the trees, the Romans had a temple. Some 19th century landowner planted the trees. He planted them in a clump or "ring" because he thought it looked "druidic". In the mid-twentieth century a coven of witches used to hold their meetings there.

Like I said- a great place for thinking Big Thoughts.

Teen-age thoughts.

And one of mine was that we needed a World Government. No more disputes among nations, no more war but, in stirring Tennysonese, "the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."

O lucky me- forty years on my wish has come true. We have our World Government. It's called the Government of the United States of America.

What happens today in the Presidential election is of far greater importance to me- and the rest of us islanders and, indeed, the bulk of the world's population- than anything that might transpire in our cute and quaint little national elections.

And dammit, I don't have a vote.

I'm not wingeing. Not really. I can see the advantages of the present arrangement as well as the drawbacks. Maybe this is a first step on the way to a World Government- something I still believe in (I think).

We'll get there, we'll get there. It's a steep old path.

You know what an optimist I am.

Meanwhile, O citizens of the New Rome, enjoy your privilege and use it wisely.

Good morning, America- and have a nice day!

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exciting isn`t it?

Teetering on the edge of the precipice, man, teetering on the edge

(It is pleasant to think of your sitting on a cliff and looking out to sea, wishing for world government. A delightful image.)

I used to play chess, badly. I remember that I always lost because I was always on the defensive, while my opponent (usually my very bright son) was doing two things at once, painting me into a corner.

This is how I feel we are doing as a nation--we're making everyone furious with us, and we're going to be all alone over here, swaggering and bullying and saying "Because I say so, that's why!" There's no communication anymore--we're like the phone company bumper sticker: "AT&T: We don't care. We don't have to."

This is the first time nearly everyone's voting: viscerally, we all know what the stakes are. I dropped my vote into the bucket, plink, where it was immediately absorbed into the flood of local Bush votes, but I did my best.

It is comforting to know that, in the very long run, maybe our new Empire is the beginning of the Federation.

Until we grow up and are ready, though, we're stuck here, with our Emperor. And so, sadly, is the world.

I have always thought of Dubya as Caligula- Little Boots- I think it fits him rather well.

Here's a line of poetry I've treasured for decades- an unfailing source of reassurance:

"Time ties down even dictators to their dates."

The author, implausibly, was the eternally fey and mimsy Walter de la Mare (a great favourite of mine)

I'm glad you remembered that line of poetry today. It is comforting to know.

Guess what? Some people think Jeb Bush may run next. When asked on CNN last night if he would run for President, he paused carefully, then said, "I said the other day I would not run in 2008."

A dynasty. Do you suppose those twins of W's might be elected, too?

The twins might be fun.

A president who giggles....

...A president who giggles and sticks out her tongue at the press! Who might show up a little high at the State of the Union speech!

Yes... wisely... mwahahahahahahahaha!!!

I plan to exercise my privilege wisely in approximately three hours, my friend.

And good day to you, as well!

Excellent

I have hopeful news from this side of the Pond:

My brother and his wife, Republicans (don't ask: it has torn our family apart, a tiny war), are in Florida, so they can't vote today!

That's two more.

And my mother's friend, who, like Mother, is in her eighties and increasingly fragile, fall at their bridge club the other night and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but she is VOTING FOR KERRY today, although using a walker, with a fierce Democrat son on either side to steady her. Hooray!

I called my mother, another Republican, this morning and said, "Please, don't vote. Just don't vote. Can you do that much for your country?"

I think she was going to hang up on me, and then she remembered that she loved me anyway, even though I am misguided and dumb.

"I'll be at the polls at nine," she told me firmly.

"If the lines are too long, maybe you shouldn't try to stand there too long, Mother. Remember your health."

"Thanks," she said, "for your concern."

I tell you, it's a regular Civil War over here today.

God help us all.

Anyway, my sister-in-law and brother are out of town, and that's two.

We've been watching The Fellowship of the Ring this afternoon.

It suddenly came to me- Tony Blair is Saruman to Dubya's Sauron.

When they started making this movie they can't have known how precisely it would fit the times. Spooky- eh?

I know less than I should about Tony Blair (and, for what it's worth, I think he looks--though less lately, maybe because he's "fading"--just like an Elf)--but I would think he would be, not Saruman (who was powerful and turned to evil) but, rather, King Theoden, who was misled and possessed.

But Theoden is rescued from the evil spell- as we've just seen- and Blair shows no signs of becoming disenchanted.

It's quite funny. We ordered the Lord of the Rings trilogy from the rental company and they've sent us the first disc of each film. So we've seen disc one of The Fellowship, followed by disc one of The Two Towers. We're now going to watch disc one of The Return of the King. It hardly matters- we know the story anyway- and if we return these discs they ought (fingers crossed) to send us the missing discs by return post.

Hey, this Tolkien marathon stops us from thinking too much about what's going on in the polling booths on your side of the Pond.

And my mother's friend, who, like Mother, is in her eighties and increasingly fragile, fall at their bridge club the other night and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but she is VOTING FOR KERRY today, although using a walker, with a fierce Democrat son on either side to steady her. Hooray!

Hooray, indeed, for little old ladies with walkers! And actually for your mother as well; I might not agree with her, but it is somehow good that at least she cares about it rather than sitting back, indifferently. Voting oughtn't be considered a 'right', but a 'duty'.

I'm proud of my mother. She is intrepid. She watches C-Span broadcasts of boring Senate meetings, and she cares.

She doesn't think we should "change horses in mid-stream."

She's afraid of the terrorists.

I don't agree with her, and I can't reason with her. If I try, she says, "I don't want to talk about it. It makes me mad."

Fair enough. It's hard to shove her around.

But on some issues--amazingly--she is very liberal and understanding and intuitive. For example, she doesn't understand all the fuss about gay marriages.

When I was a child, I got into a long diatribe with a fundamentalist preacher who just happened to be teaching my 7th-grade geography class. I had brought a library book on evolution into the classroom, and he began trying to set me straight.

Because of my mother, I was able to hold my ground, even though he was letting me know I was going the wrong way, and that I'd be sorry.

I never will forget talking with my mother that night after school.

"My teacher said this and this about the Bible being against evolution," I told her.

And she said (so like her) something that has stayed with me all these years, so powerful was it:

"What do YOU think?"

"What do YOU think?"

Yes... The question all children should be asked at regular intervals, not only to teach them to trust themselves, but also to teach them that they ought to have opinions. Being opinionated is not the most appealing of qualities, but somehow I relate to that sort of people far more easily than to opinion-less people.

And now my mother is forced to listen to my opinions! Well, serves her right!

Too bad she's not so easily convinced...

(I am very tense today. I'm worried about our nation, and I'm worried about the world, too. This feels like a world-history-making day. I hope for the best.)

We all seem to be mixed up in this... Hmm... -And this internerd-thing is not making it any easier to detach from it!

I was just talking (online) with a friend who says she is looking forward to a voting party tonight because she is "so tense."

This is a common feeling here today. It's hard to define--what is that German word for atmosphere--zeithgeist?

It's in the air. We're all feeling something is moving. Scary.

And even scarier the thought that things might not move at all; the realisation that, regardless of the outcome, things will be more or less the same tomorrow and the day after that. But then; the hope... The hope that someday somethings might be just slightly different.

My worst fear is that we will become a police state.

I see signs of it: the War is becoming a blank check for the administration to suppress free speech.

I've never thought of myself as paranoid, or as politically minded, but the world, as Galadriel said at the beginning of LOTR, "has changed."

Hmmm... Had written great comment, drawing parallels between Bush's rhetorics, LOTR and Lyotard's "end of the Great Stories", but my internet connection timed out, and posterity will not be able to marvel at my temporary brilliance... Ah, well; back to being mediocre, then! (Anyway; if Bush ever catches Bin Laden he's going to be on the look-out for a new enemy, and intuitively one might feel that his greatest enemy would be European (especially francophone) intellectuals... Better not be one of them, then!)

Hmmm... Had written great comment, drawing parallels between Bush's rhetorics, LOTR and Lyotard's "end of the Great Stories", but my internet connection timed out, and posterity will not be able to marvel at my temporary brilliance... Ah, well; back to being mediocre, then!

A groan of commiseration coming your way! How I can relate to this!

Know what I have learned to do? Just before I hit the "Post" button, I grab everything by copying it...

LJ has been slow to dead at posting all day.

As for your comments: I was reading in The Onion (from January 2003) the funny but unsettling farce article "Bush on North Korea: 'We Must Invade Iraq'" -- it's true: there will always be another place to conquer, and a pretext to do it.

I tend to write comments in my LJ client and the copy-paste them, but sometimes I'm too lazy if I won't be using the html functions anyway...

But yes; Bush has cast himself as a 'flat' character - pure white, of course - and so he needs an oponent in order to seem in any way credible within the plot. He needs a Darth Wader to his Skywalker, so to speak. Of course, some of us do not buy the very premises of this plot, and so it is wasted on us, but it does seem to work on others. God; I'm such a cliché of a student of literature at times! Anyhow...

(And yes; Bush and geography, well... We've been laughing at it for years, but it really is rather sad.)

But yes; Bush has cast himself as a 'flat' character - pure white, of course - and so he needs an oponent in order to seem in any way credible within the plot. He needs a Darth Wader to his Skywalker, so to speak. Of course, some of us do not buy the very premises of this plot, and so it is wasted on us, but it does seem to work on others. God; I'm such a cliché of a student of literature at times! Anyhow...

I appreciate your clever thinking!

Whether some of us buy the plot's premises is, I think, irrelevant, once the archetypes are activated...

(God: I'm such a cliche of a student of Jung at times...)

I confess to a lack of knowledge about psycho-analysis... But I do think it is interesting to look at the sort of narrative that has been created or use psychological terms to express our perception of it; why leave all this stuff to the sociologists and historians?

But I do think it is interesting to look at the sort of narrative that has been created or use psychological terms to express our perception of it; why leave all this stuff to the sociologists and historians?

When it's all put together--history, psychology, sociology, and the art, music, and stories of an era--surely we have a picture that is more complete.

My sister, who has a Master's in history, tells me that history books can be very biased and often factually incorrect, something that never occurred to me, since history bored me.

Of course they're biased; they're representations based on the selection of a human being, and try as we might, we can never quite avoid having our own agenda hidden somewhere... Objectivity is not necessarily a bad goal, but you'll never quite get there, and so a documentary by Michael Moore can be said to be more honest than a history book on 17th century Poland, as Moore expresses his subjectivity in far clearer terms... Moore holds out "Fahrenheit 9-11" to us and says "look; this is MY representation of the events", whereas someone dealing with older history might not themselves be aware that they will inevitably have some sort of biased or predetermined conclusion in their research and representation.

about your mother being liberal on some issues but being afraid of terrorism and not wanting to change horses-- i know how frustrating that is... one of my best friends is sort of the same, he thinks bush is doing a terrible job domestically and doesn't agree with any of his positions on social issues, but he really thinks bush is doing a great job with terrorism and "doesn't trust kerry on foreign affairs". as of august, he still thought we'd find weapons of mass destruction, and he is convinced that invading iraq had made us safer. and he goes to harvard! more importantly, though, he doesn't read newspapers and gets all his news from cnn and fox news (so i've been emailing him articles from the new york times in an attempt to sway him). it frustrates me that someone so smart can be so uninformed.

about your mother being liberal on some issues but being afraid of terrorism and not wanting to change horses-- i know how frustrating that is... one

I've rarely--never felt so passionate about political issues. Or so frustrated.

Arrrgh: FOX news. Arrgh.

well, not that it matters since i'm a resident of "liberal massachusetts", but i did my thing.

kerry is in boston today. work tonight will be crazy. if i wind up spending all night editing tapes about a bush victory, i will not be a happy camper.

i have enjoyed reading your thoughts on this day. if you read newspapers online, paul krugman's column in the ny times about election day is quite good, as is james carroll's in the boston globe.

Yes I read a lot of stuff on-line. I get Truthout- which gives me the pick of the "liberal press" both American and European. Krugman is a writer they regularly feature. I read something of his this morning, probably the article you mean.

If I hadn't felt good about voting before, I would now.

Thanks!

Cheers. I've been watching lord of the Rings all afternoon- partly so as to keep my mind off the election. Any time now I will have to switch back to the real world and see what's been going on....

Not much yet, although the news websites are all getting realllllllllllllllly slooooooooooooooow. :)

Your comment about a world government frightens me. It frightens me because I see a kernel of truth in it. That kernel of truth, that currently George W. Bush is in charge of the world, really is truly horrifying.

I, too, dream of a world government. A true world government, where there are no longer any boundaries between nations. Where people can move where they want and pursue the career they want, and where people care about what happens to those on the other side of the planet. Where people retain their cultural identity, but no longer let it affect how they vote or how they perceive the world. A world where there is only "us" not "us and them."

I'm going to stop here before I ramble on for the next eternity about the world government I would like to see.

I love your gentle dream for the world, and I share it.

I believe that it will happen someday, if we survive.

I think it will come. I think this is a transitional phase we're passing through right now- and transitions are always tumultuous.

And I have no idea why that comment posted twice - LJ was acting weird all day yesterday, though, and I suspect that had something to do with it.

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Tennysonian Thoughts

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