Fourth of July Rivals
By William Dennis
Preface
As to the question of why I have set myself to rhyming sociology: I recently came across a possible answer in a collection of critical essays on Tennyson’s work: Harold Bloom introduces the collection with this statement--
“ The temper of poetic imagination is peculiarly and favorably responsive to the thwarting of political hope…,” which seems to suit the present case admirably. And Robert Langbaum observed, “In his doubts and answers, Tennyson like all great writers was able to bring a new age into being by telling the present age what its preoccupations were. His answers helped provide the staple of liberal opinion during the 1850's and 60's."
In a web-cast debate, the astronomer, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, observed in connection with his appreciation of the painting by Vincent van Gogh known as, Starry Night, that the value for him lay not in its naturalistic accuracy of observation, as if it were a revelatory documentation of objective reality. Rather its worth lay in the artwork’s power to convey what nature, the stars in this case, meant to the artist, suggesting new layers and levels of significance to the rest of us.
Of course, I do not hope or claim to achieve what Tennyson achieved or van Gogh conveyed to anything like the same degree, but I am pleased to recognize in my previously unconscious motives the same urge to bring material to public awareness. Just as Allen Ginsburg set his queer shoulder to the wheel, I set my dull stylus to scratch a hole in the wall obscuring from public consciousness the meaning and importance of the social sciences which are in resplendent bloom around us.
“ The temper of poetic imagination is peculiarly and favorably responsive to the thwarting of political hope…,” which seems to suit the present case admirably. And Robert Langbaum observed, “In his doubts and answers, Tennyson like all great writers was able to bring a new age into being by telling the present age what its preoccupations were. His answers helped provide the staple of liberal opinion during the 1850's and 60's."
In a web-cast debate, the astronomer, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, observed in connection with his appreciation of the painting by Vincent van Gogh known as, Starry Night, that the value for him lay not in its naturalistic accuracy of observation, as if it were a revelatory documentation of objective reality. Rather its worth lay in the artwork’s power to convey what nature, the stars in this case, meant to the artist, suggesting new layers and levels of significance to the rest of us.
Of course, I do not hope or claim to achieve what Tennyson achieved or van Gogh conveyed to anything like the same degree, but I am pleased to recognize in my previously unconscious motives the same urge to bring material to public awareness. Just as Allen Ginsburg set his queer shoulder to the wheel, I set my dull stylus to scratch a hole in the wall obscuring from public consciousness the meaning and importance of the social sciences which are in resplendent bloom around us.
Acknowledgments
This poem owes much, if not all, to Edward O. Wilson for his insight into altruism as an evolutionary survival trait, which he explicates in his book, “The Social Conquest of Earth,” and to Colin Woodard for his explanation of the historical origins of the persistent characteristics which distinguish the several founding regions of our country, which he gives in, “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.” Any credit for original thinking and insight goes to them as well as to others whose thinking has contributed to my own.
*** Useful Altruism ***
The Tree of Life and all it’s fruiting branches-- just stove-wood to a man who owns an axe, and nothing can more put him out of sorts than any effort made to stay his hand-- the future’s claim he holds an unjust tax, as altruism skipped his generation; robber barons—he’d like to join their band: although their graves are public urinals, they lived the only life to love—of mastication. But broaden from the actor to the troupe: to what is shared by individuals, the nature of the beast will seem quite other, as water’s not just solvent when it’s soup. Here’s why statistics often seems to lie, those groups do best where each supports his brother, whose denims bulge with genes for altruism, so altruists in groups share much more pie. It honors strength to bear the weak along, more than that common practice—cannibalism. We all meet malice, sickness, fortune’s pranks; to youth and age we all sometimes belong; no single man, however strong, can fence the sea nor build a road for just his single shanks, or pen a poem for his own reading pleasure; nor did Jason on his Argosy, that mighty lad, un-ship eight oars alone-- he fleeced the land, but took Poseidon’s measure. Our single-handed leader changed regimes; at least, he wished he’d done it on his own… or with no banner-printers and no press. Though even selfish souls need help, it seems, to do what others wish they would not do, they swear by single might and cussedness. The single-good-and-commonweal conundrum, could it rest in balance when it’s through, would crush a giant or stout pygmies’ huddle, breaking any back it made its fulcrum. To swing our pendulum from some high meme through modest arcs across the social muddle, traversing polities of compromise-- philosophy applied to petty theme-- may satisfy the peckish inner bourgeoisie, but partial truths and palatable lies want citron tang to ward the soul from scurvy. Placed before what Plato called to be, the wisdom of the East salutes the path, however Sisyphusian or swervey; enjoy the walk from bunker to the rough, since steps are countless, if one does the math. And well may this be wisdom, but the wise all find a little bit of wisdom quite enough to render champions of altruism gruff. *** Yankeedom *** The Yankee fathers saw in Plymouth Rock a new Gibraltar, lacking but for size, which tears of self-denial must make grow, then watered more by ducking-stool and stock, as government improved the people's lives. We take on faith that which we can not know; may school bell be to church bell as, thank God-- they did; we do – the Teacher was to Dives. As God was goodness and they did his will, they passed in one short pace from rood to rod. Now Puritanism has grown secular, though advocating moral, good works still. As God has made the world through evolution, the modern Yankee, less spectacular, sustainably erects his shining city through polity and power's devolution, for lasting good must serve the greater good. Though doing well is still not always pretty, faith, first misplaced, then altogether lost, concedes the Golden Rule misunderstood, fierce missionaries' best use was the pot, with guidelines more than laws come Pentecost. Albeit, they may have annoyed their neighbors, eternal, earthly credit be their lot for having stood alone and first against the sin of slavery, with its weeping sores. To sugar-cane infection from Barbados, the jungley, humid South found no defense. When lowland sugar-fever ran its course, a cotton-cancer served the highland's dose and swept both Cherokee and Oglethorpe away, effecting, all-unasked, a quick divorce between the common voter and his vote. A slave must have his master, so they say-- a race of masters made a master race as heartless as the Romans they would quote. Refocused Yankee fervor to save souls-- now for democracy – could spare no place for aristocracy's industrious, bloody lash, for race and class produce Woosterian panache. *** New Netherlands *** Nieuw Nederland's five hundred played at bowls, while keeping score in eighteen languages; even for the Dutch, it would be brash to claim majority—for twenty-eight per group, must-needs they round-up averages. They wanted settlers, as back home they lacked for those who fled a pauper's desperate straits or sects which suffered for some one, true faith; though English Puritans, straight-faced, stiff-backed, had turned from Holland's “manifold temptations,” as “evil examples” offered the naïf to lime their better angels with free thought. When Governor Stuyvesant tried expurgation of Jews and Quakers he was over-ruled from home for having done more than he ought for social unity, neglecting trade and Flushing's heated protests, which he'd fueled. Not life-shaped-commerce: the other way around; each to his way, so long as profit's made. The Bronx grew famous later for its cheer; in Flushing protest was its first clear sound. For it was trade ahead of anything, and social purity was thought small-beer: to build a perfect city on a hill – a perfect waste of some good hill through meddling. Neither were the Inquisition's racks or waters of the North Sea ever still from persecution of man's weakness; if they could get a soul to pay his tax, they'd learned to wink at any other failing. For strangers to act strange, a willingness united the United Provinces, without which efforts were thought un-availing for colonies to find prosperity. As heaped-up praise will reach extravagance, begrudging leaches savor from the salt; so tolerance made use of, not run free, and pluralism put-up with, un-sought, resembles less a virtue than a fault. That all alternatives were so much worse: was history's liberal lesson, dearly bought, where generally there's nothing learned at all. They showed a liberal bent, drawn by the purse: Algonquin, lacking beaver-skins, seemed crass; the Iroquois they found acceptable, distinguished, as they were, by handsome pelts, whereby they stood out from the savage mass. So marriage was quite legal with red women, whose families were as civil as the Celts; and solvent Africans might be let free or, for tax purposes, called citizen. That Puritans might murder and betray their native hosts, a commonplace of history, in their elusive purity's pursuit, but even bigotry would yield the way to Dutchmen's reverence for their bottom line. The sonnet penned and cast in bronze to boot by Emma Lazarus for "your tired, your poor," was just old-fashioned sentiment, though fine, a contrast to the newly-built colossus in the straights where immigrants must moor. The first, small huddled mass of slaves, and yearning-- doubtless, aching—to be free, not prosperous, off-loaded seventeen hard years before the bottom of the Witte Paert set churning New Amsterdam's established demographics (to treat that small mixed chorus as a core), by disembarking full three hundred slaves, one wretched tenth to swell the teeming mix. In five years, one in five Manhattanites was African, where once stood Munsi braves; nor were all slaves, not if they held the guilders. Greenwich Village housed suburbanites, when—socially advanced, sophisticated, cultured in a way that still bewilders-- from all the world, the Netherlands stood forth. The Duke of York, one James, who (long entranced by militarism's authoritarian charm, sought to astound his neighbors and prove his worth) invaded from the sea in time of peace. Declaring war before-hand could not harm, although perhaps he may have thought it would, his brother having granted him free lease. Caught thus with pantaloons around its ankles, Fort Amsterdam fell fast, but promptly stood. The Dutch abjured oppressive monarchs once, and thought they might again, for nothing rankles quite like freedom's loss—of thought, of press and, worse, of enterprise—one royal dunce, the future James the Second, recompense. And for a time rebellion claimed success-- however, they still call it New York City. The only British king with divine sense to lay some claim to intellectualism, prized up the first rebellious stone, more's pity, of the New World's avalanche-in-waiting. In GI’s pure, wise-cracked Americanism, Tin-Pan Alley and the silver screen, as slow-swung ballad or headlined banner prating, upward-mobility was the American way-- from Father Divine to Bishop Fulton Sheen-- diversity and tolerance—ideals or gifts for which the Dutch were first to pray, that and lay-worship of free enterprise. A rummage in our history's trunk reveals America contains New Netherlands within it, old dust prepared to quicken in a New York minute. *** The Borderlands *** Not just an oxymoron, despite its size, Greater Appalachia took form last-- proud men with patience far from infinite, cut from rags of low-land Scotts, from tags of chapel-going Irish-Scotts out-castes, and fractious, English, northern-border bob-tail. Eight hundred years of war wore out all flags-- their lands were ruins and they sought sanctuary. Their violence, though, as often earned them jail-- from biting off the nose to full castration of opponents or, too much to carry, they'd string a necklace of dried human ears. For they were Calvin's wrathful God's own nation, warrior-clans, sanctified in blood extracted from each other without tears. Four generations either way they'd trust; the world of men besides was understood to be no place to lay up solid treasure. Stock with legs to run, when run one must, five acres' rye, distilled to liquid gold, or reputation—any real man's measure-- was currency for barter in bank's stead. They neither governed, nor would they be told; for family trumped community in spades; that justice would be vengeance, take as read. Leisure was prosperity, but freedom-- sweet freedom was the bloom that never fades to these for whom the law would always be mere persecution till the Kingdom come. So they sought lives beyond the reach of law, modeled on familiar anarchy. The thing that government and they agreed on: they should hasten where frontiers yet raw could use fresh scalps as buffers to the red-men. The marriages and wars proceeded on were brutal, staggering in their hosts of dead. Some lived the life of forest denizen among the Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, the Creek and Cherokee and there they bred outstanding native statesmen of mixed stock. But many simply trespassed, making free with neighbors' land and crops and stock and daughters. Appalachians served likewise to block expansion of slave-gentry on the coast from usurped fastnesses of falling waters. The Paxton Boys, at fifteen hundred strong, invaded Philadelphia, where some, not most, put down their Quaker ways to take up arms against Scotts-Irish men who saw no wrong in razing Indian villages at peace, who'd hacked one ancient man to bloody death in jail where, hoping they would finally cease, a town had offered shelter to his tribe. Adopted war-whoops proved no waste of breath, for in-migrating tribals on the war-path, although conceding honor might proscribe them killing out of hand the native tribals in appeasement of a general wrath at competition for control of land in mountains westward, where their tribes were rivals. For all Ben Franklin's Boston-Yankee guile, he recognized the Borderer's demand for greater place on legislative bodies. But for Poor Richard's boost of Yankee style, the major New World, British, urban center were over-run by red-man parodies in blanket-coats and moccasins, mock scalping Anabaptist, Deist and Dissenter, who horrified, begged garrison from London or what was payment of their taxes helping? Peace back east came only when the west-- its natives driven out, when not gunned down and scalped to claim Virginia's generous bounty-- resembled Scotland's lawless frontiers best: few roads and fewer laws. A few good families, the lucky tenth, who owned in any county most good land, were soon enough grown wroth with predatory informalities as practiced by their landless, tenant neighbors-- the bottom half of everyone, who loath to plant a crop, got by with hunting or their wits or failing those, the fruits of others' labors. Cherokee War veterans, who’d grown to like the taste of plunder lived as woodsmen, bandits, poachers and practitioners of blackmail-- this last as Scottish as Selkirk or Craik. Although these men despised outside control, and lived on purpose far from judge or jail, they brooked no disagreements or dissents and crushed such savagely, body and soul, in wives and children, the lazy or immoral (equals), and political opponents, without compromise enforcing norms, and even lynching laggards prone to quarrel. Those made to farm on pain of flagellation, might be branded yet, and if reforms seemed too half-hearted, suffer banishment. According to their Plan of Regulation the wealthy tenth then swept the southern highlands, Virginia to north Georgia. Admonishment, when it came, the Regulators scorned; three years it took, and arms, to stay their hands. When planters, from the South and gentlemen, could re-assert such sway as they adorned, the Regulator families lead the way to pioneer unsettled lands again, and so was born the state now called Kentucky. From that time forth, up to the present day, the Borderers of Greater Appalachia fought for freedom always, standing plucky for both sides throughout the Civil War-- at first, against the Yankees and Britannia, then Tidewater gentlemen, Deep Southern planters, Midlands merchants—honor-bound, still, as before, and going on as they began forever more. South of the North and north of the South, the Midlands-- well-organized, utopian enchanters attracted in four years a populace Tidewater gents, who spoke but in commands, had slaved a quarter-century to reach; New France took seventy years to grow so populous. Penn guaranteed land cheap, religion free and politics at liberty to each, creating an American ideal. They came as families of small farmers-to-be, skilled artisans of modest hopes and means; Penn's Wood took on a civil, settled feel right from its Quaker-dominated start. As they would do by any human beings, they treated with the native tribes as equals, seeking peace and allies of the heart-- against all expectation, with success. The Thirty Years War and all its sanguine sequels-- Hapsburg rivalries with Bourbon kings; French Revolution, Napoleon at chess; hands, Protestant and Catholic, raised in fists; logistics simply pillage—armies taking things; made William Penn's hospitable proposal attract whole villages to leave the lists, especially from the bone-limed fields of Pfaltz. Peasants and craftsmen, Protestants, most all; some few belonged to sects which structured life-- that is, wear black and beards and cook with schmaltz, tend one's farm and family, given choice, plump for small potatoes, avoid strife, and, “praise God, from whom all blessing flow.” As their own company gave them to rejoice, Penn let them live without the need for English. Permitting tracts of German stock to grow, to fill up Lutheran and Mennonite, with German Calvinists as well as Amish, and the Brethren of Christ—Penn found he ruled the only colonial British site wherein the bulk was not of British stock-- decidedly un-British; this compound has wrought a multi-cultural, pluralistic combination to our nation’s lock. Pennsylvania Germans and the Quakers sober, thrifty, pious folk—they fit: neither group kept slaves or took up arms, the Germans—quiet, quietist—the Quakers; while Quakers did no harm in government, the Germans did a lot of good on farms. Though wealthy Quakers had arrived with slaves, 1712 had seen them all repent and German Quakers raised the first protest-- a group which otherwise made quite small waves-- of slavery in the north Americas: the Golden Rule applied to slaves—divest! “…to all men like as we will be done ourselves….” Heedless what descent or color was, the Quakers set a duty to prohibit slavery, which the royal courts themselves prohibited, though most had freed their slaves. A few, to set upon their guilt some limit, offered compensation for past labors. Friends governed more as innocents than knaves: at odds with government, like most idealists; they granted innate goodness to their neighbors; the Golden Rule and discipline of self, those much-mocked precepts, headed their idea-lists. The way of Friends with beadledom and custom, like some mad, Socratic breed of elf, was to confront, and challenge every step-- this proved a practice poorly chosen, plus some, given that the government was them. But Penn’s Grove proved no economic misstep, just governmental chaos from its start. How or why, the council could not fathom, to meet, keep records or empower courts. The desperate lower counties chose to part and so the state of Delaware was formed by Swedes and Finns—hotheads, by all reports-- who worked themselves up into quite a state. Penn wrote from London, prose that slowly warmed his pen: “All good is said of [Pennsylvania]...,” growing wroth, he let his theme dilate, “but little good of...people.” Scenic hills-- inhabitants, though, much like Transylvania. Come late, the Borderers were Calvinists, believing man depraved, the world all ills-- moved easily to violence and contempt for native tribes and Quaker pacifists. They pushed the natives into league with France, yet served to shield the Quakers, who exempt from Lenni Lenape retaliations, claimed God’s blessing for their passive stance, as so few Quakers lay among the slain. Likewise, no military preparations had been made those thirty years before against French privateers, whose coups de main to sack plantations close to Philadelphia by sailing up the Delaware to strike ashore, stirred Franklin's ire, which ire aroused, woke wit, insomniac of the intelligencia: “To refuse defending one's self ,...is so “unusual...[our enemies] may not believe it.” While Franklin raised donations for defense, the Quakers, by their inner light's dim glow, prefigured through such early abdications the sloping path from deference to absence. Steadfast in their pacifism, forced to choose, officials tendered resignations, rather than transgress religious ethics. The Friends lacked friends in politics thenceforth. “The principles of Quakerism have,” (from Thomas Paine, found among his relics) “a direct tendency to make a man “the quiet and inoffensive subject of “any and every government set over him:” a compliment, to judge how he began. Though quietness looked like timidity, and too much inoffensiveness seemed prim, an overall respectability might be bestowed by unanimity. So, as the British held the Irish back, they strove with politic facility to miss the Revolution…, with respect: the Crown did keep Tidewater lords on track; the King had made their outpost possible; and Scotts could be unpleasant, left un-checked. Wherefore, they often sided with the South who thought less royal meddling optimal. The Midlands served as uncommitted swing-vote, un-making kings, but caring naught in truth, for independence, Anglican influence or slavery's excess, of which they took note. Revolution, as the Midlands fought it, consisted of diplomacy, non-violence with shrew impact on the Constitution, securing sovereign rights for states that sought it, checking Yankee meddlers and Southern despots. Pacifists, when turned to revolution, forestalled a strong and unitary state imposing humble, tolerant (in spots), and pluralistic ethos, diverse perspective, and apathy toward what lay past their garden gate. Although these traits persist today as prime directive; in practice they can be frustratingly selective. *** To Own the Fourth of July *** Best epilogues conduct themselves in silence honoring the limits placed on foresight. Our struggle, by diplomacy or violence, to capture government in our own shape was never class-driven, nor has the wordy fight that farm and business interests have conducted been prime charge, nor inter-party scrapes. Look rather to the ethno-regional clash, battalions into which each is inducted by his parents, nurturing or strict. Two groups have fought and called each other rash-- the Mason-Dixon bloc, led by the South against the Northern coalition, pricked on by New England Yankee leadership. The pivot group, which will not plight real troth-- the Midlands, mainly…, and not really lead. The Red and Blue both always strive to slip their halters over Purple's donkey ears but either Appalachia shakes its head, the Midland nods, or other allies sneeze. A perfect union, driven less by fears, might see our nation's nations compromise, as they have shown they can do when they please. New Netherlands, New England, the Left Coast-- Blue Nations—shake their heads and roll their eyes; they don't ask much: strong central government; some modest checks on plutocrats, at most; environmental resources preserved; add civil rights for blacks and they're content. The common good efficiently pursued through government effective as deserved, frugal competence, a strong tax base, and prudence with shared assets, how so construed-- what sort of madman could object to that? The Dixie bloc, apartheid as to race, authoritarian as to the rest: the Deep South has been able to stand pat. Jefferson's Tidewater's home, however, with hostile hinterlanders to the west, succumbing to the Midlands from the north, has been eclipsed—for now or for forever. Appalachia’s weight shifts foot to foot, disliking most, by turns, now North, then South. Four hundred years of steady application by the old Deep South, at times hard put, (viz: Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement) forged an elitist, single-party nation and colonial-style economy of factory-farms—plantations with improvement-- or digging wealth for peanuts from the ground by workers lacking in autonomy through schooling scant and ill (and thus low-wage), compliant and with few as may be found of healthcare or environmental rules, while safety regulations spark true rage. When forced by smoking guns to yield up slavery, still, Dixie needed men to work like mules, so sharecrop came to be—American caste-- that met demands for labor cheap through knavery. White rabble and the former slaves might vote, and so end Dixie's elite rule at last; but poll tax, literacy tests and threats defended princely privilege like a moat. Though Nazis caused the South some small distress by modeling their race laws, Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen put it best, who said the other cheek may also have a kiss. Rule by an oligarchy must be cloaked: they call it white supremacy instead, and never fail to rally down-trod whites-- despite the fact their liberties are choked-- with retail mongering at wholesale rates of fear to lose their Bibles, guns and rights; their proud-necked daughters then would be defiled; the races mixed in these United States; and worse, the mixed-breed brats would be transformed to secular humanism—much reviled-- environmentalism, communism, and unless one's sorely misinformed (have faith, no gentleman would twist the truth), they would not blanch at homosexualism. Had Dixie broken free, through peace or war, thus reconfiguring our country's youth, the natural produce of affinity of regions with shared values at their core: tolerance, inclusiveness, with health care, gun control and ethnic diversity, might have been a new United States of Canada, and to the south, its pair: the Kingdom of the Chosen of the Lord, the same..., well, not so much, but low tax rates. These interesting times make this much clear: no ships of state sail well that take on board disenfranchisement over winning votes and rule out public scrutiny in fear the freight of their positions on the issues weighs heavily enough to sink their boats. Other nations may be more corrupt; they can afford it, joined by firmer tissues that we lack—ethnicity, religion or firm consensus no one can disrupt. Open, cleanly and efficiently run government stands central to our vision, and our Declaration of Consensus, the Constitution, has sufficiently connected us together as one folk. Should federal leaders so incense us that we betray this founding law and myth, or should pandemic or terrorists evoke mainstream abandonment of civil rights, see Congress or Supreme Court made off with, our ethno-regional nations' federation could undo ages in a few bad nights. What else cements the USA together? As with Iran, Iraq, the Afghan nation, Sumer or the Persian Empire, around a troubled melting-pot foregather meddlesome imperials to fish. And with the Constitution on its pyre, combinations of like-minded blocs would make a dangerous, but attractive, dish. Like ours, all times are of unusual stress; the modal trend shows more-than-average shocks for epochs of imperial decline. The poor grow more; the middle-class grows less; and when there's little, autocrats want extra. The Old South's thrusting rich strive to align the Southern Bloc with social Darwinism. Of course, in Jersey, they all do Selectra, but if more billionaires-per-acre dwell with less excess of individualism, thank self-pharmacy and social conscience. Some day the old, white South must hear the knell announcing that the Civil War is lost and they can finally end the long defense, though these are thoughts which have been thought before. What wrests the levers from their hands, at cost of grief's slow pence—the usual currency-- will not be propaganda they abhor; our nations are impervious to cant-- ornate graffiti trace, demography. The culture of the place, its stock and race means Southern, white and British Protestant; like honeysuckle on a barbed-wire fence with time they just grow harder to unlace. While slavery shapes the thought, 'assimilation,' 'to be Southern' lacks a future tense. Ideals like ethnic purity sort ill with Asian or Latino immigration; and flags of racial privilege rally few; but Dixieness embraces breeding, still, though they would rather be displaced than change. A melting-pot will not make Brunswick stew; and history misremembers coexistence. Challenged bluntly on their own home range by non-white immigration, plutocrats fall back on gerrymandering resistance, pleased well enough to weaken the republic, great hindrance to aspiring autocrats. The dwindling of the pale-faced Southern tribe from national minority to clique within the bloc of Dixie's old dominion, like defeats historians describe-- the Civil Rights campaign and Civil War-- must needs be bitter, drawn-out and Virginian. Oft-times said, times change and we change with them-- neither world nor we as was before although the future must root in the past and augurs lend themselves to apothegm, the status quo shall not be seen henceforth: this much we know may safely be forecast. The very stuff of U.S. history has been the quarrel of the South and North, allegiance of the undecided middle having in its gift the victory. And should the greatest good prevail against archaic, individualistic muddle and expression of the national life as doing unto others in defense, then evolution of the national soul might follow—multi-ethnic, with less strife, and comfortable with the Bill of Rights. The past is dim, the future black as coal, but absent the old North-South power struggle, what homeland would we find by strange, new lights? Affinity and enmity might let political alliances re-juggle maps of North American terrain to plot a Balkanized, contending set of states, small, ineffectual, and touchy. El Norte to the bounding arctic main, if ties be further loosened, there could be mere distant nodding, city state to duchy, like pre-union Europe, only post-. If Dixie's autocrats gain victory, then Bible-law, a Baptist sharia state class-based, the lower class reserved for most, might save the shrinking land from dissolution. Or utopia may well await-- a semi-sovereign, self-sustaining net of villages with hi-tech resolution to disdain all larger government. Forecasting finally comes down to a bet on altruism versus self-absorption in northern, social-democratic raiment or southern, formal, autocratic dress, though perfect opposition calls for torsion, since Appalachian populism props a southern oligarchy it can't bless. And charity, while honored on the lips up north, still gets poor service in the shops. The one, least likely, future state remains the one no cry or desperate act detains-- the status quo, the summary of history's slips, all dining on past glory and getting by on tips. |