perfidy

It was not too long ago when Francis Fukuyama made some waves with his prediction that, with capitalism's apparent defeat over communism, "history" was at an end. Assuming capitalist democracy is the best way to organize your society, and that populations naturally strive toward it, the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the greatest ideoological and physical barrier to democratic institutions both in Europe and to the wider world. Fukuyama's history means big-p Progress toward a better future of plenty, self satisfaction, representative government, and a global environment more closely resembling order than otherwise exists today. Once that state is reached, history would be at an end, and Dr Fukuyama would write a book about it.

Whether you agree with him or not, Fukuyama missed the point. History didn't end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A history, arguably, ended. A far more fundamental and significant history had already come to an end many years before. That history ended 90 years ago this month, with the opening moves of the War to End All Wars.

That was quite a few wars ago of course. It was also the last Great War. Although there have been some real corkers since, none has been Great. I don't know of another period where, in so short a time, the world that came after was so utterly different than the one that had been. The general effects of the conflict are widely agreed upon, in terms of endings (secret alliance structures [so far as we know!], monarchic direction of imperial foreign policies, the impossibility of protracted European conflict) and beginnings (birth of a viable communist state, ubiquity of automated weaponry, United Nations v.1.0).

Although the changes in military thought are perhaps most thoroughly studied, the war's significance on other historical forces ranged far beyond the battlefields, as the sheer volume of material the conflict generated would indicate. To describe the Great War as "well documented" would be a grotesque understatement; it may be the most widely-studied era in the western world. Many smart people have considered its lessons: Eksteins, Fussell, Gilbert, Keegan, Tuchman, Ferguson, Fisher, to name a few, and new work just keeps on a'coming.

With the amount of material available, and a broadly understood concept of the scheme and scope of the conflict, the war is widely accessible to the general (ie, non-smarty pants historian) public. And with so many people thinking about it, I bet there are some very original and imaginative counterfactual scenarios out there. From the general questions, such as "What if the US had remained neutral?"; to more specific ones, a la "What if young Corporal Hitler had been killed on the Western Front?"; to kooky ones indicating a dearth of human interaction on the part of the questioner, like "What if at the Battle of Quiggledorf, Oberleutnant Schmidt's platoon had broken through the French blockhouses and opened the crossroads, yadda yadda yadda, singlehandedly won the war for Germany?"

What are other interesting counterfactuals that can come from reflecting on this anniversary? What might other repurcussions have been on the arts, literature, culture, diplomacy, society, if the war had turned out differently? What about beyond the western world- Imperial Japan, say, or the nascent USSR?

Earlier, I mentioned that my son slept while Rome burned. I mean, while I blogged. This is what it looked like:

My two boys. Bodhi will always be my eldest, but at fifteen months, John is already vastly outperforming on the intelligence and common sense scales. They're duking it out for loudest though, a contest I am devoutly hoping will be resolved soon.
 

One thing that did briefly flicker in the corner of my awareness recently was the fact that John Kerry received none of the expected bounce in the polls following the recent convention. It is a normal for a candidate to jump a buit in the polls after several days of the intensive and generally favorable coverage attending the nominating convention. Kerry didn't get this, and received the lowest post convention bounce of any candidate since McGovern back in '72. Why is this, I wondered? When I've talked to my liberal friends, they are unifrormly lacking in enthusiasm for Kerry. While they are unified in their dislike for Bush, they have no passion for putting Kerry in the oval office.

Kerry on display for the nation apparently aroused no passion in the electorate, either. I saw very little of the convention, but all three times that I glimpsed it, I saw Kerry talking about his service in Vietnam. While military service is certainly not a bad thing, it is far from the only thing. The recent "This Land is My Land" parody from Jib Jab highlighted this perfectly, and could have stood for the entirety of the democratic convention - "I won three purple hearts, and Bush is a jingoistic moron."

Charles Krauthammer cuts right to the chase, dismissing the stylistic and "the people have already made up their minds" defenses out of hand:

Hardly. The explanation that respects the intelligence of the American people is that Kerry had nothing to say. Well, one thing: Vietnam. His entire speech, the entire convention, was a celebration of his military service. The salute. The band of brothers. The Swift boat metaphors. The attribution of everything -- from religious values to foreign policy wisdom -- to Kerry's five-month stint in Vietnam 35 years ago.

This jibes well with what I've observed. Later, Krauthammer observes,

The convention gave no bounce because it consisted of but two elements: Vietnam, plus attacks on the president. The press swallowed the claim that the convention, following a directive from on high, was not negative. In fact, that meant simply that Al Gore was not to repeat his charges that the Bush administration is allied with "digital brownshirts" and running a "gulag." And that Bush was not to be attacked by name.

But the themes were transparently negative: We are not the party that misleads you into war. We are not the party that trashes the Constitution. We are not the party that acts unilaterally. And my favorite, because of its Escher-like yogiism: We are not the party that divides the country -- as opposed to those lying, Constitution-trashing, unilateralist Republican cowboys.

For the last half decade at least, and really since about '92, the Democrats have not really stood for anything at all. They are the party of negation, the party of denial. What those nasty Republicans want, well, we're agin it! Social Security is collapsing - but no suggestions from the left for how to fix it, just rote opposition to any Republican plan. The war on terror - against the patriot act, the war in Iraq, and most other measures the administration has taken. Not that these choices are beyond debate, to be sure, but the Democratic party has nothing to say except that the choices were ill-considered, in poor judgment, damaging to America and its interests, likely unconstitutional if not outright immoral and by the way, Bush is a liar. But no alternatives except for vague platitudes about involving the international community and more funding for local fire departments.

Given the hatred for Bush in a significant part of the left, distaste for Bush in the remainder, and doubts in the middle; and the deeply troubling events in Iraq - Kerry should be riding high. Even Dukakis, who eventually went down to a humiliating defeat, was leading in the polls early on. Kerry has never had a lead significantly beyond the statistical margin of error in most of the polls over the last six months. The Bush administration has been facing some of the most difficult domestic and foreign policy challenges of the last fifty years, with moderate success. I think the polls show that Bush has already taken about as much political damage from the recent unpleasantness in Iraq as he's ever going to - and Kerry doesn't have much room to move except down.

Fig Newtons are really, really tasty.

Just stretching the fingers, remembering how to google, and kick starting the rusty, two cycle, 2.5hp motor that is my noggin.
 

The wife is in Maryland, doing the band thing for some conspicuously consuming stingy yacht monkeys. The boy is asleep on the couch, preventing me from being asleep on the couch. The railing is replaced on the stairway, the taxes are done (just in time, my extension was running out), the laundry is washed and folded, and I have no desire to enter the jungle that is my garage. I have finished the book proposal, except for editing. Resumes are sent. Email answered. I have no choice but to blog.

For the first several weeks of this hiatus, I was insanely busy and had every excuse to not blog. I didn't watch the news, because I was fixing the house or burying my face in some stripper's tits in Vegas. Good excuses. But as time went by, I wasn't even reading the blog. Not so much for lack of time, but for shame, guilt and remorse.

As a cofounder of this blog, I have responsibilities. Not large ones, granted, but responsibilities nevertheless. And I had been shirking them. And the longer I went without posting, the harder it was to face my shame, read the backlog and start posting again.

I can now tell you that I have faced my fears, conquered my guilt, and sent my shame to its room to sulk. I'm back! Not that that will do you, my esteemed reader, any good because I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the world. I might have noticed if terrorists nuked DC, but only because I'm in the fallout zone downwind of the city. Short of that, for me its still late May.

While my son slumbers, I will read the news and see how much piquant and incisive commentary I can serve up before he wakes.

That's right, walking punchline and Dave Chapelle catchphrase (not to mention missing link between disco, funk, and skeezy sex parties) Rick James is dead at 56, and I am proud to be the FIRST of thousands of like-minded bloggers to use such an unoriginal and tired-before-its-time headline to announce the fact.

Breaking from my usual modus operandi, I don't have very much to offer in the way of reverential encomia to a dead rock star. It's all just too sad to jeer at, and his music doesn't exactly lend itself to dewy-eyed reverence. Instead, I will only note two fun facts: Rick James is the only disco star most people can name who knew how to play an instrument, and did you know he's Canadian? So I'm told! His first band, Mynah Birds, also featured a youthful, pre-Buffalo Springfield Neil Young on guitar, it's true!

See, right there I was able to give all you James-mourners a fun fact that's not only entertaining, but far more uplifting than a rote recounting of the pathetic mess his life had become: the cocaine-fueled assaults of women, the prison time, the rehab, the failed comeback, the stroke, the hip replacement surgery (!), and all the other sad details of a man who only wanted to fire up a party and have a toke.

If you don't own "Bustin' Out," Rick's best funk tune and featuring a FAT bassline, do the estate of Rick James a favor and pick it up. May he rest in peace. (um..... bitch!)

[wik] Not that I expected Rick James, of all people, to die of natural causes. I was expecting something more. . . colorful.

Minister Geeklethal has helpfully reminded me that the "legitimate press" has been having a field day with Kerry's Nixonian assertion last Sunday to George "Chunk" Stephanapolous that he has a plan-- a secret plan, a plan so cunning you could brush your teeth with it-- to end the war and bring the troops home. Naturally, however, he can't speak of this plan until after the election and he is safely in office. If history is any judge, the plan will probably involve the massive firebombing of the Tigris river valley followed by hamfisted counterinsurgency campaigns that will be mistaken by some units as license to level towns, accompanied at home by the savage repression of student dissent and the employment of the FBI and a secret White House office in the strategic blackmailing of key political opponents.

We at the Ministry were, through bribery, cunning and strategic legbreakery, able to confirm identity of the high-level Kerry advisor who has put together this grand strategy to be executed after the candidate takes office. Picture below the cut.

Thanks to Norbizness (and Google Image Search) for the image, and for Minister Buckethead for the title of this post.

When he's right, he's right*. Christopher Hichens on "safety" in the name of Islamic terrorism:

Meanwhile, the administration is giving a gigantic hostage to fortune in claiming that its policies at home and abroad are "making America safer." It will take only one atrocity to make that boast seem worse than hollow, and this in turn will tempt many liberals and Democrats into demagogy. ("They couldn't make you safer, but I can. … It's time to bring our boys home.") It's difficult to imagine a state of greater vulnerability, both physically and morally, and both at home and overseas. We can bring "our" boys home, but "their" soldiers are already here, and in place, and training, and waiting. There will be further outrages and slaughters, all across this country and Europe, as there already are in the countries of Islamic civilization, and the crucial thing will be how we respond, not how we "predict" what is already certain or rehearse our whinings and complaints for when the blow falls.

[wik] Of course, when he's wrong he's a shallow, pretentious, dishonest, name-dropping gin-drunken fat old hack with a mean streak he routinely mistakes for charming contrariness.

[alsø wik] In a refreshing turnabout from the usual platitudinous pap proffered to the populace, people in pursuit of a bit of bracing honesty can take heart from the President's remarks of yesterday: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Mmmm.... honesty tastes like bile in my mouth... or is that just fear?

[alsø alsø wik] As usual, I have a song lyric to suit every occasion, in this case a very on-point lyric about how scary brown people are in their own country, and how nice it is to have a gate at the top of the road.

The Clash / Safe European Home

Well, i just got back an' i wish i never leave now
Who dat martian arrival at the airport?
How many local dollars for a local anaesthetic?
The johnny on the corner was a very sympathetic

I went to the place where every white face is an
Invitation to robbery
An' sitting here in my safe european home
I don't wanna go back there again

Wasn't i lucky n' wouldn't it be loverly?
Send us all cards, an' have a laying in on a sunday
I was there for two weeks, so how come i never tell
That natty dread drinks at the sheraton hotel?

Now they got the sun, an' they got the palm trees
They got the weed, an' they got the taxis
Whoa, the harder they come, n' the home of ol' bluebeat
Yes i'd stay an' be a tourist but i can't take the gunplay

Thanks to the Rev. Moon's largesse, North Korea is now said to be in possession of a dozen Soviet-surplus nuclear missile submarines in fine working order. Remember, this is the same Rev. Moon who was crowned emperor a few months ago by members of the US Congress.

If I were Tom Clancy and I were writing this shit into a novel, I would throw it out. It's crazy and nobody would believe it.

Please excuse me; I'm writing this under the gun. In two days I turn thirty, and I need to get this review article cranked out before they come to take all my punk away. It's what happened to all my friends: a white van screeches to a stop in front of your house at 7 AM on the first Sunday after your 30th birthday, and a team of masked men swarm into your house, replacing your favorite cds with copies of Jim Nabors' Greatest Hits and Josh Groban Sings Songs of God, Country, and Neckties. I'm a little unclear as to whether this will happen before or after I'm injected with the microchip that makes me vote Republican, but I guess I can just wait and see on that point.

You see, I was recently blessed with a visitation from the long lost and legendary punk band Rocket From The Tombs. I spent a lot of years reading about this half-apocryphal group in Greil Marcus' punk rock history Lipstick Traces and countless 'zines, wondering if any band making punk music in the days before punk was even a word, much less spirit made flesh, could possibly live up to the breathless hype they've been accorded in the back pages of fanboys-only treatises. Well, guess what: yes it can. Unfortunately, I don't have very much time to spend with the band before I lose them forever, so I will make this as brief as I can [about 1200 words, as it turns out].

Rocket From The Tombs was a short-lived band that came together in Cleveland in 1974 when a local music writer named Dave Thomas took the alias Crocus Behemoth and recruited some friends to make music inspired by The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. The band's classic lineup took shape with the addition of local singer, guitarist and Lou Reed fanatic Peter Laughner, bassist Craig Bell, guitarist Gene O'Connor (better known as Cheetah Chrome) and drummer Johnny Madansky (later "Johnny Blitz"). Just eight months after this lineup came together, Rocket From The Tombs would disintegrate thanks to squabbling over artistic direction, the artier camp championed by Laughner and Thomas taking flight in the legendary Pere Ubu, and the hard-rocking wing comprising O'Connor, Madansky, and sometime Tombs singer Steve "Stiv" Bators later founding CBGB mainstays The Dead Boys. For a band whose entire recorded output amounts to a few one-mic radio tapes and a handful of live shows, Rocket From The Tombs' status as one of the first bands to capture the dirty magic of punk has grown over the years out of all proportion with the number of people who have actually heard their music (funny how that happens). In 2002, Smog Veil Records released a set of rehearsal tapes and live demos in 2002 as The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs, the first time that the bulk of RFTT's output appeared on CD anywhere. Improbably, Rocket From The Tombs would reform in 2003 for a series of live dates, teaming Thomas, Chrome, and original bassist David Bell with Television guitarist Richard Lloyd and Pere Ubu drummer Steve Melman and producing a live album, Rocket Redux.

So how does it all sound, after thirty years of waiting?

On one hand, it sounds just as you would expect. The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs is essentially the sound of some desperate kids in a dying city translating the Rosetta Stone with a Cap'n Crunch Decoder Ring and a copy of Kick Out The Jams, and just like most first drafts of later greatness, it can be hard to see what's valuable underneath the muck (I feel the same way about The Replacements' debut Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash! and The Flaming Lips' first EP as well, among many others). Since most of the tracks were recorded on one mic the quality is muddy, and the playing is at times ludicrously sloppy. On the other hand, however, all the murkiness and fumbling in the world can't obfuscate the fact that Rocket From The Tombs had incredible songs, great energy, and a stunningly original idea of what rock should be. Fueled by equal parts Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and the MC5, the band combined swagger, angst, and plain freaky weirdness into a sound far greater than the sum of its garage-band parts. The songs that don't fall apart into messes spill over into feedback, Crocus Behemoth simply can't sing, and the brilliant, funny lyrics are buried under layers of guitar fuzz and drum fills. The same tension between "make art" and "kick ass" that eventually drove the group apart makes The Day The Earth Met... a brilliantly original artifact of punk before its time.

The bulk of the songs on The Day The Earth Met... appear in finished form on Pere Ubu and Dead Boys albums. Particularly interesting to punk completists are early versions of Pere Ubu's strange and chilling "30 Seconds over Tokyo" and "Final Solution" and The Dead Boys' "Down In Flames," "Sonic Reducer" and "Ain't It Fun" (later massacred cruelly by Guns 'n Roses), but the lesser known songs are where the fascination lies. The RFTT originals "Amphetamine," "Never Gonna Kill Myself Again," and "So Cold" are musically tight, hypnotic, and excellent on a par with the songs later made famous. In particular, Peter Laughner's sardonic lyrics deserve a place in the all-time songwriters' hall of fame. Moreover, though the sound quality is rough, the guitar greatness of Laughner and Cheetah Chrome-- one of the only great lead guitarists of the punk era-- shines through loud and clear. If you are a hardcore punk fan, it is hard to deem this collection as anything but essential.

Fast forward to 2003, when Rocket From The Tombs regroup to answer the unasked question, "what would Sonic Reducer sound like if played by a bunch of fifty-year-olds who haven't seen each other in years?" Bizarrely enough, the answer is a wholly unexpected and completely welcome "fantastic." With Richard Lloyd of Television on board providing guitar support, and with decades of experience behind them, Rocket Redux pulls the haze of tape hiss, methamphetamine shakes, and teenage mania aside to reveal a group of men with more energy than a schoolful of teenagers playing a set of songs which uniformly deserve to be all time classics. Everything works, especially the way that the dual Richard Lloyd-Cheetah Chrome guitar attack and Dave Thomas' strained growling vocals turn decades-old demos into modern-day monsters. The drug hangover of "Ain't It Fun," the adrenaline-fueled punch of "Sonic Reducer RFTT" and the surging "Frustration" alone are worth the price of admission, but every one of the twelve tracks on Rocket Redux proves that Rocket From The Tombs deserve every last word of their legend.

Please excuse me. I need to go enjoy these records while they last, because in less than forty-eight hours, they're coming to give me a minivan, a haircut, and a backache.

Catch Rocket From The Tombs/Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome on tour with Terri Texas Bomb:
8/6, St. Louis MO, The Creepy Crawl
8/7, Columbus OH, Club 202
8/8, Akron OH, The Lime Spider
8/9, Richmond VA, Nancy Raygun
8/10, Baltimore MD, Side Bar
8/11, Passaic NJ, Connections
8/12, New York NY, The Continental

Also posted to blogcritics.org.