The Message Column

September

Flood

The Olmec Heads

There once was a theory of 'the Olmec' who were alleged to be the 'rulers' of a certain part of what was called MesoAmerica. Roughly, in anthropology, it's a 'cultural region'. But it never was homogeneous. The Olmec heads were reported by various archaeologists to have been buried in a way that the effort to destroy and bury them took more effort than the construction of them. Now, I take all of the 1950's and a 1960's anthropological accounts of Mexico and Central America with a grain of salt. I think that the Yale/ Penn and Havvaadrrdd pleabs who were sent down there to gather all the facts of the place had no real idea about a real History. Firstly: so much of what they said was later proven fraudulent (that's too hard a word) after the Mayan Codices were finally cracked (by a brilliant veteran) and the language of the Mayans revealed to the world. What we learned then is that the monuments of the Maya, as well, were all of these trophy victory boasting things, where various victorious cabal leaders (we might call them a 'tribe', but it was feudalism) who were ethnically different than the ones who they ruled over would trumpet their victories, and brag about their noble lineages. And so the story that mid-last-centrury (20th century) anthropologists and archaeologists made up and published in their various 'works'; mostly books of pictures with explanations; seem more like story outlines of fantasy concerning story-plots from Hollywood, and totally made up; except tied to the 'artifacts'.

Well the whole 'Olmec head' thing . . . it's just one more example of when old art gets replaced. They went way out of their way to remove those giant visages. So that's a conjecture, and perhaps not true.

I remember another conjecture that I have also read about that region: that the Aztecs were actually foreign invaders. Well, it was later after the Spanish showed up and the resistance said, oh, cool let's ally with them and we will 'play' Montezuma, because he knows he's a sinner. He knows cannibalism is a sinful thing, and he feels great guilt about it (Yes, the Aztecs are reported as having been cannibals, for 'ritual' purposes. ie: it was not reported as their main diet, though what do I know?). So they played him. And he thought that they were divinely sent to make him pay for his sins. So he tried to atone but . . . alas . . . they killed him anyway. I could put that in the passive, because how are this 'they'?

History is what it is. Sometimes old statuary gets 'culturally janky'. I 'm being creative with the word janky. They hate this horid metal thing that's plunked down on the best boulevards and they can go to the council and say 'Ya hhaaa, we don't like this ugly thing here anymore.'

You can hate a piece of sculpture without having any narrative about whoever the sculpture is supposed to represent. But if you go to a public place and declare war on an enemy, and then call them by a name that seems to tag this war as against the whole group who you (those who would harbor such fallacies) delude to this 'race' which you call by a color-term, and in fact there are no people of that 'color' unless they put makeup or medicine on themselves. It's a term of aggregation. And to to attach so much hate on it makes some people seem to think that 'hey, these people are really loosing their cool about nothing.' We all kind of think that statue ain't that cool anymore, but it's a tourist attraction. I might hate what happened, what those people did, but I don't hate their descendants who have used this spot of memorialize their elders. So however it happens that ugly fixtures of statist delusions are removed from the public square, we need to be kind to the living. You win nothing when an ugly thing is removed. It's just a change, like when the leaves fall off the trees. And whats up with the 'victory' dance behavior and ritualizing the decapitation of a piece of art, even if it's someone you don't like?

You simply don't have the right to go to a public space and paint over the characters in a mural by a dead artist that you don't like. So if you go to the public university in San Francisco you can see a mural like that. And there is a very famous example of a mural that a famous 'industrialist' had commissioned. He didn't like one of the faces (it was the 1930's in Manhattan, and he was the king of everything) so he had the whole mural cut up and removed. That's what happens in the real world.

And as far as going to battle over the vandalism of a statue? Whatever. It's a thing that people do, they like to desecrate things for their own weird ritual reasons. Even if you think you dance the magic dance and suddenly your channels of rage seems to be making things come out as you would like: you are delusional. The art that you destroy was meaningless in the first place, merely represented the delusions of past generations of some imagination of the grander of a cause, and the loss of so many people in a senseless war . . . as it seems now, don't you understand how fucked up all the survivors were after that happened? All the statuary was a sad attempt at denial: they were just ordinary, like everyone else, and they needed to remember all the dead. And that was, by the 1920's subverted into evil cause of political control. And at that point those statues were perhaps loci of KKK activity. (I am giving a conjecture). OK, so what? Isn't the klan fairly impotent by now? Do they really still exist? (Reports are that they have some members, it's never a significant population)

Yes, fear and intimidation: from either side of an argument, and people who like to make a grand public display: either building ugly monuments or taring them down. I have my own ideas about what is appropriate statuary, and I think it's a matter of regional and personal taste. Not every work of art will last forever, nor should all of it, or else the whole world would be full of old crap-art that people are afraid to discard. But the discarding of old art should not be a political cause of a supremacist ideology that use the disposal of the retrograde art as a way to provoke violence out of excitable people of 'the opposition'. If you comprehend that the Nazi ideology only exists within a very damaged person, then don't you see that these 'nazis' who you oppose are more likely to have interpersonal difficulties with most of the people who they encounter? They may be 'patients' already of a facility, at times. Yes, they are sick and you make them sicker by provoking them. And someone, some 'adult in the room' person, of that part of the political nut-factory, knows this too and yet they let the provocations go on, to keep the pot boiling, knowing full well that there really are not 'true believing' 'nazis' who wouldn't also probably be declared criminally insane as well.

In the case of Boston on Saturday, the Chicken-Littles of the left (that is some small few) went out and started screaming 'the sky is falling, the sky is falling'. And all the hot-head cub guys believed it and went out and did the 'face-down the bad power' bit, which is an 'endearing quality' if it were against actual nazis, and did this against the police, who are really their older brothers, cousins, and dads; older sisters and mothers, their transgender or unknown gender (and we are too polite to ask) friends, relatives, and folks-from-the hood. They thought that real nazis were there, which they weren't. And the older (just a few more years, and doing Police work) knew that there were not. And so . . . basically, they got a beatdown. A bunch of them were arrested for various crimes against the public order, and a lot of lawyers got some new clients, and these boys, ready to fight for the rightgous cause, will probably end up being told the truth: the people at the free speech rally were not nazis or clannie loosers, but just garden variety independent media, out side the sphere of liberal understanding. Basically it's like the surface of Venus to them, because they know nothing about Conservatism and really, they need to be educated that Republicans and Conservatives are not who some are trying to associate with them.

So it's the throwing together of two separate groups of 'true believers' in need of time at a respite, or in retreat, rehab, or long term "Shattuck" quality care (some of you readers will know what I mean). The problem of mental illness is real. Those who would provoke or encourage mentally ill people to do battle on the streets over old metal that's ugly, and everyone thinks so anyway, and we don't care about it. Maybe we like it. But it's just a piece of metal. It's not really Robert E Lee's head that they yanked off, it's a stupid piece of bronze, almost meaningless.

Such statuary, if it's anything, always has repair facility associated with it, and if its an important piece, it's specifications are known usually, and often it can be re-cast. Because little bronze heads are deemed cool bling by some. As offensive as it is, that's a fact. And so a lot of famous statues often loose their heads, and it's a cottage industry, of sorts, replacing them.

But it's just stupid barbarism because the display of destruction of a public thing, that might not be so retrograde after all, and maybe kind of cool thing to go sit around, and gather at, like the Ben Franklin statue at Penn, or there is a wonderful statue of G. Washington in Manhattan at . . . and one in Boston. Are these also to be targets of these vandals?

I'd object to that. But statues are statues. And vandals and thieves love to cop a big hunk of metal, easy to melt and resell, like old cannons: it's worth a few hundred dollars or more, by now.

But as far as destroying the legacy of these past people? Do we really want to agree to trashing our historical leaders and slandering them with falseness concerning their real legacy? Complex and deep, and with no quick explanation, this pantheon of people were real people. Many of them were eccentric and peculiar and some of them selfish and self-serving. But you, as an individual, can't possible know everything about all of them enough to say that you'd delete this and augment that. And so what is the qualification for who it is that gets deprecated? And how did they get promoted in the first place to being 'important Americans'? And why should society cede the decision on which artwork is still cool to have around to cultural Marxist children: privileged, drugged up, and not knowing history; Doing their little mating dance at the statue garden. Because that's what it is: they are trying to be impressive and be 'part of the gang', fired up on emotions.

The other marxists ought to reign this in right quick. Stop encouraging pledges to act out so severely.

Political violence is failure.

who says "I'm a poet"?

The statues represent the children
lead to fight for a failing cause

not much different than other 
failing causes

Violence in the name of politics
is one such failing cause

who says I'm not a poet
let this not be my epitath

last week on Blathings . . .

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Oh tiny font nonsense,
just because your letters are smaller
doesn't mean you have some alternative importance.

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Is it obvious parody or News or both?

 

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In Wicked Need of an Edit

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Political and Media Inanity

Kafka was a dillhole, Orwell was a submissive? depends on who you ask. . .

Truck-u-later

in this column Truck-u-later steps in deeper . . .

Tear down the ugly statues of your own delusions, stop the obcession with the dead past.

Sept. 1, 2017

delight in the delete.

Remember the Sultana!

April 27, 1865

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   the        the        the
   Lord       Lord       Lord
  for his    for his    for his
 unfailing  unfailing  unfailing
   love!      love!      love!



  well, little else now.