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— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 29, 2019
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Archive for October 28th, 2019
Thank you, Nats fans. https://t.co/DWNnSpy4vp
October 28, 2019Preserving our oceans and rivers should not be a partisan issue. Protecting the land which sustains us should not be a partisan issue. Protecting the air we breathe should not be a partisan issue…this planet is our home. https://t.co/CzfldkxjZT
October 28, 2019Preserving our oceans and rivers should not be a partisan issue. Protecting the land which sustains us should not be a partisan issue. Protecting the air we breathe should not be a partisan issue…this planet is our home. https://t.co/CzfldkxjZT
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 29, 2019
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@deanhallmusic @NewYorker @nytimes @Slate @USATODAY @MaddowBlog @thedailybeast Thanks, you’re hired! (Commission negotiable?)
October 28, 2019Thanks, you're hired! (Commission negotiable?)
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 29, 2019
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My dad worked downtown at that time, spent many lunch hours watching arch construction and marveling at the precision engineering that made that day 54 years ago possible. https://t.co/CIyQu9EHIg
October 28, 2019My dad worked downtown at that time, spent many lunch hours watching arch construction and marveling at the precision engineering that made that day 54 years ago possible. https://t.co/CIyQu9EHIg
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 28, 2019
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I’ve just posted on my Blog about: Funereal politics https://t.co/LJe9pk1I7g
October 28, 2019I've just posted on my Blog about: Funereal politics https://t.co/LJe9pk1I7g
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 28, 2019
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Funereal politics
October 28, 2019We attended a funeral Saturday for my wife’s uncle. deep in rural-red Tennessee, in a Pentecostal church. The eulogist concluded, to applause: “Trump 2020!” It was a clear instance of what Robert Talisse calls too much “democracy,” the cure for which he says is more deliberate engagement with people in non-political and non-politicized social activities. Funerals and other ceremonial rituals commemorating birth and death used to be that way. No more, apparently. “Even our houses of worship [have] become political echo chambers,” says Michele Margolis.
Another eulogist noted that the deceased doubted even his own mother’s eligibility for heaven, since she was a Democrat. Ha ha. That’s what Mel Gibson said about his saintly wife, and he wasn’t kidding either. “And the people said amen.”
At the cemetery, we dodged a scary falling limb as skies darkened and a gale kicked up. Thank you for saving us, Jesus. But if we’d been a few inches less fortunately positioned, no doubt, the other congregants would have had a ready explanation at hand: too bad, but they were Democrats.
Politics didn’t come up at the post-funeral reception, at our table. and the food was good. I found common ground with other mourners at the dessert bar, but that may not be enough to rebuild a shattered culture on.
You could say this was all just a demonstration of what we’ve always known about small-town life at its worst, forgetting for the moment the Hollywood charm of Mayberry: it reinforces our worst tribalizing instincts for conformity and ostracism of non-conformists, it rewards small-minded intolerance and the ignorant prejudices of the proudly uneducated populace. “The idiocy of rural life,” Marx called it.
Yes, but thanks to our electoral system and the the small-town mentality now has an increasingly outsized influence on the nation’s course and destiny.
Another instance of politics poisoning what ought to be a refuge from partisanship: Trump was booed at the World Series last night, where a chorus of “lock him up” could be heard. Admittedly I’d have joined in, if I’d been there. But I’d still have felt sullied and cheap and un-American. Slate spins it another way, though: “America came together to boo Donald Trump at the World Series.”
Uncle Jimmy was always pleasant with me, our relationship – apparently unique, to judge from the remarks of several eulogists – was almost entirely apolitical. We met most typically at the annual Decoration Day gathering, at the family cemetery where he’s now taken up his final abode.
This is the remedy, for the worst polarizing effects of partisan tribalism: make a point of keeping politics out of places and occasions where it doesn’t belong. But the trouble with that approach is that it leaves such apolitical relationships in a superficial place of mutual pleasantries. We don’t get to know one another, or really appreciate and explore our differences. An entire society built on the surface of social encounter, with no depth or meaning or insight, would be shallow and boring.
On the other hand, shallow and boring may be just the relief we need from the current climate of rancor, vituperation, and dishonesty. Love may fail, Vonnegut said, but politeness and kindness will prevail. Or at least they may be a start. “There’s nothing weak about kindness, compassion, and looking out for others,” whatever their political party, a very wise and decent man at another funeral last week said he wanted his daughters to know.
Anyway, and for the record (please note, daughters): at my memorial service decades from now (I hope), let there be no partisan politics spoken from the dais. Play John Fogerty’s “Put Me in Coach,” Mark Knopfler’s “Walk of Life,” and Eric Idle’s “Always Look on the Bright Side.” (And “The Galaxy Song” for an encore.)
Read a passage or two from William James (“the really vital question for us all is, what is this world going to be, what is life going to make of itself?”) and John Dewey (on “the continuous human community in which we are a link” etc.), and tell a funny story or two at my expense. I won’t mind. Lay out an ample dessert bar. Do not display my vacant corpse. Scatter my ashes at the public park, the ballpark, the dog park.
And remind everyone that an end comes for us all, eventually we must all find a final perch; but (as Nietzsche concluded “The Dawn”), “other birds will fly farther!”
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@rickd24a We do live in inappropriate times, don’t we? But this too shall pass, I have to believe.
October 28, 2019We do live in inappropriate times, don't we? But this too shall pass, I have to believe.
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 28, 2019
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Up@dawn 