Not intending to go all political here, I just really enjoy observing culture, narratives, and human behavior from the perspective of story lines. Real life unfolds just like a novel sometimes.
Walter White has been on mind lately, the fictional character from the series “Breaking Bad.” For those who don’t know he’s a chemistry teacher playing by all the rules, when he gets sick, has financial trouble, and realizes the deck is stacked against him, he’s trapped in a game he cannot win. He’s a good guy doing everything right and suffering greatly for it, so he starts cooking meth on the side to help pay off some of his medical bills. From there on out the story explodes. Literally.
That theme of “good guys finish last” or “there’s no reward for playing by the rules,” that realization that the system is corrupt and we no longer seem to be living in a meritocracy plagues a lot of people from my generation, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and if I do what I am supposed to, the system will simply crush me and spit me out. And it does, it frequently does. Walter White captured that sense of injustice, that awareness that in the game of life, following the rules is how you lose. Good guys finish last.
Two articles I came across this week gave me some more food for thought. The first is by David Ernst, Donald Trump Is The First President To Turn Postmodernism Against Itself. A really fabulous article that speaks of heroes and anti-heroes. He too speaks of Walter White, Tony Soprano, Scarface, these bad guys we all secretely cheer for, on the down low at least. He captures that spirit well by saying of Al Pacino’s character, “All these well-to-do Miami types wouldn’t be caught dead associating with someone like Tony, even though they know full well that the cocaine business is making them all rich, and many of them probably abuse his product.” Al Pacino’s character turns “polite society” on its head simply by seeing it for what it really is.
So by the time Donald Trump comes along in the tale, David plays off that same theme, “In other words: even if I have been a no-good, rotten, disgusting scoundrel, what does that make you? At least I don’t pretend to be decent; you people, on the other hand, have the gall to pretend that you’re any better than I am. Let’s dispense with the fiction that you would have treated me with any less contempt if I had bothered to live up to any of your standards of decency in the first place, and acknowledge that they have nothing to do with decency per se, and everything to do with power.”
“Deplorables,” proudly deplorable, and that is exactly how it went down.
The other article, Those Stung by Wasps by Rod Dreher, could not be more of a contrast, a kind of cluelessness that makes me want to scream in frustration. You are not listening, you refuse to hear, you are not even observing the data right in front of you. He says, “The astonishing audacity and recklessness with which Trump has begun his presidency is a bad sign.” A bad sign for whom? Has anyone ever ran for president without some reckless audacity? He continues, “As every well-raised Southern child knows, manners express morality.”
That punches me right in my little working class heart, it triggers all sorts of classist issues and deep-seated resentments about “polite society,” about the upper crust who can smile so coldly, so politely, while stabbing you right in the back. Make no mistake, he isn’t speaking of saying “please” and “thank you” here, he is speaking of “manners as morality,” as in the way we may be planning to do great harm to a few thousand people, but we will be doing it within the bounds of polite society, in a civilized way that reflects our genteel upbringing and good manners, and this is somehow morally okay because we are all “the right kind of people.”
Ahh, the banality of evil, the moral ambiguity of “good manners.” I always find that kind of duplicity deeply disturbing. There’s a kind of genteel civility, good manners and integrity, among those we shall call the “non elite,” the outsiders. Many of the Rod Dreher’s of the world cannot see it, they do not even understand it, but a few million people walked into a voting booth on election day, banking on it.
And where is polite society, the mannered elite right now? Rioting, looting, protesting….
Wally Fry said:
Those were interesting reads IB, thanks
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insanitybytes22 said:
Glad you enjoyed them, Wally. Also glad you aren’t in spam anymore. 🙂
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Wally Fry said:
I think they got me fixed!
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lovelifeandgod said:
I think Canada is one of the worst when it comes to polite elites. We have an out of control child “protection” agency that will take your kids away from you with a smile for trivial reasons, while kids who are actually in abusive homes rarely get any help. I know because I was taken away from my home by CAS for nine months when I was six. My parents were poor immigrants going through some problems who didn’t really understand the legal system, and they were exploited for it so the nice ladies in their comfy office jobs could make a good buck from the government for “helping struggling youth.” Being taken from my family at such a young age and only being “allowed” to visit my dad once a week did way more harm than what the bureaucrats perceived to be good. I couldn’t smile genuinely for a few years even after I was returned home and didn’t eat properly while in custody. I guess I had this subconscious fear that I would be taken away again.
So I agree, I despise “polite society” when it’s used to mask so many ills. The Victorian era was famous for that, and we seem to have returned to it now.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“We have an out of control child “protection” agency that will take your kids away from you with a smile for trivial reasons, while kids who are actually in abusive homes rarely get any help.”
Oh, I so hear you! We have the same issues here. In my state, our child protective services and foster care system ranks number 50 in the nation. That is such a huge weapon used against families.
Yes, that “despising polite society,” I so get that. 🙂
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lovelifeandgod said:
What makes me the most angry is when kids end up in even worse situations than they would ever have dreamed of experiencing at home. Foster parents are often more unchecked than real parents, which is frightening. Mine were decent, but some kids aren’t so lucky.
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insanitybytes22 said:
I know. It’s a train wreck of epic proportions, a power system that really does more harm than good. I’ve spent a lot of time in prayer, in research, trying to figure out what I could do to help change it, how we could make it better. I can’t seem to solve that riddle, I still just want to burn the whole thing down and start over.
So today I’m invested more in strengthening families, marriages,trying to direct power into individual hands, communities, and not the State. Strong families, strong churches,strong communities, do more to solve the problem of neglected and abused kids than anything else ever could.
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lovelifeandgod said:
Amen! Strong communities keep kids safe.
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Mike said:
Yes… that Old South, Polite, Slave Owning Society… always displaying manners while grasping to the last dying breath of Feudal Europe and attempting to preserve the class division of the Aristocracy and human ownership. In private, offering reassurance to each other with “The South shall Rise Again!” like a subdued “Heil” and a raised hand. Who would have suspected that very Elitistism would rise tallest in California, Chicago and New York? Who knew it would be on the Common Areas and Campus Quads of our Universities? Who knew the Soft Slavery of Socialism would be tamped down for 50-years only to smolder in the minds of our educated ignorant and burst suddenly into flame across the only Country on Earth forged from The Age of Reason? Many of us… just not enough.
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insanitybytes22 said:
LOL! Well said, Mike. I began to catch on when I realized I really had a lot more in common with the South than I did with DC,LA,or NY. I began calling them our alien lizard overlords, which is never a good sign.
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Julie (aka Cookie) said:
after reading the above commentator’s comment…I had to jump in rather than just saying a big Amen to your post IB as I do find it, as always ,spot on…
So…now, now …
lets not pick on those Southerners amongst us shall we…
we certainly know the south lost the war…as in I’m not hearing the cries of the day’s of old of the south rising again…just the Rise Up of the Falcons Super Bowl war cries…
and sadly this country never should have had to fight such a war…but there you have man being man. Misguided, ill-informed, selfish, prideful, arrogant, divided…not much different from today I fear.
I personally find that time in our Nation’s history to be a very sad…
And I also find that many folks across this grand land of ours are still under the impression that we Southerners all secretly yearn for those days of Scarlett and Mammy…..Ode to Cotton being king…..and if that is the case I have some wonderful swamp land for sale….
I would also be very hard pressed finding any one of sense down in this geographical area of mine who would think things such as slavery or feudalism or segregation a good thing…and living in Georgia all my life, I’ve never seen nor known of a white sheet wearing, rebel flag flying, idiot white supremacist as I think the days of George Wallace are thankfully long gone…
Now mind you that is not to say that we don’t have that political good ol boy and good ol girl system that seems to be indicative of many a cities or towns across this country…or that we don’t have idiots here and there that are just that, idiots who lean to a lack of education or life experiences teaching them otherwise—just as we may find such living in the mountains of Idaho preparing to wage a new civil war—we will always have idiots…those who cling to hate rather than seeing a human being as just that….
Just as we are witnessing the rise of intolerable behavior from our more extremist brethren and sistren…
It might behoove our angst ridden, hate spewing, intolerant youth of both sides to revisit their history classes—but only those classes taught by honest individuals who care only to share facts and figures rather than a personal agenda or skewed ideology…
So here’s to the Falcon’s, may they Rise Up and beat those New England yankees…..
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ahh, we love the South, Julie. There’s a certain amount of facetiousness in Mike’s comment, as in here we are being pounded with endless scary tales about the South, all while some genuine elitism is actually marching right at us from places like Chicago, NY and California. Decidedly not the South.
It really all strikes me as a bit funny, one day you just wake up and we are all the South, as in call me uneducated and rural one more time….
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Julie (aka Cookie) said:
Oh I realize there was more tongue than cheek there IB but here in the South we have been the whipping boy, as it were, for most of everyone in academia or those who are a part of the intelligentsia and upper echelon of this county for as long as I’ve had breath in this body…
We have been the poster child of the redneck deplorable, bigoted, illiterate, backwards hicks that most of the “elite” in this country love to proclaim as the loathsomeness which gets the “wrong” people in places where they have no business being…so perhaps it is now to our good company that those “others” out there…those who voted for Donald Trump or those who still cling to a sense of right verses wrong… or those who believe in decorum, morality, justice… now join …
And not that there won’t be those who cringe at the notion of lumping DT voters in the category of decorum, justice, morality, yada, yada, yada….while there will still be the idiots there as well….
so now we lump the “working class” with us…that backbone of American found in the factories of Detroit, Pittsburg, Cleveland… etc…with us rednecks…
So it seems as if our numbers are growing and the company is always welcomed as we are certainly known for our hospitality 🙂
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Daria Kill said:
Reblogged this on Let me give YOU the Moe-down.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you. 🙂
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SLIMJIM said:
I saw the first link being shared around and didn’t read the second link before till you shared it. I loved your ending: “And where is polite society, the mannered elite right now? Rioting, looting, protesting….”
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patrickhawthorne01 said:
“As every well-raised Southern child knows, manners express morality.”
Ummm…I was born, raised, and have lived in the south all my days. All I’ve got to say to this is, “Dude! What rock did you just crawl out from?”
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insanitybytes22 said:
LOL! You tell’em, Patrick. 🙂
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SLIMJIM said:
Patrick you make me laugh with your Southern ways (in a good way)
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