Fast Car

 Henry David Thoreau said: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  For me, nothing echos his words more than this song by Tracy Chapman.  Among other remarkable things accomplished by Chapman, she was also the lover of Alice Walker.  

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just across the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living

See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with a bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
When mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said, "Somebody's gotta take care of him"
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
And we'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinkin' late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together, you and me'd find it

I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

Auriga

When the house of cards began falling down around Richard Nixon, some Republicans felt like, "This is our guy; we have to protect him!" while other Republicans felt like, "We don't want the world to judge us by what this guy does!"  

As the case developed, there came a secret meeting among senior Republicans in the Senate about whether or not they would prevent Nixon's removal from office should he be impeached, which seemed like it was almost certainly going to happen soon.  For the good of the party and the good of the nation, they sent a message to Nixon through Kissinger: The Senate GOP would not protect him.  48 hours later, Nixon resigned.

Better legal minds might feel differently, but to my way of thinking, what happened on Jan 6 was vastly more serious than when Nixon was president.    The difference is how the rest of the GOP responded and how the president himself responded.  Nixon could have fought it.  He could have done everything Trump is doing now, but, in the end, Nixon was the better man.  

I honestly admire Nixon.  I always have.  He was every bit as great as he was broken.  After Nixon, there grew a strong feeling among Republicans that they had made the wrong decision.  That feeling grew, especially when Carter beat Ford.  That's when Reagan came up with this idea of "Never speak ill of another Republican."  That philosophy is dominant now.  No matter what a Republican does, their party won't turn on them.  

Ultimately, I'm not a party kind of guy.  Adherence to your party, no matter what they do, might work for football fans, but it's a very bad idea when it comes to governance.  There have been, and are now, some really shit Democrats.  I'll be glad to talk to you about them.  For the most part, though, I'm still going to vote Democrat when it's a decent guy because (right now) their platform is better for Mississippi.  That could change, but right now, it's overwhelmingly clear to me that Mississippi, my home, is better served by what the Democratic party brings.  

When a great man rose in Rome, and he took his triumphant chariot ride through the masses singing his name, there stood a man behind him, a slave called an "Auriga" whose job it was to hold a wreath of laurel above his head, but whisper in his ear, "remember, thou art but a man."  We could use some of that today.  

The White Boy

When I was a baby, people who were a different color from me wanted the same rights as me.  None of that would change my rights so I agreed. Many people didn't.  I was a baby, so maybe I was wrong.

When I was a boy, people who loved differently from me wanted the same rights as me.  None of what they were doing involved me, so I agreed.  A little later, women wanted the same rights to control their body that I had.  It was their body, not mine so I agreed.  Lots of people didn't agree.  I was just a boy so maybe I was wrong.

Now that I'm old, some people aren't happy with the gender they were assigned at birth so they want the right to change it.  They want to change their own assigned gender, not mine, so I agreed.  Lots of people don't agree.    I'm old now though, so maybe I'm wrong.

From birth to old age, nobody ever tried to limit what I could be, so maybe I just don't get trying to do that to others.

Toilet Trouble

 Before he went to Millsaps, my grandfather had never used a toilet before.  Founder's Hall had one.  (They would install a ladies' room before they tore it down.)  The KA House had a single-seater that I'm sure they kept as pristine and clean as the ones in the KA House now.

Where he came from, people didn't have toilets.  They had outhouses and chamber pots.  When we went to homecoming in the seventies, his little Methodist church in Hesterville had a port-a-potty where the outhouse used to be.  The only one willing to use it was my cousin Libba Wingate, who had trouble holding her water after childbirth.  Delta women act like they're frail as lace and require our constant protection and supervision.  It is a lie.  They've been climbing trees and shooting doves since they were four, and any man who falls for that trap deserves what they get.

In those days, there weren't that many buildings in all of Mississippi that had toilets.  Pretty soon, though, indoor plumbing became common, and every public building had bathrooms for three genders: Male, Female, and Colored.  If you think it causes a commotion now when somebody uses the wrong bathroom, try letting a white woman use the colored toilet in 1940.  They would have found a way to send three black men to jail for that.

After the sexual revolution of the seventies, people who had different ideas about how to express their gender started to feel like they had more freedom to do so.  Some people feel very threatened if they start to lose control over gender expression, and almost immediately, they become uncomfortable with the sexual revolution.  

A few years ago, internet trolls decided that if there was anything they hated more than transgender people, it was furries, so they started spreading the story that elementary schools in California had to install "litter box" bathrooms in all their schools for students who identify as furries.  It's not true, of course, but the trolls had a grand time watching guys with MAGA hats spew their nonsense on YouTube.  If you think about it, I'm sure you know somebody who has heard this story and believes it.

So, where does all this gender ideology and multiple bathroom business lead?  Where does it end?

A few days ago, in Iran, a sixteen-year-old girl was beaten to death by the "morality police" because she dared to uncover her hair on the train.  It's not the first time this has happened.  In Iran, women covering their heads is part of their gender ideology.  

It's so easy for us to hold ourselves as morally superior to Iran, but fifty years ago, they were the country in the Middle East that was the most like us.  They had a very popular, democratically elected prime minister, who made the mistake of trying to Huey Long, the British Persian Oil company, so the CIA had him taken out and replaced by a puppet, and they changed the name to British Petroleum and pretended like nobody did anything.  Twenty years later, the puppet government we installed was taken over by the Islamic Brotherhood, and an awful lot of law-abiding, peaceful Persians had to move to the United States.  

This girl was sixteen.  All she wanted was to express her gender identity in her own way, and she died for it.  She died because the adults in Iran believed they had to control these things, that it was madness to let a sixteen-year-old decide for herself whether or not to show her hair.  

I'm not saying that's where it will end in this country, but these things are a spectrum, and we're on the spectrum.  We like to think we're so very different from Iranians and so very different from them, but are we.

There are two kinds of people in the world.  Those who believe all cultural matters must be tightly regulated and controlled, and then there are people who believe that bacchanalia can sometimes be useful, that you have to let people express themselves in their own way, or it ends in tragedy.