Walking through the halls of Congress last week there was indeed a bounce in my step, a giddiness to my face. I’m in! I’m in! Here is where it happens! Or something like that. There was me, and to my right and left there were actual Representatives’ offices, their state shields, their signs that read “All Welcome,” and “Come on in!” Ledgers set atop pedestals outside the front doors—I could even sign in! little me, five foot four-and-a-half inches high and once from the almost as tiny state of Connecticut…but there my name would be! there on that ledger! for days, for maybe weeks!—young, earnest interns in suits and skirts and ties, there was my government going on, to my right and to my left there went my government in action. The hallways were long and tall and marbled with grandeur. And everything that was not marbled was wood, and everything that was not wood and marble was polished brass. Architecture the way it was meant to be. Buildings meant to inspire.

But I wasn’t inspired. It was something lighter than that, brighter than that, it was something not really to be taken seriously. Like I was getting away with something. Like I was breaking the rules.

It seems appropriate right now to point out that I went to boarding school. Two Connecticut prep schools with rules and endless and creaky histories meant to strike the fear of something or other in us but really all they did, those rules and those histories, was add to the excitement of getting away with whatever it was we were at that moment trying to get away with. The rules, you see, courted their own fracture. All the grand halls and all that aged oak just begged, we were convinced at the time, to be besmirched.

So there is that penchant in me, that streak of mischeviousness, ironically encouraged, but to be honest it was more than that, walking through those halls of Congress. It was more than just juvenile evasions and the wonder of undetected, vaguely illicit behavior. And it wasn’t just that I was not, in fact, getting away with something (they had checked me too thoroughly at the metal detector, after all, they made certain I wasn’t getting away with anything). It was something more, and it was indeed something darker. The sense that, truly, I should not be there. The sense that the halls of Congress are really not meant for us, and when by some begrudging allowance they are opened to us, it must all only be window dressing, a farce. And so there I was coyly laughing.

Because I’ve read Kafka, and I guess I took him seriously. You know The Trial? Specifically its only anthologized chapter, “Before the Law”? “Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law”—this is how it begins, and if any of you have spent one hour at all even in the foyer of Kafka’s writings you know immediately how it will end: an elapsed lifetime later, this life spent waiting, the waiting in earnest, the earnestness respectful, the desire beneath everything honest and profound—and of course he dies in the end, having waited, having never gotten in. At the end of the story, at the end of this man’s life, the following exchange takes place:

“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Classic Kafka. Emphatic and utter futility.

So of course I thought I would never get in to see my Law, either, of course I thought that’s how it all always went: the Law is only there to be looked at, the Law is only there to be guarded; no one gets in, no one is turned away; the Law and power and our collective human fate are guarded from us, there only to be looked at.

Not that I want to turn this into a philosophy lesson. Nor do I think I am paranoid, overly analytic, overwrought. Rather, I want merely to make a statement, one I think is made far too seldom these days. I mentioned the metal detectors, and I alluded to the guards, but I forgot to point out the automatic rifles, and the prohibition, in the House and Senate galleries, against, pens, pencils, notebooks and writing, and I have held back until now pointing out—or reminding—the millions (and billions) of dollars that go into lobbying, and I have held back until this paragraph bringing up that only one senator, yes just one, is not a millionaire, yes not a millionaire. Lobbyists of course do not sit in the galleries. And the only people not allowed to report on what is happening are the citizens. “What do you still want to know, then?” the gatekeeper asks the poor, now old and dying man from the country. “You are insatiable,” he tells him, his voice dripping with the kind of disdain we just might do well to remember is not limited to only German, pre-Modernist fiction.

______________________________

“You see, boys forget what their country means by just reading The Land of the Free in history books. When they get to be men they forget even more. Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that.”

—Mr Smith Goes to Washington

______________________________

You probably remember last week’s post, the one about patriotism, and yes I just quoted a Frank Capra movie, and yes it was Mr Smith goes to Washington, but no there’s no reason to worry, I have neither gone insane nor been kidnapped, and no one has stolen my computer. It’s just that there are these things.

Look up above, at that quote again. Forget that Jimmy Stewart is the one speaking it. When they get to be men they forget even more. We should hold it up every single day, we should hold it in front of us. We should go to the House of Representatives and see if they let us in, we should go to the Senate, we should pick up the paper and go to class, we should read and speak aloud, we should write it down. We should say things that no one wants to hear, but most important of all we should say things that everyone wants to hear but cannot figure out how to say, cannot find eloquent enough language, cannot find the strength or the way to say it. We should speak out against tyranny; we should stand in front of tanks. And we should protect that speech, and we should protect that right to stand, indeed we should never let it get to that point, we should never let the tanks roll in in the first place, we should never find ourselves camped in a square for weeks in order for just one of us to speak. We should hold it up every single day, we should hold it up in front of us and the tanks and the people who send those tanks. Especially the people who have the power to send those tanks.

Oddly enough, when Stewart’s Smith says that Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books, he really means that it must never stray too far from them. Trust me on this. It cannot be otherwise, it must not be otherwise, and he said it himself when he went on to define Liberty as being free to think and speak, having the good fortune of being guaranteed this, having the yes solemn responsibility of being guarantors. Because what is thought, and what is speech, without the guarantee of writing? Thought and speech are evanescent, they are fleeting, video and radio try to save it now but they perform only part of the trick, the sound of King’s “I have a dream” sends chills, but it does not legislate, deep, baritone echoes on the Mall compel consciences, but they do not similarly impel bodies, they do not make every body and mind and will in the country compliant, they do not safeguard liberties in every state, for every generation to come. Without King’s speech, there might not have been Johnson’s dignified act, but with only King’s speech there might still be two water fountains, there might still not be counter service for all, there might still be legislatively acceptable ignorance. Words fixed and frozen on a page, and not hanging with eloquence in the air, are what circumscribe our lives, are what make our country our country.

The guns and the metal detectors irked me, but to a certain extent I’ve accepted them as part of today’s society; this country is much bigger, this world is much bigger, there are people who would do harm, there are people who would take away. In order to be safe…or something like that. No, what irked me most of all was not even the obious collusion, coursing through those hallways marbled with ties and Italian shoes, of power and money, what irked me most of all was their taking away my books, and my pens. To what end? Why, when I sit watching my own government, the people elected by me, to serve me, why was I barred from writing down what I see, what was I prohibited from more fully bearing witness? There’s something not right there, and as if in an act of obvious and uncomfortably ironic defiance, I found the perfect argument against this rule inscribed on the first wall I saw upone entering the House.

“The greatest dangers to Liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal well-meaning but without understanding.”

Louis Brandeis said that, apparently in 1928, and this quite obviously resonated with me having just come from youknowwhere, and it would only resonate more in the coming moments, when I was asked to give up my books and my pens, when I was kept through rules too heartbreakingly hypocritical for me to want to comprehend to come in the way of myself and my understanding. All those flags everywhere, all those guns, all that uncomfortable patriotism that borders, yes on jingoism—in short, all that brandished zeal…and there my government was, promoting that zeal, but not that understanding.

I went to Liberty yesterday...

I’ll begin with the flyer. Which, in the spirit of due diligence, I’ll transcribe word for idiosyncratically capitalized word:

Jewish-Christian

National Committee

AMERICA’S

NEW

Party Needs YOU

to Run for Office!

Stay in School.

We’ll Run Your

Campaign for You.

CALL NOW!

(434) 258-5254

Equal opportunity! Women & Minorities Welcome!

JNC…America’s NEW Biblical values party.

“Pro-Life, Pro-Religious Freedom, Pro-Israel”

What I couldn’t fit in, what was off to the left of every line from “AMERICA’S” to “Stay in School” was the founder’s picture, name, and, I suppose, motto. The picture was that of a gamely, possibly latina blonde's smiling visage, her name is Ishah Wright, and what I take to be her motto reads as follows:

“Supporting

candidates with a

Judeao[probably sic]-Christian

platform is

Constitutional.”

As some of you may or may not be aware, I was at Liberty University yesterday. Western, though not to say, West, Virginia, the semi-rural Blue Hill Mountain town of Lynchburg to be precise. Verdant and vaguely vertiginous, with a Wal-mart and a Falwell airport and a [Tim, one presumes] LaHaye Ice Rink splayed out over the flat parts. A rainy, early spring day.

The event was to start at 10, which it didn’t because nothing happens on that campus between 10 and 11, there isn’t even coffee sold, the vending machines work I suppose but nothing else, nothing manned by men and women at any rate, nothing personelled. Book stores and newspaper stands, formerly echoing hallways and every single lit and unlit classroom. An eclipse of campus life in the middle of the day, a momentary moon passing in front of the chatter and smatter and everyday thrum of a campus life, how odd, how peculiar, why was this happening. Chapel. Although I still don’t know what goes on at a Liberty Chapel--is it all god/bible, is it all chapter:verses, is there some speechifying, does Falwell take matters into his own hands, are there also school matters, does someone stand up to make announcements—all a mystery to me, still, and unless I go out of my way it will always be, so just suffice it to say for now, for all of us: Chapel from 10 to 11, attendance required, to further discourage you from truancy you can't even buy coffee, not if Liberty has anything to say about it (though they can’t stop you from getting a Coke).

So. So this odd quiet—(moon of something passing in front of the source of light)—there we were milling around amidst this odd quiet. Tables carried inside the building, chairs and electronic equipment, boxes of sponsor-embossed books and highlighters (our assorted accoutrements of the shill), power cords and paper, our black table cloths, our still-intact blears. We arrived at 9:20 and finished setting up just before 10, I walked back inside the bustling building and the bustling building was still. Natalie, the newcomer, was walking towards us saying something about not being able to buy coffee, there being a rule. I thought I heard the word “chapel.” The bustling building was still. The hallway lights were on, but every other light was off. Come to think of it, she really did say the word “chapel.”

This was the second school we’ve been to where they actually had something called chapel that people actually were required to go to. But this was so emphatic. There really was something like a silence.

I wandered around. Up and down hallways a little, you might call it poking, I went poking around. There were classrooms to peer into, bulletin boards to examine, I had an hour to kill after all, I didn’t feel like looking at glass-encased pictures of Jerry Falwell with various caucasian dignitaries of the late-twentieth century. Some of the things were interesting, but not as interesting as what I’ve given you above. (I took it with me after all; mostly, though, I think I was attracted to the marriage [of convenience] of “Christian” and “Jewish.”^) Ishah Wright and her “Judeao-Christian” dream. The United States as the purview if not provenance of JC. And isn’t it funny how many things those initials can stand for. Or maybe they always only stand for one, depending on whom you ask.

As promised, at 11 the hallways again sprang to life, various interior lights were turned on, coffee was again sold. [Author’s Note: the line, within minutes, was over 20-feet long.] I bought coffee for myself and Natalie and began my day making business cards for Liberty University students, and without further ado I’ll write here in this initial, action-filled sentence that sometime between noon and 1 pm, after making around 15 or so sets of cards, I look over the shoulder of the next student-guest filling in boxes and see that the name she has typed into the “First Name” box is “Ishah” and into the “Last Name” box she has typed the word “Wright.” Lo, and behold.

An opportunity. (Though I did not know then for whom.)

I asked her where she was from, she asked me if I was a Christian. Not quite like that, I mean she answered my question and there followed at least a touch of conversation, I mean it wasn’t quite like wham-bam-mayIprayforyou, but truth be told there was quite a bit less time than I would have preferred between the two inquiries. In fact to take the wham-bam motif and run with it a little further it really was like she was trying to get into my eschatological pants, a Don Juan for Jesus I guess, My, I hardly even knew her. But there she was, reaching for my belt. Unbuckling. Sadly shaking her head as she looked down and saw my agnostic.

Things didn’t exactly evolve from there. We got into it. I told her I found the question unanswerable, proof, empiricism, et al, my five senses, et al, she asked if Jesus revealed himself to me through a miracle would I accept him, I said of course I’d love to see it. (In my mind: Jesus descending in a canted shower of light, were those flower petals trailing behind him, no but seriously such is the sophomoric level of my knowledge of religion, I know miracles come in other forms, highway underpass approximations of the visage of Mary, that sort of thing, but I swear to you those flowers and that rain of light are what descended through my mind.) I said of course, doubting I ever would, she asked if she could pray for me, for this to happen, I told her it was a free country. She bowed her head and began praying. Right there. Out loud and in the middle of the hallway, people walking by, young men and women standing in line to fill out business cards. And yes it felt like she was forcing herself on me, yes she had spiritually mounted me, she was up there suddenly riding. Riding my tiny agnostic.

Obviously, I was a little taken aback. Not to sound like the pith-helmeted San Franciscan astounded in the Blue Hills of Virginia, but…I really didn’t know what to do. I stood there wearing a visible “uh.” Do I bow my head concurrently, out of something like respect? Do I wait silently, patiently? Go on about my business and my day, leaning and assisting the next form-filling-out student until she was done, which I would know through aural evidence because she would stop addressing god and again start addressing me? Ought I to have politely asked her to engage in this sort of activity alone, or in those places which have been socially designated?

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details. She finished, we finished, she went on her way…and another rose to take her place.

As this is the thing about Liberty. An evangelical school…well, an evangelical school—they are there to evangelize, or because their parents want them to (and most likely do so themselves), and so this is the thing about Liberty: there will usually be someone there to take the last person’s place. As there was yesterday for me.

Krystle was her name, and no I won’t bore you with all the striking details, I won’t bore you with any of them this time and instead I will cut to the striking chase: as a result of this second proselytic^^ conversation I realized that I am a patriot, that I love and am thankful for Jefferson’s United States of America.

No I am not talking about someone having the freedom to stand and talk to god in a once more bustling Virginia hallway while I have the freedom to lean towards a computer and ignore her, and no I’m not talking about my being able to drive around the country claiming San Franciscaness, no I’m not talking about voting, no I’m not talking about rockets and red glares. And no I’m not joking. I’m being serious. And I want all of you who think as I do to take a moment to consider.

You see I told this young woman named Krystle that I didn’t need a god to tell me to be a good person, that I could figure out for myself that killing people, for instance, was wrong, that on my own--or, at any rate, through my own use of reason--I came to the conclusion that helping people and making them feel good and seeking justice for all involved felt, in turn, good to me. That acting in such a way and seeking to legislate at least a similar disposition could only be good for a society, a culture, a civilization, that this made sense to me, that this was the only way to ensure happiness for one and for all. I told this young woman that at some point in adolescence I found two things to be true: that everyone has a right to determine her or his own future, unless these determinations impinge upon the rights of others to do so; and that it is good (and right and proper) to act justly towards others, ideally with kindness. I told her I came to these notions because they made sense to me, and because—though I didn’t know this concept at the time—if I put them to the test of the categorical imperative they passed--that is, if they became the rule of law and action for everyone, everyone would be happy, and everyone would have the opportunity to be happy.

She told me that I couldn’t possibly know this on my own. She told me that humans are inherently wicked and sinful, and that if we didn’t have someone (someOne) telling us to do otherwise, and if we didn’t have the fear of that someOne in us to make us obey, there would be no goodness, there would be no society, there would be no civility. She told me that we as a society needed an otherworldly guidance in order to not, and here yes I’m putting words into her mouth, tear each other to pieces.

I told her I didn’t think this was true, I told her that in fact I know it not to be true because history has been nothing if not an inexorable march towards finding enlightenment closer and closer to home, that, in fact, the very country we were standing in, the very nation her college seeks to extol at nearly deafening levels, is indeed the perfect love-child of the Enlightenment and the belief that humans need no kings, thorny or otherwise, to tell us that justice is good, and that the Good is to be sought.

Let me write that again. Because this is what I am getting at.

The United States of America, this country we live in, conceived by 18th-century exemplars of the Enlightenment, that epochal acme of the inexorable march of reason and rationality against the darkling forces of myth and superstition, is the greatest proof yet offered by homo sapiens that we need no kings, thorny or otherwise, that we need not invisible or omnipotent Unmoved Movers to tell us what reason itself dictates: that self-determination and the categorical imperative lead to justice, that justice and the categorical imperative call for self-determination.

Call this a white paper if you want, call this an apologia if you want, call this a line in the sand if you want, but here is what this is to me: Jefferson’s America is proof of the rightness and inevitability of the Enlightenment, and I will not let them take it from me. And I challenge all of you reading this now: See America for the bastion of Reason it was meant to be, and recognize that there are those who would rapturously take it away, that they are working to do so right now, that something needs to be done about it before the sky begins to darken, before the eclipses begin to stay….

^I am, of course and in the interests of full disclosure, the product of a marriage—though not one of convenience—between a Christian and a Jew. But for the life of me I don’t think this has anything to do with the present fascination.

^^ sp., I know, but I’m coining it and you can figure it out.

You've Heard of the Terrible Twos...

how about the Sparring Sixes? Nono, I can do better than that--oh no shit I can't.

Just a little FYI in/re: an OMG!/WTF? bit of news from Florida related by Herbert in yesterday's Times. (Which, apparently, you can only find on Blogger, but that's another point entirely.) Not sure what this says about our society--or can I call it theirs? is this a Southern thing do you think?--but it says something. Arresting 6-year-olds, and throwing the book at them. This, in a society that does its best to teach us to avoid responsibility, Gonzales doing us the solid of noting that "mistakes were made" [oh but by whom? or did the mistakes make themselves, a something from nothing, proof of god!], a president who needs six years of thinking to come up with something he, maybe, wasn't right about, a society that uses the lawsuit as a first and often final means of deciding whose responsibility, exactly, it was to make it safely up the icy stairs (I'm talking to you John Edwards, you and your 11-bathroom mansion by the way].

Okay enough for now. I just wanted to make sure everyone out there was aware that in FL they're arresting 6-year-olds.

This Time of Social Rest

Listening to NPR the other day, it was bright and warm and we were parked beneath the sun across the street from the Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Charlotte, North Carolina, another empty RV park, this one with poorer showers but a nearby Coke machine, 60 cents for a can, somehow the quality of the bathing facility seemed a little less important. So. Mike and I were both inside the RV, occupying separate corners, doing our separate things—a little work, a little idle, but always through the use of some form of technology or other. The day was passing, with deliberation, punctuated by bird calls and the distant engine roars of practice laps, heated by sun and southern languor and with all deliberation, the day was passing. North Carolina, the United States. Another American day in another American year.

News, of course, that’s why I turned on NPR, mornings and evenings making me think of catching up with the world, or maybe it’s just a matter of passively segueing in to and out of the quieter hours. I sit and listen, do not move, and the world comes to me. And through the radio it seems to take more time, somehow it feels more like watching it stroll towards me on the horizon. It’s nicer this way, none of that visual abuse so often caterwauling out of the television, the clashing graphics so violent these days, Nancy Grace’s face. Nora Roberts, Ann Taylor, Cory Flintoff, your voices are like ribbons of chocolate falling, even you Lakshmi Singh, even you Terry Gross, both of you are still the opposite of FOX. Meaning, oddly enough, the perfect accompaniment to a quiet RV park day is not FOX, but NPR.

The sun beginning to gather its belongings, gesturing towards its door, the air still warm like breath, another American day in another American year.

It was either Nora Roberts or Ann Taylor who said it. A report from Baghdad, another bomb, another explosion, more death, more violence between strangers, a phrase she spoke into her studio microphone, “the wounded and the witnesses.” Look at it again, say it aloud to yourself: “the wounded and the witnesses.” Or try it like this:

“the wounded and the witnesses.”

The first thing to catch my ear, yes, the alliteration, but then the more I thought about it…. The alliteration, yes, at first, but then as I thought about it the meaning. First came the images, blood and flowing robes, hot sand swept by the dry air, exploding human violence in a Middle Eastern country. For some reason all the blood I saw was in spatters, not soaked, flung almost artfully across faces, faces contorted in pain, a loved one or maybe just the state of their country lying wounded and helpless in their arms. Tears, cries. Wails, the ringing of concussed ears. Sand still infusing into all that hot wind. The word ‘aftermath’ all over the background, people’s lives changed irrevocably, one rememberer at a time.

Then came the thought, damning: we are all witnesses. Then the thought that we were all just standing idly by, wanting to go about our own lives, we were on our way to market, we were studying at school, we were trying to earn a living, we were writing, we were reading—and then this. And then this war, and then the genocide in Rwanda, and then Abu Ghraib, and then Chechnya, and then the tsunami, and then a thousand dead Indians on a train, and then a hundred thousand Brazilians in a slum, and then Katrina, and then Darfur, and then the World Trade Center, and then the winter he never came home. We were doing something else. We were merely on our way. We were just trying to get by.

Innocent, we were, but condemned we have become. As long as we remain standing idly by, as long as we want only to go about our own lives, as long as keep traveling only to and from the market and never to Washington, and never in letters to elected officials, and never, having taken to the streets, to the square to join a protest or a parade, to speak out, either for our against. Innocent we once were until we first saw, or heard, until we first took it upon ourselves to find and know this world. We witnesses to the wounded, the wounded who pile up every day, and what do they have to show for this lived life, as they lie departing in our arms, as their blood streaks our faces, what do they have to show for it all, for their winnowed breathing? What reassurance do they have from us that this at least might not happen again? What reassurance do they have that, at the very least—at the embarrassing minimum—this won’t happen again tomorrow, that this death and intransigence won’t slip by unindicted even later that afternoon?

I know how much glass is in this house from which I throw stones. Even my fixtures are clear and brittle, even my mortar and nails. But. Or particularly—why is it all so complacent? Why does our society say that they care, but act like they don’t, why all the supporting of our troops with car magnets, but their denigration when it comes time to vote, when we kept in office those who would put them, without enough armaments and with lower salaries than the private sector mercenaries, into harm’s way? Why do we young, we educated, we energetic, why do we who have been followed by such incessantly smiling fortune—why do we who should, and worst of all do know better—how is it that we go about our lives, having witnessed, holding close and not flinging far this testimony? Are we really so fat and is the hog really so high? Is there really that much soma in the air? Are the iPods too often in our ears, is the internet almost always on in front of us, are we really that busy writing emails, and buying drinks, do we not recognize the wounded in our arms, the criminals who have put them there? Are we really so safe and opiated that we have not even spoken out once?

Are those bastards really so untouchable? Is it really so easy for them to ruin the world? Is it really just a matter of crafting highly pixelated distractions?

By the way...

The only thing that could get me to leave the Bay area...

Silly Rabbit, Guns Are for Kids

Not sure about the logic here. A little help?

From the "Camping Reminders" guidelines of the Fleetwood RV Camping Resort, across the street from the Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, NC. (The belly of the beast! I'm in the belly of the beast!)

FIREWORKS/FIREARMS: For the safety of our guests, fireworks and firearms are strictly prohibited. Fireworks and firearms will be confiscated and can result in expulsion from the park without refund and/or prosecution.

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES: Fleetwood RV Camping Resort is a family-oriented resort, as such the use of alcohol in open containers is prohibited. Please contain alcoholic beverages in non-distinguishable containers. Excessive drunkenness will result in expulsion from the park without refund and/or prosecution.

So let me get this straight: they catch you packing heat...maybe maybe not they kick you out of the park ("can result in expulsion"). They catch you wasted: you're out ("will result in expulsion").

Dude--what the fuck is wrong with these people??

Because there are at least two major things wrong with this policy. First and foremost, it being an RV park, i.e., a place where people park the motor vehicles to which they are wedded/attached, if you kick someone out for being drunk they will have to get in their RV and drive it somewhere. As in, you're telling people who are excessively drunk that, because they are excessively drunk, they're going to have to get in their vehicle and drive away. (What the fuck is wrong with these people??) The second major thing wrong with this policy is that while they're busy making their establishment safe from slurry speech and potential public urination, they give far less of shit if someone pulls out a, um, different kind of weapon [sorry about that], effectively saying that alcohol is more dangerous to the peace and welfare of their little makeshift community than is a dischargeable weapon.

But you know what might be worst of all? I expected this. What's worst of all is that when I came across this only part of me was flabbergasted; the rest of me just kind of mentally shrugged, the silent voice inside my head saying, Of course.

Of course this bible belt business would be more concerned with, I don't know...god! what the fuck are they concerned about? (Apparently I do need a little help here.) Is it people pulling out their peckers and making little smiley faces in the sand by their site? Is it the afore-mentioned slurriness? Is what they're afraid of a night full of catcalls and Rebel Yells, an endless string of Git 'er Dun's? If so, why the edict that booze needs to be in "non-distinguishable" containers, and why the mention of Fleetwood being a "family-oriented" resort? And why, for the love of a dead christ, is this preamble of family orientation not a part of the gun rule???

Who are these people? And why are they voting in my elections? And what is their conception of the world, that they can love one of history's most flaming pacifists on Sunday, then make love to their guns on Monday? He turned the fuckin water into wine, dickheads, not bullets.

I really need to get out of the South.