dylan

Family legend is that my great grandfather was a neighbor of the great American novelist Sinclair Lewis (like all good legends, it is likely untrue)..Dorothy Thompson once described him as "an old-fashioned populist American radical" with "a deep feeling for tradition". There was have been something in the water.My moms hero is Dorothy Day, one of the prominent figures and faces of the Catholic Worker movement. The National Review crowd listening to John Luckas extol her virtues as a conservative icon years ago was not sympathetic or amused. Of course Luckas was right, and though my mother would probably cringe at the suggestion that she herself was a "conservative" she is also right to claim Day as her "favorite saint". Mom also loves Walker Percy, southern writers in general, the Irish (perhaps to a disturbing degree), and the ceremonial Christianity of Catholicism and it's bastard child (perhaps literally, depending on your views on English history) Episcopalianism. She pointed me in the direction of John Shelby Spong and Paul Tillich, and though she believes in the resurrection and virgin birth, she is happy to know that I think Jesus was wonderful and Chesterton is one of the shining lights of Western thought.My dads dad (Pops) regards C. Wright Mills book "The Power Elite" as maybe the greatest piece of cultural, sociologial and political criticism ever written...a keen observer will notice that James Burnhams "Managerial Revolution" theory and Samuel Francis (a Chattanooga boy, much like myself I might add) "Middle American Revolution" are remarkably similar to the argument layed out by Mills. Once again "Pops" would sooner die than be called a conservative, but when the Iraq war hit the surface he told me "no real conservatives support this". He likely knew many "real conservatives" in the small Scandanavian and German Minnesota towns of his youth, home to the professionally cranky aforementioned Sinclair Lewis (the caricature provided by Walter Matheau in Grumpy Old Men is accurate and timeless). I can just imagine my Pops, the DFL Democrat (he has always been stubborn about making it known that DFL is his background), in the land of a thousand lakes, mixing it up with La Follete Progressives and small town reactionaries, all of them in silent acknowledgment that their community comes first.My moms father "(Pal Pal or Paw Paw depending on the depth of your accent) lived inside the belly of the beast, working at Dupont for decades, for which he lost his hearing and got a pension to replace it. He is still a company man, but is a Southern Baptist and Southern soul first. That said in 2000 I listened as my Paw Paw talked the workingmans talk while extolling the virtues of Ralph Nader, questioning the sanctity of the corprotocracy, and generally being disgusted by the two party system. This was not a deviation from cracker culture to him, but rather its natural expression.My grandmothers have their own stories.Pome (my dads mom) was an artist and fighter. At under five feet tall, she lasted years longer than most grown men would last, dutifully reporting for the draining process of kidney dialysis in the worst of conditions time after time. She once told me only divine providence could explain the countries founding and the nature of the Republic. She came from wealth, but was not a natural patrician (my great grandfather was a "self made millionaire" to quote another American Horatio Alger, 2pac Shakur), and was less politically predictable than my grandfather (this trait does not imply that she had sounder judgment..during W's first term, she was vicious toward King George II, but would often vocalize her heartfelt opinion that Jeb would be an excellent heir to the Bush dynasty).Ironically my mothers mom (Gramere) is a southern debutante and IS something of a natural patrician, despite the fact that she did not come from money, but rather from the farms of North Alabama. She has a love for puns (of the clean variety..remember she is a lady first) and the "old ways". She, like most Southerners her age, is absolutely certain that we are related to Robert E. Lee, and is equally certain that the country is going to hell because we have abadoned the righteous path. Though she is deeply religious, when she bemoans the collapse of our society and culture it is not all things Jesus on her mind, but the rampant consumerism and depraved behavior it crams down our throats. I can't say that she is wrong, and I'm pretty sure my great grandfathers neighbor Sinclair Lewis and my eighth cousin, sixty-seven times removed, Robert E. Lee would agree.My moms brothers have a lukewarm relationship at best. My Uncle David lives in my fathers childhood home of Albequerque where he is an architect. We do not speak often, though when we do speak we enjoy candid conversations where he seems to show kinship with the emerging Green Party politics on the fringe of New Mexican life, despite the fact that he lives and dies by the developers sword (we are all filled with contradictions). He fulfilled my mothers lifelong dream and converted to Catholicism (my mother remains an unaffiliated admirer, perhaps more Southern, than orthodox, though she would blush at such a charge), puting him at odds with his brother, and my Godfather, Uncle Alan..an openly gay man, married to his partner (or as I sensibly and lovingly call him Uncle Joe). My Uncle Alan has been at more universities than I can recall, is directly responsible for my music snobbery, shares my love of Presidential history, and is a modern American Progressive. I knew he was gay at a young age and never cared. Though my Uncle would disagree, I believe Gore Vidal is right; homosexuals don't exist..homosexualist do. It is a verb, not a noun, but my Uncle Alan is a noun I'm proud to claim as my own.Then there is my dad and my Uncle Dave. These two will always go hand in hand to me and to most who knew them.Though they were born elsewhere, their formative years were spent in Albequrque, New Mexico in an era before mass immigration, urban sprawl, hyper-development, and the military industrial complex had turned the town into a "thriving" metropolis. My father often talks about Albequrque as a charming town, but my Uncle Dave regarded it and the broader American West as something of a "forbidden paradise". To my Uncle Dave the West and the natural state in general was a universial good. This led him toward an unhealthy obsession with the Weather Channel in later years, but it also turned him into a poet and a quiet prophet of enviornmental defense. The first time I read Edward Abbey I felt like I was talking to my Uncle Dave, though he is in actuality a cross between Bukowski and Abbey, an ultraintelligent scribe, who loved the bottle, the American West and couldn't escape skid row. He was like a big brother to me, but WAS a big brother to my father.My dad is the closest thing to a hero I have. Talking politics with him is a great joy, but the candor of his political tirades (inherited from his father to be fair) is something that has become the central trait of my daily life. As a lone quasi-socialist voice in the South, who claims Paul Wellstone as his pragmatic political hero, I have heard my dad respond to criticism of the welfare state by saying "so what, what the fuck is wrong with people being able to eat! I say great!". While I am not a big government man that degree of honesty is exeedingly rare, among radicals of all stripes (when was the last time you saw a radical libertarian honestly say "noise ordances are bullshit, I'll play Skynyrd covers through triple stacks all damn night if I feel like it"?). It is also a sentiment that I think my dad endorses as a neccesary evil in a world of criminally massive corporations. After all this is the same man that thought Waco and Ruby Ridge were war crimes (and told me so at the time, despite my relative youth), thinks FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and believes "entangling alliances" to be the biggest threat the nation has ever faced. He has no faith in international institutions, is deeply suspicious of the Fed, and loathes the Patriot Act. In other words he is an American First, though I doubt he would ever use those words to describe himself. He is also a mean man in the mosh pit, a karoake legend, a special ed teacher, a great soccer coach who never played the game in his life, and a man who has remarked for years that he wants his headstone to read "we always ate well" (he also called my emerging Old Right sympathies, when he remarked years ago "Dylan has sympathy for and supports anything radical..it doesn't matter if it is Right or Left"). Indeed we did.We by the way includes not just my mom, but my brothers Drew, Dustin and Devon. I am convinced that the common "D" is a Freudian expression of my fathers enthusiasm for a certain body part found only in women..knowing my dad it may not even be Freudian. Regardless it is a blessing and a curse, though my brothers are entirely a blessing.My Brother Drew is one of my closest friends, and a lifelong skeptic of the Mencken variety. I remember trips to Calvary Lutheran Church every Sunday where I was a devout young congregant, but little "pooter" as we called him then (and now at times..thank Uncle Dave for that one) never seemed to care and was openly questioning the divinity of Christ, relevance of church and existance of God by the age of six. None of this has changed and while his ecclecticism is not identical to mine, like us, it is closely related and explosive. His temper is the stuff of legend (not the Sinclair Lewis/Robert E. Lee variety) and his sense of humor horrifies the uptight and PC, which is precisely why it is good humor. He has an amazingly good singing voice, though his only forays into the musical world have been rap tracks (available on MYSPACE!) and three AM Karaoke battles with the wives of close friends.My Brother Dustin is the quiet one of our bunch. He loves wrestling as much as I do, but doesn't use that as an excuse to suck in school like I often did ("I was up all night watching In Your House 5 Miss Roberts"). His heros are Kurt Angle, Steve Irwin and Mr. Bean. I have no clue what to make of that, or the fact that his claim to fame is the ability to balance toilet paper rolls on his head during long car trips, but I think it has something to do with growing up in a more innocent enviornment than me and Drew did. He goes to school in Ringold, Georgia, lives in Chattanooga and is unknowingly living in world closer to the "old way"..a way most of us would do better to follow.Devon is Devon. Friends from my high school years remember him as a bloodthirsty maniac of a child. This is not surprising, considering who his older brothers were, but Devon has since morphed into an accidentially amusing wititician (not a word, but it fits) who has quipped "hatred is hatred because it's hatred" and referred to the life of FDR as "miserable" in two seperate class projects. He also shares my obsession with wrestling, has the memory of an elephant and despite his endorsement of buxom women, will likely end up on Broadway one day..whether this appearance will be on the stage or outside as a rambiling man with a cup full of change and an Illumanti theory of government remains to be seen.Finally there is my Lovely (notwe the capitalization) sort-of-wife Jen, and my wonderful daughter Emma.Jen and I have been together for almost seven years. We fell in love via the internet with the conduit being a creepy combination of AOL Emo Chat, Charles Bukowski and mutual hatred of Lord Of Flies (book not movie). We met at a Greyhound station in the ghetto of North Charleston, just a stones throw away from the infamous Charleston Hardore Mecca, the Bopp Hall. My dad brought her a barrell of monkeys and an equistrian magazine. I wore an Ultimate Warriors shirt I later lost at Adam Jones bachelor party, after nearly killing Daniel Bein and watching the groom plunge to his near death from the stage of a strip club. But that is another story.Jen is a non-dogmatic self-identified feminist. We argue about things like the death penality (which she supports) and "To Catch a Predator" (which I think is dangerously close to entrapment). She shares alot of my views, but not all of them..the common thread is that we are both people of priniciple. In 2004 she dutifully reported to the polls to cast her vote for Pro-Life (I had to say it babe) Socialist candidate Walt Brown...I sat at home, bitched about the process and have no regrets. To paraphrase from my friend Beejays tatoo artist, and Gorilla Biscuitts frontman Civ we were both be right just not in the same way. She loves animals, smokes like a chimney, drinks more coffee than any sensible person and likes knitting a little too much..but I love her for it and wouldn't trade her for anyone else.We named our daughter after the Anarchist, anti-suffragette, world class rabblerouser Emma Goldman and the emotional hardcore band Constantine Sankathi. She is a fiery redhead, fulfilling my mothers other dream (she never does that herself), and is even more obstinate than I was (and am). She has her great grandmothers (Pome) artistic streak, my brother Devons mischevious facial expressions and Jens charmingly wicked tongue. With me she shares a love of Drake and Josh and hot candy. I am listening to her infectious laughter now and I hope desperately that there is something left for her of the Real America, by the time she is my age.I have left many players out..there is my Aunt Patty, something of a charming recluse, eerily similar to Emily Dickinson, my Aunt Andrea who loves True Crime books even more than I do, my Grandaddy Mac who always made sure that I knew the moon landing was faked, Steve and Jane Barry who were like a third set of grandparents and showed me that the French, tacos and obscure card games were the pinnacle of Western Civilization, my mother-in-law Paulette who just thinks everyone should mind their own business ESPECIALLY our politial class, and her "friend" of several years Mike who is union till he dies, and believes immigration, slavish devotion to Israel, and unnecesary foreign wars are destroying the country.Former SDS President Carl Ogelsby once said "The Old Right and The New Left are morally and politically coordinate". Without knowing it, my family and most American families prove this rule. Populism, Americanism, Communalism, Tribalism, it all comes bak to Love for place, family, culture and self..these are what are families give us..it is the only proper arrangment for a society and the only politics worth preserving.