11,756. RUDIMENTS, pt. 684

RUDIMENTS, pt. 684

(at root, it was all human hatred)

I never really thought

Americans owned up to

the Civil War  -  in fact,

they lived their little, crazy,

insular lives as if it had

never happened. The 

average Dad on my own 

block would have had

nothing to say about it

other than some oblique

reference to slavery, I'd

guess. The thing about

America's generations is

how they all restart from

zero each time. The most

of History for those guys

ran back to, maybe 1940,

and all that 'where they

were when' stuff, maybe

about Pearl Harbor, or

the Depression. (The real

Depression, not like the 

ones now where you, 

maybe, hear people on

their high horse about 

having to cut back some

on their cable). The coolest

info I ever got, unwittingly,

were things of the old 1920's

and Depression era that my

Grandmother (the only 

grandparent I ever had, 

and for this) would tell me, 

of her young days (same 

age as the 20th century; 

10 in 1910, 20 in 1920, 

etc.); things about horses

and 'cars'; places she called

Poorhouses, and their fears

of being carted off to one.
Bread lines and tenements.
Twenty-give cent gas meters.

Those were some real stories.

There never seemed to be any

engrained  societal-memory 

on the truer fabric of all the

lives and issues that had

gone before though. Even

those holidays set aside for

commemorations of things

were turned into sideshows

no longer reporting to the

issue at hand. I saw it all

as negligence  -  the poor

reporting of a country so

unaware of itself that it

thought it embodied all 

the 'Good' that ever was. 

Such blindness. Losing all

that farmland and going

'suburban' as it all did,

probably had lots to do

with that. To me, both the

Civil War AND the loss 

of any non-commercial 

remembrance of it meant 

that the Nation itself had

failed, but never realized or

admitted to it, and continued

to just roll along without any

fixed principles except for 

some weird version of 

commerce for profit, and 

forget the rest. Truly, just

a mob scene of monkeys

seeking pennies.

-

It must have been a massive

shock, in 1854, for a country

like this one to awake and 

realize that it was probably 

doomed to warfare, strife and 

separation. Once that repeal 

took place, (the 1854 repeal 

of the ban on slavery in the 

'Nebraska Territory'), it was

apparent that each step of

the way into the future and 

into the growth of land, states, 

and  places, heads were to be

butting heads at every turn; 

almost better to just have it 

out, now. Let the bloodletting 

begin, not fester.  No one 

would be that way today.

They would all just roll 

over  -  opponents and 

favor-ites. There's no spunk 

for internal battle now; they'd

all just go watch TV - to
them them about it. (You 
know, TV; those wall-sized 
things that, now have taken over 
every room in people's homes, 
and the constant glow-light  
flicker that is always on). 

-

I wrote previously about 

Lincoln at Cooper Union, 

addressing the crowd, as a 

candidate. There's a spot in 

NYC where there used to

be an old Rail Station  -  

Hudson Station or something  -  

and there's a plaque that tells 

the story of it being the location 

for Lincoln's campaign arrivals 

into the city, his triumphal later

arrivals as President, and of it 

also being the same station

at which his casket arrived and 

departed, after his assassination,

along his funeral train processional.

I always was interested in seeing

how Lincoln, when you come right

down to it, never out and out opposed

slavery; he more took the position

of opposing the lawlessness of

secession, over that of any real

concern over slavery. Those were

the sorts of issues that still baffled

in the 1950's. I'd see all those, for

example, segregation guys, in

Little Rock and Selma and all

that  -  blubbery, sweaty faces, 

screaming jowels, dressed like

either weird farmhands or 

undertakers, howling at children

of, supposedly, another race,

another color, by their personal

determinants. None of those people

had ever owned up to anything.

Anyway they were maybe 40 years

old at the most, and urban people

besides  -  screaming at the 

Edmund Pettis Bridge? What 

infernal burning in their gut 

had ever steered them there? 

What did they know, yokels

that they were, about anything, 

most especially about the 'issue' 

at hand? It was all, the South, 

the issue, the remnants of some 

country-grace attitude, ALL, 

screwed up and inverted. 1950's 

people knew nothing about 

nothing; yet, here we were, 

forced again to listen to drivel.

-

I used to walk endless streets,

and I'd realize, within these

issues, that 'New Yorkers' were

not much different. They rioted,

burned, and lynched blacks, in

much the same furies as the

Southern whites did. The actual

issue of 'Slavery' little mattered.

At root, it was all human hatred,

unsequestered, running rampant,

and probably overflowing with 

greed too. I think the one

difference, perhaps, then, was

real estate  -  the values now of

'Real' Estate are so different and

so far above and higher, that the

resistance to any destruction and

perfidy towards them would be

resisted and massacres would

ensue. It's all the same deal,

I suppose, just the sides and

issues have been flipped, and

now no one resists anything.
I think there's a tear in the
American psyche from all this,
which has never been repaired.
The ongoing gap is too much, the
two ends no longer meet, all is
askew. That un-mendable rent
still tears, in turn, at us; confusing
each issue, taking its disguise from
every other issue, whether it be
guns, abortion, voting rights, 
schooling, reparations, whatever.
These days, and for a long time now,
everyone is 'represented,'  -  oh,
sure  -  but by the wrong thing and
in the wrong manner. I think it's
all going to happen again, maybe
not in my few years left, but soon.
Yes. Sure. The lynchings now
are internal.