I’m just out here trying to find a good metaphor for life in America right now, and I’m mulling over the words of our most astute sack-of-shit poet, Allen Ginsberg.
OK, side note. You know who you never want to think about too closely? Poets. As I’ve talked about before, I feel deeply uncomfortable with my regard for Allen Ginsberg’s poetry. “Maybe I should be able to molest children, if it seems like they’re up for it” is an indefensible position, and I have grave qualms about finding anything of value in a mind that thinks that way. But I still think “Howl” is one of the most searingly insightful poems about America to have ever been written.
And, man, what’s especially weird to think about is that at the same time Allen Ginsberg was writing “Howl,” another poet — Ezra Pound — was confined to a hospital for his treacherous activities during World War II. And from that hospital, Pound was acting as the emotional support poet for the most prominent racist who terrorized Nashville, John Kasper. And also at this same time — the same time “Howl” was being written — Nashville poet Donald Davidson was forming the Tennesseans for Constitutional Government, which provided money and legal help for racists opposing school integration. Which means that, as much as their poetry differed, the private concern of a lot of 1950s poets was advocating for their right to destroy children’s lives.
State House votes yes as gun safety advocates voice opposition from the gallery
Anyway, I’m thinking about our state wanting to arm teachers, and of course, I’m thinking of the Moloch of Ginsberg's "Howl" — "Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!” — and how this country shovels piles of children into the gaping maw of Moloch in order to buy us more time to keep from changing. Truly, is there anything else that makes sense of this madness? Once you realize that some level of human sacrifice is acceptable to people in power, you realize that legislation like putting guns in the hands of teachers in schools is just about putting the decision of which particular children to sacrifice on teachers — now that the legislature has done the work of deciding that, in general, we’re going to keep sacrificing our children to guns, because we don’t want to address our problem. “Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!” Indeed.
But Dan McClellan over on TikTok hipped me to the fact that there’s a 100-year-long growing scholarly suspicion that Moloch wasn’t a thing. That it wasn’t a god to sacrifice kids to, but just the name for the sacrifice. We, meaning people, looked at how we treat each other and decided this kind of incomprehensible stupidity had to have been pumped into the world at the behest of some kind of supernatural force. And we took the name for "sacrifice" and turned it into a deity.
That feels right. But man, it ruins my ability to write this column. It would be so satisfying to rip back the curtain and reveal that all these “godly” right-wing legislators are actually worshipping Moloch in disguise. But alas, there’s not even Moloch behind the curtain. It’s just a mirror.
The city held a dedication ceremony at Diane Nash Plaza Saturday — a good reminder that we should have a civil rights museum
Earlier this month at the ceremony honoring civil rights icon Diane Nash, Nash said that, in order for her and her colleagues to do what they did, they had to love the people who were opposing them. (It’s pretty similar to what Jesus said — “Love your enemy” — but no one listens to that old hippie anymore.) And I heard it, but I do not know how to do it. How do you watch our state legislature and not want to reflect back to them what they’re putting out into the world? Gov. Bill Lee's friend was killed by a school shooter and he still signed this bill. I think I’m a pretty imaginative person, and I can’t imagine how he lives with himself. I can’t imagine how to look at him with anything but disdain.
The secret may indeed be in treating others how you’d want to be treated, but I’m stuck here wanting really badly to treat Republicans how they treat others.
