Exile on Main Street

The artist has no more actual place in the American culture of today than he has in the American economy of today.

— William Faulkner

I'm flattered so many friends and acquaintances have taken well to my choice of an "encore" career.

At the same time, I'm saddened that I can only pursue painting as a career because I don't depend on it for the lion's share of my income.

My hat's off to those painters—successful or not—who found the cajones to try in their youth to paint for a living.

Faulkner was right to say the artist "has no place in the mosaic of the American dream as it exists today."

The average American artist, according to the Labor Department, earns $50,300 a year. That's $10,000 less than a clerk at the post office (a job Faulkner held as a young man, until he was fired for throwing away mail).

Of course remorse isn't good for the soul; and calling America materialistic is trite.

But as Wassily Kandinsky observed, "The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip."

Terror

 

I was not predicting the future, I was trying to prevent it.

― Ray Bradbury

A year ago, I urged live event organizers to prepare for domestic terror.

Sadly, that prediction proved correct last night.

Strongmen

A friend who posts reactionary memes every day on Facebook admitted to me he not only gets his jollies provoking "your kind," but secretly wishes Trump were president.

You probably know a lot of people like him.

I wish they'd all read Strongmen, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat's 2020 account of modern authoritarianism, now out in paperback.

It's the scariest read you'll find outside a Stephen King novel.

Ben-Ghiat finds every modern strongman—including Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Amin, Pinochet, Erdogan, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Berlusconi, Gaddafi, Hussein, Orban, Putin, Modi and Trump—cut from precisely the same vile cloth.

Strongmen are all emotionally stunted weirdos who seize the levers of power because dominion over others fills an inner need to prove they're not emotionally stunted weirdos.

They're masters in the dual arts of disguise and deceit.   

"They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation's savior," Ben-Ghiat writes. 

"Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears," she continues, "strongmen present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety from racial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."

Strongmen rely on distortions, myths, lies, and propaganda to build a faithful audience, banking on followers' willingness to abandon the real world in favor of the fantasy world the strongmen create.

Eventually—as in the case of my misguided friend—there's no talking to a strongman's followers.

"They believe in him because they believe in him," Ben-Ghiat writes. 

Their unshakable faith in the strongman leads them to insist you—by believing in a world where people strive to live in peace, right systemic wrongs, and work for prosperity and progress—are "drinking the Kool-Aid."

But strongmen really don't give two shits about their followers and, in fact, are openly contemptuous of them. 

All they really care about is robbing the treasury, punishing critics, controlling women and women's bodies, and pursuing vainglorious goals.

Soon—to every other citizen's detriment—chaos, bankruptcy, and warfare ensue, as strongmen lose what little is left of their ability to distinguish the difference between personal lusts and their nation's needs.

Their sick, self-aggrandizing projects invariably lead to their comeuppance and to a national apocalypse, as our parents witnessed in World War II and we're witnessing in Ukraine now.

"Authoritarian history is full of projects and causes championed by the ruler out of hubris and megalomania and implemented to disastrous effect," Ben-Ghiat writes.

Why don't Trump's followers see that?

POSTSCRIPT: Should you find the inclusion of Trump in the company of strongmen like Mussolini and Hitler far fetched, bare in mind that Trump's press secretary has acknowledged he openly admired other dictators' ruthlessness.

"I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him," Stephanie Grisham told The Hill. "He loved the people who could kill anyone."

Historian Ben-Ghiat says the "strongman's golden rule is: do whatever is necessary to stay in power."

We see Trump apply that rule every day.

Ukraine

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Putin is the richest man in the world.

His cronies are among the richest.

Why they are compelled to crush Ukraine culminates from their unfathomable wealth.

It also culminates from their remoteness from 99.99% of humanity.  

"Love of money is blind," says artist Erik Pevernagie. 

"Greed and money make people forfeit the quiddity of life, banish them from what is essential and alienate them from themselves. They lose their identity and become drifting exiles."

Above: A tank rolls through Kherson, Ukraine. Photographer unknown.

UPDATE: Early this morning, Ukraine announced its forces have launched a counter-offensive outside Kyiv, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Hieronymo Girolamo

If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which
God has passed through history, we truly see
that here is a force for good.

— Pope Benedict XVI

Despite being raised a Roman Catholic, I struggle—as most Americans do—with believers.

Believers who practice what they preach have my admiration; but far too often your garden-variety believer turns out to have worse moral failings than the rest of us. He just doesn't know it.

I'm also not sanguine about church leaders; the opaque and bizarre organizations they run; or about the wily ways they exploit weakness and ressentiment.

More than most Americans, when it comes to religion's role in society, I tend to agree with Napoleon: "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

Saints, nonetheless, captivate me.

The Catholic Church recognizes over 10,000 of them.

Saints are venerated by the church for "heroic sanctity." They're history's first responders, only with missals. 

And saints are often "patrons"—sponsors of causes and cities and professions, and guardians of individuals when they're caught in a bind.

Catholics celebrate saints' feast days, take their names at confirmation, and pray to them when they're wanting. 

Saints' life stories are generally fascinating.

One of the 10,000 saints I just discovered is Hieronymo Girolamo, St. Francis of Jerome.

A Jesuit in the 17th century, Hieronymo spent 40 years of his life preaching in the rural areas surrounding Naples, where his sermons would draw as many as 15,000 listeners.

His followers said he had god's gift on the soapbox and would often drag sinners before him, so they could hear his outdoor sermons. He spoke of the wickedness of sins, the need for repentance, the suddenness of death, the tortures of hell, and the salvation in Jesus.

Hieronymo spoke 40 times a day, always choosing streets and crossroads where recent crimes had been committed. Whenever he concluded, the crowd would crush forward to kiss his hand or touch his garments and beg forgiveness of their sins. 

"He is a lamb when he talks, but a lion when he preaches," listeners said, "not a mere mortal, but an angel expressly sent to save souls."

Hieronymo also earned a reputation for miracle-working—a requirement for sainthood.

He was said to have received communion directly from Jesus Christ. He was also witnessed asking a prostitute's corpse where its inhabitant was and receiving the answer, "I'm in Hell!"

Hieronymo preached in the streets until the age of 73. "As long as I keep a breath of life I will go on," he said. "Even if dragged through the streets, I will thank God. A pack animal must die under its bundle."

He died in 1716 and was canonized 123 years later.

By my count, Hieronymo delivered well over 670,000 sermons during his lifetime.