And we stopped in
Bethlehem—
They made the answers
here
But there weren’t so
many questions then
Admission: Late to the party as usual, but Republican
presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s statements on the
19 February 2012 episode of Face the Nation about “man” and
the Earth and “phony theology” deserve a bit more reflection. The implication
that man and Earth are distinct, not invested in one another, is phony—perhaps
not (pre-Vatican II?) theologically, but by most other measures of
semi-reasonable observation. What’s at stake here is unmasking pervasive
attitudes that forgive earth injury in the name of…what? God? Power? Manifest
Destiny?
 |
| injured, a world |
Pedaling my bike to work this morning (yes, I’m that kind of
radical—either that, or I’m just too cheap to pay for parking, or maybe I do it
because of its manifold health benefits—I’ll let you decide), the Drones popped
up on my earPod music device and my ride was quickened by
eight minutes of
their brilliant howl against the pain caused by all the idiocy of “man’s” attempts
to exert control over other nations, theologies, and nature—“another bomb for
every atom you injure” runs one line. Notice that the atom (the building block
of life, earth, nature, and humanity, as I interpret the lyric) is the injured
party and notice that the “bomb”—the power to destroy—is what you gain when you
injure life.
The consequences of nuclear testing in the form of radiation
entering the foodstream starts the song and from there the verses comment
acidly on misadventures in the Middle East, war, terrorism, and the deals that
“we” (the West, terrorists, suicide bombers: all are equally condemned) make
with the Devil in seeking dominion over others. What the apocalyptic “A Hard
Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” meant to an earlier generation, “Jezebel” should mean to a
post-punk, post-9/11, and post-Bush generation; in the song the Drones attempt
to understand this post-rational world rooted in spectacles of fear mongering
and death-dealing. “Bombproof the embassy,” lead singer Gareth Liddiard
implores. “Give infanticide a cemetery.” Diplomacy and innocence (you can’t get
much more innocent than infants) are dead in this world. “Uranium tips [and]
night vision cruise missiles,” the lyrics suggest, are the only means that "we" now use to understand this world.
The “Jezebel” in the title of the song is never identified.
I doubt the band literally means the Biblical queen of Israel; rather, I take
the band to mean Jezebel in its contemporary popular sense of a sexually promiscuous
woman. A sinner, a whore, who tempts a man to indulge his sensual passions,
his desire for power in the case of the song, and ignore his more significant
relations. Earth is the Jezebel man desires in the song; complete dominion over
our mother and all her children—even if dominion means killing them, her
children, us. “I’m gonna lose my skin,” the singer laments. “And I ain’t gonna
see you again.”
The work I bicycle to on mornings such as this is in the
American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota where I teach
courses on Native literature and the Drones’ song got me to thinking about the
contrast between indigenous worldviews (as embodied in the
literature I teach) and those kind of worldviews stunted by fundamentalist
monotheisms that see man (never woman) as the center of the world (which the
Drones brilliantly crucify—yes, I said it—in the song).
In class in recent days we’ve been discussing a phrase that
one of the characters in Thomas King’s
Green Grass, Running Water repeats again and again (and which other characters
begin to use as the book unfolds). The character, Norma, the main character’s
auntie, a woman—an elder to be heeded—continually appeals to those around her
to “Mind your relations.”
Norma’s statement is so simple that it could mean anything
from “Listen to your family” to the more broadly philosophical turf of “Think
about how you relate to others”—and “others” here must be understood as other
people, other nations (including those of the animals and plants), as well as
others in the grander cosmological sense of the sun, the moon, and the stars;
it needs to be thought about as other times and places (physical and spiritual);
it is intergenerational and transdimensional. Mind these things as relations,
think with them as you think about yourself, step outside egocentric
indulgences and consider your place in the broader community of family and
history, environment and the Earth. Mind these things as equals, as invested in
you as you are in them. You may be small and insignificant compared to a star
but in your relations you are a giant. Mind your relations because you are
them. The Earth is the mother that pushes you into this matrix of
relations, and you are always connected with them. The Earth of minded relations is no
Jezebel; her breast feeds, it does not mislead.
 |
i could eat you,
but then gingivitis
would ruin my life |
Such an insight is not unique to Native literature. In class
we’ve discussed scientific theories of symbiosis that explore the way animals
and environments evolve together to their mutual benefit and talked about how
this kind of cooperative
relationship
is actually evident in the ongoing fact of life on earth--whether that life
dates back billions of years or a mere six or seven millennia as creationist
theologies propose. The environments that sustain our lives are manifestations
of the wisdom of the teaching contained in the phrase “Mind your relations.”
Having the Drones pounding through my earphones as I think
about minding my relations, candidate Santorum’s words last Sunday came winging
(or might that be whinging, in the British sense of the word) back to me.
As he
tried to explain to Face the Nation host
Bob Schieffer what he meant in calling President Obama’s a “phony theology,”
Santorum revealed the limits of his theology
and his inability to mind his relations. He explained that "radical
environmentalists" have “this idea that-- that man is-- is not-- is here to
serve the Earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the
Earth. And I think that is a-- a-- is a phony ideal.” In an attempt to clarify
what “man” “is” or “is not” to do, Santorum continued, “man is here to-- to use
the resources and use them wisely, to care for the Earth, to be a steward of
the Earth. But we're not here to serve the Earth. The Earth is not the objective.
Man is the objective.”
Man’s
needs, the Earth’s resources, are the objective. Man is here to care for the
Earth, even if his “objective” needs threaten Earth’s ability to sustain us.
The object it seems is to penetrate the Earth, what with the way she titillates
us with her resources, and “steward” her, lead her back to the path of
righteousness, but only once we’ve “used [her] wisely”. Indulge yourself man,
the Earth is not the objective; she is the object, the Jezebel who serves man’s
desires, yet needs his guidance. Dominion is the objective, a shattering of
relations the consequence.
 |
what else pops out?
why those knowing smiles? |
With his gee-whiz overbite and throwback sweater vests,
Santorum reminds me of a character from a fifties television sitcom—of those
days back when all the moms wore dresses, all the dads dispensed easily
digested platitudes, and all the teens were virgins. Sticking straws through
the mouths of pop bottles at the soda fountain was as close to sexual
expression as those TV kids dared to get. This virginal fantasy, while
(perhaps) entertaining to watch, should not be mistaken for critical insight—nor
should Santorum’s words. The idea that Obama and "radical" environmentalists want
man to serve the Earth, to kneel before the Jezebel, the way a masochist kneels
before a dominatrix, is the kind of post-rational political rhetoric that seeks
to destroy our ability to think about, and with, our relations.
