
Blind-drunk Lakota stumble along the road. A man with a hat that reads NATIVE PRIDE sleeps against a building, using a five-gallon bucket for a pillow. The only businesses in town are "bars," really just tin-roofed shacks, owned by whites, with stacks of malt liquor cases behind counters. On offer: Hurricane High Gravity, 8.1 percent alcohol, one dollar for a twenty-four-ounce can. Or Camo Black Ice. Or Evil Eye Red Kiwi Strawberry. All cheap, all around 10 percent alcohol, twice an ordinary beer. They taste like paint thinner and burnt breakers. Heavy drinkers on the rez are often said to be "mizzing out" or "blank."Of course, former Nebraska Governor Johanns isn't going to shut down Whiteclay because, hey, those liquor stores have the right to try to make a profit. It's free enterprise. This same Governor Johanns will also go to Pine Ridge and ask them to shut down casinos because of the moral bankruptcy they bring about for the (white) people that go there.
Brian Believer Jr.: Winter, Johnny was always bundled up, they'd offer him a sleeping bag or a blanket. Sometimes I'd come over here, colder than hell, he'd still be standing out here with a big old hood sweater on. I said, Where do you sleep, and he says, Don't worry, I got a place to sleep. ... We're Lakota warriors, and we should be able to take care of ourselves, but all we get is just the VA checks. A VA check won't even buy you a house. I don't know what's going on. I don't care.
Perhaps we should use 'prick lit' for all those bangs and bombs books with the dark as opposed to pink covers?This comment is the winner though:
And please, commenters, don't say sci-fi is patronised or forgotten - I've seen many a serious review of cyberpunk and many a reverential article about the likes of Philip K Dick - well deserved, mind you, but you don't see the same seriousness given to women's work. By the way, Jane Austen - now so revered - was considered lightweight and chicky-chick in her own time.
Most strikingly of all, when you take a good look at books from women who have gotten the nominations for big awards in the last few years, you'll notice that the ones by women are almost uniformly either a) in the voice or point of view of male characters or b) self-consciously "about" male themes: war, genocide, revolution. This is not bad, per se. But it does show how deeply ingrained our biases are.Dear Christ Jesus is all I can say. The same commenter also says, "I would not want to be a young female writer these days." Yeah, sure - because of people like you, bud. This is called shooting yourself in the damn foot. Guess I'll go back to the kitchen now and have me a glass of chardonnay to go with my James McAvoy fantasy, because god knows that's what accurately reflects my life as a woman.
The Wall Street Journal interviews Cormac McCarthy.
WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?
CM: For modern readers, yeah. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you're going to write something like "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.
WSJ: People have said "Blood Meridian" is unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.
Some members of modern Pagan faiths have long warned of a theocratic Christian cabal bent on taking over America, often with the usual suspects of conservative Christianity playing a part. These fears have often been debunked, but your book “The Family” seems to in part vindicate those voices, albeit not in the ways they imagined. Who are “The Family”, and are they really trying to take over the government?*: Around ninth grade I was writing a book whose villains were the "Mink Libels," Christian fundamentalists who subtly but surely took over America. I'm sure this was because I was becoming more politically conscious at the time... plus the Bush administration was in office. Considering I - and probably most of the country - knew pretty much nothing about actual Christian political-fundamentalism (and based it off superficial observations about Ashcroft, among others), it's always creeped me out when I see "Mink Libels" in the real world. The name is nonsense, just something that sounded good at the time. I'm still obsessed with Christian fundamentalism, as this post makes evident...
They’re not trying to take over government; they’ve been a part of government for almost seventy years. The Family is a network of conservative Christian elites in government, military, and business bound together by what The Family’s founder, Abraham Vereide, called simply “The Idea.” The Idea came to Vereide one night in April, 1935. God, he’d later say, revealed to him that Christianity’s emphasis on the poor, the suffering, the weak, the down and out, was all wrong. God wanted Vereide to minister not to the poor, but the powerful. He called them the “up and out” — corporate executives, politicians. The Idea was that if you could win the hearts of these “key men,” they, in turn, would dispense blessings to the masses. It was, in effect, trickle down religion, and it’s been the creed of religious conservative elites ever since, the justification for their war on organized labor and their support for foreign dictators, from Papa Doc Duvalier to Suharto to the thugs supported through the Silk Road Act, sponsored by Family politicians Senator Sam Brownback and Rep. Joe Pitts.
Which is all to say that the question we need to ask about fundamentalists is not, “What are they going to do?” but “What have they already done?” Fundamentalism is not a cabal or a conspiracy; it’s an ideology, and for nearly 70 years it has led America away from democracy and toward empire.The theology of The Family seems quite different from the usual Christian conservatives and fire-breathing fundamentalists we often see covered in the news (though some of them are members or associates of The Family as well). Can you expand on what they believe, and what “Jesus Plus Nothing” means to them?
The Family’s vision of “Jesus plus nothing” leads them to seek a government conformed at every level, in every department, every office, to the will of their totalizing Jesus. There’s a sense in which this is a weirdly bureaucratic Christ. He doesn’t stand on street corners and shout about revelation; he whispers his message in the ears of his “New Chosen,” as some Family members call themselves. And the message is almost always the same: “privatize.” For seventy years, The Family has been dedicated to deregulating markets in order to free up the “invisible hand” of God.
I was intrigued by the notion of The Family performing “spiritual assassinations” on political leaders (making them “die in spirit” to Jesus), getting close enough to perform their “hit” through innocuous-seeming events like the National Prayer Breakfast (which they organize). Who are some high-profile “hits” we may have heard of?
Just to be clear – they’re not killing anybody. You’re referring to Chapter Eight, “Vietnamization,” in which I write about The Family’s admiration for the guerilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong. In 1966 – the same year Family leader Doug Coe announced that The Family was going “underground,” erasing its public profile – another Family leader, Clif Robinson, met with the U.S. ambassador to Laos, William Sullivan – strategist of the “secret” – and illegal – air war against that country. Robinson reported back to American Family leadership on what he learned. The lesson was that the Fellowship should understand itself as a guerrilla force on the spiritual battlefield.
They wanted their “victims” to “die to self” – that is, to commit themselves totally to Jesus plus nothing. One of their greatest “hits” was Chuck Colson, the Watergate felon. In his mega-selling memoir, “Born Again,” Colson writes of being recruited into The Family, which he describes as “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” through Doug Coe and the CEO of missile manufacturer Raytheon. Colson would later declare that through The Family’s religion, he was able to accomplish much of what he had once hoped to do politically. “Dying to self” paradoxically gave him a supreme sense of self-righteousness, a confidence – and a political network – through which he’s built up one of the most powerful Christian Right organizations in the world.
You talk about the differences and similarities between the “populist” and “elitist” branches of American fundamentalism (together forming a “popular front”). With The Family typifying an elitist manifestation, and evangelical mega-churches like Colorado’s New Life Church (formerly headed by disgraced pastor Ted Haggard) typifying the “populist” branch. I was struck by how New Life actively worked to drive out Pagan Witches and other undesirables from their city. Is driving out the “Witches” (the religious “other”) a shared goal between the populist and elitist branches? Or simply the consequence of fundamentalist Christianity coming into power?
Ultimately, the inner circle of The Family considers all non-monotheistic beliefs “demonic.” At their C Street House for congressmen, they used to have a prayer calendar listing spiritual war targets for the day – Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, etc.
In an interview with Alternet you described The Family as “ultimately something worse” than fascism. Since “fascism” is usually considered the ultimate manifestation of political evil, on the right and left, what makes this group worse?
The fact that it’s far more effective. Fascism, properly understood, was a relatively short-lived European ideology. There have been other examples of it since, but by far the most powerful ideology since 1945 has been not fascism, but empire. One church historian says of The Family that they’re not right-wing and certainly not left-wing, but “empire-wing.” Fascism may be a purer evil, but empire is a more pervasive one, and ultimately more dangerous because it’s able to call on the loyalties of well-intentioned people who’d never go near fascism. But if you’re a Vietnamese kid napalmed in 1968, or an Iraqi kid with your hands blown off in 2008, empire is every bit as bad as fascism. Or, for that matter, if you’re a Bangladeshi or a Chinese sweat shop worker or an Afghani forced to grow and process heroin to survive, the economic ramifications of empire are as bad as the explicit political repression of fascism. And for decades, what traditional fascism has cropped up around the world – in Central America, in some African nations, for instance – has been made possible only through the support of empire.
One point you make in the book is that secular America keeps trying to announce the death of fundamentalism, of conservative Christian power, but that these frequent declarations are rarely real. That the “defeats” are merely part of a natural ebb and flow of fundamentalism in America. Instead of shrinking, conservative “muscular” Christianity grows ever stronger and is very much a part of the American fabric. Is the much-touted recent “evangelical crack-up” just another natural ebb? Will we see audacious power-grabs by fundamentalist forces in the near future?
We see audacious power-grabs right now! For instance, Rwanda has recently become the first official “Purpose-Driven Nation,” remade in the image of evangelical pastor Rick Warren’s bestselling “Purpose Driven Life” with the support of U.S. dollars and faith-based initiatives. There’s no “evangelical crack-up,” no matter how much the New York Times may wish it so. Rather, there’s an evangelical transformation – and an expansion. Evangelicals are addressing issues liberals thought they owned, such as poverty and AIDS. That doesn’t make evangelical conservatives less conservative; it makes their agenda more far-reaching, for better or worse.
Some of the old lions of the Christian Right are dead or are dying. The new generation is softer-toned in style. But conservative evangelicalism has been a huge part of American life for 200 years. It’s not going away just because Jerry Falwell went to heaven. Or wherever.
So how do those opposed to what The Family is trying to do fight back? What is this groups Achilles heel? Is there anything anyone can do to minimize their influence on America and the world?
Of course! The first step is what we’re doing right here: talking about these issues, educating ourselves. The Family prospers when the public doesn’t pay attention.
Let’s tell Obama that we respect his desire to include people of faith – all faiths and no faith – in the public square, but we want him to recognize that not everybody is operating in good faith. Let’s pay attention to our local representatives. We need to hold the media accountable, too. We need them to ask smarter – and tougher – questions about religion. When we encounter monotheist politicians – that is, those who consider only monotheism legitimate – we need to give them loud refreshers in the history of the Founders, who were quite clear that they meant the First Amendment to extend to everyone, regardless of their beliefs.
I’m not a Pagan, but I’d also love to see some Pagan candidates for office. We’ll all benefit from that. Even if Pagans don’t win major offices – and they won’t, at least for awhile – their very presence in the public square helps everybody think about what pluralism means, what democracy means. Democracy isn’t something we HAVE, it’s something we make. The Family doesn’t like it. They call it “the din of the vox populi.” The din of the voice of the people. So we know what we need to do: Let’s make some noise.



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In reply to the people who object to the pretty covers, please understand that commercial publishing is a business. And in order to appeal to the most readers possible, women's fiction jackets need to actually LOOK LIKE women's fiction. And you're right - there are key markers for this: swirls, confetti, glittery hearts and flowers - to name but a few. But why is this such a bad thing? They might put off a Guardian reader or two, but the fact remains that there are likely several hundred thousand people a year who they delight - because, as any proper chick-lit /women's fiction fan will tell you, when you see those swirls and pretty illustrations, it usually means a novel which'll make you giggle, recognise yourself and people in your life, and maybe even give you that magical bit of escapism. And really -- even if the content is not personally your cup of tea -- what on earth could be wrong with letting other women enjoy that?