Why be polite? It is the Politcal Season

Mayhap I've mentioned that one of mah favorite writers is Flannery O'Connor.

She wrote the dern'dest short stories ya ever will read. You'll laugh out loud, an' you'll be shocked. Some called her the master of the grotesque. She wrote up some amazin' characters--mostly drawn from the South.

One funny but serious story is called Good Country People. The story revolves around a lonely young woman who sneers at her country mama and mama's friends. He mama named her Joy, but after gettin' a Ph.D in nihilistic philosophy she renamed herself "Hulga" --about as ugly and hopeless a name as I'se ever heered. Hulga has a wooden leg that she sees as her most precious part.

Along comes the travelin' bible salesman, a Mr. Manly Pointer (Tole ya the stories is hilarious) who is goin' to , ah, point a few thangs out to this smug woman who puts on airs about her atheistic erudition. She ain't what she claims, and neither is he....but I won't spoil the story fer ya'....jes' a warm up to make a point on manners.

Flannry O'Connor wrote during the 1960s (early death from Lupus) when the Civil Rights thang was gatherin' steam. She noted that the relations a'tween Black and Whites would be okay as long as we all kept our good manners--an' mostly she were right: More riots and trouble in the North than the South over integration.

Flannery thought the formality of manners acted as a mediator--a buffer if ya will, for those times when tempers is high.

Well, tempers is about to fly, ain't it? I mean, here we go into the election season, campaign season, political season.

I reckon ever'body goin' to have strong opinions--I will. (Obama is a Marxist, pure and simple.)
All I'se suggestin' is that we remember to be polite about itl-ya know? The person who thinks different from you is still a person that ya might like on other matters.

Mostly the Front Porch ain't fer sluggin' thangs out--thas round on the BACK Porch. But it ain't never amiss to remind meself that I can say strong thangs about the situation wif'out forgettin' to be mannerly.

No Country For Old Men--Again: Election 2008

Okay, I'se becomin' a broken record...but iffin' ya ain't see No Country for Old Men, git to it!

I seen it again--yep, 3rd time, and it is worth it. An' Aunty read the book first (of course).





The movie is tellin' us'uns somethin' real big--bigger than politics or war or the economy. It is sayin' who we as a people are--or aren't.

So this heah is mah question--in both the book and movie the sheriff ( who is tryin' to save a good ole' boy out hunntin' who thought it might be not-so-bad-to steal 2 million in drug money he found after a drug deal gone sour....natcherly he unleashed all hell on hisself and others) makes this BIG -B I G --point:

Everthang went to hell when folks stopped sayin' sir and
mam. Does ya'll see that? See the connection?




I knows some think thas' a fer stretch--that lawlessness and violence doan have much to do with the quaint (Southern!) custom of sayin' "Sir" or "M'am" ...an' I been thinkin' so hard on this matter. Studyin' it....which brings me to a confession to all ya'll: I'se a Southern Agrarian. I reads
Edmund Burke, and his intellectual chillen, Flannery O'Connor, M.E. Bradford(author of Founding Fathers) , Russell Kirk, Allen Tate and Wendell Berry and other traditional thinkers. Flannery also said it was manners that would make livin' peaceably possible. No manner, no peace.



So--to all this (manners, tradition and a stable civilization) No Country is tellin' us Americans that we's only jes' beginin' to see horror.

We lost our good manners which is the symbol of recognizin' a fellow human bein' as worthy of basic kindness. Manners is a symbol fer voluntary fidelity to somethin bigger than yore own desires. When a people put themselves and their desires over ever'thang else, then it ain't no society no more--only a collection of loners huddled in the same city limits, county lines or national border. An that ain't No Country For Old Men (to be in if he values his soul--as noted in the movie).

In the story, Sheriff Bell asks, "Who are these people?" he means folks who have no idea of, nor intention to have, basic human decency.

So, Aunty is wonderin'--as we move into election 2008, is we still a society? Is we folks we agree to the basics of a republic, jes' disagree about how to achieve them basics we share? or is we no longer truly sharin' basics as one society?

I read this recently:

Civility is the relationship among citizens in a republic. It corresponds to the condition we call "freedom", which is not just an absence of restraint or coercion, but the security of living under commonly recognized rules of conduct. Not all these rules are enforced by the state; legal institutions of civility depend on the ethical substratum and collapse when it is absent. And in fact the colloquial sense of civility as good manners is relevant to its political meaning: citizens typically deal with each other by consent, and they have to say "please" and "thank you" to each other.


(Author Cormac McCarthy is a Southerner [Tennessee])