Hillbilly Elegy: Movie Review

 

This is usually where I tell you the book was better than the movie and the director didn’t understand the real thrust of the book. But Hillbilly Elegy hits the mark in tone and substance and paints a sympathetic portrait of the struggle to escape circumstance.

 I read the book years ago and thought it was perfect for anyone raised in rough circumstance because the struggles are similar.  You can trace the problems of poor white America to the same problems of poor ___ insert ethnic identity group here. There are dramatic exceptions of course. White’s never faced discrimination on anywhere near the level of blacks (in particular) or Native Americans. The laws were specifically written to exclude them and deny them basic rights. But family breakdown and addiction aren’t the sole problems of one group. Hopelessness feeds on poverty and runs through poor communities like a main road, reminding everyone where the demarcation lies.

 Hillbilly Elegy is a one man’s story about escaping the essential setback of a broken family with one parent who is an addict and the other one who is out of the picture.

J.D Vance is a struggling law student at Yale trying to get an internship with a prestigious firm. Right about that time he gets a call about his mother who nearly overdosed on heroin. He needs to leave his fancy dinner and help his sister out. While he goes home we see flashbacks to his young life and the difficulties of growing up with an abusive mother (Amy Adams) and no father. As the most stable person in his life, his grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close) pushes him to focus on his education.

The mistake people make with both the book and the movie is assuming it represents a culture or identity of poor whites. As a result the critics thought the portrayals of his mother and grandmother a little cliqued. Critics want to make every story an attack on some existing institution, the church, the government, the patriarchy. Hillbilly Elegy is great because it’s hopeful and doesn’t point fingers at institutions. It says “Life is tougher for some than others but with help and dedication you can overcome and achieve.” It’s a pro-American movie that accepts responsibility and proves that paths exist to leave behind that which holds you back.   

 J.D Vance tells the audience about his kin and lifestyle as he experienced it. I don’t believe he set out to write a book about hillbillies and their misunderstood lives. It’s really a tribute to his grandmother who, despite her limitations and nastiness, provided a stable environment from which to move forward. He moved forward thanks to her, but she only provided him a lift. He made a decision at some point to succeed and keep moving forward.  

There is a telling scene at the start of the movie. J.D. goes swimming just down the road from his uncle’s rural abode. The kids there dunk him in the water and try to hold him under. He fights with them of course but there too many. He is eventually rescued by his extended family and brought back to the house, bloodied and beaten. It’s a perfect picture of how a community (defined anyway you want) can hold us down. Vance struggles in high school with drugs and alcohol and partying with losers. His grandmother sees it and becomes his lifeline away from it. She also sees that J.D.’s mother can’t be the foundation for him, her frivolous lifestyle a recipe for destruction.

There is also a hint from the grandmother (Mamaw) of a failed experience with her own daughter Bev. We are reminded that Bev (J.D’s mother) was a promising student who was the salutatorian of her class and headed for better. This feels like a second chance for Mamaw to actually put past wrongs right. Her life as a mother was equally abusive and her kids saw their parents in countless domestic fights. Mamaw even set her kid’s drunk dad on fire! Here the film shows these abusive relationships as part of the deal in this community. I don’t believe it’s exclusive to white hillbillies and I don’t believe Vance was saying this either. 

It’s a great American story with great acting and a hopeful finish. Because of the personal responsibility ethic it gets low marks from the critics. I liked it and I recommend it.

 

The Peloponnesian War: A book review

 

With any long war comes the unmistakable slide into ugliness.

 I’m reading VDH’s book A War Like No Other about the Peloponnesian War from roughly 431 BC to 406 BC. It’s a military tactics and strategy book and it’s almost more than the average reader needs to know. There is a great deal about logistical difficulties and the broad nature of the conflicts that broke out across the Aegean and Ionian communities. The two powers at the time were Sparta and Athens but a lot of the fighting took place between allies of both.

Most historians understand the conflict as between a rising power and a declining one. Or rather, Sparta attacked Athens before it could become an even bigger threat.

Athens as the great sea power had a lot of port cities that paid tribute to its sprawling empire. Not all allies of Athens wanted to fight for them and actually tried to switch sides. Sparta didn’t initially have a big navy. They were a feared infantry force (hoplites) with no equal across all of Greece. Had the Peloponnesian War been a series of battlefield clashes Sparta would’ve won in a few years. The conflict wasn’t exactly 30 straight years of fighting. There were years of calm and truce (Peace of Nicias) even with smaller city states warring with each other.

But the war is characterized by sieges and disease with the occasional hoplite battles going head to head. Sieges were easier for the Athenians to use, given their naval superiority and wealth. Sieges could take years if the community being surrounded had enough supplies to outlast an occupying force. A lot of cities used stone walls to surround their population and wait it out. During this time in history, no one was adept at making proper ladders to scale barriers or effective battering rams. It would be another hundred years until armies like Alexander the Great’s figured out how to scale walls effectively.

 The most common way for a besieged city to fall was for someone inside to open the gates and let the invading army in. It was usually the oligarchs or wealthier patrons making deals with the surrounding force. There were so many sieges it’s tough to list them all. They frequently became expensive to maintain for the invading army more so than the occupied city, and didn’t add much in the way of spoils. They tied up men and materiel for years.

If the siege proved a success, you could capture and kill the men or force them into your depleted army. But training and lodging took time and became a burden cost wise. You could sell the women and children into slavery and make a few bucks, but it wouldn’t be enough to overcome the cost of years spend surrounding the place. Play out these scenarios over the countless cities and you begin to see the problem. A lot of little wars, skirmishes and sieges made a long war into a conflict of attrition. There wasn’t much to be gained by surrounding a walled city and waiting for them to surrender. But it became the default method of fighting, despite the few hoplite battles in Delium and Sicily.

 Athens fell victim to a plague early in the war (430-429) and wiped out significant members of the military (1/3), including the great general Pericles. If not for the outbreak I think Athens would have won the war. But they never really recovered from the devastating pandemic.

It’s a fascinating read but it’s tough to keep track of all the disparate city states and regions and their allies. Hanson uses multiple definitions too for the same groups (democrats, Athenians) and introduces a torrent of new concepts and words I wasn’t familiar with before. This book requires a little prior knowledge and whatever I knew before about the war (not much) it wasn’t enough to keep up.

He doesn’t organize the text chronologically either. He sections it off in separate elements of fighting, horses, sieges, disease, hoplite infantry battles, naval warfare. I find it easier to follow along in a chronological fashion, if not only to understand the history told like an unfolding story. I found the overall reading difficult but not impossible. 

Do this. Open a map of ancient Greece and trace your finger along the Aegean sea and notice all the cities. Do the same with the Ionian Sea and imagine each city or tiny island is a sovereign territory with citizens and an army and an oligarchy. It’s impossible to keep track of them all.

If there is a general theme to the war it’s this. Warfare is ugly across all human societies and descends into increasingly worse behavior as it goes on. The collective conscious of any community at war is beset with memories of what the other side did. After a few years nearly everyone has a story about some tragedy. This bitterness increases across generations and leads to bloodier battles and outright slaughter, even whole scale genocide in some cases. It’s easy to see how this happens. When war is necessary we always want a quick resolution, so that the vitriol doesn’t set in and consume generations.

The Peloponnesian War failed in this regard and dethroned Athens as the great democratic power of the 5^th century. But their legacy is philosophy and democratic governance. They also had the first historian (Thucydides) who chronicled much of the war. If you love ancient history and warfare A War Like No Other is for you.

God's Truth or Familiar Patterns

 

What’s to be done about life’s ugly cycles of disappointment and loathing? Everyone has their own emotional tripwires that explode and render us helpless, incapacitated by thoughts of past failings. Those previous bad decisions can stack up chronologically like an encyclopedia of mistakes.

For me, past failures play out in my head like a bad movie I’ve seen too many times. It’s on a loop, reminding me of the poor decisions and lack of effort leading to increasing failures. If only I could find the stop button, or better still the delete button.

As a kid I remember walking out of baseball practice after getting shelled by a batter who zeroed in my fastball. Instead of figuring out what to change I plow ahead, angry, frustrated. All it took to knock me out was a patient hitter. Sports are perfect for exposing flaws in our character because competition is a cold hard teacher. We establish notions about ourselves early in life and getting over the false image we create is a big challenge. I’ve always envied those people who don’t obsess over loss of failure, I admire their ability to put difficulty behind them and move forward.  

I went fishing with my Dad this past summer. I never catch a lot except for carp (always the frigging carb) and usually spend the time trying to unsnag the line out of the tree branch sunk below the shoreline. Or we spend time changing bait and looking for a hole where the bass hide. I'm betting his lake is over fished because we’ve covered it multiple ways, it’s not that big. The poles and gear all his I just go along for the ride and try to watch a couple and real in just in time for the fish to flop off the hook. Dad likes to tie the line to the leader a particular way. I never quite figured it out, didn’t care too. But it’s supposed to be better so I watched him do it. I couldn’t get it after a couple of tries so I quit. I’m a kid in baseball practice again, not wanting to learn from coach. I’m too upset to learn how to throw the curve. Forget it, I quit. I don’t care anymore anyway. I can’t do it anyway what’s the use.

It’s a pattern I hate about myself, it’s childish. Every “failure” no matter how silly is a reminder of how I don’t measure up and never have. I guess it’s why the baseball reference is so apt. Whatever your first memory or failure or embarrassment is will haunt you like a blind spot, a red flashing light of embarrassment. When we don’t find out how to work through problems and solve them we find pathways around. We find side paths through the woods that push us further off the main trail. The issues don’t go away but they do define how we will interact with similar problems in life. Suddenly we’re on paths of our own making still heading in the right direction but avoiding a lot of the barriers we’re meant to climb. The familiar patterns determine our path.

I’ve seen avoidance play out in other areas of life from careers to house work. There is hope for change in everything but it takes recognizing the personal challenge and working towards improvement. How? First thing is to find a Bible verse that speaks to who you are as a person. You didn't think I was going to recommend another tiresome self help class did you? You have to know what God says about you and rest on that. Here is my power verse. It works every time. I'm replacing a negative with a positive.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phillipians 1:6)

 You must repeat it to yourself whenever that attitude of self-loathing or depression or regret pops up and tries to drag you down. Say it out loud and repeat it as often as necessary until your mind is back on the path. Stop wandering around in the woods looking for your own way. God is with us wherever we end up, but His path is the one we walked away from while wallowing in failure. In other words, it’s a better idea than going alone and a lot less work.

As Christians we need to get used to fighting again; fighting the attacks on the mind and fighting to stay on the path. I’m convinced everyone has a personal battle rooted in past regrets or failure or cringe-worthy decisions. I can be so honest about it because struggle is a common to everyone. We have a way out. We can have victory through scripture that’s designed to change our thinking and renew our minds. It’s a life long struggle but we do get better at recognizing negativity and falling into familiar patterns. So when you feel that familiar "here we go again" self talk, take control and speak the Word over yourself. 

The idea is to replace false belief and insecurity with God's truth and show others how to do the same.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Whining about Trees

 

 

I’m not sure why my trees are the last ones in the neighborhood to drop their leaves. 

I live on the corner so I have a little more yard than most of my neighbors. I own 3 and half full grown trees that all drop quite a lot of leaves. The “half” is because I share one with my neighbor. I’m not sure where the property line is but the tree likely splits it. The colder weather up north means by early November the leaves are mostly on the ground. Here I don’t lose them all until about mid-December, which seems very late. Of course we don’t get a lot of snow so running into huge piles of the stuff that cover the leaves isn’t likely.

If I had the money I’d cut the big maple in the front down. It’s rotten right down through the middle and the branches droop lethargically and snap off with a stiff breeze. I spend each day following a storm cleaning up the weak ones that gave up, tired of being connected to the dying trunk. They lay scattered in peace around the green grass, the trash can their final resting place. A year ago I had a tree guy drive up and offer me a deal to cut it down. I wasn’t in a position to spend that much, so we settled on a few dead limbs near the top. He took a big chunk out of it but did away with some really dangerous “widow maker” limbs. That would have to do for now.

I’ve cut two trees down since moving here. I can’t imagine why the original owner went so crazy planting them. Two were very close to the house and I’m only surprised a massive limb didn’t crack a crossbeam on the roof. The first one I cut out within the first year of moving in. The heavy limbs leaned ominously over the roof waiting to crash down on it. The second tree was too close as well but hadn’t really developed heavy branches that would cause major damage. The worst thing that happened was during a summer storm. A blast of wind came through and cracked a good size limb from the base and pulled down my electric line running from my riser to the city utility pole. It also crushed my chain link fence. After the clean-up I decided the tree had to go. It took another year or so before I found the money, but I managed. Actually my neighbor offered to split the bill since it was near the line. It was a generous move, especially since the limbs always fell on my side. We still have one tree between us but it’s not much trouble.

This past summer I had another large limb crack off my pear tree in the back. Pears are notoriously weak trees and although they grow fast they rarely hold up in high winds. In Oklahoma that’s certainly true. We get some monstrous storms here that will make you wish you’d cut them all down. I like what trees offer, shade and cover. Old neighborhoods with big leafy trees that line streets show off the maturity of the homes but can be a lot of work. Most of the homes around here don’t have a lot of large trees and I think I know why. The storms make it tough to grow them sturdy.

I’m my wildest dreams I image having a big lot with trees around the property line. As Americans we like to move up in careers and status, big houses and estates are a part of that. I imagine everyone has an ideal home and setting in their mind. Some want sprawling green space with tree lined driveways and long showy gardens. Others like small lots with spacious rooms, theaters and man-caves for games and sports. Everyone has one key item or centerpiece to their dream home. For me it’s a pool. Not just any pool but a massive in-ground salt water filtered party space with grills, and outdoor dining. I get that pools are a lot of work, but I’d get a lot of use out of it from family and friends. You can keep the game rooms and the man cave and the big gardens, I’ll take a massive (how did you afford this type) pool that begs to be used.

Oh and I’ll take a gardener to clean up the trees in the yard after a big storm.   

Never mind the Ballot Bollocks

 

Nothing seems to matter as much as the election right now.

I’ve kept my political posts to a minimum but I won’t pretend I’m not following the election news. Too many opinions just feel like noise at this point so I take the quiet role until I can write something I've though about.

We’ve entered a ‘recount-Florida-in-2000-was-a-warmup’ phase.

I’ve been sick the last few days and home bound. I’m not sure if I contracted the dreaded virus or not but I should know in a day or so. It’s given me time to settle my soul about the uncertainty ahead. I don’t like to make predictions but I’m very concerned about the upcoming year for two reasons.

First, if the recounts show large scale fraud and Trump wins reelection the rioting will be epic. I actually think this is the likeliest scenario. Needless to say there are too many votes overall in a few states. Wisconsin shows that 89% of registered voters cast a ballot--really Wisconsin? The national average every year goes between 60 and 70% at the high end. That’s the most objective case I can make for fraud.

The second option is if Biden’s lead holds and he is inaugurated in January. I don’t expect rioting on a large scale but the country will take a dramatic shift in direction. I hear Republicans rejoicing because they managed to win back the Senate and pick up seats in the House. But with the radical left running shop in DC it won’t be business as usual where they put a bill together and coral enough votes to pass it. That’s how it should work. They’ll do as much as they can through edict and regulation.

Think it can’t happen? What laws exist that require citizens to mask up or give their contact tracing details? Answer, NONE. It’s done through edict, or pronouncement. Expect more of that kind of governing, all for ‘safety’ and ‘health’. The Massachusetts governor put a curfew on his state just before the election. He just ‘issued’ it because of rising cases, no legal process, no votes—just edicts. California issued Thanksgiving Day requirements for total number of people allowed to get together, no legal process, no votes. This won’t just apply to Covid-19 either. Once you establish that people will mostly acquiesce to pronouncements…pronouncements it will be. It’s much easier than passing laws anyway.

A weak Biden administration doesn’t need to pass laws and get Senate approval, they just put activists in place and move the football. So no I’m not excited about the Republicans maintaining the Senate if we lose the presidency.  When you control the White House you control a lot of federal judges and state’s attorneys, that’s real power. It means you’re able to prosecute specific crimes and go after enemies, the way the IRS did under Lois Lerner. They dragged Patriot and Tea Party groups through the legal swamps as intimidation. Has the Trump administration upset the Democrat party enough to be dragged into court again? I think you know the answer to that. The so-called crimes can be anything (they’re just a fig leaf) since the idea is to bankrupt the family even in no jail time is required. Would this majority Republican Senate prevent an aggressive judge from going after Trump? Ha!

At this point I’m leaning toward option one becoming a reality and an ugly, violent response on the streets. As a Christian I believe the United States is still the best hope for the world despite our patchy record abroad. A strong America is a bulwark against a rising tide of authoritarianism abroad. That doesn’t mean we wage war everywhere; it means we support and defend democracy and advocate for free people. We come up short constantly and even mix up our message on trade, Mid-east policy, immigration. If we can’t get elections right here then we are doomed.

With Trump’s first term we reset a lot of institutions and policies that I didn’t see coming. From our NATO alliance and trade war with China, to our wholesale reduction in new regulations and increasing domestic energy. With Trump our country resembles the vibrant, wealthy and freedom protecting place the world needs. A Biden presidency will put a lid on this country, restricting freedoms and limiting movement.

 I’ll be in prayer a lot over the next few months.  

 

The Indispensable Man

 

Currently reading A War Like No Other by VDH about the Peloponnesian War.

VDH is Victor Davis Hanson, also known as one of the best military historians alive today. That might not be exactly right though. It’s not like I know a lot about the world of Military History and academia but he is well regarded. Plus I see him on YouTube discussing current events through a conservative lens. He’s written for National Review for years and it’s how I first discovered him. I’ve seen him on the Uncommon Knowledge show with Peter Robinson and heard him on a regular podcast I listen too, Ricochet. I used to think of him as stodgy old professor with no sense of humor and a straightforward approach to history. I still think a lot of that is true but he’s such a wellspring of information that his speeches and interviews beg to be heard. It’s his clear thinking that comes through on any topic.

You must settle your mind when you hear him though. He won’t tell jokes or lighten the mood with a hilarious antidote about mixing up the foreign language in another country and ordering a blanket when he wanted a whisky or something. He plows through the material but doesn’t waste words or get sidetracked; it works well with his dry delivery. No one would listen at all otherwise. He’s been a solid defender of Trump since 2016 which put him on the outs with a lot of his National Review colleagues. At least outwardly the editorial staff went hard against Trump while VDH demurred, even writing a book called The Case for Trump. I haven’t read it but I’ve heard enough of his arguments for Trump that I think I’ve got a handle on it. I wouldn’t call him a cheerleader for the president, he doesn’t fit the mold. But of he was at 51% before Trump before I think he’s gotten to 75% by now.

It’s just a feeling I get but his defense of the man is as consistent as ever. I wonder if the Mueller report and the impeachment hearings reinforced his decision that Trump was getting a raw deal. Like a good historian he always brings former presidents and their administrations into discussion about how different this president actually governs. The way it works is like this, some pundit or interviewer will mention some egregious thing the president did and Victor will put it in context. I remember a few months ago when Trump considered putting troops into Portland to quell the riots. Victor mentioned at least 3 incidents of modern presidents doing this exact thing. The question about what would Trump do was asked with “We’ve never been here before” exasperation. No incident is exactly like something from the past, but the past presents a framework by which to interpret future actions. Hanson possesses a deep understanding of American history and a love for its people, traditions and importance to the rest of the world.

As a farmer in California, a part of the country overrun with illegal immigration, he is uniquely suited to opine on it. Unlike a lot his more cosmopolitan brethren, his family is in the trenches trying to keep the land from being overrun by gangs and squatters. I’m not disparaging those from wealthier backgrounds or even those not accustomed to watching your life change dramatically through illegal immigration. But they aren’t in the trenches the way a lot of Californians are. Culture and borders matter to preserving freedom and the rule of law. If not the future looks bleak for America. Until we get serious about defending the law we’ll lose every time to foreign invasion. We can still have a vibrant immigration policy that honors the immigrant and keeps the scoundrels (coyotes and other opportunists) at bay.

Anytime the great man is slated to be on a podcast or TV show I sit down and listen. Now that the election is in freefall mode I’ll be waiting to hear his take. It sounds like AP just called the national race for Joe Biden. With the legal challenges from Trump in key states, this thing is just beginning.