The Essential American Soul

"...is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer."

So wrote D.H. Lawrence, and so is Wes Stauer, the main character in Tom Kratman's Countdown: The Liberators.  The first book in a new series, Countdown: The Liberators is also Tom Kratman's first venture outside of the science fiction genre, this particular story taking place in a near future (I had the year 2014 in mind as I read it) where America's influence is on the wane.  Stauer is a retired soldier living a comfortable but less-than-satisfying life in San Antonio with his beautiful girlfriend Philomena "Phillie" Potter.  Stauer's dissatisfaction is neither borne of a dislike of the Alamo City or of Phillie, but of a frustration at seeing his country decline into socialist mediocrity and at having his hard, isolate, stoic soul confined in retirement.

Stauer's deliverance comes when on one evening, an old friend from Sudan named Wahab arrives on his doorstep with an irresistible offer: assemble a private mercenary force, with all expenses paid, to rescue the kidnapped son of Wahab's wealthy tribal chieftain.  What unfolds is an adventure that takes Stauer, Phillie, and a host of other vibrant characters to such far-flung locales as Guyana, Chad, Burma, and South Africa as Stauer assembles an international all-star team of soldiers, airmen, and sailors to staff his private military enterprise and reach deep into the deserts of northeastern Africa to affect a seemingly impossible search and rescue.

As is the case with all of Kratman's novels, this story is filled with observations and commentary on present political and social realities.  The most poignant and humorous of these come from one of the story's primary antagonists, an older, world-weary gentlemen named Labaan who spent his youth in the United States and learned to detest one group of Americans he believes irredeemably beyond hope: Californians.  One of many examples can be seen with this passage from the sixth chapter, taking place in N'Djamena, Chad as Labaan and his fellow kidnappers, along with their hostage, disembark from a broken-down aircraft:

There was a youngish white man, tall, muscular, tanned, blond, and bearded, waiting for the Kenya Airways flight as the hatch opened.  The white's sweat-stained shirt was unbuttoned halfway to his navel.

Labaan took one look and thought, God...no!  Not one of them, not here?

"Dude," the white said,as Labaan reached the foot of the debarking steps, "the plane...it's bogus....it's broken."

God save me from Californians, Labaan thought.  It wasn't enough to have to go to school with the mindless twits.  Even here, without a surfable beach for over a thousand miles, they find me to blight my existence and insult their own language.

Amidst his despair at having to deal with Caifornians, Labaan also laments the destruction wrought by Western charitable aid across Africa. Such rich, complex, interesting characters like Labaan populate Kratman's story from beginning to end, giving additional opinions on subjects ranging from the aforementioned benighted Californians to "green" automobile technology to post-apartheid South Africa and to the global scourge of transnational progressivism.  But ultimately, one wonders: does Stauer recover the Sudanese chief's kidnapped son?  Does the honorable enemy Labaan, along with his dry wit, live to fight another day?  Within the pages of Kratman's taut adventure, the answers await.

Rise of the Valkyries

It has been quite a while since I reviewed one of Tom Kratman's novels on this blog.  Not because of any lack of production on his part, but rather because of a lack of production on mine...at least where blogging is concerned.  As happens with many of us inhabiting the blogosphere, real life has a way of reasserting itself and limiting one's time online.  Such has been the case with me for most of the past year, resulting in just three previous posts in 2011.  Not that I have anything to complain about, mind you.  Since relocating up here to Lubbock in August 2009, my career and life have improved markedly.  But sacrifices have had to be made, and my rate of blog posting has been among them.  That said, with a few moments of time to spare this late December night, what follows is my brief review of Tom Kratman's The Amazon Legion, six chapters of which I posted on this blog back in March 2010.

Set in the same universe as three of Kratman's other novels: A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex, and The Lotus Eaters, The Amazon Legion takes place five centuries into the future on Terra Nova, a planet colonized by humans and with nations not too different from our own.  The story centers around a young woman named Maria Fuentes, living in a small Spanish-speaking nation known as the Timocratic Republic of Balboa.  After being disowned by her wealthy parents for becoming pregnant out of wedlock and having to raise her young daughter in abject poverty, Maria has a chance encounter with Patricio Carrera, the founder and leader of the Balboan military: the Legion del Cid.  Carrera, much to the chagrin of the Republic's Senate, has conceived a radical idea:  integrate gays and women into all levels of military service (including combat roles) by creating specific regiments for each - the Tercio Gorgidas for the former and the Tercio Amazona for the latter.  Much of the novel chronicles Fuentes' journey through basic and subsequent special forces training.  Members of the Tercio Gorgidas are used to train the initial members of the Tercio Amazona, as Carrera has determined than straight men will simply not be up to the task.  Kratman himself, in this interview from 2008 with Blake "Laughing Wolf" Powers of the military blog Blackfive, expounds upon that point when describing the novel in its initial form, then titled The Amazon's Right Breast:



The chapters describing the training of Fuentes and her fellow recruits are among the grittiest, most brutal, but also most compelling passages that I have ever read.  Doubtlessly, Kratman drew upon some of his own Army Ranger training experiences when crafting them.  But the violence therein is not pointless.  As with all of Kratman's novels, larger themes are explored.  In this case, such themes include not only the aforementioned feasibility of women and homosexuals serving in combat, but also further ruminations upon the nature of timocracy (detailed even more extensively in The Lotus Eaters) and the value of loyalty and self-sacrifice, traits that have tended to wither in liberal democracies.

The tribulations of Fuentes and her Amazona compatriots are set against a larger geopolitical drama on Terra Nova, wherein a large and powerful confederation of nations called the Tauran Union (think the European Union with teeth) have occupied much of Balboa with the intent of controlling the Balboa Transitway, an above sea-level canal linking Terra Nova's two largest oceans, the Shimmering Sea and the Mar Furioso.  As for how the Amazonas fare in the struggle to rid Balboa of the Tauran presence, you will have to read the novel yourself.  But be advised, it's one hell of a ride.

After the Downfall

Lin’s revenge. That thought kept recurring as I read Flashback, the latest novel by the inimitable Dan Simmons. Who is this “Lin” of whom I speak? Lin Zexu: a scholar and law enforcement official in Qing Dynasty-era China, assigned to the city of Guangdong as an imperial commissioner in 1838 to halt the sale and distribution of illegal drugs, namely opium. Lin was remarkably successful in doing so, and he not only went after Chinese distributors, but Western ones as well. It is estimated that more than two-and-a half million pounds of opium were seized and destroyed as a result of Lin’s activities. He was, essentially, a Chinese version of Eliot Ness.

The British, however, were none too pleased with this development and responded violently, initiating what became known as the First Opium War (1839-42). China was defeated, Lin was exiled, and the Chinese people remained awash in opium, helplessly seeing their country dismembered – carved into spheres of influence – by a multitude of foreign powers over the succeeding decades.

It is a similar scenario which Simmons presents to his reader within the pages of Flashback. The year is 2032, and the Union has been dissolved. Oh, there is still a United States of America, but it is bankrupt, reduced in size, and governed by a select group of “foreign advisors” in concert with a weakened federal government. At least four states have left the Union: Hawaii (subsequently annexed by a resurgent Japanese Empire), Arizona and New Mexico (which along with southern California are part of a new country named Nuevo Mexico), and Texas (once again an independent republic). Even worse, the vast majority of Americans do not care. 87% of the population is addicted to a cheap drug called flashback, which enables its users to relive cherished memories as their society crumbles around them.

The main character of the novel is a flashback-addicted ex-cop, living in Denver, named Nick Bottom. The reader meets Bottom as a broken man, haunted by the death of his wife six years prior, estranged from his teenage son Val, and frustrated by an unsolved murder investigation that destroyed his career. But things change when the Japanese federal advisor in Denver – whose son was the murder victim in the aforementioned investigation – calls Bottom out of his involuntary retirement to revisit the case as a private investigator.

The other viewpoint characters in the story are Nick’s son Val and Nick’s father-in-law Leonard Fox, an emeritus professor of English retired from UCLA, with whom Val lives in a Los Angeles torn apart by ethnic strife. As Nick revisits his old investigation and finds that his deceased wife may have had something to do with the murder, Val and Leonard take flight from LA as the city descends into anarchy, braving the nearly-impassable American Southwest to reunite with Nick.

Along the way, both with Nick’s investigation and with Val and Leonard’s desperate flight, Simmons slowly reveals his broken, dystopic America to his readers. Simmons’ imagined America of the future is a place where every negative socioeconomic and political trend of the present has been taken to its most negative result. I’ll not spoil matters by revealing further details on that point, but as I read through the novel I kept asking: how plausible could Simmons’ dystopia really be? The unsettling answer: very. It *could* happen here because it *did* happen there. The China of the past may well be the America of the future.

I’ve gone on longer than I intended, but before concluding I must take issue with what a gaggle of leftist commenters have been posting on the Amazon page for Flashback. They are unjustly, dishonestly, and maliciously smearing Simmons as a xenophobe and a racist. That characterization is absolutely false, but all-too-typical of the adherents of a bankrupt ideology that can only defend their faith with hatred and invective. Anyone who is a regular reader of the novels of Dan Simmons knows that he is neither a racist nor a xenophobe. But don’t take my word for it. Read his novels Hyperion (1986) and Black Hills (2010) and you will see I am correct.

Flashback is Simmons’ coming-out-conservative novel, and it is well worth your time to read. With an ending that is evocative of Pedro Calderon de la Barca, it is a story you will not soon forget.

Carlyle Reconsidered

In this post, Claire Berlinski considers the words of Thomas Carlyle - this sentence specifically: "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men." Here's my take: I find some truth in that statement. Presently, social history dominates much of the historical profession. Within social history's paradigm, the accomplishments of prominent men (and women) are cast aside in favor of perceived broad social trends; the paradigm is ultimately rooted in the belief that circumstances dictate outcomes, and that the influence of individuals is, at best, minimal. It is a proposition that implies inevitability.

And inevitability in history is a proposition with which I strongly disagree. Individuals matter. Individual decisions matter. Nothing is inevitable. And on many an occasion, the determination of a single person has changed the course of a war, a nation, and a people.

Consider the case of Oliver Hazard Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie, one of the key battles of the War of 1812. On September 10, 1813, Commodore Perry inspired his men to a decisive victory over the British Navy's Great Lakes fleet, flying a naval standard from his flagship, the USS Lawrence, which read "Don't Give Up the Ship." During the course of the battle, the Lawrence suffered severe damage and Perry was forced to transfer his command to the USS Niagara - carrying his naval standard with him. But despite this setback, which might have turned the tide against them, Perry and his men fought on and ultimately dealt the British war effort in North America a mortal blow, effectively ending the possibility of an invasion of the Ohio River Valley. Perry then related the news of his triumph to General William Henry Harrison with this terse message: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

Perry enjoyed his subsequent fame for only six years. In 1819, on an expedition up the Orinoco River in Venezuela, he contracted yellow fever and passed away. He was survived by his younger brother, Matthew Calbraith Perry, who in 1853-54 led a diplomatic naval expedition to Japan, successfully convincing that country's government to to begin engaging in open trade with the United States (and subsequently, the rest of the Western world). Since the early 1600s, Japan had maintained a policy of strict political and economic isolation - its only contact with the Western world being with a handful of Dutch traders allowed to visit Nagasaki (and re-supply a handful of Dutch merchants living at the nearby island of Deshima) once a year.

Returning to the subject of Oliver Perry and his naval standard, the phrase "Don't Give Up the Ship" had been coined just three months earlier by Perry's friend, Captain James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake. On June 4, 1813, the Chesapeake engaged the British frigate HMS Shannon off of the Atlantic coast, and during the fight Captain Lawrence was mortally wounded. As he lay dying, Lawrence allegedly said "Don't give up the ship! Fight her till she sinks." Nonetheless, shortly thereafter the Chesapeake was stormed by a British boarding party and the vessel hauled off to Halifax, Nova Scotia. But Lawrence's brave words lived on, inspiring Perry to achieve the victory that had been denied to his friend.

Though it is not always so, in this case history was most definitely the biography of a great man. Just as Horace noted that even Homer sometimes nods, occasionally even an "insufferable windbag" like Carlyle can make a valid point.

In the Arena

Finding a truly good movie to watch can seem a Herculean effort these days, but I was fortunate enough to finally get around to seeing The Matador, a documentary recommended to me by Ricochet member MLH in the comments to this post by Joe Escalante.

The Matador is about a Spanish bullfighter named David "El Fandi" Fandila and his quest to become only the thirteenth matador in the entire history of bullfighting to complete one hundred matches in a single season. The film centers on the 2003, 2004, and 2005 bullfighting seasons as Fandila struggles mightily to realize his dream. The viewer sees Fandila evolve from a promising, talented rookie into an experienced, battle-hardened veteran trying to fight off despair as his goal continually eludes him.

In addition to a portrait of Fandila in the arena, directors Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey also show his life outside of the arena; the anguish of his mother and father, torn by pride in their son's achievements and mortal fear every time he steps into the bullring, the frustration of his fiancée whom he hardly ever sees, and the loyalty of his older brother who gave up a promising career in professional skiing to serve as David's second.

The directors also address the bitter controversy over the morality of bullfighting - interviewing those who wish to see the proud Spanish tradition of the corrida ground to dust. Though the filmmakers do not endorse either the pro- or anti-bullfighting side, the bullfighting critics come off as shrill and self-righteous, much like the larger movement of international socialism to which most of them are attached. One wonders if it was such tin-eared utopian universalism that motivated Spanish nationalists like José Sanjurjo and Francisco Franco to react and take up arms so many decades ago.

One of the film's most compelling scenes takes place when Fandila is attempting to complete six matches in a row before an adoring crowd in his hometown of Granada. Fandila is gored in the third match but manages to complete it. However, the injury is serious enough to require immediate surgery. Rather than ending his afternoon right then and there, Fandila insists that the stadium physician perform his surgery without any anesthetics so that he can return to the bullring within an hour and perform the remaining three matches.

Does Fandila return and complete his matches that day? Does he attain his goal of performing one hundred matches in a single season, and thus take his place alongside the greatest bullfighters of all time? For the answers, you will have to watch this wonderful, awe-inspiring documentary.

A North American Afghanistan?

Not the most pleasant thought to be reading this Christmas Eve, but a couple of recent news items have reminded me of how the U.S.-Mexico border continues its descent into anarchy, courtesy not only of Mexican narcotraficantes, but also of the incompetent, self-serving, corrupt behemoth that is official Washington.  First, there is the case of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was shot and killed last week in Arizona near the Arizona-Mexico border in pursuit of criminals, after which the following unfolded (h/t Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom):

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday attended the funeral of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry who was fatally shot while pursuing a gang last week in Arizona. In a phone call where Napolitano offered condolences to the family, the father of the murdered agent, angry that the border is still not secure, told her “you gotta wake your man up in the White House” and she allegedly responded “he’s done more in the last two years than any other president.” However, to the Terry family such sentiment represented “empty words.”

Empty words indeed, for the violence continues apace along the Texas-Mexico border as well.  From today's San Antonio Express-News:

BROWNSVILLE — When the rattle of gunfire and pop of grenades woke Rene Cardona from his dorm bed at the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College, he brushed it off as another drug war battle across the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico — a short distance away but in another country.

But when he looked out to see Border Patrol, security guards and police forming a frenzied phalanx along the river, he felt fear.

“The way they were acting, the way the police were arranged all around the entrances and above the border wall, it kind of freaked me out,” said Cardona, a junior majoring in journalism. “I felt that they were scared about something bigger happening.”

In September 2009, bullets from “the other side” grazed a campus building. No one was injured, but something had changed.

Fifteen months later, the rat-tat-tat across the border has become a familiar sound.

The problem gets worse and worse, and official Washington does nothing.  Furthermore, we are told by the Obama administration and an array of lobbyist and advocacy groups that the problem really isn't that bad, the border is safer than it it has ever been, the problem is being exaggerated by anti-illegal immigration and other "extremist" groups, and on and on.  Horse baloney.  The Ruling Class (to borrow Angelo M. Codevilla's term) and their hangers on care nothing about the fate of Americans living along the border.

Regrettably, that callous attitude even includes some elected representatives from border states so affected - not just Democrats, but Republicans as well.  I've seen it first-hand.  I've long hesitated to share this story for obvious reasons, but now - sixteen years after the fact - I think it bears repeating.  Back during the summer of 1994, after I had completed my freshman year of undergraduate studies, I interned in Washington, D.C. at the office of a now-former Congressman from Texas, a Republican, who shall remain nameless.  One day, as I was answering phone calls from constituents, I received a call from a border-area rancher who was distraught about the worsening problem of illegal aliens and drug-runners trespassing upon his land.  Per office protocol, I proceeded to try to forward the call to the legislative assistant who handled such issues.  But instead of taking the call, the legislative assistant in question told me to take a message, because he was otherwise occupied washing his coffee cup.  I then had to tell the rancher that the appropriate legislative assistant couldn't help him because he was "otherwise occupied" but could leave a message.  Bitterly and dejectedly, the rancher left his contact information and the call was ended.

I felt (and still feel) horrible for having had to handle the rancher's call that way, and it was an eye-opening moment revealing just how those on Capitol Hill really think of those whom they purport to represent.  I have no idea of what became of the rancher, but I have little doubt that the staffer who rejected the call later went on to have a lucrative career as a lobbyist, which is what eventually happens with many in the employ of members of Congress.  As the above episode with Secretary Napolitano shows, little has changed in sixteen years.

Message: talk to the hand.

***

On a less-unpleasant note, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.  Again, apologies for the very slow pace of blogging, but times are busy.  Right now, though, I am managing to enjoy some down-time, visiting family in San Antonio.  For your entertainment pleasure, here is a video sent to me by Tom Kratman last year, recounting Christmas on the Western Front in 1914 during World War I.  The song is "Christmas in the Trenches" by John McCutcheon (1989):



Simply magnificent.

Makes a Majority

The 2010 mid-term elections have come and gone, and the Republican Party, the amorphous Tea Party, and the American people have emerged triumphant.  As the election returns came in and the Republican victories accumulated, I remembered a prediction I made back in March of 2009:

As I write this blog post, a quarter past midnight Central Daylight Time on March 28, 2009, I will venture to make two political predictions: Rick Perry will be re-elected Governor of Texas in 2010 and Barack Obama will not be re-elected President of the United States in 2012.

The first part of my prediction has come to pass.  And so will the second.  But two years is an eternity in politics and there is much work to be done.  Fortunately, with this past election, the ranks of Congress and numerous state governments have been filled with an impressive line-up of new public servants dedicated to correcting the depredations of Obama and his gang of elitist democratic socialists.

Two years ago, we conservatives were told by our putative betters that we had no hope.  The Republican Party was said to be suffering from near-irreparable "brand damage", conservatism was allegedly discredited, we ourselves were said to be mere ignoramuses, wistfully clinging to our guns and religion.  Obama and the Democrats were said to have compiled an enduring 40-year Democratic majority.  To add insult to injury, there were those supposedly on our side - David Frum, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, amongst a gaggle of others - who said the Republican Party needed to abandon the principles of conservatism and adopt a more "pragmatic" approach.

But some, like the redoubtable Rush Limbaugh, would have none of it.  Early in 2009, Limbaugh spoke four words that drew a virtual line in the sand against the statists and pragmatists: "I hope he fails."

Another great American - Andrew Jackson - once said: "One man with courage makes a majority."

But Rush Limbaugh was not just one man.  He was one of many.

Marco Rubio, the senator-elect from Florida: one man.  Brian Sandoval, Nevada's new governor-elect: one man.  Susana Martinez, New Mexico's new governor-elect: one woman.  Bill Flores, a ninth-generation Texan just like me, and the new representative of the 17th congressional district of Texas: one man.  Francisco "Quico" Canseco - a native Laredoan whose late father, the prominent physician Dr. Pancho Canseco, delivered my mother and four of her five brothers - and who is himself now the newly-elected congressman from the 23rd congressional district of Texas, having defeated the detestable Ciro "Zero" Rodriguez: one man.  Blake Farenthold, newly elected representative of the 27th congressional district of Texas, and grandson of the legendary Sissy Farenthold: one man.  And Sarah Palin, who has endured the most brutal of personal attacks against herself and her family, but whose determination and true grit defeats her hateful detractors at every turn: one woman.

And, most importantly of all, those of us who individually made it all happen: each of us one man, one woman - but together, an army of one.

The war, however, is far from over.  There will be setbacks, and the struggle will seem thankless and unforgiving at times, but should we stand strong, adhere to the principles of conservatism and classical liberalism, and ensure our nation's continuing exceptionalism, victory will be ours once more.

It seems fitting that I close with a video I first posted a year-and-a-half ago, a video of Ted Nugent performing to an enthusiastic audience - of which I was a part - back on April 15, 2009 at the San Antonio Tea Party:



"We have met the enemy, and they are ours."