A country, it is said, is a people with an army, a navy, and a flag. That's not entirely true. Scotland and Wales are considered countries, but they share their army, navy, and to some extent, their flag with the rest of the United Kingdom.

It's not clear to me why the northern counties of Ireland are part of the UK, and the rest of Ireland is a country unto itself. Religion seems to be part of it. I thought for years that the terrorism and unrest of Northern Ireland were endemic over all of Ireland, but it seems that the country of Ireland was peaceful, that it is only the northern territories that were in turmoil.

When the Iron Curtain fell in the 1980s, Germany reunified in jig time, and it had been apart for a third of a century. Vietnam was separated even longer, and had been fought over for centuries, but friends tell me that the placid, peaceful beauty of modern Vietnam is really enchanting.

The Disunited States

And then, there is the United States, which has never reunified since the 1860s, and if truth be told, probably was never unified before that, either. We needed each other to secede from European rule, but we never really were one people.

I suspect it's the shared experience that makes a people whole. After WWII, a country named "Czechoslavakia" came into being. Nero Wolfe, the corpulent homebound detective who is the centerpiece of Rex Stout's novels, was a Montenegran, and he spat on the idea that Czechoslavakia was a country or ever could become one, for the people did not share a heritage.

When I was growing up, I knew of Bagdad. It was a featured word in my piano lessons, because it's one of the few cities that can be spelled with the letters assigned to notes of the musical scale. All I ever saw of Bagdad was a cartoon showing buildings with minarets, and I wondered why the minarets existed. Still do, I guess. I'm not too sure about the gargoyle topping buildings in American cities, either.

A certain percentage of the population hears Bagdad, and the first image that comes to mind are the minarets of that cartoon. I imagine it's a pretty small population these days, an old and dying population. Kids are much less likely to learn the piano these days, and of those who do, most will associate pictures of modern war, because that's what they first associated with the word.

The South Can't Rise Again Unless It Falls First

Similarly, there are different images, concepts, and philosophies that come to mind when one hears of the American South, and that ain't gonna change soon.

Show John a picture of the General Lee car, star of the "Dukes of Hazzard" television show, and he sees the stars-and-bars as a symbol of freedom. Hell, the car was damned near free of the constraints of gravity. Show Jim that same car and his blood pressure spikes 20 points, thinking of the fact that the cast was Wonder-bread white.

The Pew Research Center released a poll Friday that said the Civil War was still relevant, and still divisive. That "flag" question, for instance, was one of the things featured. About 9% of us view the stars-and-bars positively, and about 30% view it negatively.

Part of the problem with polls like that is people like me, for I find myself in both camps. I take heart in the fact that Americans stood for what they believed in, and fought - a half-million of them dying. I cringe at the fact that, for many of them, what they believed was that they were inherently better than slaves, and inherently deserved to be in charge.

A Little Newt Off The Old Block

Newt Gingrich's daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, was speaking on CSPAN this morning, and she made me cringe, too. She talked about the days before security, when as a little girl, she would wander the halls of the legislative office buildings in Washington DC, getting lost. What's the matter with your parents, little girl, that they can't be bothered to ACT like parents? Some people are inherently better than others, I guess. And then I thought about growing up on the farm, and how I did a lot of really stupid things. A farm isn't an office building, it's industrial, and it's an industry with a really high death rate.

Then she talked about how, in this country, we are always going to have people who have more and people who have less, because we have the freedom to do better, and the freedom to fail. And my thought was, yes, and we have people who get a head start on life, and those who start off dragging an anchor every step of the way. Some people are inherently better than others, I guess.

And then she talked about her kids, and how they whined that they were bored, and she said she told them it wasn't her responsibility to make anyone else happy, that they had to do that for themselves. Money can't make you happy, of course, but as someone who once was married to someone with a terminal case of lupus, and as someone who is currently married to someone with a terminal case of white matter syndrome, I can assure you that insufficient money goes a long way to assuring misery. Some people are inherently better than others, I guess.

Blondie's No Republican

My wife has not one good word to say about Republicans, but I told her that she married someone who's much closer to being a Republican than a Democrat, so they must have some redeeming qualities. And it doesn't take long to find some. Republicans are much more generous with charitable contributions, for instance. Conservatives give something like four times as much to charitable causes than do liberals of the same income levels.

And I don't mean to suggest that conservatives are the only ones who feel that they are inherently better than others. Liberals do, too, and in their opinion, they are inherently better than others in the ways that matter.

I'm not sure that any of us are exempt. As an old college buddy used to say, "we each take our turns in the barrel." We're all different, each of us with our distinct advantages, and we each feel that we're better in the way that matters. Well, almost. There are a couple of people I can think of with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. But that's an awful small minority.

More Than Human

Mama repeatedly told me that she grew up sure that she was adopted, because surely nobody would be as cruel to their own kid as that, making her work all the time. I understood the feeling; I grew up wondering if I was even the same species as the rest of humanity. I think autistic spectrum disorders such as my Asperger's can do that to you. After all, the autistic cannot understand what others are saying and thinking, and others can't understand the autistic.

When I was in high school, they taught me that there were five races, white, black, yellow, red, and brown. Even then, though, they couldn't really define "race" very well. There were discussions as to whether the semitic peoples - jews and arabs - with their olive skin were of the same race as scandinavians, with their pasty white skin, and that led to really hurt feelings when someone with an olive skin was described as a non-white by his best friend.

I picked up a classroom map once at a library clearance sale, made of cloth and equipped with huge grommets. It showed the various tribes of the old world, where they originated, and where they moved to. It was politically incorrect, and I couldn't put it up anywhere without feelings being hurt, but I was interested in learning about the Goths, the Huns, the Saxons, the Magyar, etc., in order to understand where people came from originally.

Prima Nocta And Other Fun Marriage Games

Most migrant tribes eventually settled down and formed city-states. The head of the tribe was the old bull of the clan. He ended up becoming king. Young men would capture people from other tribes, who would become slaves and/or wives. In order to ensure these new wives would be loyal to the new city-state, rituals like the custom of prima nocta were introduced. If you share a child in common with the king, you probably would be loyal!

Legend has it that the jewish nation came about when Abraham naturalized vast numbers of people from tribes which had been devastated by war. He wanted the men, not just the women, so he established a ritual where one swore allegiance to the new nation by sacrificing the pound of flesh dearest to his heart. It wasn't truly a pound, of course, but every little fraction of an ounce is important.

We never instituted such a ritual to bring the north and the south together, though, and according to that Pew poll, 64% of all white men living in the former states of the Confederacy consider themselves to be Southerners.

Eliminating Miscegnation Bans

Integrating the black and white cultures seems to be progressing much more quickly. In 1958, the Gallop Poll found 94% opposed to interracial marriage, but in 2007, 77% had no objections at all - possibly because there are so many mixed-race babies who have grown up to be admirable adults.

But while familiarity breeds, heritage apparently doesn't. If you are so foolish as to publicly admit that you oppose interracial marriage, you would find others looking down their nose at you. Jackie Gingrich Cushing, on the other hand, can look down from her throne of superiority at the rest of us, and she thinks her opinions are being treated with respect because she's not being pelted with rotten fruit.

I guess some people are just inherently better than others.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Asperger's Syndrome - autism spectrum disorder - Bagdad - charity - country - Czechoslavakia - Democrat - Dukes of Hazzard - General Lee - Goth - Huns - Ireland - Jackie Gingrich Cushing - Magyars - mixed-race babies - Monte Negro - Nero Wolfe - Newt Gingrich - prima nocta - Republican - Saxons - Scotland - Vietnam - Wales - white matter syndrome - Wonder bread