BABYLON AND MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
by John Cooper
cosmicflyswatter.com

Memorial Day, 2009

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Ps 137:1

The blood of our countrymen has been shed by its banks
While back home in this Babylon
Our hearts shout our thanks

Yes brave soldier we thank you
now more than ever
While the liars set headstrong
our culture to sever

I ate breakfast at a cafe and listened to one of the regulars inform me that a fellow by the name of Eminem has just released a new album. Now I have heard of this creature and what I know of him leaves me not wanting to know any more. The regular told me that he thought this character was so smart. How so, I asked? Look at all the money he's made. Look at how successful he is, said my friend. So was Adolph Hitler, I replied. This comment drew the attention of three people sitting at the counter. They wanted to know if I was comparing Adolph Hitler to the skulking little tweak rapper named Eminem. The answer was and is yes. They both have celebrated perversion and evil.

After making some more friends I went for a hike. I was mildly irritated to hear anyone give any credit to such a cowardly little infant as Eminem. The psychology of his past is irrelevant. In reality the psychology of all things is irrelevant. From psychology comes manipulation and perverse philosophy. The atheists Freud and Nietzsche provided all the psychological clarity Hitler needed for his expeditions to create hell on earth. Is it not the dignity of man that requires the attempt to transcend his own psychology? Does psychology have any value? Perhaps it does I told myself as I parked my car by the arroyo.

Maybe psychology is useful in its initial contribution to a person's perspective. But it could be only for a moment, before a Corruption Certificate is issued and that person gains a sense of the now authorized excuses he has for bad behavior... I discarded this line of thinking and headed across the arroyo to the trail head.

Just then I saw a coyote skulking around by the main walk. I had seen this fellow before. But all of a sudden I lost control of my perspective. For whatever psychological reasons anyone could come up with, my senses were distorted. A rap strain began to pound in my ears:

Ugah bugah bugah
Ugah bugah bugah
Ugah bugah
Ugah bugah
Ugah bugah bugah

Just then the coyote stood up on his hind legs and started to dance to the tribal utterances of the rap. His face distorted and it morphed into the face of Eminem. He was dancing around like anyone I've seen on MTV. Then he was joined by other creatures. A possum, two squirrels, a raven, a deer and her fawn, and three scrub jays, all danced and bleated out vulgarities. They were indulging in sexual innuendo and cleverness beyond even the real Eminem. My personal psychology had taken over and I could not transcend myself. The ugly rap music and the spectacle of Eminem dancing around as a perverted coyote was overwhelming me, when all of a sudden I heard a mourning dove cooing dolefully and all things returned to normal. I was rescued and relieved. My Early-Summer's Morning Dream was ended.

But I knew then why I had reacted negatively to another's praise of the creature known as Eminem. Like the skulking cowardly coyote, so too is the man who for whatever reasons disgraces virtue. It takes courage in today's world to admit there is such a thing as virtue in the first place and even more courage to pursue it. All men's dignity requires virtue's pursuit. It requires that men discard their personal psychologies and demand at least the attempt by all other men and women.

But you'll not convince a tragic little character like Eminem. He has the entire world's dollars at his disposal. The young are ripe for the picking. The young's slates are half-empty and they are always ready to be titillated by any Snake Oil the filth-mongers in the music industry have to offer.

Our Skulking Cowardly Coyote has a lot of support. He is a pop-squirt being used by the money mill, a tool for the homegrown Babylonians. He even has the support of Academia. Eminem is clearly headed towards an honorary degree from Harvard for his "courage" to defy the hegemony of the old fashioned. His degree will no doubt contain words like "for speaking truth to power" or some other such adolescent aphorism that passes for intellectual observation these days.

The isolate-perverts at Harvard University will support him with fairy tale sugar plumbs dancing in their relative heads. If there is a lie that can be made into a truth, if there is an evil that can be called good, or a good that can be called evil, you will find the best and first version of it being cooked in the snake-oil cauldrons of the once great Harvard University.

I finished my hike and headed home. There were better things to think on. After all, it was Memorial Day Weekend.

Across the world by the rivers of the real Babylon the blood of our soldiers is shed. Whether we should have gone there or not is not important on this Memorial Day. Unlike the tweaky rich little rapper who skulks about the streets of a Babylon he is hoping to create here, the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen will return from true service to our country from the ancient Babylon.

They will remember those who fell beside them, those who joined the sacrifices of all who are remembered this Memorial Day. Wherever Americans shed their blood fighting for the freedom of men and women, the blood of our hopes should join them. From this pool of blood will spring the truth of life renewed. The Truth is that there is no greater love than he who would give his life for others.

We may lose our country in the end but the Truth will abide. No matter what nonsense is cooked in the sick halls of academia, or the sewers of the media and entertainment covens, the truth will survive in the end.

Every man or woman who sacrificed his or her life for the Good of this country testified to the Truth with his or her life.

And to my friend Lt. Col. Robert Kirkland, US Army, who at this moment is headed back to Iraq, may God bless you and return you safely.

Happy Memorial Day to all those in Babylon, either here or there.