Egoism
Individualism
Sovereignty
Splendor

(These ideas are explicated in this sloppy manifesto)

 
Cain's world: You were saying?

From the Telegraph:

Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.

The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

posted by Greg Swann at 10:52 PM

 
Cain's world: A more subtle theory of a just war

Paul Berman reviewing Jean Bethke Elshtain's Just War Against Terror in the New York Times Book Review:

Elshtain is a professor of ethics at the University of Chicago, and during the next months she listened to a great many of her colleagues. And she remained aghast. The professors, some of them, seemed in her eyes stuck in a Vietnam quagmire of their own, in which America was always a villain and never a victim, and American military response was always a catastrophe, never a measured act of self-defense or a humanitarian boon.

The professors, all too many of them, insisted that ''no space exists within American society today to make contrarian arguments.'' And yet Elshtain judged that, within the academy, the truly unpopular argument was one in defense of American policy. She wasn't too happy with the leaders of American Christianity, either. Christian discussion of the war seemed to her, in too many cases, simplistic, sentimental, utopian and unrealistic -- a discussion based on ''easy criticism, if not condemnation, of America and her leaders.'' There was a lot of indignation against the demonizing of America's enemies. ''But who is demonizing and dehumanizing whom?'' she asks. ''No American public official on the national front has demonized Muslims. All political leaders from both parties have warned against any such tendency. The demonizing has come from the other side.''

And so Elshtain listened, and fumed, and now she has drawn up a catalog of the precise errors of logic and language that have led so many people to respond so foolishly and glibly to the terrorist attacks. She notes an inability to make the right distinctions -- between, for instance, martyrs and murderers, or between justice and revenge, or between terror and legitimate war. She notes an inability to distinguish between intended deaths (the victims of the terrorist attacks) and unintended deaths (the victims of American military errors). She notes a sloppy attitude toward facts -- for instance, a willingness to assume that vast numbers of civilians were killed in Afghanistan, when the actual numbers, according to The Los Angeles Times, were a little over a thousand by midsummer 2002, large enough but not vast.

She notes an inability to listen. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have openly expressed their hatred of Christians, Jews and Americans, and their desire for random murder. And yet, in her estimation, all too many people in the universities and in the pulpits profess to be in the dark about Al Qaeda's true intentions, or pretend to know the real reason behind the attack -- some modest, real-world complaint about American or Israeli policies.

She notices what she calls a ''false clarity derived from flawed analogies'' -- for instance, a comparison of political repression today to that of the Palmer Raids after World War I or the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. She observes that it is reasonable and right to raise questions about political repression in the present circumstance. But, she adds, the Bush administration has spoken out against vigilantism, and the F.B.I. has launched investigations of hate crimes against Arab-Americans and other Muslims -- responses dramatically unlike those during the two world wars.

She concludes that, in too many university and church discussions, ''repeatedly the worst possible gloss is put on American motivations and the best on the motivations of those who attacked us.'' And, in this manner, not afraid to make a bit of noise, Elshtain sends her arguments rolling across the lawn, everywhere encountering weedy clumps of prejudice and ill-conceived assumptions, and everywhere leaving behind a well-trimmed swath of intellectual clarity, which is pleasing to see.

posted by Greg Swann at 7:50 AM

 
Governor to show casinos owners who the real gangsters are

From ABCNEWS.com:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Thursday he is considering an unprecedented state takeover of Illinois' casinos and hiring a company to run them to benefit the cash-strapped state.

The casino industry immediately called the proposals "preposterous."

Alternatively, Blagojevich said he is considering auctioning off the nine licenses currently in use to raise money to fill the state's $5 billion budget deficit.

The governor said his administration is "aggressively" exploring the idea of taking back the casino licenses. He pointed to a casino in Ontario, Canada, that is state-owned but run by a separate management firm.

"It's conceivable, for example, that the state can own the boat and hire Harrah's or MGM to do the management and pay them a management fee," Blagojevich said. "But instead of the profits going to the casino industry, they would go to the state."

This is exactly how the Arabs got into the oil business. Who says we can't learn anything from the Middle East?
posted by Greg Swann at 7:06 AM

 
Weasel watch: Why they appease...

Sarah Fitz-Claridge at Setting the World to Rights:

Every act of appeasement of the bad guys was also an act of appeasement of us. And it had the same effect on us: a sullen but temporary acquiescence. We were willing, for a while, to take the chance (however slim we considered it) that we could achieve our objectives by that method, and so not have to resort to war. But our objectives themselves did not change. How on earth could being appeased ever change anyone's objectives? So ours remained good, just as Saddam's remained bad, and the Weasels’ remained weasely. And inevitably it all unravelled, and in the end a few hundred thousand more people had been murdered than would have been if either we or Saddam had rejected the appeasers’ whiny siren song in the first place.

And here is a marked difference between this appeasement and classic appeasement: Chamberlain was trying to cope with the threat posed by Hitler. King Aethelred with that of the Vikings. They feared invasion, violence, oppression and the destruction of their liberties. Today's Weasels are trying to cope with us. Because they fear insignificance.

posted by Greg Swann at 6:36 AM

 
SplendorQuest: Pulling back the curtain on modern art

A friend pointed me to a wonderful speech by Fred Ross on the horrifying fraud that is modern art. It's not new, but it is timeless. I'm quoting a great deal of it here, but the full text is much longer, and every bit of it is eminently quotable:

The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride, and then ... fell off a cliff, and smashed to pieces on the rocks below. Since World War I the contemporary visual arts as represented in Museum exhibitions, University Art Departments, and journalistic art criticism became little more than juvenile, repetitive exercises at proving to the former adult world that they could do whatever they damn well wanted ... sadly devolving ever downwards into a distorted, contrived and contorted notion of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression? Ironically, this so-called "freedom" as embodied in Modernism, rather than a form of "expression" in truth became a form of "suppression" and "oppression." Modernism as we know it, ultimately became the most oppressive and restrictive system of thought in all of art history.

Every reasonable shred of order and any standards with which it was possible to identify, understand and to create great paintings and sculpture, was degraded ... detested ... desecrated and eviscerated. The backbone of the painters' craft, namely drawing, was thrown into the trash along with modeling, perspective, illusion, recognizable objects or elements from the real world, and with it the ability to capture, exhibit, and poetically express subjects and themes about mankind and the human condition and about man's trials on this speck of stardust called Earth ... Earth, hurtling through infinity with all of us along on board, along with everything we know and everything we hold dear.

Reason ... philosophy ... religion ... literature ... fantasy ... dreams, and all of the feelings, emotions and pathos of our every day lives ... all of it was no longer worthy of the painter's craft. Any hint by the artist at trying to portray such things was branded as banal, maudlin, photographic, illustration, or petty sentimentality.

Our children, going supposedly to the finest universities in the world, being taught by professors with Bachelors or Arts, Masters of Arts, Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Art Education ... even Doctoral degrees, our children instead have been subjected to methodical brain-washing and taught to deny the evidence of their own senses. Taught that Mattisse, Cézanne, and Picasso, along with their followers, were the most brilliant artists in all of history. Why? Because they weren't telling us lies like the traditional painters, of course. They weren't trying to make us believe that we were looking at scenes in reality, or at scenes from the imagination, from fantasy or from dreams. They were telling us the truth. They were telling it like it is. They spent their lives and careers on something that was not banal, and not silly, insipid or inane. They in fact provided the world with the most ingenious of all breakthroughs in the history of artistic thought. Even the great scientific achievements of the industrial revolution paled before their brilliant discovery. And what was that discovery for which they have been raised above Bouguereau, exalted over Gérôme, and celebrated beyond Ingres, David, Constable, Fragonard, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough or Poussin? Why in fact were they heralded to the absolute zenith ... the tiptop of human achievement ... being worthy even of placement shoulder to shoulder on pedestals right beside Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Vermeer and Raphael? What did they do? Why were they glorified practically above all others that ever went before them? Ladies and gentleman, they proved ... amazing, incredible, and fantastic as it may seem, they proved that the canvas was flat ... flat and very thin ... skinny ... indeed, not even shallow, lacking any depth or meaning whatsoever.

And the flatter that they proved it to be the greater they were exalted. Cézanne collapsed the landscape, Matisse flattened our homes and our families, and Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning placed it all in a blender and splattered it against the wall. They made even pancakes look fat and chunky by comparison. But this was only part of the breathtaking breakthroughs of modernism ... and their offshoots flourished. Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, minimalism, ColorField, Conceptual, op-art, pop-art and post modernism ... and to understand it all ... to understand, took very special people indeed, since the mass of humanity was too ignorant and stupid to understand. Like that famous advertisement in the NY Times said so many years ago ... Bad art ... or Good art? You be the judge, indeed.

Of course, to justify this whole theoretical paradigm, all the artists that painted recognizable scenes with depth and illusion had to be discredited ... and discredited they were, with a virulence and vituperation so scathing and merciless that one would think they must have been messengers of the devil himself to deserve such abuse. And to put the final nail in their coffins, all of their art was banished and their names and accomplishments written right out of history.

posted by Greg Swann at 9:19 AM

 
Goodbye, girls

In a demonstration of clubfootedness that clearly marks them as Republicans, the Dixie Chicks, seeking to heal their self-inflicted career wounds, have elected to pose nude for the cover of Entertainment Weekly. From the New York Post:

The Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks have struck back at their critics by baring their souls - and their bodies.

The country stars appear nude on the cover of next week's "Entertainment Weekly," with contradicting slogans painted on their skin: Saddam's Angels, Dixie Sluts, Patriot, Proud Americans.

Band members Martie Maguire, Emily Robison and Natalie Maines say they dreamed up the gimmick to defend themselves against the backlash over Maines' crack at a London concert: "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the president of United States is from Texas."

The remark - made just before the start of the war in Iraq and seen by many as unpatriotic - caused the band's record sales to fall and radio stations in the South to yank their songs off the air.

Missing evidently is the web-borne epithet, "Blixie Chicks." Even so, surely they will raise the bar on unsightly nakedness: The only thing that could be worse than looking at them in their hideous clothes would be looking at them without them.

But their decision is not as immediately bone-headed as it might seem: Huge-selling Country acts depend for much of their sales on crossover buyers. In the case of the Chicks, this is teenage girls and young women.

But: Crossover sales depends on airplay, and that depends on the Country music market-makers. Not hard-drinkin' rodeo cowboys. Not crusty rednecks on tractors. Not even stout matrons bringin' in the sheaves at the Middlebrow Baptist Church. The people who will make or break the Dixie Chicks, the people who make or break all Country acts, are all those single moms out there. They could envision those "Wide Open Spaces." Every one of them would love to say "Goodbye, Earl" in the most permanent way. Whether they do it or not, they like to imagine themselves singing "Godspeed, Sweet Dreams" to their kids.

But to a hard-pressed, long-suffering single mom, President George Bush looks a lot like Toby Keith made perfect: A hard-drinkin' rodeo cowboy redeemed by the love of a good woman.

You can do pretty much anything you want with those single moms. You can murder their husbands, as the Chicks did. You can burn down their houses or make them commit suicide by defenestration, as Martina McBride never tires of doing. You can even tell them that "only the best-lookin' tuna gets to be star-kissed," as Keith did in a widely-circulated bootleg. But you cannot ever piss on the dream that there is one supremely perfectible man for each one of those seemingly-imperfectible single moms.

The CDs were broken by the people who bought them. The concert tickets were burned by the people who waited on line to get them. The CDs are not being bought by the people who otherwise would have bought them. The Chicks aren't in trouble because they annoyed the Republicans or the Southerners or the Iraq-hawks or the talk radio hosts. The Chicks aren't in trouble because they ticked off men--for the most part men don't buy their product. The Dixie Chicks are in trouble because they pissed on and pissed off their core audience, single moms who get up and go to work every morning because they believe in that dream, because they do not dare doubt that dream.

They've done nothing to fix this. They've done nothing but make it worse.
posted by Greg Swann at 8:26 AM

 
SqualorQuest: 'Divil take the hindmost'

Richard Roeper writing in the Chicago Sun-Times quotes a 'bug-chaser,' a male homosexual who deliberately pursued infection with the HIV virus, as saying:

"When I went to get tested last time, I was expecting a positive reading, and it was. I was relieved. I have it, now I don't have to worry about--do I have it, do I have it, do I have it, do I need to be careful? I'm happy. Relieved. I can breathe again."

Yikes! Bug-chasers turn out to be almost as suicidal as Republican Senate leaders. I'm talking about Rick Santorum, of course, who offered these sage words to the Associated Press:

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.

Santorum has a point, but as is the usual case with Republicans, it's the wrong point. It is certainly true that the Sexual Revolution is undermining the family. That is its purpose, to remove the most significant bulwark in pluralist society against the Total State. But surely the solution to this crisis is not the Marginally-Less-Than-Total State that Santorum proposes.

As a public-policy issue, bug-chasers are alike unto smokers or people who ride motorcycles without helmets: They take stupid risks with their bodies--which is their perfect right--and then stick the taxpayer's with the unhappy and very expensive consequences--which is no one's right. I wrote about these issues a while ago:

Now, obviously, I believe you have a right to be stupidly self-destructive. If you own your life - body, mind and spirit - and if no one else owns your life, and if it is always criminal to attempt to exert external control over your life, then, necessarily, your life is yours to manage as you choose. If that means acting in ways that will hasten your life's end, it is nevertheless your right to act in those ways.

But, of course, the state is taking a progressively larger 'stake' in your life. Your case for motorcycling without a helmet is much diminished if you have the nerve to expect the state to pick up the tab for an accident. And if you are forbidden to pay for your own health care, as you will be under HillaryCare, you no longer have a meaningful right to be stupidly self-destructive. We may expect that the helmetless motorcycle riders and the seatbeltless drivers will soon be joined by the bungee jumpers, hang-glider pilots, skydivers, beer drinkers and late-night ice cream eaters. They have no right to take such potentially-costly risks with the state property that is their bodies.

Even ignoring the financial aspects of the problem it is not a challenge to point out the unhappy consequences of 'alternative' family structures. For example, polygamy is integral to the family life of fundamentalist Islam, which results in the women wearing burqas and the men wearing vests festooned with explosives. Santorum is right to defend the family--heterosexual, monogamous and romantic--even if for the wrong reasons.

The solution to all of this is not more laws but fewer--a lot fewer. We don't need to compel motorcycle riders to wear helmets--or bug-chasers condoms--we just need to let them rot to their deaths on their own damn nickel. We don't need to natter away at smokers or incessant eaters or drug addicts, we simply need to let them die on their own dime. If some few men wish to insist that they were pre-wired by nature to eroticize the rectum, to eroticize death by their infatuation with the rectum, then--without intending to pun--let the divil take the hindmost.

Where error is unsubsidized, those who wish to do better will learn better. Those who don't will expire, requiescant in pace. To be free is not alone the freedom to embrace Splendor. It is the freedom, also, to wallow in squalor--at your own expense.
posted by Greg Swann at 9:15 AM

 
SplendorQuest: Felice Bryant, RIP

From CMT.com:

Country Music Hall of Fame member Felice Bryant, a partner in one of most successful and prolific songwriting teams in music history, died Tuesday morning (April 22) at her home in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Bryant, 77, had been diagnosed with cancer.

She and her late husband, Boudleaux Bryant, are credited with writing more than 800 songs -- including "Rocky Top," "Wake Up Little Susie" and "Bye Bye Love" -- that resulted in international sales estimated at more than 500 million copies. The couple's compositions played a key role in the Everly Brothers' career, and their songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists including Eddy Arnold, Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett, Simon & Garfunkel, Sarah Vaughan, the Grateful Dead, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Elvis Costello, Count Basie, Dean Martin, Ruth Brown, Cher, R.E.M. and Ray Charles.

I'm a true sucker for simple songs. 'Three chords and the truth' if I can have it, but three chords and a good time will do. The era of the Bryants is the era of Lieber and Stoller in New York, of Holland-Dozier-Holland in Detroit, of Sonny Bono and John Philips in L.A., of Phil and Don Everly themselves with "Cathy's Clown", of Van Morrison's "Gloria" and Willie Nelson's "Crazy" and Buddy Holly's entire catalog--and of many, many others, a vast host of songwriters who knew just enough music to make it jump, and just enough truth to make it real. Clean and streamlined like a 'jetliner,' it was the music of AM radio, the music of fun. Today a piece of that is gone...
posted by Greg Swann at 1:52 PM

 
Cain's world: China cracks

From The Scotsman:

George Bush, the US president, said yesterday he believes there is a "good chance" of persuading North Korea to end its nuclear weapons programmes. He said the US was working with China, Japan and South Korea towards a goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. "I believe that all four of us working together have a good chance of convincing North Korea to abandon her ambitions to develop nuclear arsenals," Mr Bush said.

Plans for US-North Korean talks in China on the North's nuclear weapons effort were thrown into uncertainty on Friday after the communist state appeared to announce steps that could yield six to eight bombs within months.

The confusion about North Korea's intentions came days after the state department disclosed plans for the multi-nation talks. "The key thing on the North Korea agenda is that China is assuming a very important responsibility," Mr Bush said. "Now that they're engaged in the process, it makes it more likely" that a policy of nuclear-free Koreas will result.

In fact, the United States will not build for South Korea the Black Forest of nuclear missiles it built for West Germany. But why would China want to risk that? This strategy has been amazingly successful. The free world is much safer than it was a month ago, and it will be much safer still a year from now.
posted by Greg Swann at 8:10 AM

 
Cain's world: Post-Pan-Arabism

From Reason Magazine:

The fall of Baghdad this month was accompanied by another event that was less visible but that has potentially far greater consequences: the collapse of Pan-Arabism as an essential and controlling aspect of Arab political thought. Because the triumph of Pan-Arabism half a century ago led to the eclipse of liberal thought in the Arab world, Pan-Arabism's collapse may well make room for liberalism's gradual return in the region's discourse. That could in turn allow the region to break its historic cycle of political failure and economic stagnation. If that occurs, it would be a clear—if perhaps paradoxical—case of liberal interests advanced and served by military means; the true victors of the overthrow of Iraqi Ba'thism would be the long-powerless Arab liberals.

Pan-Arabism is the concept that the Arab world from Morocco to the Persian Gulf constitutes a single natural entity. The long-term function of Arab politics and culture is thus to advance eventual Arab unity; entities like the Arab League are way stations toward this end. Of course, regions like the Maghreb, the Levant, and the Gulf are recognized as having their differences, but as seen through the Pan-Arabist prism, these are perceived as overwhelmed by stronger common interests.

The concept has often seemed to be so much boilerplate (talk of actually political unity really was boilerplate), with Arab leaders frequently working at cross-purposes. However, it has retained power as a way of interpreting the world, especially the interaction between Arabs and others. In these terms, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Despite the concept's many ups and downs, individual nations have often subsumed their cultures, economic interests, and politics within a Pan-Arabist agenda that has served all Arabs poorly.

The worst consequence of the idea was that it legitimized the notion of a single great Arab leader, speaking for and acting on behalf of all Arabs. This empowered politically megalomaniacal and militarily inept figures to bring the entire Arab world to near-ruin. The major such figure was of course Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser, whose rise to power represented the triumph of the idea. Nasser not only led his own nation to catastrophe in his delusional 1967 war against Israel, but took the rest of the Arab world with him. Iraq's Saddam Hussein also adopted the rhetorical role—Pan-Arabism is the last resort of the Arab scoundrel—and appears to have been accepted in the role by otherwise skeptical Arabs as long as he was in confrontation with the United States, with Israel, and with "imperialism."

Hussein's fall at the hands of the U.S. military is potentially a mortal blow to the concept, primarily because of the reaction of much of the Iraqi populace. Scenes of unrestrained jubilation on the part of Iraqis throughout their country simply cannot be absorbed into the Pan-Arabist narrative, which framed the conflict through the Arab media—especially the popular and influential Al-Jazeera—as a case of Western imperial aggression against the Arab nation.

posted by Greg Swann at 8:01 AM

 
SplendorQuest: Bruce Robison

The Dixie Chicks were on a repeat of Saturday Night tonight. The silly girls deserve what they're getting: Because Country music gets no respect from the culture at large, the audience expects to be respected by the artists asking for their money. Still, the Chicks' Home CD is a remarkable work of New Grass perfection. I expect their next album will be a good deal better, to kiss and make up to their public.

The Chicks did the current single from Home on Saturday Night, the harrowing Traveling Soldier by Bruce Robison and Farrah Braniff. Robison is a haunting Austin singer-songwriter, who scored lately with a Tim McGraw cover of his Angry All The Time.

The lyrics to these songs are exquisite, so I'm going to show them, but they are nothing compared to the performances. Lyrical music simply must be heard. For all its hokey faults, Country music is the only contemporary popular music form that combines real musicianship, real writing and real relevance to real life. And Bruce Robison is a fine exemplar of all three qualities.

Traveling Soldier
by Bruce Robison and Farrah Braniff

Two days past eighteen,
He was waitin' for the bus in his army greens.
Sat down in a booth, in a cafe there,
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair.

He's a little shy but she give him a smile,
So he said: "Would you mind sittin' down for a while?
"And talkin' to me. I'm feelin' a little low."
She said: "I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go."

So they went down and they sat on the pier,
He said: "I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care,
"I got no one to send a letter to.
"Would you mind if I sent one back here to you?"

I cried: "Never gonna hold the hand of another guy."
"Too young for him," they told her.
Waitin' for the love of the travellin' soldier.
"Our love will never end."
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says,
My soldier's comin' home.

The letters came from an army camp,
In California, then Vietnam.
He told her of his heart, it might be love,
And all of the things he was so scared of.

He said: "When it's gettin' kinda rough over here,
"I think of that day, sittin' down at the pier.
"And I close my eyes and see your pretty smile.
"Don't worry, but I won't be able to write for a while."

I cried: "Never gonna hold the hand of another guy."
"Too young for him," they told her.
Waitin' for the love of the travellin' soldier.
"Our love will never end."
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says,
My soldier's comin' home.

One Friday night at a football game,
The Lord's Prayer said, and the anthem sang,
A man said: "Folks would you bow your head,
"For the list of local Vietnam dead."

Cryin' all alone under the stands,
Was the piccolo player in the marching band.
And one name read and nobody really cared,
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.

I cried: "Never gonna hold the hand of another guy."
"Too young for him," they told her.
Waitin' for the love of the travellin' soldier.
"Our love will never end."
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says,
My soldier's comin' home.

I'm convinced that Angry All The Time is written for a woman's voice. I have an MP3 of Robison singing it, but I also know that he pitched it to Faith Hill, Tim McGraw's wife. For whatever reason, she passed it on to him, and he made it work, even if it makes less than perfect sense from a man's perspective.

Angry All The Time
by Bruce Robison

Here we are:
What is left of a husband and a wife. Four good kids,
Who have a way of gettin on with their lives.
I'm not old but I'm getting a whole lot older every day,
It's too late to keep from goin' crazy.
I got to get away.

The reasons that I can't stay,
Don't have a thing to do with being in love.
And I understand that lovin' a man,
Shouldn't have to be this rough.
You ain't the only one who feels,
Like this world left you far behind.
I don't know why you gotta be angry all the time.

Our boys are strong, the spittin' image of you when you were young.
I hope someday they can see past what you have become.
I remember every time I said I'd never leave.
What I can't live with is memories of the way you used to be.

The reasons that I can't stay,
Don't have a thing to do with being in love.
And I understand that lovin' a man,
Shouldn't have to be this rough.
You ain't the only one who feels,
Like this world left you far behind.
I don't know why you gotta be angry all the time.

Twenty years have came and went since I walked out of your door.
I never quite made it back to the one I was before.
And God it hurts me to think of you,
For the light in your eyes was gone. Sometimes
I don't know why this old world can't leave well enough alone.

The reasons that I can't stay,
Don't have a thing to do with being in love.
And I understand that lovin' a man,
Shouldn't have to be this rough.
You ain't the only one who feels,
Like this world left you far behind.
I don't know why you gotta be angry all the time.

This is the kind of visceral brutality that means everything to me in art. This is Country music at its best.
posted by Greg Swann at 12:40 AM

SplendorQuests