Volume 1, Issue 8: Dandelion Wine
a land as bright, beloved, and blue
Local
Fink v. Meckley
The political party was once precisely what its name suggests—a party made up of like-minded locals who aimed at the assertion of their will in politics. The activities of such associations were: having parties, drinking, family picnics, sports, and competitions—the sorts of things that people need to do together to become a people and have a general will to begin with. Therefore, the interests of the party were decidedly narrow and local. Without such ties political action is nothing more than activism pursued in the name of some distant academic cause forced into one’s mind via the latest pop culture propaganda. These party machines were run by local party bosses, and though there was no shortage of corruption, the bosses set the agenda of each town and county against the claims of the state and the federal governments. More importantly, they were machines which gave people otherwise incapable of political life some outlet in contrast to those with prestige, who will always exercise their connections to secure their interests. The death of the local party and the concentration of its power into the hands of bureaucratic DC-based political consultants and “scientists”1 is one of the untold American tragedies.
Fortunately for those of us in Hillsdale, this form of association is not dead quite yet, in part because the people of the town still consider themselves to be distinct in some way. We have accordingly been treated to genuine, non-bureaucratic, refreshing corruption, an example of which is our very own local party. In the Fall of 2020 the Hillsdale County Republican Party (HCRP)—which was run for many years by the city’s establishment Republicans—was taken over by a populist invasion via the precinct delegate system.2 No doubt these populists are rough around the edges, but isn’t that just republicanism?3 Upon their ascendency to the throne of the party they engineered a plethora of painful slogans (“Hillsdale vs. Everybody”; “RINO Hunting”; etc.) and alienated a good part of the old establishment with bellicose rhetoric and over-the-top events, claiming to be a grassroots movement in contrast to the top-down honing and shaping of their intra-party opponents. Ultimately they tried to create a state-wide empire far too quickly and failed to notice that they had no solid footing at home, or anywhere for that matter. Yet whatever their rhetoric, the populists are essentially a coalition of patriotic Christians and confused semi-libertarians who genuinely seem to have the best interest of the ordinary people of Hillsdale in mind, even if they are incapable of concerted political action.
Prior to the takeover, the institution was dying at the hands of the establishment faction. Meetings were attended by the sort of sparse crowd one might see at a 6:00 AM Boomer parish weekday mass, and they were so disorganized that even I, a lover of disorganized meetings, could hardly bear to witness the embarrassment unfolding before my eyes. Modeled upon an HR conference room run-down, these gatherings had no spirit, provided nothing of interest, and offered no reason to attend. Their platform was two-pronged: first, maximize state grant-getting to fund the luxury pet projects of the wealthy—particularly those who have a vaguely neoconservative bent and think that Hillsdale should be more like South Bend or Ann Arbor; second, ignore or placate the rough-around-the-edges types because they love liberty a little too much, and that makes educated people uncomfortable. The party platform served only to usher centralized bureaucracy into Hillsdale.
After a mistake-filled two-year reign of the populists, the establishment has returned with force, backed by the bureaucrats in the County Clerk’s office, who rejected nearly every populist precinct delegate ballot application the day before they were due (on questionable grounds). In the wake of the August primaries they will likely overtake the old party leadership—barring a tremendously successful write-in campaign—replacing the populists with numerous people who have never shown the slightest concern for the direction of the local party.4
In any case, the institution will now find itself in a tenuous position, which is unfortunate because it must be robust if it is to be anything more than a plaything for the Mike Shirkeys of the world. One might also hope that some competent leader would understand that both sides might cooperate to some degree if the party might adopt the better sides of each faction. But this brings us to the premier race in the upcoming primary election, to be held on August 2nd.
Central to this infighting is the state representative primary. In one corner is incumbent Andrew Fink, whose entire life has been tailored for this moment. A big city Ypsilanti lawyer by training, Fink—as you’ve probably heard several hundred times—is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He has described himself as a “social and fiscal conservative” who is most concerned with “dismantling economic centralization, promoting the right to life, and avoiding poor government financial decisions.” Mr. Fink will doubtless win the votes of educated sophisticates and those who would wear boat shoes. He holds as his mentors United States Congressman Tim Walberg and the aforementioned Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey. In partnership with Consumers Energy, Fink beat out three local candidates in the 2020 primaries to secure his first term in the Michigan State House of Representatives. He has his sights set on the Speaker of the House position, and then presumably Washington, D.C. The now lame-duck HCRP leadership has spent two years relentlessly bashing Fink, openly calling him a RINO despite his (barely) acceptable performance in the state house. One hopes that upon his faction’s victory Fink will see that the HCRP is important for the County and ought not be turned into a club for monied geriatrics, but we have good reason to think that he has no robust vision.
In an attempt to primary the incumbent, the HCRP has put up Steve Meckley, the owner of the nearby Meckley’s Fruit Farm. The reasoning for Meckley’s opposition to Fink has only been articulated recently, leading to speculations that he was a puppet directed by the HCRP’s leadership to undermine their rival. But he has shown some spirit and independence in recent weeks, offering particular criticisms of Fink that seem to us more or less on the mark.5 Meckley has also been backed by State Senate Candidate Jonathan Lindsey, who has the respect of the Review and its friends.
In any case, the results of the election will determine the direction of the HCRP, and because of the Republican dominance in the greater region, the direction of Hillsdale County itself. Shall the county subordinate itself to the state and its whims for the sake of financed loans and sushi bars, or is there a worthier end at which the city might aim?
—Clovis
Hillsdale Brewing Company
We fell hungrily upon the Hillsdale Brewing Company on a Saturday afternoon as our family made its return from an outing on the Baw Beese Trail.6 Though by dint of our exertions we were inclined to appreciate whatever the Company’s menu had to offer (we had an excellent B.L.A.T. and one or two7 Blueberry Cream Ales), we were pleasantly surprised by every other aspect of this admirable establishment, whose only crime—which is perhaps the general crime in our beloved town8—is closing too early of a weekday evening.
If you’ve been on Facebook, you will have noticed that the HBC’s recently renovated great room boasts an axe-throwing range to go along with darts, cornhole, air hockey, and a live-music stage. But you may not know that the northwesterly corner of that hall contains a modest children’s playhouse as well as numerous interesting toys. Our several children gave us almost no trouble the whole time, except for the one-and-a-half-year-old, who is precisely the sort of whom it has been said by men taller, beardier, and wiser than ourselves, “You’ve got a leader on your hands.” The labyrinth has not yet been designed that could contain that blond, curly-haired beast.
At any rate, if you’ve been seeking a place that will happily accommodate parental day-drinking, look no further!
—Fauxglin
Dandelion Wine
1928 Vintage
I don’t believe there is a point I could make about this book that isn’t completely pedestrian—happiness can never be manufactured, the simplest lives are often the most joyous, the fear and loneliness of old age and death. This is no fault of the book itself nor the man who wrote it, but rather in my limited skills of thought. Instead, what I will say is that I am surprised to have found a book that has touched me so profoundly.
Bradbury truly captures the Midwest in all of its charm. The city of Green Town—a stand-in for his own Illinois hometown—is a host to many people who do not have the trappings of wealth and luxury, but find significant, complete joy and purpose in their simple days.
The story’s narrator, 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding, leads the reader through the summer of 1928—a vintage summer indeed. The season begins with the realization that he is alive; sensory experiences are brought into sharp focus. Pages are filled with the heady scents of spice; the feel of grass, roots, and dirt on your feet; the hum of a lawn mower engine. And despite its ordinariness and the flaws which it obviously has, there is something significant about this celebration of this town and its people. For Douglas was born there, and it is a town still capable of being his own.
—Winona
What’s Been Taken
Dandelion Wine shows what it might look like to remember, and therefore approach something like thought, which might eventually grow into gratitude. Only in such an instance would one come to consider obligations to one’s place and people. But the questions that would lead to such thoughts have been closed off. Perhaps they were taken from us, or perhaps we gave them away–what’s the difference? What’s gone is our memory, not just individually, but collectively. In our feverish pursuit of ever more invasive technology, in our demonic efforts to achieve the optimal organization of the rootless masses, how could one remember to think, much less give thanks?
But we can begin some recovery via the concrete—memories from deep within childhood: scents, smells, sights, sounds—these are the things which call to Douglas’s mind the beauty of the past and could inspire him in the future; even the flittering shadows of Auffmann’s happiness machine on the wall of the garage (which seems to be road to self-annihilation) are not so potent. Summer evenings on the front porch; childish shenanigans; the cooperative work of the entire network of people in the household economy—none of this midwestern-ness approaches the aristocratic splendor of old Europe. But there is something remarkably decent and whole about it that the soul longing for ancient years or higher culture might overlook—something worth defending.
But the gears of civilization are grinding and even Douglas sees that in the hopeless frenzy of change and innovation the old will be thrown away and the new will take its place. Trolleys are replaced by buses; the elderly are shipped to nursing homes; houses and land become real estate. The magic which enchanted life is ripped away by innovators and financiers, and the people of Green Town are told that their place is not objectively better than any other, as if they’re too stupid to be aware of this conception and haven’t simply chosen the familiar because of its familiar-ness and therefore enchanted-ness. Thus, Douglas’ final recovery from his late-summer malaise hinges on his choice to once more seek out enchantment, of which Green Town offers much.
—Clovis
For those who have not read this book, I am compelled to conclude by taking up Fauxglin’s precious column inches with a poem of Bradbury’s which he includes in his introduction to the story and contains much of it. Waukegan—Bradbury’s own hometown in Illinois—is depicted in the story as Douglas’ Green Town.
Byzantium I come not from, But from another time and place Whose race was simple, tried and true; As boy I dropped me forth in Illinois. A name with neither love nor grace Was Waukegan, there I came from And not, good friends, Byzantium. And yet in looking back I see From topmost part of farthest tree A land as bright, beloved, and blue As any Yeats found to be true. So we grew up with mythic dead To spoon upon midwestern bread And spread old God’s bright marmalade To slake in peanut-butter shade, Pretending there beneath our sky That it was Aphrodite’s thigh… While by the porch-rail calm and bold His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold My grandfather, a myth indeed Did all of Plato supersede While Grandma in rocking chair Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright To winter us on summer night. And uncles gathered with their smokes Emitted wisdom disguised as jokes, And aunts as wise as Delphic maids Dispensed prophetic lemonades To boys knelt there as acolytes To Grecian porch on summer nights; Then went to bed, there to repent The evils of the innocent; The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears Said, through the nights and through the years Not Illinois or Waukegan But blither sky and blither sun. Though mediocre all our Fates And Mayor not as bright as Yeats Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum? Byzantium. Byzantium.
New Polity
We went down to Steubenville, Ohio on Thursday, June 9th with a pair of Eule-eyed young men of our acquaintance, to assure ourselves that our preferred philosopher king, Professor D.C. Schindler, is in fact real, and to observe how the men of New Polity would answer the question of whether America is a tyranny.
Here is a list of things we learned:
From Marc Barnes, that sitting next to one of our dozing colleagues is not enough to shame the latter into attentiveness, or indeed into refraining from making numerous arguments based on what he had not heard.
From Schindler, that although America does not rise to the level of tyranny, it is well to remember that Plato’s tyrant is awake when others are asleep, and that he lives in the real world as if it is a dream world.
From Jacob Imam, that the Federal Reserve is the closest thing America has to one of the ancient and awe-inspiring tyrants invoked by Schindler, and that the problem of the “replacement of the real by the abstract” was the not-so-secret teaching of the conference as a whole.
From Professor Patrick Lee of Steubenville, proponent of the New Natural Law, nothing.
From Professor Peter Simpson, that Saratoga was the most significant battle of the Revolution, and that Benedict Arnold might have been a better man than George Washington.9
From Will Hoyt, that a good land is hard to find, and that integralists loathe and would silence autodidacts capable of rediscovering the good in the ruins of strip mines.
From Professor Chadwick Pecknold, current holder of the “Do The Reading” Chair at Catholic University, that the unasked question of the conference was whether there is anything new under the sun (with respect to America, bureaucracy, etc.); and that integralist chieftains are as supercilious and nasty10 during a Q&A panel as they are on Twitter.11
From Andrew Willard Jones, that the ghost of Hillsdale Past should be haunting Hillsdale Present. (We don’t know that it is.) We were as surprised as Pecknold—who with scornful exasperation lisped, “little platoons delenda est”—to hear the name of Richard Weaver so often upon his lips.
At the conference, New Polity announced the founding of the College of St. Joseph the Worker, which intends to form its students “into effective and committed members of their communities by teaching them the Catholic intellectual tradition while training them in skilled and dignified labor.” See its program options here.
It will be worth your time—in our opinion, if not in that of our oh-so-prudent colleagues—to follow the future interactions between New Polity and the Vermeullian integralists.12 Choose your own American Catholic adventure!
—Fauxglin
Miscellaneous
The gentlemen at The New Thinkery recently discussed the political implications (what Dr. Paul Diduch called “the Minos problem”) of Francis Bacon’s retelling of the “parable” of Daedalus, the ancestor of Socrates13 who “devised and constructed the Labyrinth.” Toward the end of their conversation, Alex Priou suggested that Bacon might be considered to be more politically responsible (or attentive) than René Descartes—who “was much more populist in his understanding of science”—because he recognized the need to confine scientific genius within Saloman’s House. And, to be sure, Descartes wrote his Discourse in French rather than Latin and opened that work with a frankly irresponsible commentary on the equal distribution of “the power of judging well” in all men. But the Discourse is a “fable,” is it not? This recognition of the equal distribution of reason is Descartes’ preference—a choice of nearly the same rank as his provisional maxims—rather than the product of the studied pursuit of his own method.
We would argue that Descartes is as much a designer of labyrinths as is Bacon: both men certainly sought to make man into the “master and possessor of nature,” and both veiled their elitism in an overt concern for the “maintenance of health.” They would both of them construct a labyrinth, an expertly administered fabricated enclosure—one frighteningly foreshadowed in Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”14—that would limit the horizon of the many’s “perfectibility,” which they must grant if they would be good Moderns, to good health alone.15
What prevention but a politics of the real?
—Fauxglin
Republican candidates across the country spend hundreds of millions of dollars hiring campaign consultants and every single one of them gets the same product: pro-veteran; guns are good; look at my family; taxes are mean; generic attack on prominent Democrat.
During primaries the local party’s direction is determined via the direct election of precinct delegates. These elected delegates, who hold office for two year terms, proceed vote for the party’s formal leaders from among their number.
The scholars at Fauxglin’s precious New Polity—eager subjects as they are—would be appalled; they’re fine with the Hoyts of the world so long as they speak and dress like Hoyt.
In fairness, some have done much; but these are the Hillsdale variety of Curtis Yessler’s self-identified “elves” we’re talking about. They know that political parties are for ugly hobbits.
“Andrew Fink worked with radical left Democrats to sponsor HB5436—a criminal justice reform bill that would ease bail requirements on criminals. Michigan needs law and order, not soft on crime policies”; “We need to restore election integrity with mandatory in-person voting, not just tinker with voter rolls.”; “Andrew Fink supported a bill that would allow Gretchen Whitmer to lock down Michigan again for 28 days on a whim!”
That we finally turned aside was doubtless appreciated by the several aging cyclists who nearly met their end as they heroically swerved this way and that through the obstacle course set by our children’s imaginative interpretation of “stay to the right!”
Forgive us, dear readers, it may even have been three or four!
Except, of course, for Pub & Grub, but perhaps we are just now too old and grey to be there past 10:00 PM.
Yikes! Where was the lightning that must have struck at that moment?! Perhaps, if nobility were not dead, and if our beloved colleague were not dozing on our shoulder, 10,000 gauntlets would have clattered on the floor and fisticuffs commenced.
They acknowledge and revel in it themselves, so we cannot be rude.
We should add that we were pleased to learn the integralist-approved pronunciation of Hobbesian. Lest we seem too dismissive, however, we should also say that we were very interested in Pecknold’s analysis of ancient and modern “spectacle,” in particular his Voegelinian account of Comte’s effort to “develop mechanisms for redirecting the gaze of souls” away from Christ. Good stuff, but don’t you dare suggest that “bureaucracy” might be among those mechanisms!
That is, until “Adrian” blocks you on Twitter as he models for his audience the forthcoming integralist speech-regime, which in the meantime must shore up the existing administrative state against every intrusion of hobbit politics, so that, when the time comes, the properly pedagogical law can train us all to become the right sort of Catholic.
!
Of course you’ve read it, but do you remember the “enchantment” brought about by the technological innovations that adorn the apartment in which Georgiana is confined, innovations that include a use of screens worthy of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? [Note, dear reader, that though we have not read Dandelion Wine, we have hereby done our duty in mentioning Bradbury.] Beware of the Aylmerian redaction of beauty!
Three “woulds” in one sentence? C’mon, man!