One of Fernand Braudel's fake-profound utterances runs, "The reality
of a social order surrounds us like the air we breathe." Whereto I'd been
wont to add, "And like Los Angeles, when you've been made aware of the air,
*something really stinks*. Problem is, Braudel *seemingly*, that is, one
should hope he had enough sense at that stage of senile dementia in which
he wrote the Three Books of the Law, to distinguish between Reality in the
ideological sense, which is listed under that name in the phonebooth, and
the objective reality, which we don't even know what we mean by that, and
which we most certainly don't want to know even exists so long as we gotta
go about our business which might get screwed up had we had to realize that
we're living in it while we're doing whateveritis wejustgottado. Social
socalled Scientists are the only subspecies of the latter living the whole
of their everyday-Normal lives almost, or entirely, unconscious of their
almost-every-move-and-thought constrained, like the jaded Noblewoman in
one of the future ? Lady Liu's adolescent kinky-sex manuals "For The
Wellborn Wife of Distinguished Ancestry Having Made Good Marriage With
Nothing Whatever To Do Thereafter," by the omnipresent pervasiveness of
the Observed. The kid sister of the future Liu Yu, apprenticed to a cobbler
(perhaps, who knows, a foot fetishist in a period when, in China too, such
men were weird and freako even as they are among us, so far as we acknowledge),
who heard the song of marching feats of arms, joined the Army, sought to be
all he could be, perhaps succeeded, found herself, by sheer genius, as proven
by the IQ test results, admitted to the Palace School For Young Ladies in the
year 363. Said year, in time, and time is indeed a screwy Thingie, became part
of her dissertation title "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
*jinshi* degree, World System Studies Program, Southern National University
at Jiankang, Southern National Peoples Traditional Empire. Year 389 in
enumeration from arbitrary fixed point of no known significance"; entitled,
*Mirror Image: Roman-Persian Imperial Rivalries on Mesopotamian Silk Route,
from the death of Julian the Apostate to the Antioch Insurrection, 363-383*."
Today, of course, we know that the years AD, as concocted in 532 by Little
Dennis (Dionysius Exiguus), Roman monk, in accordance with Orders, possibly
unHoly, turned out exactly what the foregoing disclaimer disclaimed. For
the orders' source, Justinian, with ambitions to The-Greathood, 532 started
out, with the Nika Insurrection, a Disgrace which was damnwellbetter gonna
be made good, Or Else. We know now what that Or Else was, and we no longer
need Lady, most recently Louise Liu to tell us. In her lectures at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, I mean.
Of all the forms, varieties, and nuances of unpopularity & rejection Ms,
subsequently Lady, Liu endured at the Palace School for Young Ladies, endurance
of virginity cut the worst; was near the top of the stigma list. In wiving,
noblemen preferred Experienced Women; the Officer Corps had its caste commit-
ment to VIRGINITY OR DEATH. I needn't spell this out precisely. So, with her
allowance money, Ms, later Lady (when Liu Yu, by patent of the incumbent Son
of Heaven/Yellow Thearch, was admitted to the diminuated privileges of what
the Americans called WOOLWORTH NOBILITY) Liu purchased a bunch, call it four,
adolescent, call it fourteen-year-old, farmboy slaves, inured to hard,
unremitting, mindless toil, and instructed, by signlanguage, they had to
learn ars amatoria as if instinctive, how she wanted to be hurt and the
precise meaning of the delta x wherewith it was made emotionally compelling;
thereafter, they were free, rather, encouraged to take money for their own
keeping, from housemates not under the restrictions she herself endured.
All she wanted for herself was Friends, Companionship of Fellow Women.
She wrote, before entering University, a Feminist Tract. This is Lost,
has not come down to us. Its sole trace left in the Histories may or may
not be evident in this footnote (Huang, 1990a, p. 72) relating to the scandals
of the Liu Song dynasty (420-479) founded by Liu Yu:
"Liu Ziye was a teenager who occupied the souther throne for eighteen
months. The chronicles report that he was once approached by his half
sister, a young woman called Princess Shanyin: 'You and I differ in
gender; yet both of us were born of the same father. Now look: You have
palace women counted by the thousands; but one husband is all I have!
What kind of inequality is this?' He therefore provided her with thirty
male concubines."
At University, when sixteenyearold Lady Liu was exposed to StateofArt &
Cutting Edge Professional Literature in English or translated therinto, she
encountered factoids, inconsequential eo ipso, but devastating to self, hers.
Eg, in 404, Liu Yu would seize power; in 420 would ascend the Throne. She
need not, after all, have done anything so weird ab initio. Consequently when,
in her interview of 376 with Valens, following "a furious night's note-
scribbling," the Augustus of the East, whom Ammianus Marcellinus called "a
man equally ignorant of Literature and War," told her, Girlie, get lost,"
she huffed, "My brother's gonna be Son of Heaven, and what the fuck are YOU?!"
Lady/Louise Liu was wont to say, "The Dark Ages defies all wellintentioned
efforts at rehabilitation. It fu-, uh, *******well WAS that bad, so bad, as
it happened, that only an Armenian Imperialist Intervention, Yes, I do mean,
allude & refer to the United Snakes of Armenia, affectation acquired from
your comedy troupe Firesign Theater, could get it even worse than it coulda
got with no help at all. Wasn't for Huns, woulda been others. You figure on,
you got Huns? Ho. You got Attila an' those people, born losers, we called 'em.
Too wellmannered to survive. Why, Attila even *liked women*. UnHunnish,
requiring vast cultural changes in the Hun mentalite and gender role
configuration. My perusal of the relevant literature informs me that Attila
gave his life to the cause of proving to his young and beautiful beloved that
he was still the man he used to be. Compared to that most chivalrous, True
gentleman, our Huns....
"combined their native savagery with all the vices of a decadent
civilization."
ASIDE from having whateverittakes to get Conquered by Germans or suchlike,
can anyone here please suggest to the rest of the class what's this Decadence
thingie. Ms Su?
"Debasement of the coinage."
Ms Gu?
"Sex in high places?"
Mr Fang?
"Barbarians in the army."
---FUCKING RACIST BITCH!
Beg pardon?
"Why you allus callin' onna whitelike peoples, not bros & sists?"
All ye what art weary & heavy laden, I give ye rest. Anyone's got open
eyeballs, I callonem. Perhaps you, now I see th' hate stare, got something
to add to the foregoing?
"Th' whocares, whybother trip!"
Exactly so, almost. On the very verge of the Eve, the Seven Sages of the
Bamboo Grove, if y' digwhaddImean, were whuzhappnin', I dunnowhatchookidz say
today instead, well, say, whydont'cha read thisyer sicko poem aloud to th'
class; compare while yer atit, t' gangstarap, remembrin' the while, these
folks is filthy, beyond all imagination, rich!....
*****
"...Shi Lei's nephew, Shi Hu (ruled 334-349) was a monster of debauchery
whose own son tried to assassinate him" What's the fallacy here, class?
EG, as we say, who f'r'instance got assassinated when they *didn't know
yet* the motherfucker wuz a monster of debauchery. Very good. "(and was
duly executed by his father). This Tartar Bluebeard used to have the
most attractive of his concubines roasted and served at table: 'From time
to time he used to have one of the girls of his harem beheaded, cooked
and served to his guests, while the uncooked head was passed round on a
plate to prove that he had not sacrificed the least beautiful.' With the
contrast of character not uncommon among barbarians perverted by their
first contact with civilization, but capable of being reformed by the
preaching of a saint, Shih Hu was one of the most zealous protectors of
Buddhism." (Grousset, Rise & Splendour..., p. 106)
So ya got the Before an' th' After. Now, would a WHITE MAN, who done got
religion, act like the BEFORE, when it's, y'know, already AFTER? Haha, yagotme,
knowin' fullwell I's'agonna run a hot irony over yer starched shirtsan'blouses.
I am talkin 'bout WHO? Who, meanin' WHO WHUT MADE X-tianity what it's been
ever since, the Discriminating, Persecuting, and Majority, or DIE. So long as
that aint us. What Stalin did for Communism. Lenin having saved himself from
ultimate ignominy by dying with excellent, compared to CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE
I COULDA MENTIONED, TIMING. But thaz revolutions, a whole nother colour of
the kettle of fish. In a deservedly obscure book, whose name I shan't dignify
with mention, Daniel A. Foss situated a Thingie called Revoutionary Dictator-
ship in the, haha, "natural history of social movements," such that, at peak
intensity, you get, uh, say, Taborites, Pride's Purge & Cromwell, the terrorist
thugs who massacrated the Armenian Tories of whom the minority escaped to Hell,
Hull, & Halifax, the Committee of Public Safety, the Bolsheviks and War
Communism, Fidel with all the Committees for Defense of the Revolution
panopticon claptrap, and A Big Red Sun Rises inna East/China Stinks of Mao
Zedong, y'know; and of course, yer basic Islamic Revolutionary Party, after
an original fake called the Rastakhiz Party, only this time it's REAL, so
watchit, girls, if y'don't want acid inna face. But who's t'see th' fuckin'
face, nohow, yer ol' man hasn't looked at it in years, and you got this burlap
sack over it Elsewise.
This, whut I just said, is 'bout *social movements*, which this Daniel A.
Foss usefully, for a change, distinguished conceptually, not always substan-
tively, from religious movements. Meaning, you can have periodic Spiritual
Great Awakenings, Reform Movements, Heretical Movements, Orthodox Reinvigora-
tions, Mass Conversions to a Whole Nother Faith, and the Broad Masses continue
doin' th' same old shit. Whut wuz the original conception or promise on both
sides, goin' allawayback. Slaves kissassonmasters, wimmin on dudes, an' stuff.
NOTHING IS CHANGED except after death, unnerstand. Unless you were Jewish in
need of the McCoy Messiah. The Jews, for hundreds of years, in between full-
scale guerrilla wars and after, even, had ideologically motivated guerrila-
bandit terrorists called *listim*, who imposed their own law and order under
Roman noses with the Imperialist Occupation knowing diddly; and there's vast
tracts of Talmud devoted to, say, wife gets kidnapped by Romans or puppet
troops, don't pay, she's damaged goods. Kidnapped by *listim*, pay, cuz she's
inviolated an'wid honour intact. This wuz, I tell ya, almost as good as the
Chinese version. X-tians, on Principle, inna most Pricipallated fashion,
rebelliolated only, solely, an' exclusively onna Religious plane, which aint
no conflict at all, come down to it, pushcometoshove, except and unless and
when it does, which is so subtle an' complex an' finetunedified to call with
precision, it's a motherfucker, lemmetellya. But dig, as the old folks say;
grok, gnow. These X-tians been fulminatin' bout Principalities and Powers,
not the Powers of X, mind you, but what art Within The Beltway, whuzzabeltway,
that is where the Capitalism-Specific Form of Human Sacrifice, appellated
Belt-Tightening, doth not prevail. And have been so doing for THREE HUNDRED
YEARS. Year's 325. Connie sez, Till last year, when I kicked ass on Licinius,
you wuz Persecuted. What wuz yer Job, t'get Persecuted. As X-tians. Now, I
have got done changed yer job description, thusly. I am, as Commander In Chief
of All Thingies Existing On Earth, whence they get to go upstairs further on,
and on Earth I order all Thingies to get run the Army Way. I, your sole
Augustus, a word centuries old meaning MORE THAN HUMAN, ie, SUPERMAN, am gonna
preside at the X-tian National Convention, Nicaea, where it will be CONCLUSIVE-
LY DECIDED, by me, myself, alone, with my conscience, what Christianity means,
exactly, therefore, with comparable exactitude, is. Which may be done compe-
tently solely by Greeks. Whereafter the jobs and money will be passed around.
Ye that believeth in me, and I don't hafta do this, are in effect district
directors of the the Ministry of Social Welfare. Loaves, yes. Fishes, special
permission only. DISMISSED!
Now, class, who can tell me whaddafug I'm doin' lyin' here stark naked in
this bathtub....Okay, all historians agree that Connie's high-society wife,
Fausta, died in her bathtub. Version I sez, she got speared like a fish in
the tub at Constantine's orders. Version II sez she was speared like a fish
*and* got drowned at the same time with the spearers holding her head under
water. These historians' accounts follow from the inference that Fausta, as
a high-society wife, was delinquent from standpoint of adherence to the code
of political behaviour dictated to high-society wives of Major Politcal
Players, in pursuance whereto it is incumbent upon the wife, if given good
and sufficiency of SUBTLE HINTS to effect that her demise, of a fatal nature,
is strongly if not urgently desired, required, even, must dutifully bump, or
have herself bumped, off. The third version I found in the previously-cited
Constantine and Eusebius (qv, this was posted on Sept 29). Author sez, Fausta
was indeed the Good Girl and, having heated the bath to overmuchly excessive
H on the C to H scale, fainted from the heat an' boiled herself to death, doing
her Wifely Duty in commission of Forced Suicide.
Still, he killed her, the motherfucker.
So, class, you write me a paper for next class, and in a trice, soon's you
are all done split out th' door I am gonna take SOAP to this stinking corporeal
body, on the following: WOULD YOU BUY A USED RELIGION FROM THIS MAN. Now,
listen, kidz. Constantine, unlike Great Stalin, got away with it. Constantine
had Eusebius; Stalin had, inter many alia, Zhdanov. Nobody believes today in
the Greatness of Great Stalin; nobody believes anything written by Zhdanov has
any Truth-Value more respectable than UNDEFINED. Yet, I shall conclude with
a citation from the WORLD'S LEADING AUTHORITY ON ROMAN EMPERORS IN GENERAL,
Fergus Millar, in The Emperor In The Roman World, 1977: "If we may trust
Eusebius, and why should we not...."
Ten billion dollars' profit was made off the Southern Empire in Antiquities.
Daniel A. Foss