L.B.: Worlds collide

Left Behind, pp. 364-365

There's a bit of a lesson in the first meeting of our two heroes, Buck Williams and Rayford Steele. It's a fine portrait of the insecure alpha male in his native habitat. Rayford seems so eager to strike a dominant posture that I was afraid he was about to start peeing on trees or mounting somebody:

"He's with us," Rayford told the woman at the desk. He shook Buck's hand. "So you're the writer for Global Weekly who was on my plane."

As always, the authors intend Rayford's perspective to be trustworthy and reliable, but that's not really possible with a character as self-absorbed and un-self-aware (in the worst sense) as he is. This is off-putting in Left Behind because it's not possible for readers to share the authors' insistence that Rayford's self-importance is deserved and appropriate. But maybe in a sense, by sharing their character's delusion and presenting us with this unreliable reliable narrative perspective, the authors have unintentionally created a new kind of meta-fictional device that goes beyond Nabokov's wildest dreams.

In any case, I love that membership in the Pan-Con Club (fremder!) is something that Rayford flaunts like a hard-earned trophy. "He's with us," he says. Don't worry, my young friend, I have pull. Stick with me and I can get you into traveler's lounges at airports all over the country. I'd bet he's the same way with his membership in the Columbia Record House. ("I know people, my friend. I can get you eight CDs for a penny.")

"What do you want to interview me about?" he asks Buck:

"Your take on the disappearances. I'm doing a cover story on the theories behind what happened, and it would be good to get your perspective as a professional and as someone who was right in the middle of the turmoil when it happened."

What an opportunity! Rayford thought. "Happy to," he said. "You can join us for dinner then?"

"You bet," Buck said. "And this is your daughter?"

While Rayford is desperately establishing his alpha-male status, Buck just plays along. He doesn't undermine the pilot's home-turf advantage by pulling out the Pan-Con Club ID that a frequent flier like him is sure to have. And he strokes Rayford's ego, playing to his sense of status "as a professional" and describing him as being "right in the middle of the turmoil" when, in fact, they were both in the middle of nowhere, somewhere over the Atlantic when The Event occurred. While Rayford continues trying to maintain control -- "join us for dinner?" -- Buck isn't interested in that game. He's playing a game of his own -- "This is your daughter?"

Later, as we revisit this scene from Buck's perspective, he makes this clearer:

He had been tempted to tell Captain Steele that, as of the next day, he would no longer be just a writer but would become executive editor. But he feared that would sound like bragging, not complaining, so he had said nothing.

The context there is that he'd have been perfectly comfortalble bragging to Rayford, but he didn't want to sound like he was bragging in front of Chloe. It's because she's standing there that he circumspectly avoids playing the Who's More Important? game with Rayford.

So the lesson here for alpha-male executive types like Rayford is this: While you're busy posturing to establish your dominance, the other guy is probably trying to figure out how to nail your daughter. So who's really the alpha-male here?*

The larger problem with this scene is that this isn't how strangers would be introducing themselves a week after The Event. They would still be in the throes of that shared trauma and thus wouldn't really be meeting as strangers.

There would be, post-Event, some kind of ritualized exchange that would acknowledge this common ground of loss and bewilderment, some way of asking and answering the "where were you when?" and "who did you lose?" questions. "This is my daughter, Chloe," would be followed, inevitably and involuntarily, by "she's all I have left after her mother and young brother vanished." And Buck would respond by telling Rayford about his missing sister-in-law and the niece and nephew whose absence was still a raw wound that "tugged at his heart almost constantly." Recognizing the imbalance between their respective losses, and feeling again the pangs of survivor's guilt, Buck would awkwardly express his sympathies to the Steeles, reciting the inadequate stock phrases he would have come to rely on after dozens of such conversations during the past week.

None of that happens here, of course. Instead we just get, "Hi, I'm a very important airline captain." And, "Hi, I'm the GIRAT, who's the babe?"

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* I don't know enough about the Tim/Jerry dynamic to speculate on this as subtext, but one has to wonder. They both must be aware, at some level, that their dual protagonists are thinly veiled Mary Sue surrogates. This places Jenkins in the awkward position of having to write scenes in which his stand-in is "courting" the daughter of LaHaye's stand-in. I get this picture of Jenkins sitting uncomfortably in the living room, fidgeting with a corsage in a plastic container as LaHaye asks him pointed questions about his "intentions."

Comments

[bulbul]

So, do you remember where you were when the Wall fell?
Funny, but I don't remember the Wall at all (hehe). It's not because I was eleven back then, it's just that the subsequent events completely overshadowed it. I remember November 19th, the first big demonstration in Prague and I remember November 29th when the parliament revoked article 4 of the Constitution, the one about the leading role of the Communist Party.

[Karen]

I was 26 when the Berlin Wall fell, working at the worst job of my entire career. I don't remember what I was doing on that actual date, though. I clearly remember the Ceacescus' execution, though. I was in the bar in the Weston Galleria in Dallas, on December 27, 1989, watching CNN on the bar TV. Madame C. had on a beige tweed suit and a brown or black shirt. What does it say about me that I so clearly remember her outfit? I'm not quite sure I want to know.

I find the question of why Buck has no sexual experience interesting, but mostly as part of a larger question. None of the Good Guys in the series have ANY interesting sins. No drugs, drug or gambling habits, credit card debt, nothing. Now, in the FundieWorld where I grew up, the holy roller churches liked nothing better than a reformed sinner. They thrived on stories of how God redeemed someone from heroin addiction, porn obsession, booze, whatever. The problem is, they only liked the stories, the actual reformed sinners had to find a less discriminating church. The best reformed sinners conducted revival meetings, then left town after a week. Welcoming an actual person with a sordid past into the fellowship means that the members have to acknowledge that they are also sinners. This is especially true with what Dorothy L. Sayers called the "disreputable" sins of gluttony, lust, and anger.

L & J's readers all come from the same background I did, recently prosperous people with a tenous grasp on the middle or upper-middle class. Their readers are probably mostly women, who in FundieWorld are vastly more vulnerable than the men are. They might themselves drink, abuse the VISA, or have an extremely close relationship to Xanax, but they aren't like THOSE people who screw and take drugs and go into bankruptcy. Only good people get saved, thus they are good people. If Buck had sex before, he wouldn't be a Good Person and wouldn't deserve to be saved.

Scott, I live in Austin, in Mission Presbytery. My congregation sponsored the seminary education of one of our members who was in a long-term, stable, faithful lesbian relationship. She finished school with high grades and huge support from the school, only to have her candidacy for ordination torpedoed by someone from California who had never met her. Well, in addition to not even being from the same state. Another congregation in our Presbytery had a member removed from the rolls because he had publicly stated he was an atheist in the past. Apparently expressing doubts on any point of doctrine at any time now is grounds for excommunication. You have my sympathy; our denomiation has a dedicated cadre of lunatics in it.

[J]

To such people, that sexual virtue is one of the cores of their faith, way above charity & forgiveness; that's why sex is such a big deal among the ideological/religious decendents of the Puritans.

Do we really want to give them an inch and accept that what they call sexual "virtue" really is virtuous? It seems in equal parts A.) superstition mixed with B.) the American verison of Purity Culture (i.e. Untouchable castes, Levites-can't-touch-the-dead, Eastern Orthodox girls can't ever go into the shrine, etc.) and C.) killjoyism.

In other words the thought that "XYZ sexual act/relationship is morally wrong" is an extremely thin facade smeared over the really motivating ideas that:

1.) "XYZ sexual act/relationship will make you grow hair on your palms" or
2.) "XYZ sexual act/relationship is unclean" or
3.) "I want my children and grandchildren to have just as boring and frustrating a sexual life as I had"

[Robb]

They probably aren't all exorcizing their own demons, either.

Zing!

[Robb]

@ J:
I'm not going to get into what is & is not virtuous or righteous, but it must be said that among the Puritans (as in, these people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans, and their related denominational kin, along with followers of this: http://www.theopedia.com/Holiness_movement) placed personal virtue (aka - avoidance of the practice of sin) slightly higher than most other Christian groups, which would put it equal with repentance & seeking of forgiveness for sin.

Even that is very broad - it's been interpreted lots of different ways by lots of folks. Exactly how it relates to sex can be speculated tons of ways. I just think that the majority of American Evangelical Protestants are influenced by these concepts, even if they don't hold to them or even consider them orthodox.

I don't.

[J]

No, I agree totally Robb. I'm just wheelin' out the theories.

Regarding this bit:

"...placed personal virtue (aka - avoidance of the practice of sin)..."

I'm normally content to criticize religion itself rather than how anyone practices it. But I can't resist pointing out that this bit seems really counter to what I always thought Christian teaching was: That we're all going to sin, even as Christians, that to try and resist it personally was a sign not of virtue but pride and arrogance.

Now I do know about those folk--can't remember if they're Assembly of God or else some strain of Holiness people--who believe that after they're baptized, they are incapable of sin. Oh and monkeys have also been known to fly out of their asses upon occasion.

[Fraser]

Best Berlin Wall story: A local columnist saw it on TV, called to her kids to come see "the Iron Curtain falling!" Kids nonplussed response "Why do we need to iron the curtains?"
I liked Scott's stories.

[Jenny Islander]

"So, do you remember where you were when the Wall fell? "

A bit of background: It was well known in my home town that we were a designated nuclear target because of the nearby Coast Guard/former Navy base. So the Cold War was as personal as a toothache when I was a kid.

I was in the progressive, open-minded, free-spirited dorm at the university I attended for my freshman year (only). My roomie was watching the news on her TV. She stared at me blankly when I jumped up and started running down the hall, shouting "The Wall is coming down! The Wall is coming down!"

Everybody in that dorm gave me the "duh??" expression. Nobody could figure out why I was so happy. Even the guy who had a poster of an East Berlin border guard helping a little kid hop over a coil of barbed wire. He had no idea what it was--he just thought it was a cute picture.

So mingled with my joy that the Cold War was finally over was the growing realization that I hadn't really found a group of like-minded imaginative people when I applied to join this dorm. Looking back, I think they were probably even more self-absorbed than the average college freshman.

[Jeff]

"Hi, I'm a very important airline captain." And, "Hi, I'm the GIRAT, who's the babe?"

I instantly translated these into LOLcat: "Hai! I iz a bigdeal flyman!" "Ohai! I iz bigdeal no-newswriter! Can I has yr cheezburger?"

Berlin Wall: I remember seeing it on TV, but not where I was at the time.
9/11: Heard about on the radio on the way to work, and most of my co-workers had web-pages (CNN and the like) getting updates.

I accepted Scott's stories on face value, as opposed to women iz Eeeevil. Of course, he comes right back with a post that confuses socialism with Stalinism, but wotthehey.

[kodiak]

Well, I'm too young to really remember anything about the Berlin Wall, as it fell when I was still in the 'riding bikes/building clubhouses' stage of my life. But I do remember a world event that was only a few years later.

1991 I remember lying in the living room, playing bard games with my sisters since my parents had taken control of the room and the tv to watch strange green videos of bombs going off in some place i had never heard of. What I remember most was that there was a tension in that room that even we kids could feel.

Looking back on it I know that it was the first hours of the first Gulf War and that my parents were worried that someone would do something stupid and a button would be pressed in Washington that would change the world forever. They had grown up with a fear that I still don't really have (though I can appreciate it now), the fear of The Next Nuclear War (tm) and the insane political theory of mutually assured destruction.

I felt the same way on 9/11, that something incomprehensible was happening that would change things, and at that moment I didn't know if they'd change for better or worse (and to be frank, I still don't have a solid bead on that one)

[Tehanu]

I agree with whoever said that it's the surprise that's memorable. I would go a bit further and say "shock" rather than "surprise." The Berlin Wall coming down was an important event but not a surprising one, not with all the other glasnost things going on. Or take something like the Challenger explosion -- it was a surprise in the sense that nobody was going around "expecting" it, but who's shocked any more by plane crashes and other technological failures?

[cjmr's husband]

playing bard games

Got one of those downstairs, it's called "Bethump'd With Words".

[Tehanu]

I forgot to mention, Praline's analysis of Buck's sex life, or lack thereof rather (at 11:43 am) is terrific.

[Multispork]

Interview Rayford as a 'professional'? Professional what? Surely it isn't relevant unless he's a professional mass-disappearance witnesser? "And as the words 'flimsy pretext' were redefined, we looked on in awe."

OT-ish: Has LaHaye invested some of his royalties in plastic surgery and toupees/dye jobs? Because in the photo on the back of the LB paperback I browsed through yesterday he looks quite uncannily like a ventriloquist's dummy. Right down to the creepy grin, empty-looking ironed jeans and checked shirt. Jenkins was standing behind him, and no, I couldn't see where his hand was.

[ako]

Oh, I remember the first Gulf War. The first I heard of the war, my parents were out. My older brother was watching me and my younger brother, which meant we got to order pizza and stay up late. We were watching something on TV, I don't remember what, when the news broke in and announced someone I had never heard of had invaded some country I hadn't know existed, and this somehow meant America would be at war soon. I was eleven, so I didn't entirely get it. My older brother tried to explain it, but he was fourteen.

Later, I found out one of my classmates had relatives in Tel Aviv, and we all spent the war a bit scared her aunts and uncles would be blown up.

The color of green they used in the night-vision cameras to show the bombings still scares me a bit. It was the first time I realized I was actually watching real people get blown up on television. When I see it, my first thought's still that people are being killed.

I think the Berlin Wall stuck in my head partly because I was so young, and my parents attached such importance to it. I had the rather silly idea that it was the end of Eastern Europeans being oppressed.

[Jackie]

@ J: "Intarnetting is like going on a sex tour of Brazil and bringing no rubbers."
As a brazilian, I'm not that happy about reading that. The country has a population of about 190mil. I'd ask if the point was that everybody here was promiscuous, but somehow I have the feeling the point was more that all of the girls are either prostitutes or easy.
Looking from one side, the country prevalent religion is Catholicism, and even as most people are only nominal catholics, not really following the rules, we're still too much repressed, and women are still expected to be madonnas or ingenues. I _wish_ we could have some more psychological and emotionally good sex going on around the place, everybody would be much happier.
On the other side, we have one of the best HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in the world. The program manufactures and distributes generic versions of antiretroviral drugs, providing them at no cost to all HIV-positive people in the country, and the prevention strategy focuses more on condom education and distribution. Of course it's not 100% effective, it is difficult to reach everybody with the info and the condoms, and there are idiots who know all about how not to do it and still do it wrong here as much as in any other place.
Prostitution is not a crime here, so yes, if you are a tourist and you pay someone to have sex with you, and then you pay more to do it without condoms and you end up with a STD, I think that tells more about you than about my country...

...............

I love LB Fridays and I'd comment on topic, but I'm already running late for a very chaste family meeting.

[Thlayli]

I'm a little surprised to see how many of y'all were 9 or 10 in 1989.

Me, I was a college senior. I knew enough to realize that what was happening was a Very Big Deal, that the world as it had existed my entire life was going to be different from now on.

[PurpleGirl]

I have no idea where I was when the Berlin Wall came down or how I heard about it. However, I vividly remember the process of it being built and the horror stories of East Germans trying to escape to West Berlin.

Watching the coverage of the Berlin Wall was one of those formative moments. It still stands out clearly in my memory. I was a smart kid, and it was obvious that it was coming, but the actual moment was still a shock. It was a first real lesson in what freedom meant, and it's one of those things that I count towards what makes me who I am, if that makes any sense. My kid sis, who is four years younger than me, also remembers it because my mom was really good at explaining it to her, even though she was seven at the time.

In regards to the first Gulf War, I remember the buildup (we had an address for writing soldiers posted on the board in one of my classrooms), but the actual moment, I was reading in my bedroom when my mom called me out to view it. I can still tell you what book I was reading (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) because I still have the book, in which my twelve year old self had enough foresight to record "This was the book I was reading when the Gulf War started" in the book.

9/11 was my mother calling me from the hospital. She made it sound like it was an accidental plane crash, but kept muttering about it being history, so I was somewhat unprepared for what I found when I turned on the TV. The thing that sticks out most about that day was the fact that there was a bunny trapped behind my fridge. (It's a long story.)

Columbia's the last thing that sticks out. There, I was staying at a friend's house in San Diego, and their guest room opened onto the kitchen. So I was drawn out of my sleepiness by my friends' parents talking about a space shuttle accident. My confused brain went through the following steps. 1) Why are they talking about Challenger? Wasn't the anniversary of that a few days ago? 2) Hey, wait a second, somebody in the Bay Area community posted something about going outside and watching Columbia come back in. 3) Hey, that was today. And then the lightbulb went on and I jumped out of bed, not wanting to have the really bad idea I had confirmed. But sure enough, that's what was going on.

Those are the things that stick out in my mind, anyway.

-kat

[Richard Hershberger]

Karen: "our denomiation has a dedicated cadre of lunatics in it."

I'm not conversant with the various flavors of Presbyterians. I though PCUSA was the nondescript mainline version. Am I wrong about that?

J: ""...placed personal virtue (aka - avoidance of the practice of sin)..."

I'm normally content to criticize religion itself rather than how anyone practices it. But I can't resist pointing out that this bit seems really counter to what I always thought Christian teaching was: That we're all going to sin, even as Christians, that to try and resist it personally was a sign not of virtue but pride and arrogance."

You don't have it quite right. We are to try to resist sin, but recognize that we are by nature sinful. We therefore cannot expect perfection either in ourselves or others. While we are not perfect, however, we can ask for and receive forgiveness. (There is a heresy which holds that once one is truly converted and one's sins washed away, further sin is impossible. It naturally follows that whatever such a person does isn't a sin. Much whackiness inevitably follows. This heresy pops up every few centuries, but fortunately seldom gets much traction.)

[Dahne]

Kafka's post-Rapture novel - now that would be worth reading!

Rayford Steele hung up after an uneasy phone call to find that he had been transformed in his home full of frilly knickknacks into an enormous Christian.

[cjmr]

First Gulf War: We were newlyweds, but husband was off on his co-op job semester, so I still spent most of the time in his ex-room with his ex-roommate and roommate's fiancée (who just happens to be my best friend) and CNN. She and I spent a lot of time talking about how our lives would change if the guys were called up/drafted.

Even though the country at war, it didn't seem to be anywhere near as life-altering an event as the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall had special significance for me, because four and a half years earlier (as an exchange student) I had stood with a group of other students at the border between West and East out in the country, where the border was simply a double row of very high barbed wire and electrified fencing, placed very carefully 15 yards on the East German side of the border. The guide said that that was so that the East German soldiers could shoot people escaping even if they were past the fence. We had been there about fifteen minutes before East German helicopters showed up and circled around until we left. On the bus on the way back to town the guide talked about how he had cousins he'd never met and aunts and uncles who he hadn't seen since he was a little boy because their village was in East Germany, 20 miles away. So when we were watching CNN, one of the things I was thinking about was what it would be like for him to finally meet his cousins.

[mcc]

"Your take on the disappearances. I'm doing a cover story on the theories behind what happened, and it would be good to get your perspective as a professional and as someone who was right in the middle of the turmoil when it happened."

What an opportunity! Rayford thought.

...Hm. An opportunity for what exactly?

[Karen]

Richard, PCUSA is the nondescript mainline version. 95% of us are completely okay with the 21st Century. The problem is that a loudmouthed 5% blames our decline in membership on ordaining women and being nice to gays. They have a lot of time on their hands to go to meetings and pass resolutions.

[Jesurgislac]

Rayford Steele hung up after an uneasy phone call to find that he had been transformed in his home full of frilly knickknacks into an enormous Christian.

Dahne wins the thread.

[Sarah Jane]

I had just turned 4 at the time of the Challenger explosion. I was watching Smurfs, and the program was interrupted for the breaking news. Talking with others, it seems that 4 is remarkably young for a person to remember a major news event like that.

I was not-quite-8 when the Berlin Wall came down. I don't remember where I was when I heard the news -- as many others have said, it was a significant step in an ongoing process -- but I do remember concerns following the fall of the wall that some parts had contained asbestos and possibly radiation, and people with souvenir pieces of the wall should contain them properly.

I was 8 at the start of the first Gulf War. Like others, I vividly remember the green images of bombing and destruction. I didn't understand why these things were happening, but I knew enough to be horrified.

It's interesting as I talk to people just a few years younger, who don't remember the Cold War at all, and who have very little sense of the world before 9/11. I think that many of us are profoundly shaped by childhood environments and memories -- whether it's the Depression or the post-9/11 world. It makes me wonder what my own [as-yet-hypothetical] children will experience and remember, and how the world of their childhood will shape the people they become.

[Gabriel]

So, what I take away from the review of this passage is after the rapture the world will be just like one huge company Christmas party, full of posturing and maneuvering by a bunch of halfwits who think they're going to be top dog in the coming year.

[Mabus]

I would have said sexual virtue is simply a matter of self-control--the same thing that keeps people from getting drunk or high, gambling their savings away, buying lots of unnecessary luxuries...you know, the other standard indicators of excessive love of personal pleasure. Of course, some of these are easier to hide than others--it's harder, though obviously not impossible, to keep quiet about a drug addiction than it is to hide that you're molesting the choirboys.

I suppose someone who sees pleasure as a good in itself would find such a perspective disagreeable, but then theoretically the same person would see nothing wrong with shooting up, or even getting a pleasure-center implant. (You know, the kind that monkeys press the buttons on till they die.) Once I realized that, I set aside the idea of pleasure as a primary good and started asking what kinds of things create pleasure and why.

[Iorwerth Thomas]

There is a heresy which holds that once one is truly converted and one's sins washed away, further sin is impossible. It naturally follows that whatever such a person does isn't a sin. Much whackiness inevitably follows. This heresy pops up every few centuries, but fortunately seldom gets much traction.

Ah, Antinomianism. My favourite heresy, largely because it has such a cool name...

[hapax]

I am old, old, OLD. I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall vividly because I was trying to type my master's thesis, and everyone kept dragging me out to look at the television set because why would I want to focus on a bunch of Anglo-Saxon nuns when I could see history happen before my eyes?

9/11 I remember very vividly because we had just moved away from NY a few months earlier. All I could think of were my friends and family (everyone I knew immediately was fine, but many lost someone in their own circles -- one friend was literally on the phone with a pal who worked in the WTC when the first plane hit.)

I don't know what to say about Scott's stories. I don't think they are misogynistic, personally, but I do think he is guilty of transference -- he's met a number of assholes who happen also to be Christian, and use their religion to justify their assholery; therefore he concludes that Christianity = assholery. It's a common error, though. I myself think of all the assholes I know who are libertarians, and use their political theories to justify...

As to the other main theme on this thread, I refuse to think of Buck's sex life. The man has the vague genitalia of a Ken doll.

[Painini]

kat, Columbia sticks out for me, too - partially because it has something shameful in common with my Sept. 11 memory.

I first heard about the Towers in morning calculus; everyone was talking about something, and for those of us who didn't know what, the teacher asked a girl to go up front and explain it. She did so, and decently enough - except she kept laughing every few beats. (We hadn't registered the implications yet, obviously, and it took everyone a minute to realise that, yeah, yea far East, people had already been at work in the buildings; then the laughter vanished.)

Columbia I also heard about in class, but I remember going home and waking up a space-loving friend who'd spent the previous night on our sofa. He blinked for a minute, then decided I was having him on, making a joke about the book he was reading at the time. It took a minute to get my bearings back and explain - no, really.

I usually have a morbid sense of humour, but ...

[hapax]

My favourite heresy, largely because it has such a cool name...

Personally, I am fond of Pneumatomachianism, for the same reason. Also Patripassionism.

[Karen]

hapax, I think you and I are about the same age. As I noted above, the Berlin Wall came down when I was 26, making me roughly twice the age of the modal Slactivite. Want to go take our canes and chase some kids off the lawn?

[Laima]

The Challenger Explosion was the first event of this sort that I remember very vividly. I was working at my first job, in retail, and when I got in to the store, everyone was glued to the radio. Later, after work, a bunch of my friends and I went out, just to be together, and my (very first) boyfriend told me he loved me for the first time.

I was 23 when the Berlin Wall came down, and remember seeing it on tv, and thinking it was about time. It was especially cool to visit East Germany in 1990 and get a souvenir piece of the Wall - but this comment thread is the first time I've ever heard that there was asbestos and/or radiation issues with the concrete. Hmm, maybe I should do something with my little souvenir piece, but what? It's been sitting on one of my bookshelves for 17 years now. I've handled it, too, but mostly just picking it up and looking at it.
Weird.

[Ember Keelty]

Am I the only one convinced that Buck is one of those "technical virgins"? I bet he's been taking blow jobs for years. Not much involvement going on there, right?

Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down?

Probably in my crib, as I was less than a year old.

Although I have vague recollections of the 1996 elections and the Monica Lewinski scandal, the first historical event I paid any real attention to was the 2000 elections. I was rather upset by the outcome, partly because I considered myself a Democrat (both my parents were), partly because I felt bad for the people in Florida, and partly because Dick Cheney scared the shit out of me.

[cjmr]

Anybody else remember where they were when they heard Reagan had been shot? I'd just come back from lunch in and they made a special announcement to the whole elementary school. I think that was sixth grade.

The first major event I remember was the first thing I ever read in the paper--that Nixon had resigned and Ford was going to be our new president. Of course I immediately asked what re-sig-ned meant. (That really freaked my parents out, because they thought my reading skills were confined to words like 'cat' and 'green')

[cjmr]

So is Ember the youngest commenter here?

[ako]

I suppose someone who sees pleasure as a good in itself would find such a perspective disagreeable, but then theoretically the same person would see nothing wrong with shooting up, or even getting a pleasure-center implant. (You know, the kind that monkeys press the buttons on till they die.)

That would really be someone who saw pleasure as the ultimate good, wouldn't it? I see pleasure as a good in of itself, but not worth giving up all other goods for. Shooting up leads to bad consequences. Pleasure-center implants lead to bad consequences (namely death).

That being said, I imagine the big divergence between us on sexual morality would be in deciding what constitutes harm (and how to balance competing harms). A lot of specifically religious ideas about sexual morality only make sense from specific religious perspectives, and lack secular justification (not all, but a lot). The idea of harm to the soul only makes sense to people who have specific ideas about the soul. I imagine, if we really got into it, we'd get a fair list of situations where you see harm and I don't (and likely vice-versa), and quite a lot of disagreement about which form of harm is more serious. I also imagine it would be a great way to ignite a colossal flame war, so I'd rather not.

My point is there's a difference between pleasure-as-a-good and pleasure-as-the-ultimate-good.

[Robb]

hapax, I think you and I are about the same age. As I noted above, the Berlin Wall came down when I was 26, making me roughly twice the age of the modal Slactivite. Want to go take our canes and chase some kids off the lawn?

Oh man, I bet you guys hate that "the rock and roll" music that us kids like, and want to enact laws banning dancing? Don't make me quote Psalm 150 on yo' asses...

because Dick Cheney scared the shit out of me

I'm reminded of that scene in Aliens where Newt is talking to Ripley about her nightmares, and says "My mommy always said there were no monsters, no real ones. But there are, aren't there" Ripley smiles grimly & says, "Yes, there are..."

[hapax]

Goodness. The first newsworthy thing I remember was the moon landing. We had just got our first television set that month. I remember the '72 elections, and the Watergate scandal -- my mother was glued to the tv for the entire summer, and my father talked about loading up his gun and marching on the White House if Nixon wouldn't leave office. I remember crying when Walesa took office in Poland, because it was the first time in my life that I could entertain the possibility that the world would NOT end in nuclear devastation in my life time.

I think that's one of the things that's so infuriating about the whole 9/11 hysteria to old fogies like me. Not that it wasn't a horrible, horrible tragedy, but we remember what truly living in real existential terror feels like. Our parents remembered, and shared, the memory of a realfascist enemy bent on world domination. Bin Laden and his cadre of crazies just don't scare me that much. (Sort of like what our European cohort, who lived for decades with IRA bombings and Black September and all, must feel).

[Ember Keelty]

I won’t tell you there’s nothing ‘neath your bed
I won’t sell you that it’s all in your head
This world of ours is not as it seems
The monsters are real but they're not in your dreams
Learn what you can from the beasts you defeat
You’ll need it for some of the people you'll meet
-"Goodnight, Demon Slayer" by Voltaire

[Zorya]

hapax, I think you and I are about the same age. As I noted above, the Berlin Wall came down when I was 26, making me roughly twice the age of the modal Slactivite. Want to go take our canes and chase some kids off the lawn?

May I join you, Karen? I was 9 when Kennedy was assassinated, 20 when Nixon resigned, nearly 32 when Challenger exploded, 35 when the Berlin Wall fell, 36 when Desert Shield/Storm started, 41 when the Waco tragedy occurred and 47 when the Twin Towers fell. While I don't remember exactly what I was doing when I heard of these events (except 9/11) I remember them all.

[cjmr]

hmmm, hapax is a little olderer than me than I thought...

[Zorya]

Anybody else remember where they were when they heard Reagan had been shot?

Heck yes, cjmr. It was my 27th birthday and I was at my first base as a 2nd louie in the Air Force.

[Shaenon]

In any case, I love that membership in the Pan-Con Club (fremder!) is something that Rayford flaunts like a hard-earned trophy.

For a religious novel, Left Behind is awfully materialistic and preoccupied with worldly wealth and privilege--but a level of wealth and privilege that only fairly sheltered members of the lower middle class would find impressive. We know that Carpathia is important not because he's the leader of a foreign power, but because he can afford a hotel suite and (gasp!) his own business card. We know that Buck is a top reporter because he rides a lot of planes and he's been to Europe. We're supposed to be impressed that Rayford can get people into an airport lounge. It's a level of material success designed to impress small-town guys who only get a taste of the wider world when the boss sends them on a red-eye to Chicago every couple of years.

This is something I'm inclined to chalk up to calculation rather than incompetence. I'm pretty sure LaHaye and Jenkins know what real wealth looks like (hell, I'm certain LaHaye does). They could have made their protagonists ordinary Joes, or they could have made them realistic well-traveled, upper-middle-class people. Instead, they opted for wish-fulfillment, cynically encouraging their readers to indulge the fantasy of flying business class, leaving taxis running for twenty minutes, and, no doubt, being able to order room service any time you want!

[Michele]

I think I'm the same age as cjmr.

I vaguely remember people talking about Nixon resigning.
I remember SpaceLab falling to earth. 4th grade??
I remember wearing yellow ribbons for the hostages in Iran. (I also remember about the helicopters.)
Reagan got shot = 6th grade
Mt. St. Helens = 6th grade
Challenger = 10th grade
Berlin Wall = college junior, sort of (I had transferred schools, but not all my credits came with me, so it was weird)
9/11 = at work in Cleveland
Columbia = at home in California

[Jesurgislac]

cjmr: Anybody else remember where they were when they heard Reagan had been shot?

I probably read about it in the morning newspaper: I do remember it being in the news, but more for my dad saying, with unexpected sardony, that while obviously one disapproves of assassination, just the same, if someone is shooting at President Reagan one could wish they had better aim.

I remember exactly where I was the day John Lennon was shot.

[Jesurgislac]

Anyone else remember where they were when the IRA bombed the Brighton hotel where Margaret Thatcher et al were staying?

[cjmr]

Michéle,
I think we're within months of the same age. I think we were even born in the same state.

Jesurgislac,
With Reagan I don't think it was so much a question of 'poor' aim as of overly good doctors. Even ten years earlier, medical technology wise, and they might not have saved him.

[J]

Sorry if my sex-tour-of-Brazil bit rubbed you the wrong way, jackie. My fault. It was intended as more of a jab at sex tourism anywhere than at the nation of Brazil specifically. Or actually, it was just meant as praise for the virus-proof-ness of Mozilla Firefox and it fell rather flat even at that.

If it improves my pro-Brazilian credentials at all, I am a member of this organization.