Tag Archives: Mardi Gras

Just checking in

Last night on the Academy Awards there was a faux pas. The best picture award was announced for LA LA Land and then turned out to be awarded to Moonlight. I am not above making a few jokes about that fumble. Meanwhile I also recognize how much success and organization the Oscars show otherwise and contrast that to how many points of infrastructure and organization in my own life are barely holding on. I fixed about ten things that needed fixing last week but the curve is still more to entropy than progress. So how can I criticize one glitch.  Hollywood is something I have posted about before here, here and here. In addition, I have often mentioned The Blob made in Abbeville and on which I worked as well as Louisiana Story, made in Abbeville about which I studied and wrote but have only published a little.  Today I am a bit sleep deprived and the weather is odd but I will try to get a few things done since I cannot party very much anyway. Feels more Lent than Carnival inside my head today. A different man would not watch award shows when his life has largely slipped out of the contentions where he once competed. But I still watch human excellence of various kinds and sometimes indulge in hope for some reward for some of my unrewarded labors. But I am more tired than excited and other than this post won’t be likley to discuss the Oscars much.

 

I have been staying fairly busy with a lot of things that needed doing, helping a friend get settled back into the United States of America after a long time away and working on lawns and trying to maintain various equipment with insufficient resources.Things like moving somewhere where I might thrive more readily, finding decent work for pay, editing my novel or dissertation for publication, real quality recreation or anything else is not able to be done just now effectively.  I need to try to use Lent to do the impossible by paring away some of the relatively necessary. it will take some real sacrifice to try to be good to myself in the long term. Not likely to matter much in all honesty. I also watched the Academy Awards last night. This is Lundi Gras, tomorrow is Mardi Gras and then Ash Wednesday.   I have also been spending time on things that just  concern me for now and take time.

The Feast of the Epiphany, end of Christmas and start of Carnival Season

This is a very vug day for me in the year. Though in the USA we celebrated Epiphany and the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child and Holy Family on Sunday. This feast is many things we remeber Jesus and the Holy Family going into Egypt where advanced stuies in Judaism, Greek Science and Paganism, Buddhism and other parts of the worlds ferment have influence on the child and family. We see Christmas end and the official church go to ordinary time while many Catholics got carnival’s slow start. Twelfth Night tonight was a huge feat in colonial Louisiana but not much today. Conservative families who are well organized will plan to box up and prep or have a party that includes some boxing up. In addition they will also have the first of the King Cakes honoring the three kings. Whoever grts the slice with the image of a baby representing Baby Jesus must throw the next party or in more modest groups bring the next cake to the routine gathering.

Today I will concern myself with some ordinary work but also go to a basketball game and keep Epiphany in my heart. Maybe I will keep it a bit in the open as well — we shall see. Carnival season runs to Mardi Gras which means Fat Tuesday and is the day before the austerities of Ash Wednesday and Lent take hold.

Monarchy and Royalist Culture in America: Past, Present and Future/ Part One

I wish to outline the subject of monarchy and royalism in the United States of America. It has to be a significant part of the total discussion of the changes I am advocating in this long series of posts advocating an American Revolution. This time returning to mixed government from something which is tyrannical derivation of republican democracy whereas before we returned to mixed government from a corrupt royalist monarchy. In both cases seeking an equilibrium of the three forms of good governance which are monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. However, in this case moving from a republican to a royalist context. In a world where very long but entirely simplistic analysis is common we would need a bit of concise but complex analysis.In these brief posts I have tried to provide some of that.  We had a republican mixed government at the federal level with the President as the republican Monarch, the Senate and the Supreme Court  represent the republican Aristocracy and the House of Representatives  comprising the Democracy. That is the ideal government of many old forms of government. The President was elected by electors variously chosen, the Senators were elected by  the States legislatures. We now live in a dictatorship of the masses which is tyranny modified and complicated but still a majority tyranny at heart. The mixed government equilibrium is lost. I have proposed restoring mixed government this time Revolving into a royalist system.

This is not an easy thing to discuss and in fact is an entirely enticing thing to flee from discussing as rapidly as one possibly can and never look at again.  Yet I feel that I should discuss these issues here. I am afraid some of my dreadful lists may be coming up soon in an effort to address these matters. The changing of a from of government is always difficult and a bit traumatic under any circumstances but is even more difficult if on ie trying to establish a royalist regime like this one in this country. That is because the specifics of this case are altogether very challenging. It is important to make clear that this is not being proposed in abject blindness and disregard as concerns the strong factors related to the frustration of these plans.

We do have some royalist cultural elements so lets list some of them in no particular order:

1. Many of the Mardi Gras traditions of the Gulf Coast

2.The Kingdom of Hawaii and the role of Royal Hawaiian culture

3.The little known and appreciated but not inconsequential Acadian royal tradition.

4. The many ties with the Bourbon monarchy and aristocracy in the Revolution and Louisiana.

5. The heritage of the Napoleonic Empire  and its aristocrats with Louisiana, the Louisiana Purchase and the Confederacy.

6. The British ,French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian colonial heritage of many and varied regions of the USA.

7. Mexico’s failed European based  empire launched under Napoleon and ending in the execution of Emperor Maximilian is tied to our history.

8.Mexico’s Aborignal  American Empire of the Aztecs and the Mayan kingdoms (much less so) have ties towards our land’s populations and history.

9. The Bible and many of our religions which are influential have a strong royalist component and affect people’s thoughts and lives.

This is not nearly an exhaustive list. Also if (and that is nearly inevitable) there are some of these models that you particularly despise and reject for some reason  remember that Hitler’s Third Reich, the French Reign of Terror andmore than  half the failed states you ever heard of were republican systems. Yet surely we do not believe that everyone who founds a republic is going to end up where they were in those republics. Our examples given would be the sort of supermarket from which we could shop for precedents and patterns with the greatest legitimacy.

My posts are being written in a sense of just doing something that cannot be said to make an enormous amount of sense in terms of political logic.  I am doing what seems right more than what seems expedient. That is something many people do, attempt to do or think they are doing. However, when it comes to promoting a royalist revolution in the twenty-first century United States the improbabilities are so great that all other aspects of the quest are overshadowed by the low probability of success.

What  about the very heart of the matter. If there were an Emperor and Supreme President what would that accomplish and what would that be worth? Well first let’s consider the context of our situation. There are other forces out there seeking to create an empire in this area in the near future.

The Premiere of Libya addressed the United nations for the first time in many years after President Obama was elected. He also go the terrorist mastermind who took down the flight over Lockerbie Scotland released at about the same time. His speech did not get very good analysis and it got marginal coverage. Libya’s President Qadhafi attempted to simultaneously adopt the President, proclaim him President-for-Life  and President forever of the United States and to collect over seven trillion dollars in reparations. Obama may not have been ready at that time to support the idea of proclaiming himself African Emperor of the USA or even the moderate step proposed by Libya. The folks at Harvard might not like the way it came across, I do not know.  I am sure many honest people could argue that he had been teasing about the Emperor although Qadhafi did seem to suggest the nonroyalist dictatorship known  to have replaced the Republic of Rome before it adopted some royalist traditions as an Empire. Libya was part of the Roman Empire and the Premiere of Libya seemed eager to bring those facts to light. So all other possibilities should be interpreted in the light of the fact there may be real machinations going on to establish an African Emperor of America.  A primary value in making the Arcadian-Acadian Basileus Emperor is that he would take up that space and answer its calls and threats directly.

I have posted a great deal on royalism and its implications in this blog.  I have posted agreat deal about Acadian and American political, cultural and social traditions as well. Anyone reading this post who is really interested could search the blog and find parts of the subject discussed or ask me a question in the comments and have me direct them to those passages which discuss much of this.

But Obama is getting rid of our nuclear arsenal wholesale, committing us to use Russian capacity to get to space, spending us into oblivion and doing all he can do to raise every suspicion that he will utterly destroy this country. He is part of a deeply sick and disordered social context. We are running quickly out of time.

There are differences between dynasty and dynasty, king and king, regime and regime but any royalist monarch has the effect of joining the interest of an entire society into one personal interest. Part of being a royalist monarch is to be selfish and deprive others of certain kinds of selfishness. Commonly under many different religions and cultures a good king will allow individuals in the realm to accumulate power and wealth in many ways but still to be ruthless in denying them the powers and economic opportunities which are most likely to endanger the realm.

I will go into more details later but the structure of the proposed Royal and Imperial House will be essential to the other aspects of the Empire fitting together properly and the type of monarch here envisioned. However, it will be disturbing to the rest of the society to some substantial degree.  The next post may have to be longer. The point of this first post is simply to show that creating such a regime as I have described more or less right now is not impossible or unthinkable. It would simply have to be done — that is all.

In Time of Lent: A Few Thoughts

This Lent has begun for me with yesterday’s Ash Wednesday mass at St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Abbeville. The modified fast and abstinence from meat which the Church still reqires of it adherents where I live combined with the ashes on my forehead and the foreheads of others helped to make the change into this season more palpable and real for me.

I am not going to write much about these things just now. This year has been a rather Lenten year in many ways over the last twelve months. So the sobering feeling is minimized when one was already in a grim mood. The events that made the carnival season a carnival season for me related a great deal to the success of the New Orleans Saints football team. That is not to to say I did not cut and buy king cakes, follow the Mardi Gras events at a distance and remeber previous seasons. But I did less than usual. My usual observances are not among the most extreme or even the large group of moderately active carnival participants. But Lent has come and brings all its associations of spirituality, seafood, a more somber Catholic liturgy and the slipping away of our Southern U.S. winter.  I am really quite ready to think and emote along Lenten lines.

The Crest of the Carmelite Order which operated the Mount Carmel Elementary School I attended.

 As a Catholic Christian my life is marked with moemories of many other Lents. These seasons define my religious identity over time far more than many other more notable and pronounced ceremonies and holidays somehow. 

My brother Simon Peter is confirmed and my sister and Godchild Mary is his sponsor.

 Whether in school, family or parish life — Lent has been important. Not all of my associations and memories are so clearly defined as Catholic experiences as those shown in these three images. But many countless experiences and are so very Catholic.  

My Sophomore Class Award from the Franciscan University of Steubenville

 

So I head into Lent. That is my only comment really in this post. A definitive transition. One thing I like about my religion and faith is that it provides some transitions.