| SPINBUSTERS |
| WhupStick Victim O' the Week |
| Remembering the Head of John the Baptist |
| Although I had invested most of my life savings in preparing to teach, I quit both the job and the academics, and never looked back. Alma Mater in all her tyranny was more than I could stomach. I did not like the anti-male mindsets and agendas of the university educators, school officials, and many � though most certainly not all -- teachers. As in the rest of the culture, our educational institutions, from K through doctorate, are decidedly � and gloatingly � misandrist. Indeed, they are firmly matriarchal. A modern American classroom is no place for a male of any age, and I knew that with each paycheck (however miniscule) I received, I betrayed those boys, and by extension, the girls too. I realized that I was grooming boys for the same second-class citizenship I had experienced in the preceding thirty years, and that one day they would look back and see me not as an authentic mentor, but as their betrayer. I also began to run afoul of the forces of feminine �protection� whose agendas and interests dominate �education.� My politics � or rather disgust with politics � at the University was not appreciated. My voice was silenced in a hundred ways, subtle and overt. A non-servile white male that the kids like to hang onto is a sitting duck, and it was only a matter of time before resentment on the part of someone � or a collective of someones � would turn to accusation and the inevitable Kafkaesque proceedings of �justice.� It broke my heart, and the kids were crestfallen, but I walked. Now what in hell does any of this have to do with old Baptist John and his pirated skull? Mucho. Muy mucho. Ol� John wasn�t some cornbread country preacher. He was a liberated, brilliant man, a solar revolutionary of the first order, an angel of dissidence. The fire-sword that sprang from his mouth laid the groundwork for the Christos. A hermit � meaning a free-thinking, free-acting male � he ran around the Holy Land railing against the State of his day, and against the occult Powers That Be. He is relevant to our times because modern America in many respects is a doppleganger, and a recapitulation, of the Roman Empire. John easily saw through the hypocrisy, greed, and brutality that was imperial Rome. He found Rome a regressive and pagan � that is, matriarchal � floozy dressed up in mannish clothes, and he identified the excesses of Rome as the antithesis of real masculinity and service to god. Likewise, he criticized the Jewish people both for their submission to Whore Rome and for the absence of authentic masculine values and behavior. This pissed Rome off to the maximus, of course, but like Jesus, John�s own culture eventually silenced him, with Rome merely the agency of bloodletting. �Prophesy not in thy home lands,� said the Christos. But John did, and the Jewish civil authorities, especially the wealthy matrons, were no more enamored of him than was Rome. He was a threat. He had to go. See, John had gone off on Herod Antipas, Roman Tetrarch of Galilee in Palestine, over Herod�s incestuous marriage to Herodias, his niece and the former wife of his half-brother. John denounced the marriage as a degeneration to the ways of the Great Mother, whose bonds the early �patriarchies� were struggling to break, even as we are today. For speaking truth, Herod imprisoned John � doesn�t that sound familiar � but rightly feared to execute him. An execution might have incited ascetic elements in the culture, and stirred up the ever-fickle populace. In addition, one could say some of the angels would not be pleased, Powers be damned. It was a delicate political, and spiritual, situation. Herod�s father, Herod Antipater, steered the clan toward a combination of Jewish religious practices and Roman social observances. For his time, Herod Antipas was a learned, widely travelled man. He received his formal education at the court of Caesar Augustus. His cunning made him a court favorite, even with Augustus' treacherous wife, Livia � though the fox was careful not to displease the cobra. Herod was a lackey � a weak man, toady of the State, a typical Toxic King -- but he was no fool. He was caught between a political and religious powderkeg on one hand, and a pure-dee prophet on the other. Unlike people in modern cultures, Herod was aware that folks like Baptist John were better left un-messed-with. In Matthew 14:2, upon hearing the first reports of Jesus� ministry, Herod quails, �This is John the Baptist, he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.� Herod is full of pride and power before his dinner guests or soldiers, as when he mocks Christ. In private, however, he is pursued by demons, rightly fearing the consequences of his actions. Murdering an indomitable, gnosis-filled prophet -- a holy man -- was certain to anger what Herod conceptualized as divinity, in his case a cross between God and the gods. More than civil unrest, Herod feared the obvious spiritual allies of John. In any age or culture, an authentic male is that most rare and dangerous of beings, not to be taken lightly by Powers of Church or State. |
| Part two of seven |