"A legion of horribles:" On Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Problem of Evil

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats slain of dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horse's ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than that brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Oh my god said the sergeant.
-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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Cormac McCarthy is lauded by some as the best living author for his work, such as Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West and No Country for Old Men. He is known for his ability to weave both sparsity and intense detail into his books, but far more importantly McCarthy's ideas should somehow provoke the reader to think.

I know a lot of you guys were mad about the ending of No Country because Anton sort of got away; the only way he was hurt was by the freak chance that a car side-swiped him running a red light. It was clear all through the movie that Anton had absolutely no tempering influence and would even spit in the face of God were he able, but the fact that such evil could happen in our world raises questions.

What does this passage above say? Well, to put the whole thing in context, Blood Meridian takes place out in the lawless West theatre of the Mexican War. 'The kid' (BM's main character) has just been involuntarily placed in the service of a small irregular regiment on the American side, submerged in the hostile environment near the border.

There are basically no rules to speak of--they've all been thrown out the window. Violence is spurred by the subtlest acts, and spirals out of control ex nihilo. The Indians the band encounters are described best as barbaric and, to say the least, illiterate to the customs of polite civilization.

They kill without discrimination and do not generally know who they kill. In one scene, all of the cavalry receive their fates, given to them in Spanish from unidentified riders via Tarot cards. The combination of these two traits bases life on one thing simply: chance.

When one experiences a world like this, justice isn't really possible. That's why people usually get a little wary talking about things like Calvinist predestination (ie, how did people actually BELIEVE in this?!). Well, the thing is, piety depends on a just God who dispenses his will to the world. But religion gets a little bit tougher when surrounded by "vaporous beings from regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools."

The irregulars are quaking with fear. They know a white flag doesn't stop their skin from being separated by a metal tool from their head. Providence to these people becomes a hilarious idea, which, if personally expressed, would probably result with the speaker mortally wounded (cf. the priest of Blood Meridian run out of town and murdered because he was an 'alleged' pedophile [which he wasn't]).

Therefore, any attempt to sanction the people of Blood Meridian with law or God becomes an impossibility; chaos is the only law, and it is as binding as gravity. Modern political science sort of labels this as the 'State of Nature,' but there is one problem with it: 'reason' is the law of the State of Nature. Therefore, this 'State' naturally ends because people will opt for the better idea of civility.

Yet Blood Meridian happens all the time: look at any odious regional mufti in the Middle East! By fiat the people are subject to terrible things and shared wisdom does not exist. People grow up around blood and guts as a way of life and think of each other as one man's chattel. How does Locke explain when people don't abandon this for something better? Is it as if small-time dictators have the resources or man-flesh the Brits did in 1776?

We like to think that these people's only grievance is the fact that they are depraved--that some money or food or comfort would remove the instinct to kill for the plain fact that they can kill. This is soothing because it makes them more 'normal' kinds of people, but they have already been pretty screwed up to the point that this becomes impossible: if God was gone then, what's he think he's doing coming back all of a sudden? How is that just? The evil springs from the brutal appetites of man that are as old as the Greeks themselves--and it makes life just that much more contemptible. Solving the problem becomes a contemporary version of Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot: you can't figure out how to logically untie everything, you just have to hack through it.

This Dust Was Once the Man: Lincoln Considered

This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or
age,
Was saved the Union of these States.
-Whitman, on Lincoln

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It has been a trend in academia to argue over what Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War for. Yet in fact, Lincoln made it quite clear himself: "I would save the Union."

Whitman gets it right, though. The war simultaneously ended slavery and kept the Union together. One cannot understand Lincoln without also understanding why the fate of slavery was predicated by an intact Union, however.

In his letter to Horace Greeley of August 22, 1862, Lincoln says, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving other alone I would also do that."

An omitted sentence from the letter reads, "Broken eggs can never be mended, and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken."

Wait -- this all sounds very confusing. Lincoln wished only to save the Union, and cared about slavery merely in the sense that it helped that cause? This letter has been the object of frustration for some, and vindication for others, depending on which side of the issue they stand regarding Lincoln's political thought.

But what did the Union mean to Lincoln? How did the Union even start? Lincoln felt that when Britain unclenched its fist from the colonies, it was only natural that the people had themselves declared independence. What implications does that idea have?

Government -- even state government -- had its power derived only from the single legitimate source of authority: the people. But how?

The idea of the Declaration of Independence is the only way to answer this fully and correctly. Accepting the Declaration's idea that 'all men are created equal' was not popular. In fact, many deemed it superfluous to the Declaration because it "wasn't necessary" to Jefferson's cause of claiming independence--that was Woodrow Wilson's treatment of it, anyway.

Others like Stephen Douglas declared the Declaration only applied to white property holders; this school felt the colonists were merely asserting their own rights to be political equals with citizens of England. Arguments were made against the Declaration on empirical as well as 'moral' grounds. What did Madison, Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson think about slavery? Most of the Founders had slaves! Wasn't it clear that all men, with their differing faculties, weren't equal?

They get it wrong: this has to do with origins. This has to do with history. I might argue it even has to do with religion. When we say men are created equal, we mean that they are all given by their Creator certain rights. They are natural rights, present even before government was around.


Other national documents, viz. the U.S. Constitution, were merely the "silver frame for the golden apple;" they were instruments for the greatest claim that the Union made. The truth is, without the Declaration, the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. However, the natural law inherent to the Declaration is what Lincoln argued to be our greatest law: it is our golden apple. The Union and slavery were definitively incompatible.

This is all really cool and interesting, but what does it tell us about Lincoln's original claim in his letter to Horace Greeley -- that he would "save the Union?"

It's simple: the death of the Union meant the death of the Declaration. The idea of 'all men created equal' would reside only in the memories of a few old men. Men who become dust.

Winston Churchill: Thought and Action

Winston Churchill is someone who took Life seriously. But are men split by two different paths toward a great Life?

“But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.”

Churchill has “pity” for undergraduates who waste their schooling; pity is different from disdain or holding anger. He actually has sympathy for them because he was once the same way – Churchill was often faced with academic probation and worse in his early education.

Later, Churchill talks about his own Republic, recalling Plato’s ideal society. If Churchill had it his way, only people who truly wanted to learn would be in school. ‘Life’ is not something to be taken lightly. Likewise, there is a difference between ‘thought’ and ‘Thought,’ as there is also a difference between ‘action’ and ‘Action.’

Socrates comments that justice might be something like “minding your own business.” In Plato’s dialogues like the Euthyphro, Socrates, as a thinker on the highest plane, can never really act out on his Thought. This explains why one must be “nailed to a cross” either of one or the other.

As political beings, we need utility, which is why Congress doesn’t merely think all day about what should be done, but tries to make a good decision. There are no Socratic figures in DC. However, we also don’t want a bunch of Oedipus types running around, who act without knowing what they are doing.

When Churchill liberated undeveloped British territories, he felt that he was shining light into a dark place; the civil British life was a gift, and it took Winston going into the breach to give it. This type of ‘Action’ was more meaningful than the technical trade employed by a mason or welder. I think Churchill sees the necessity for these kinds of people, but they just have to realize that there are higher things in life they could be doing.

The problem is deep ‘Thought’ is required to inform the decision to ‘Act.’ It’s not clear that we can have both, but Churchill seems to think he had done it.

More on this later...

Harriet Jacobs: Religion in the Slaveholding South

Religion formed an important part of Harriet Jacobs’ life, as seen in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, even though the institution tried to corrupt her piety. Also true of Frederick Douglass’ narrative, Southern plantation life contorted religion into something it is not: Jacobs’ early conception of piety is exactly the stuff of Tolkien’s Mordor, where Sauron’s handmaidens sketch their ‘innocence’ in comforting platitudes and with sophistry condemn the truly just and good.

It is interesting that slaves had religion at all. In Aristotle’s Politics, he says that religion requires a certain amount of luxury and ease to believe that ‘the good’ can be sought and maintained. It is hard to see why this is necessary, until modern philosophy developed the idea of nihilism; Nothingness as the only truth. Belief in Nothing comes from a tragic experience of life, and one can see why this could happen: imagine sharing love with your mother, who is suddenly whipped, has a bloodhound let loose on her and then is sold to another place far away. It is not difficult to imagine anybody living like this laughing outright at the concept of a caring God. In this world, love leads inevitably to suffering; the only way anybody does escape suffering is by chance (cf. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil).

Religion has a hard time adequately addressing the idea of ‘chance,’ which is why the Calvinist’s predestination is difficult for modern people of more affluence (thus having less need to address chance) to understand. However, whatever myth somebody believes, it is more acceptable when one is on chance’s good side: through the early years of her life, Jacobs “was so fondly shielded that [she] never dreamed [she] was a piece of merchandise, trusted to [her owners] for safekeeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment” (281). Because Jacobs had a relatively good life in her youth, her grandmother was able to imbue a sense of morality and faith into her. It seems to be a general rule that most of the younger slaves in Jacobs’ narrative believed without apology in a just God: Jacobs relates the story of a mother beside her daughter (she was dying in labor with a child) told by her mistress, “Heaven! There is no such place for the like of [your daughter] and her bastard.” The girl replied, “Don’t grieve so, mother; God knows all about it; and HE will have mercy upon me” (287).

Although this girl of fifteen years believed God would save her, it seems terribly morbid she felt that salvation came only by death. On the plantation, most thought the justice of God only appeared in afterlife; it was hard to see Providence (“Who knows the ways of God?” says Jacobs’ grandmother [284]), and thus an otherworldly sanction became the only tether to faith. Piety and morality were capable of only the most devout since God’s work was literally nowhere to be seen.

This was true for mainly one reason. Religion was crafted by the ruling class to fully exclude blacks, and in fact to make blacks enemies with it. When her child was to be baptized, Jacobs says, “My grandmother belonged to the church; and she was very desirous of having the children christened. I knew Dr. Flint would forbid it, and I did not venture to attempt it” (295). Jacobs did end up baptizing the child after Dr. Flint went away for his medical practice, but this episode clearly shows how religion was discouraged among slaves; whites opposed black participation in religion on the ground that they were not good enough ‘things,’ let alone people.

Why this is important can be explained: in Plato’s Republic, Socrates discusses with Glaucon and Adeimantus the idea that the most moral person is the one who has the reputation in the polis as the most immoral, yet still seeks ‘the good;’ in the Christian story, Jesus was not exactly a rockstar everywhere he went – a lot of people hated him. Because it requires a tremendous beatitude to continue this sort of life, many abandon the castigating path of piety for lower standards. Conversely, says Plato, the most immoral are those who create a façade of morality while truly being wicked. In his Duke of Marlborough, Churchill writes of one such person, Louis XIV:

“No worse enemy of human freedom has ever appeared in the trappings of polite civilization. Insatiable appetite, cold, calculating ruthlessness, monumental conceit, presented themselves armed with fire and sword. The veneer of culture and good manners, of brilliant ceremonies and elaborate etiquette, only adds a heightening effect to the villainy of his life's story.”

For Churchill, the villainy is that ‘the bad’ was presented as ‘good.’ It helps to recall how appealing the snake appeared in Eden; his artificial ‘goodness’ was something Eve could not resist, and considering his true motives, this made the snake purely Satanic.

In Jacobs’ narrative, most people fall somewhere in between these two poles, except for Dr. Flint. He tried to sell Jacobs’ grandmother in private, saying it was out of respect for her, when it was truly to escape his own humiliation (285). In another case, Dr. Flint caped his dubious motives for trying to send Jacobs to an isolated living space as “trying to make a lady of [her]” (288). Since people like Dr. Flint were presented as moral beings to the community, a real problem arose for the religiosity of slaves, because (especially for those who could read Scripture like Jacobs) it contradicted the idea of God and justice: “…the condition of the slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible” (291).

The simple fact of the matter is that civil life, where one could base what one saw on rationality, was far different than slave life, where passions drove decisions. Literally nothing that happened on the plantation made sense on any level: clouded rationality was itself what prevented whites from seeing blacks as political equals (cf. Peter C. Myers’ Our Only Star and Compass). Yet eventually, Jacobs became free and religion was restored to its righteous place in her life, as she concludes, “It does not require man’s praise to obtain rest in God’s kingdom” (315). But to come near that reality would be, recalling The Lord of the Rings, the same as believing the coarse, jarring bellow of Gandalf portending the ills of the Eye while Saruman sweetly expounds his affliction with a mellifluous tongue.