In Which Nazis Dominate, But Not Quite to Their Standards

Little Falls, MN (August 23)--Went to an actual Episcopal Church for the first time in probably 6+ years because Eve was looking for a Lutheran Church (the Lutherans just in the last few days voted to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to become ordained) but the only one we found had started service a half-hour earlier, and so we went to the Episcopal instead, and they ended up being really friendly as I guess one might expect although it is really interesting how intimidating it is to go into a public place like a church when you're more or less a foreigner, and to participate in the service etc. etc. Eve mentioned as we left that it's really too bad that the Catholic Church stopped doing services in Latin, and I have to say I agree because not only does it create a common bond (in the physical rather than spiritual realm) but it enables a foreigner to find, well, not to be blunt but to find a place of refuge and sameness in a divided and xenophobic world.

Little Falls is the home of one Charles A. Lindbergh, senator, namesake of the State Park at which we've stayed the past two nights, and father of the more well-known Charles Lindbergh. But if it can be said that sons usually take on the political and cultural prejudices of their fathers (and this tendency is even stronger in political families), then I'm not sure exactly how I feel about the adoration of LF for Mr. Lindbergh, whose stance on WWII &c. I'm extrapolating from that of his son, who (I'm not sure how widespread this knowledge is so please excuse me if I'm rehashing C.K.) so corrupted his name and reputation (but not, as will be discussed, his mythology) by actively supporting the Nazis during WW the Second and being an outspoken anti-Semite and xenophobe and general, well, asshole (General Asshole...). So it's always interesting to me to see mythology (and here I refer mostly to the aviator, not to his father, even though Eve observed that the facade to the elder's museum looks suspiciously like the wing of an airplane) fly (ha!) in the face of the mythologized one's life as a whole. And Lindbergh is a particularly dissonant figure in this regard because the act for which he is mythologized is, or at least was, inherently apolitical (as opposed to e.g. Thomas Jefferson, whose slave-holding--and occasional dalliances w/ said slaves--cannot be held in absentia from his political writings: “We hold these truths...” etc.), so that it is logical (if not morally) permissible (if not responsible) to talk about Lindbergh the Aviator as a separate entity entirely from Lindbergh the Bigot. When you take US History in high school, you get the mythology and it's true you might get a reference or two to the Lindbergh Baby stuff but (A) that situation and its cultural context can be kinda tough for HS students to really understand and (B) unless you hear about the two events at the same time it's tough to reconcile the flight with the personal complications so that you start ot create two different people whose connection is so nebulous and vague (just the name) that they are, well, two different people. Which is really too bad because Lindy is such a fantastic example of the dangers of popular mythology: Philip Roth's “The Plot Against America”, despite being one of those books that actually reading does little more good than reading its summary (i.e. it's not a great book), is a disturbingly realistic imagining of a successful 1940 Lindbergh campaign for POTUS and consequent Nazification of these good old States and if it makes you think at all makes you consider other people whose mythology has been allowed to overshadow any sort of critical reflection on their person as a whole (and I'll be honest again, it's easier for me to think of Republican politicians of whom this is true than Democrats).