New Orleans, the city of graves. It’s ancient hedonism leaves no smoke or haze.
Dull are it’s streets where macabre cronies tread. ‘Spooky Tours’ and ‘Voodoo’ pales to those they leave dead.
But for love of Motherly Breakfasts, Jazz delights, levies holding, and southern nights, I pour one out for New Orleans. Built on French bodies and American Dreams.
And just like a drunk corpse, once left out of sight, it shuffles into the morning, rising up to the light. The day will come when the old eats the new, when the swamp’s indigested rises to the pew.
Excellent article. Thank you for publishing. George Bagby should have his own Substack.
I live in a city a long way from New Orleans on a different continent, and yet much of it applies here too. The crime, the decline, the dysfunction. And yet, like Bagby's view that New Orleans and the USA itself is worth saving so is my own town.
I too sympathize with those who flee. Who can blame them? And yet that can't be a solution. America is big enough you can do it for a while, but not forever. The dysfunctional seek out functioning places to exploit.
It is great to see someone prepared to make the case for making a stand. It is also uplifting to see someone propose a solution. I too think many would embrace a Caesar willing to knock heads together.
I’m from the Mississippi coast and have lots of family in the city. We’ve lived in the area for generations and this almost made me weep... to be accurate, my family doesn’t much live in New Orleans proper anymore but have instead fled to Metairie. I’ve often fantasized about a Bukele-type round-up of the mobs who have destroyed/are destroying the best city in America. That solution-the Caesar solution, as you call it—really seems like the only one.
Refreshing to see a Christian who wishes to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
A bit ironic, how it's all but forgotten that this is one of Christianity's core tenets.
And that at no point did Christ say "render unto the depraved entrenched clergy what is the depraved entrenched clergy's". On the contrary, he was famously opposed to the Pharisees.
Jews believed that the Messiah would come to free them from Caesar's rule.
Christ came, but it was not to face off Caesar. He came to face off the Pharisees. To rail against the cynical marketplace. To point to the plank in your own eye. To change the path that the people themselves are walking, not to fight those who would impose worldly order, even a flawed one.
It's the habitual hypocrisy, depravity and blindness to anything beyond the material zero-sum games that will eat your soul. A flawed order won't do that; it's simply better than disorder. You can have disorder too if you want (Caesarless New Orleans with its depraved "civil clergy" being a good example) but Christ had come to bring something else.
In the end, Caesar's rule over Jerusalem still stood. "Means that he was not the Messiah after all", many had concluded.
Those who did not follow him, saw their domain destroyed and scattered after a hundred years, the third time that they mutinied against a Caesar. Then 18 centuries more passed before another version of that domain was reestablished. Reestablished in blood, and apparently fated to remain soaked in blood for as long as it stands. (truly tragic, when considering how many millions of good Jews and good Arabs live there, with no more than a plank or two obstructing their eyesight)
Meanwhile, those who did follow him, saw their domain grow, as hundreds of Caesars came and went, and saw it extend to all the corners of this world. (and beyond it, if you would believe)
So perhaps he was the Messiah, after all?
Perhaps it's just that the Messiah was not what people thought he would be. He was so much more.
Christ accepted harlots, to the shock of his contemporaries, harlots who would change their ways. As opposed to simultaneously ostracising them and having sex with them, which was the enshrined hypocritical practice.
They wouldn't be wives, that ship had sailed, but not all ships have sailed. They had a soul. They could convince young women to not go down that path, better than their own parents would be able to.
Alas, Pharisees were harder to reach than harlots. And yet he managed to reach Nicodemus.
The same may be possible even today. Remember that whatever you write, a Nicodemus might be reading it.
Stunning article and thanks for posting J. Ok, let's stop using the word "Caesar" and substitute the obvious one..."Trump". At this stage I'm tempted to suggest one simple litmus test to check whether he's serious this time; his VP pick. If he chooses Ramaswamy then Trump actually means to do something about the swamp, the TLAs, the deep state; if he doesn't then, broadly speaking, it'll be a repeat of his first term. Vivek's not perfect but he's young, rich and available, and his programme is at least 50% of what most of us are looking for. I'm a Brit, so not voting obviously, but if I was American I think that's the test I'd apply.
Its not what you vote for, it's what you're willing to put up with. I see much internet outcry on the decline of america, yet the biggest thing the "conversatives" have done is a riot on the capitol building. It is pathetic that no one dare stand up. You have the guns, use them.
I understand the desire for Caesar, but ngl that’s the last thing we should want. I doubt that Caesar would be benevolent, and I can almost guarantee tens of thousands would die from the resulting civil war.
The whole point of Caesar is he’s the alternative to a seemingly inevitable civil war, not the cause of it. The only way to avoid open conflict between the two irreconcilable sides into which our country is currently divided is a leader who’s able to transcend the limitations of the two sides and take a strong, realistic and head-on approach towards the symptoms of decline which are affecting all of us.
That’s the form that Caesar figures have classically taken in the past, and that’s probably the most painless resolution we can hope for right now.
This would work if Caesar’s actual rise to power didn’t involve a nasty, nearly decade long civil war and tens of thousands of deaths. Caesar is the alternative to the intractable system yes, but to take power and do anything he needs to then break the system. Because Caesar is the alternative, he causes the civil war. Serious challenges to the legitimacy of regimes rarely go unanswered and without oceans of blood. Caesar will be far from painless.
If you’re talking about the original Caesar of Ancient Rome, he most certainly was not the cause of the civil war - he brought the end to it. And it was only by consolidating power that he was able to reconcile between the two sides. Though it must be said that Julius Caesar is only the textbook example of the Caesar archetype, not the only embodiment of it. So things could go differently in our case, both for better or for worse.
New Orleans, the city of graves. It’s ancient hedonism leaves no smoke or haze.
Dull are it’s streets where macabre cronies tread. ‘Spooky Tours’ and ‘Voodoo’ pales to those they leave dead.
But for love of Motherly Breakfasts, Jazz delights, levies holding, and southern nights, I pour one out for New Orleans. Built on French bodies and American Dreams.
And just like a drunk corpse, once left out of sight, it shuffles into the morning, rising up to the light. The day will come when the old eats the new, when the swamp’s indigested rises to the pew.
Excellent article. Thank you for publishing. George Bagby should have his own Substack.
I live in a city a long way from New Orleans on a different continent, and yet much of it applies here too. The crime, the decline, the dysfunction. And yet, like Bagby's view that New Orleans and the USA itself is worth saving so is my own town.
I too sympathize with those who flee. Who can blame them? And yet that can't be a solution. America is big enough you can do it for a while, but not forever. The dysfunctional seek out functioning places to exploit.
It is great to see someone prepared to make the case for making a stand. It is also uplifting to see someone propose a solution. I too think many would embrace a Caesar willing to knock heads together.
I’m from the Mississippi coast and have lots of family in the city. We’ve lived in the area for generations and this almost made me weep... to be accurate, my family doesn’t much live in New Orleans proper anymore but have instead fled to Metairie. I’ve often fantasized about a Bukele-type round-up of the mobs who have destroyed/are destroying the best city in America. That solution-the Caesar solution, as you call it—really seems like the only one.
Refreshing to see a Christian who wishes to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
A bit ironic, how it's all but forgotten that this is one of Christianity's core tenets.
And that at no point did Christ say "render unto the depraved entrenched clergy what is the depraved entrenched clergy's". On the contrary, he was famously opposed to the Pharisees.
Jews believed that the Messiah would come to free them from Caesar's rule.
Christ came, but it was not to face off Caesar. He came to face off the Pharisees. To rail against the cynical marketplace. To point to the plank in your own eye. To change the path that the people themselves are walking, not to fight those who would impose worldly order, even a flawed one.
It's the habitual hypocrisy, depravity and blindness to anything beyond the material zero-sum games that will eat your soul. A flawed order won't do that; it's simply better than disorder. You can have disorder too if you want (Caesarless New Orleans with its depraved "civil clergy" being a good example) but Christ had come to bring something else.
In the end, Caesar's rule over Jerusalem still stood. "Means that he was not the Messiah after all", many had concluded.
Those who did not follow him, saw their domain destroyed and scattered after a hundred years, the third time that they mutinied against a Caesar. Then 18 centuries more passed before another version of that domain was reestablished. Reestablished in blood, and apparently fated to remain soaked in blood for as long as it stands. (truly tragic, when considering how many millions of good Jews and good Arabs live there, with no more than a plank or two obstructing their eyesight)
Meanwhile, those who did follow him, saw their domain grow, as hundreds of Caesars came and went, and saw it extend to all the corners of this world. (and beyond it, if you would believe)
So perhaps he was the Messiah, after all?
Perhaps it's just that the Messiah was not what people thought he would be. He was so much more.
Christ accepted harlots, to the shock of his contemporaries, harlots who would change their ways. As opposed to simultaneously ostracising them and having sex with them, which was the enshrined hypocritical practice.
They wouldn't be wives, that ship had sailed, but not all ships have sailed. They had a soul. They could convince young women to not go down that path, better than their own parents would be able to.
Alas, Pharisees were harder to reach than harlots. And yet he managed to reach Nicodemus.
The same may be possible even today. Remember that whatever you write, a Nicodemus might be reading it.
Stunning article and thanks for posting J. Ok, let's stop using the word "Caesar" and substitute the obvious one..."Trump". At this stage I'm tempted to suggest one simple litmus test to check whether he's serious this time; his VP pick. If he chooses Ramaswamy then Trump actually means to do something about the swamp, the TLAs, the deep state; if he doesn't then, broadly speaking, it'll be a repeat of his first term. Vivek's not perfect but he's young, rich and available, and his programme is at least 50% of what most of us are looking for. I'm a Brit, so not voting obviously, but if I was American I think that's the test I'd apply.
great read, sad what is happening to beautiful places like New Orleans and other American cities with such a historical background.
You get what you vote for.
Its not what you vote for, it's what you're willing to put up with. I see much internet outcry on the decline of america, yet the biggest thing the "conversatives" have done is a riot on the capitol building. It is pathetic that no one dare stand up. You have the guns, use them.
Use them on whom? Where? When?
Its not my country, but if i had to guess, i'd say march on washington
Populist delusion - neema parvini
Its a good book
Read it.
Why is a former academic driving people of color around in new orleans?
Got cancelled
I understand the desire for Caesar, but ngl that’s the last thing we should want. I doubt that Caesar would be benevolent, and I can almost guarantee tens of thousands would die from the resulting civil war.
The whole point of Caesar is he’s the alternative to a seemingly inevitable civil war, not the cause of it. The only way to avoid open conflict between the two irreconcilable sides into which our country is currently divided is a leader who’s able to transcend the limitations of the two sides and take a strong, realistic and head-on approach towards the symptoms of decline which are affecting all of us.
That’s the form that Caesar figures have classically taken in the past, and that’s probably the most painless resolution we can hope for right now.
This would work if Caesar’s actual rise to power didn’t involve a nasty, nearly decade long civil war and tens of thousands of deaths. Caesar is the alternative to the intractable system yes, but to take power and do anything he needs to then break the system. Because Caesar is the alternative, he causes the civil war. Serious challenges to the legitimacy of regimes rarely go unanswered and without oceans of blood. Caesar will be far from painless.
If you’re talking about the original Caesar of Ancient Rome, he most certainly was not the cause of the civil war - he brought the end to it. And it was only by consolidating power that he was able to reconcile between the two sides. Though it must be said that Julius Caesar is only the textbook example of the Caesar archetype, not the only embodiment of it. So things could go differently in our case, both for better or for worse.