Uncle Bunky's Thanksgiving Homily

Wednesday
November 22, 2006
Uncle Bunky's Thanksgiving Homily

Dear Jaromir (& Magda),

Today, of course, marks the anniversary of JFK's assassination in 1963. It's been a timeworn custom ever since that dreadful day for Americans to ask one another: "Where were you when you heard the news?" And so, in keeping with that custom, I'll ask you, Jaromir: "Where were you when you heard the news?" I was in the 9th grade at Brookes Junior High School in Wichita, Kansas. We'd just come back to science class after lunch.

If Inauguration Day (March 4th) of 1933 symbolically marked the birth of FDR's New Deal, then in my humble opinion, November 22, 1963 marked the day FDR's New Deal was gunned down in the streets of Dallas. The day it actually began to die from those wounds, however, was that rainy day in 1968 when Hubert Humphrey was defeated by Richard Nixon because the rain prevented a few too many poor and minority voters (read: female African-American seniors) from getting to the polls. (The day it finally died was that November day in 1980 when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter -- just as Marshall McLuhan had prophesied. Its funeral procession was cleverly disguised as RR's inaugural procession up Pennsylvania Avenue. The date was January 20, 1981.)

I mention all this because of how I personally feel about FDR's New Deal, which is pathologically sentimental. The way most Americans my age feel about JFK, MLK & RFK. Of course, at the time when all this was happening, in the slow-motion of real-time historicality, it was as undetectable as the water through which it swims is to a fish. (Incidentally, this also happens to be my favorite metaphor for culture in general; as in: one's culture is as water is to the fish which spends its entire life swimming through it.)

Magda was asking what is "mythoklastic," as in The Institute for Mythoklastic Studies. And, if I recall correctly, since we were all three sitting in a noisy restaurant filled with enemy agents and the hour was getting late, I asked her if you knew what "iconoclasm" was and explained overly glibly that mythoklasm is simply a concept derived from iconoclasm. Several years ago, I Googled "mythoklasm," and was surprised to find that all the entries were in German. What do you make of that?

For simplicity's sake, for the time being, until I can come up with a more concise definition, let's just say that I tend to use the term "mythoklastic" as a euphemism for "secular humanist;" although there are times when I've been known to employ it as a substitute for the word "scientific."

Within the invisible ivy-covered walls of The Mythoklastic School of Therapy, the entire focus is on GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT. This is at the core of our core values and the highest of human virtues.

But, as simple as GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT may sound, you and I and several of our closest friends know all too well that it doesn't happen very often, during an average day's earthly business, here beneath the sun and moon.

OK. This seems like as apt a juncture as any for us to come to the end of page 1 and make arrangements to meet again, up ahead on page 2.

See You There,

Galen

(Uncle Bunky)

Two of America's Foremost Mythoklasts, Green & Dunbar