The Gypsy Horns of Guca (part 3)

Part 3

We awoke on the second day to a brass band right outside our bathroom window. This would be our wake-up call every morning around nine, as our street apparently had been designated as the rehearsal area for bands before they performed on stage. I learned that the first time you awake hungover in Serbia to the sounds of ‘Ederlezi’ (a traditional favorite), the experience is novel and wonderful. All times thereafter, it is no longer novel and exponentially less wonderful. But what never lost its appeal was stepping out on the porch in the warm morning sunlight and finding a freshly deposited plastic sack full of homemade cheese pies and washing them down with the inaugural shots of slivovic.

Homemade Serbian slivovic, the plum brandy I've also been calling rakija, is one of the great pleasures of life in Serbia and one that I have found difficult to replicate here in the States. After having tried commercially made slivovic in Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, and a Hungarian brand imported to the U.S. and found them all wanting, I learned that most Serbs get their slivovic homemade, either from the plum trees on their own land or from a friend or family members. The only danger in this: you, too, might take to greeting the morning with a few shots.

The second day of the festival took us farther afield culinary-wise. Ketchup and mayonnaise packets laid to rest, we made for endless grilled meat stands, where dozens of lambs and suckling pigs were being slow-roasted on spits. There a little illusion in this manner of cooking as one sees exactly what one is eating. And while seeing an animal corpse impaled on an iron spike from mouth to anus slowly turning over a fire may not aesthetically please or appetize some, I found the sight admittedly seductive, especially given the taste of the meat, which came as chunks on platters, cevapcici (little torpedoes of ground meat) in pita, and burger patties on buns. To adorn the flesh, each stand had a buffet of grilled peppers and onions, fresh tomatoes, tapenades, and sauces.

Noam, Marissa, and I became devoted patrons of these stands over the weekend. Aaron and Jesse had it tougher. Eating vegetarian in Guca, Serbia is no easy feat. Theoretically, given the presence of bread and the vegetable buffet, it should have been easy. But the trick was in communicating to the man behind the grill in hand gestures what one wanted, which was to him unthinkable. With impeccable pointing and loudly spoken English, Aaron and Jesse engaged in hilarious, occasionally successful, attempts to order a meat sandwich without the meat. Jesse, in his willingness to play the fool, was more persistent and often convinced the man to throw a pepper on the grill, albeit with a disgusted look on his face.

We passed the day in various diversions with dueling brass bands providing the score. At one edge of town was a carnival run by gypsies, where we spent a good hour riding bumper cars, careening into children while trying to keep our 64 ounce pivos intact. And then, strangely, after leaving the carnival, Aaron, Marissa, and I came across a mechanical bull in the middle of a field. The only people around were two supermodel cowgirls from MB whom we had seen the first night at the club.

“You want ride bull, please?” they asked in coquettishly broken English, after their pitch in Serbian earned them blank stares.

I generally leap at the opportunity to make a fool of myself, and Marissa is always up for an athletic challenge. Aaron might have declined under different circumstances, but beautiful women rouse a deep servility in him not otherwise apparent. He would have straddled an elderly man if they had suggested it.

Despite hailing from Kansas, where mechanical bull-riding is a required course in most school districts, I was no match for Marissa, who showed an alarming prowess. But she was nowhere as good as Aaron was bad. Somehow, as soon as Aaron climbed in the saddle, the empty field filled with gypsy urchins, who must have sensed the impending spectacle of a portly man on a mechanical bull. But rather than throw him from the saddle, the bull, once enlivened, instantly dumped Aaron off its back onto the ground, as though that was it had been invented for—like a dump truck unloading potatoes when the lever is pulled. The urchins cheered, Marissa and I took pictures, and, lo and behold, the Serbian cowgirls were charmed.

We recovered at a sidewalk café where a gypsy children’s band played. Even the bandleader was no more than ten years old, but he exuded the air of a lounge lizard from Havana circa 1950. His hair was slicked back and perfectly parted on the side. He wore a double-breasted white suit jacket with oversized shoulder pads, pleated and heavily tapered gray-check pants, and white leather loafers. And, the trumpet, which was nearly half his size, he played with a passion that seemed almost as ridiculously beyond his years as his dress.

That night was the headline concert of the festival—the Boban Markovic concert. Boban Markovic is in many ways responsible for bringing Balkan brass band music to the world. A gypsy from southern Serbia, he has become an international celebrity and continual presence on the world music festival circuit and anthology album releases. Boban Markovic is so good, he doesn’t even compete anymore. Whereas the other twenty bands that are invited to perform on the stage at Guca are all vying for the prizes of Best Orchestra, Best Concert, and the most coveted, Golden Trumpet, for single best musician, Boban Markovic and his Orkestar have long since won all these prizes. In fact, Boban is the only musician at Guca ever to have received five perfect 10s from the judges. Now having passed a significant share of his band-leading and soloing duties off to his son Marko Markovic, Boban is just along for the ride.

The 11-piece Boban Markovic Orkestar took the stage dressed in angelic white vests. Looking like Gabriel’s heavenly entourage, they proceeded to unleash the passions and furor of hell. To say that everyone danced like crazy is misleading. Dancing is not the right word to describe the complete surrender of control and joyous dissolution that Boban’s trumpets induced in thousands of rakija-drenched brains huddled together in a common pursuit. Convulsion strikes me as more apt, reminiscent of those medieval outbreaks of St. John’s and St. Vitus Dance, where a whole village would suddenly fall into a fit of uncontrollable dancing for days at a time. The only effective cure for the epidemic seems to have been music—which raises an interesting question. What if dancing came first, as a sort of pathological seizure, and music developed as a way to alleviate the sickness of dancing?

Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), trying to convey the Dionysian rapture induced in the audience of Greek tragedy, an art form he saw as essentially musical, also furnished the analogy of physical intoxication. He wagered that the Dionysian experience of total self-dissolution arose “either through the influence of those narcotic potions of which all primitive races speak in their hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, which penetrates with joy the whole frame of nature. So stirred, the individual forgets himself completely.”

But for Nietzsche, who allegedly (if we are to believe his Turinese landlady) liked to cut the rug privately in the nude, dancing to music was a sickness to be embraced, akin to religious experience:

"Man now expresses himself through song and dance as the member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk, how to speak, and is on the brink of taking wing as he dances. Each of his gestures betokens enchantment; through him sounds a supernatural power, the same power which makes the animals speak and the earth render up milk and honey. He feels himself to be godlike and strides with the same elation and ecstasy as the gods he has seen in his dream. No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art."

And, indeed, by the end of the concert, the sweat streaming down our divine canvases, we saw before us the true aesthetic masterpiece of 21st-century cosmopolitanism, a hybrid even headier than Nietzsche’s fusion of the Apollonian and Dionysian— a French hippie sporting a chetnik hat and waving a giant Serbian flag.

The Gypsy Horns of Guca (part 4)

Part 4

By Friday, the weekend masses had arrived. The streets were packed, lines for roast pork grew, and the stone trumpeter fountain in the main plaza, the central meeting place, was inundated in several inches of empty pivo bottles. Not only had more people arrived. A certain breed of more people had arrived— the universal spring break dudes. A transnational phenomenon, immediately recognizable by their penchant for shirtlessness, macho bravado, and all-around douche-baggery, the universal spring break dudes of Serbia added a small touch of chauvinist flare to this ensemble of traits: plastic whistles.

During the stage competitions that afternoon, whenever a gypsy band would take the stage, a chorus of piercing whistles would attempt to drown them out. Of course, it was a futile attempt, since drowning out a brass band with anything short of a mortar explosion is bound to fail. But the ill will was apparent, especially given the contrast of their behavior when a Serb (non-gypsy) band took the stage. Then, instead of whistles, wild cheering would break out and spontaneous circles would form to dance the kolo to the rather tedious and phlegmatic polka-like tune.

We fled this idiocy to a late lunch at a café, in a concerted effort to introduce something other than pork and lamb into our diet. The night before Marissa and I had lain in bed crapulent and with twisted guts, forswearing roast meat sandwiches forever more.This only partially worked, since we spoke no Serbian, the waiter spoke no English, and there was no menu. We ordered our meal by way of the handful of German words our waiter seemed to know and repeat. He took my words literally, and brought the very items we had discussed, unadulterated by any preparation: a bowl full of whole potatoes, a bowl full of whole tomatoes, a cucumber, a loaf of bread, and, thrown in for good measure, a platter of lamb parts.

On the way back from lunch we ran into a group of four gypsy children. The oldest, who looked about 15, was pushing a stroller with a toddler back and forth, while the other two, a boy and a girl of about 7, played with sticks. We were trying to get across a creek to reach a hill with a fine view of the town and had turned off the road to find a place to cross. We pointed to the hill and asked how we might get there. They seemed to understand perfectly and eagerly led us through the brush until we arrived at a giant trash mound next to a ruinous shack. It soon became clear that we were supposed to ascend this trash mound. Aaron and I helped the girl lift the stroller and we all proceeded to climb onto the garbage, the four of us with astonished looks as we watched the two younger kids scurry barefoot and gleeful through the piles of filthy paper, broken glass, and rusty machine carcasses.

This little behind the scenes stroll through human waste with our gypsy guides was the perfect counterpart to the official festival parade we watched that same day, with neat little squadrons of children outfitted in traditional Serbian folk costume—the girls in red patterned skirts and black aprons with red and white floral designs with flowers in their hair, the boys in black vests and breeches with red sashes, all wearing dainty wooden clogs that slope up into a point at the end, as though cobbled by elves. They marched along to the beat of the tuba and snare drum, enchanting onlookers with the image of a fabled Serbian past, a sartorial golden age compared to the tank tops and fanny packs that lined the curbside of the present.

We had been playing scrabble and drinking Turkish coffee under a café awning as the parade filed past when a cherubic Serb came to our table and gave Jesse a hug. As noted, strangers’ affection for Jesse was not unusual, but apparently the two had met earlier. The man’s name was Jelko, a Serb who, like us, was from the Bay Area. Jelko had earthy Germanic peasant features, with bright red cheeks and nose, and wispy blond hair that recalled a character from a Breughel scene. He was a bike messenger-cum-DJ in San Francisco, hosted a weekly Balkan music radio show, and returned to Serbia every summer to attend the Guca festival.

A charming conversationalist, despite being clearly drunk, Jelko was eager to tell us about Serbian culture and history. “You should go to Nis. It is a very good city. A lot of history. You know, Constantine of the Roman Empire was born in Nis.”

Jelko grew particularly excited when talking about the fall of Nis to the Turks at the end of the fourteenth century and the centuries-long battle against Turkish oppression that continued up through the nineteenth century. “The Turks, man, they were brutal. Absolutely brutal. They built a giant tower from heads of Serbs! Can you believe it?”

I remembered having read about the monument Jelko was talking about. After an unsuccessful Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire in Southern Serbia in 1809, the Turkish magistrate at Nis had a tower built out of the heads of the all the Serbian rebels to serve as a warning to all would be freedom fighters.

Jelko was somewhat less exuberant about his own history. He was struggling to get German citizenship, deterred by what he kept referring to as “some old trouble with the law.” “I got child support on my ass, you know. It’s a real bitch.”

But, when we returned to the topic of music, his eyes lit up again as he told us about his favorite brass bands. His excitement led us to a music stand where he instructed our purchases with a connoisseur’s authority.

I have since run into Jelko on occasion at Balkan brass shows in San Francisco. The first time, I saw him DJing and went up and shook his hand. At another show, I went into the bathroom and there was Jelko, joyfully peeing into the sink as he clinked beers with a man at the urinal. I forewent the shake that time.

That night in Guca, we cut the concert short. Aaron had developed a hearty case of the runs and the port-a-potties by the stage were guarded by burly gypsy men with feathered hats and thick mustaches who charged a handful of dinars per visit. These toilet guardians were turning a lucrative trade, and soon Aaron had used up all our coins. We retired to our porch, free toilet on hand, concert still audible, and resigned ourselves to the decanter of rakija.

The Gypsy Horns of Guca (part 5)

Part 5

It was the day of the final competition and we had all had enough of Guca—the drinking, the brass bands, the crowds, the grilled pork. Everything that only a day ago we had touted as perfection now in the twilight of a three day binge appeared grotesque. Our spirit of mass revelry seemingly exhausted, we started to slip back into our natural more nebbish-y and misanthropic selves. Here, during the culmination of three days and over thirty bands vying for the Golden Trumpet prize (along with a year’s worth of wedding gigs throughout Serbia), Marissa, Noam, and Jesse lay in the grass reading. Aaron and I, having been driven to near blindness by rakija, contented ourselves with staring into the dark inside netting of our hats.

No one else in the stadium appeared to have spent themselves too soon. In fact, much to our dismay, everyone was drinking and dancing as though they had not been drinking and dancing to the same music for four days. The glee on their inebriated faces was authentic, as though they had not already heard the song “Ederlezy” fifty times that morning. Was our notable absence of energy raising suspicion? “Well”, said Noam, “at least we aren’t being harassed.”

At which point we were harassed. A red-faced Serb in a sajkaca and a 2 liter pivo in hand leaned over and yelled something accusingly at us. Alarmed, I turned to Marissa, Noam, and Jesse and, trying not to move my lips, told them to put their books away, certain that books, unless they were about trumpets, Serbian flags, or whistles, were not allowed in the stadium. The man’s eyes narrowed at our silence and he shouted at us again, spraying spittle on Marissa’s arm. This time his two companions, who looked infinitely more civil than him, turned toward us and one of them said in English, “He want to know where you come from.”

Now that we had an interpreter, our conversation took off. Well, sort of. Our interlocutor, whose name was Rasha Mikhailovic, was so drunk that he apparently spoke incoherently even in his native tongue; and our interpreter Victor, whose English was good, couldn’t translate half of what he said. When we told Rasha we were from America, he responded with initial excitement, since Americans are often still a novelty in Serbia. “Eh America!” And then an awkward pause. Followed by “Bill Clinton! You bomb us!”

It was strange hearing a European accusingly shout the name of a president other than George W. Bush. It was also difficult to decide how best to be an ambassador of a country that had recently bombed the nation whose hospitality we were enjoying. And indeed in Belgrade we had seen the still visible destruction of certain government buildings (as well as the Chinese embassy) from the 1999 NATO bombings during the Kosovo War. “Sorry about that,” we offered sheepishly.

Somehow, everyone laughed and Rasha went on inquiring further about our identities. He told me I looked German. “Schwabisch!” he yelled, poking his finger into my chest, using a colloquial term for German in Serbia, associated with the province of Schwabia in southwest Germany. “Nazi, nazi! Hitler!” he said pointing at me and laughing. Fortunately, Rasha was even more fascinated by Marissa’s physiognomy than mine. Her half-Thai features sparked a whole litany of Asian associations in his mind from Lucy Liu to Bruce Lee to Yao Ming. We concluded Serbians must not get a lot of exposure to Asian people if they thought a 5’4 half-Thai woman resembled Yao Ming. But he clearly like what he saw, as he kept trying to slip his wedding ring on to Marissa’s finger, much to my amusement, perhaps less so to his wife, sitting silently on the blanket beside him.

Rasha took a particular liking to Aaron and insisted on swapping watches with him. Aaron was happy to comply, considering he sported a cheap knock-off designer watch from the African street vendors in mid-town Manhattan. “Now we are brothers” Rasha said, passing round his warm 2-liter pivo to honor the occasion. Later that night, when Aaron took off Rasha’s watch, he noticed there was an inscription on the back. We later found out it read, “To Rasha. You are my brother. I will never forget you.”

But even more astounding was Rasha’s show of generosity toward Jesse. Throughout our drunken parley, he kept remarking on how handsome Jesse was and that he wanted him to take his daughter. We thought this was just a funny display of affection by a slightly unhinged drunk man until suddenly his daughter showed up, a cute blond girl in her twenties, along with her friend who looked like a runway model. Rasha informed his daughter that she was now betrothed to Jesse and insisted that they go dance the kolo together. She seemed unfazed, as though her father married her off to strangers wherever he went. She and her friend took Jesse and joined the circle dance.

While Rasha professed his eternal bond of brotherhood to Aaron and tried to convince him to become blood brothers, I spoke with Victor, Rasha’s brother-in-law. He was warm and intelligent, and seemed to regard Rasha with bemused resignation. “He is like this always. He likes to get drunk,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. Victor asked what I did in America. I told him I studied European history. He said he loved history, that he would have liked to study it, but went into computer business instead. I told him I thought Serbian history was fascinating and wanted to learn more. “Yes, but the history of Serbia is sad.” Victor told me I was lucky to live in America, that Serbia had bad leaders, no jobs, and was run entirely by private firms. I said that sounded a lot like America. “Tell me,” he said, lowering his and pausing to find the right words. “Were you afraid to come to Serbia?”

How could I explain to him my stupid paranoia about Vuk Brankovic and my nightmare fantasies of being swindled and kidnapped? But it wasn’t just me. Since the 1991-95 War, the nation of Serbia had been portrayed in the American media as precisely the arch-villain I had imagined. The stain of genocide and war crimes had marred Serbia’s international image seemingly irreparably, and as the aggressor state, they became more associated with the appalling violence that characterized the conduct of certain Croats, Bosnians, and Serbs alike, and victimized the majority of them alike. When I told people in the States I was going to Serbia, some of them looked at me like I was crazy. A few even recoiled in disgust, as though I had told them I was going to a Klan rally. One would think Americans, of all people in the twenty-first century, would be sensitive to the inadequacy and injustice of passing judgment on an entire nation and its people based on the conduct of its political leaders and military abroad.

Of course, that’s not to say Serbia does not have major problems with chauvinist nationalism, as the Karadzic and Mladic souvenirs attest, and that post-Tito Serbia, like most of the former Yugoslavia, still suffers from a culture of latency, from the wounds of the two World Wars that have not been given a chance to heal. But I was happy to be in Serbia. It was a safe and hospitable country and I felt reassured to find that there, as elsewhere, there reigns a heady mix of decency and idiocy, where the former must always strive to stem the ever rising tide of the latter. In short, I liked Victor and Serbia enough to lie to him.

The winning band, proud recipients of the Golden Trumpet, took the stage for a victory lap performance. We all got up and joined the giant circle in front of the stage for a final kolo. As we danced round and round, Rasha’s warm pivo sloshing in our bellies, our spirits returned. We spotted Jesse across the circle, surrounded by his new lady friends. Judging by his form fitting shorts, he was clearly enjoying himself. In these final moments of the festival, everyone had risen to the occasion.

That night back on the porch, we emptied our final decanter of rakija. The music had died out and a silence that had not been heard for four days now reigned. Holding our glasses aloft, we made a toast to Guca, the greatest music festival in the world, and vowed never to return.

About the Author

Lawrence V. Shebb is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at North Dakota Tech University, Bismarck Campus. Nazi Sex: A Cultural Studies Perspective is his most recent work. He is the author of two previous monographs, Reading Nazi Mustaches and Sex and the Other: Intersubjectivity Discourse and Trans-specific Coital Practice in Bavaria, 1955-1962. He has published several articles in such renowned journals as This/these is/are Cultural Studies, Queer Theory Unlimited, and Myopiana. Currently, Professor Shebb is at work on a fourth book about the aesthetics of circumcision in contemporary German adult cinema. He would like to thank his family and friends for their fanatical support and the UNDTB Cultural Studies department for their tacit complicity throughout the duration of this project. Without them, Nazi Sex would not have been possible.

An Austrian Cavalry Officer Goes to the Grocery Store

Well, I suppose I must face the reckoning. I have executed my shopping maneuvers in an expedient, dare I say admirable, fashion, but the end is upon me. As Pliny the Elder said, “The happier the moment, the shorter.” We can’t remain in the bakery section all day now, can we? Or even in the butchery, where I would be content to idle a while by that handsome roast, dreaming of next Sunday’s Tafelspitz. Speaking of, did I get the cherries for Else’s streudel? Yes, of course you did, you wretch--- your fingers are stained with their ripe juice, just like Mitzi’s tender—Enough! Now is no time for a fit of weakness. You’ll stain more than your fingers with juice carrying on like that. Despicable! I shall now choose a line and face my destiny like a man.

Schade, they are so long! Wait, aisle three appears to be manageable. Yes three, the trinity, it has been chosen. I swear my allegiance to aisle three. Look at those idiots waiting among the masses. They veritably will their own suffering. A simple survey of the field and some swift arithmetic would save them from their misery. But, no—the slightest exercise of the intellect is beyond the functioning of their atavistic brain. Here is your democracy in action, you rabble. Truly amazing, the amount of degenerates who have slithered into the capital lately. Look at the goiter on that cretin!

I’m sorry, what? What? 15 items? Well, how should I know? Do you make a habit of counting your comestibles? It sounds positively morbid! Other line? But have you seen the length? You expect me to stand behind that deformed creature? This is an outrage! Sladoled, my Veronal! I feel flush.

I almost wish I had suffered the view of that throbbing goiter now. At least I would be nearly to the register. Instead, I ended up behind the whole shtetl. How can such repulsive people create so many children? This freckled one here at my knee will probably grow up to write socialist filth. While this one has the physiognomy of a dynamiter. And stop eyeing my profiteroles! Shameless indecency the way they just let their children ogle their social superiors. A good horsewhip on the behind is what you need, just like they used to do at the Theresianum. I can still feel that stiff black leather biting red into my young flesh. Now, that is how you make a man! No, no, no! No! I am not getting aroused. It’s just my girdle constricting. Most unappetizing! I can’t even eat these profiteroles. And what’s happened to my Pfeffernusse? They’re crumbling before my eyes—just like my beloved empire! Oh, when will this anguish cease? Sladoled, where is that infernal Veronal?

Well, at least I can see the periodicals now. You may as well go fetch us a hansom cab, Sladoled. T’wont be but a minute now. So, what say the scribblers and slogan-mongers today? My god, does the press know no bounds of decency? Look at that slender Tartaress, nearly totally naked at the beach. And, here, a story of drug addiction. And, oh, I’m going to be sick. They’re photographing the terminally ill in color! Inside a manual for prostitutes?! Say, what’s that sound? Not my girdle ripping! Think of your mothe—no, your commanding offic- no, Nana on her deathbed. Yes, I believe that did the trick. God, what is happening to my mind? Is my brain softening? Perhaps a chocolate bar will help, with a sprinkle of Veronal in the Marzipan center.

At last, the register. Well, my cherries have surely wilted by now, but the important thing is I did not desert my duty, for without duty there is no honor. And as Pliny the Elder said, “Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.” I will not go home empty-handed this time. But it’s no wonder I waited so long. How slow this hideous woman moves. Chop-chop, my homely fraulein! An officer has his orders. My what? Club card?! Dear god, woman, do I look like I would belong to the same club as you? Insolence! And what? Ate a Whatchamacallit? Well, I don’t know what it was called either, but, yes, I did eat a chocolate bar and I’m not paying for it. There was no marzipan inside and tasted like the sole of a Slav’s foot.

What’s that? Do I want help out?! What do you take me for, a cripple! You have the gall not only to handle my profiteroles with reckless disregard but on top of that to insult my manhood? Well, madam, I’ll have you know that according to Paragraph 114 of the Imperial army’s criminal code, the urgent defense of honor with the aid of a weapon is not only legal but mandatory when the honor of the officer is under attack without provocation and in the presence of one or more persons. Sladoled, my saber! Sladoled? Oh, even my servants have turned on me! But what else should I expect from a damn Czech? Autonomy, they say? Treason-- that's what I say! Despicable treason!

Well, I see you have left me no choice, madam. If you would just hand over what remains of my abused pastries, you may keep the rest of these vittles. Frankly, I don’t care what you do with them! Stuff them down you gaping hole or fling them to the wretches behind me. I have no use for groceries where I’m headed. To my study, where a bottle of schnapps and loaded pistol will give me all the nourishment I need.

**Note: This conceit is a riff on (or shameless theft of) Arthur Schnitzler's 1901 novella Lt. Gustl.

“History Will Judge”: The Historical View of a Delusional Age

Our thankfully former president, after he lost his popular mandate, used to reassure himself by invoking the immortal judgment of a history yet to be written. Bush wasn't bad, just untimely. What looked like incompetence and malevolence in the present would become wisdom and courage in the future. That is, assuming the future was bizarro world.

In recent months, during the transition from the Bush to Obama administration, pundits on both sides have dusted off the Ouija board of their own mediocre minds to learn how Bush will be remembered by the future.

Now you, too, can play this game so beloved by politicians and journalists in the comfort of your own home— ( http://www.gallup.com/poll/113806/Americans-Expect-History-Judge-Bush-Worse-Than-Nixon.aspx). It’s a game for all ages and political persuasions—no one is too daft to play. Just ask yourself whether ‘history’ will know Bush as the worst American president ever or as an untimely visionary who did not fear the fickle boos of popular opinion—then air your idle speculation!

Once you’ve reached a consensus, don’t worry, this game has potential for infinite variation. Just think about any contentious goings-on today and figure out what history will say about it. Iraq War? Global warming? AIDS in Africa? No nut is too tough for history to crack. And why limit yourself to world political issues, when the future verdict of history is right here ready to solve your most vexing existential crises. Beach vacation in Mexico or skiing in Utah? What would history say? Ranch or vinaigrette? History knows!

One can’t help but question the sanity of an age that looks to the future for its history so that it may know how to judge the present. Pundits are shoddy enough fortunetellers when they have their crystal ball statistics in hand, but in the realm of future historical judgment we have no numbers to belie our absolute ignorance of what shall be. So why invoke the authority of a backward-looking future?

The underlying supposition is that, unlike the present—marred by opposing political views and manifold interpretation—the future will somehow be free of these messy complications. The good history-writing citizens of the future, perched on the heights of hindsight, will discern the patterns of our actions in the befogged present.

I don’t mean to sneer here at the virtues of historical reflection, but rather at the two fallacies that lead us to appeal to the authority of future historical reflection. The first fallacy is that of a monolithic posterity. When we say history will remember George W. Bush as a worse president than Richard Nixon, which historically-reflective posterity are we referring to? Next year’s? The next generation’s? Posterity five hundred years from now? Each of these posterities presumably would have different historical understandings of our age.

Even if we could pin down where in time this future historical perspective of ourselves is located, who knows how anyone or anything will be “remembered” by any point in the future? Who’s to say whether in two hundred years George Bush and Richard Nixon won’t both appear as nostalgic icons of a prelapsarian golden age before a later Commander-in-Chief in 2112 accidentally sat on the button while humming the nuclear launch codes and plunged the world into nuclear apocalypse?

The second fallacy at work in our prediction of future historical judgment is the belief in an objective history. The future, under the guise of ‘history’, has become a stand-in for an idealized objectivity that we no longer claim in present judgment. Whereas now speculation on the legacy of George Bush’s presidency or the Iraq War is ideologically charged, in the future it will simply be historical truth.

We may like to think we see things more clearly than those we study did at the time, but, frankly, we only see them from the perspective of the present. And if history is a mirror of the present, then why should we expect the future present, whose history we will become, to be any different? In other words, history is an enterprise of the present, deeply embedded in the present, with all its contingencies and cultural and political dimensions that shape and constrain what we may know, and there’s no reason to think future history will transcend these limitations.

The truth is, when statesmen, pundits, and Gallup pollsters talk about how history will judge a person or an event, they are not thinking about history at all. They are talking about how they want us to judge that person or event right now. By invoking all-knowing History (replete with deified capitalization), they’re hoping to impress upon their opinion the stamp of singularity and finality that has long been considered a hallmark of authoritative judgment.

But if we’re looking for singular and final judgment, we’ll have to look somewhere beyond history. Traditionally, religion has been the outlet for this fantasy. I vote for keeping it that way. And so does History.