What Philosophy Can Do

The late Gary Gutting used to be the big swinging dick of matters ontological and epistemic. I remember seeing him stand toe-to-toe with Basil van Fraassen, constructive empiricist extraordinaire, in an epic heavyweight dust-up in the pages of Monist back in '82. With his 2015 book What Philosophy Can Do, Gutting has attempted to go mainstream. He argues that philosophy can be useful in, say, potentially polarized political debates, as it can identify the convictions behind (and the limitations within) any given liberal or conservative position. This all smacks of the optimism of the pre-post-Truth era, and that seems to be the dustbin to which Gutting's book has been consigned. Just the other day, I saw more than a few copies marked down to $2 at my local paper peddler. Apparently, philosophy can't do much for anyone anymore. Thorough, well-researched, and well-considered arguments don't fly in this day and age of Trump and trigger-warnings. Nice try, Mr. Gutting, but everybody just goes with their gut now. If psychiatric drugs can't help these people, do you think philosophy has any hope? May peace be upon you, because we certainly won't have it here on earth.

AEW Fight for the Fallen

“This is great pro wrestling, because the fans are loving this.” These were the words of All Elite Wrestling commentator Jim Ross and, though the man possesses at least some bias in that he works for the company, they adequately characterized AEW’s July super-card Fight for the Fallen. In spite of a few hiccups, Fight for the Fallen reclaimed some dignity for professional wrestling, both in the ring and out.

Most of the matches impressed, especially the tag team contests. Early on in the card, a three-way tag match featuring the Dark Order (Evil Uno and Stu Grayson), Anjelico and Jack Evans, and the team of Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy, set a sizzling, spot-happy pace. It was hard to keep up with the innovative offense, which featured, among other maneuvers, a choke suplex, a Black Tiger turnbuckle bomb, and a double-team Gory Special into a Diamond Cutter. This latter maneuver won the match for the Dark Order. A more conventional tag match between the Lucha Brothers and SoCal Uncensored (Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky) also offered up moves far too adept for WWE programming. The Lucha Brothers successfully executed a top-rope Canadian Destroyer, a rapid, rope-aided solebutt, and a stomp-capped double-team package piledriver (for the win).

Portrait of the artist as a young (Omega) man

Singles action did not disappoint, either. AEW Championship contender Hangman Page pounded Kip Sabian with, among other super-moves, a bridging pump-handle suplex, a backdrop onto the apron, and a powerbomb onto the ramp before pinning him with an Ax Guillotine Driver. Nonetheless, the highlight of the match came when Sabian silenced an elderly, ornery fan at ringside by kissing him on the lips. The matchup between Kenny Omega and CIMA started off deceptively slow, but then all at once accelerated, getting very intense, very quickly. CIMA answered Omega’s precision strikes with a Schwein (“White Noise” to WWE fans) onto the apron that occasioned the chant of “You killed Kenny!” throughout the building. This was not WWE “wrestling”, and these were not WWE fans. The strong-style stallions went on to exchange very stiff blows in NJPW fashion, before Omega summoned the One-Winged Angel to score the pinfall.

The main event was a tag team contest between two fraternally predicated teams: the Young Bucks and the Rhodes brothers, Dustin and Cody. The match didn’t reach the fever pitch of the evening’s previous tag contests, as could be expected given the inclusion of the fifty-year-old Dustin Rhodes. Nonetheless, the former Goldust hung in there with the former Stardust, even pulling off a Canadian Destroyer/Styles Clash combo. The Rhodes boys also victimized the Bucks with simultaneous turnbuckle groin kicks, formerly known as the “Shattered Dreams” in the days when WWE was still compelling (that is to say, the days of the WWF). Nonetheless, the Young Bucks fought back by taking a page from wrestling video games and employing the ever-demoralizing stolen move tactic, hitting a Crossroads on Cody. In due course, they perpetrated the unfailingly gaudy Meltzer Driver to secure the pinfall. Afterward, the Bucks attempted to apologize to Cody and Dustin for the gamesmanship tactics they had employed in the lead-up to the match, but they were unfortunately cut off when several key members of the AEW roster processed themselves out to the ring. This interruption did not happen for purposes of storyline, but rather for time considerations. In cringe-worthy fashion, numerous AEW mainstays took the mic and made reference to having gone over time, with some even questioning whether or not they were “still on the air.” They were, and thankfully, before signing off, the cameras were able to capture the presentation of a $150,000 check to the Victim Assistance Advisory Council. This group aids people who have suffered on account of gun violence in America; these individuals were the “Fallen” referenced in the title of the super-card.

Aside from the inventive maneuvers, this social conscience was perhaps the most refreshing aspect of AEW’s Fight for the Fallen. WWE has, of course, traditionally kept its cause-themed super-cards military-centric, as is best exemplified by their annual Tribute to the Troops shows. Military personnel make incalculable sacrifices and undertake unfathomable risks, and so supporting them is a laudable endeavor. But Vince McMahon and his underlings have rarely if ever made a business decision that wasn’t calculated, and so anything bearing the WWE logo is inherently exploitative. Thus, Tribute to the Troops has always smacked of easy positive publicity or, in wrestling terms, a cheap, patriotic pop. Moreover, such an event aligns itself fairly squarely with the American military-industrial complex, situating capitalist interest in close proximity to martial might. As such, Tribute to the Troops clearly courts the more conservative elements of WWE’s fan base. Fight for the Fallen was altogether different. Rather than proffering the predictable plaudits for the people of the American Armed Forces, AEW has been brave enough to identity an egregiously overlooked (and ever-burgeoning) group—the victims of gun violence. Here AEW has displayed the corporate cojones to call out a distressing problem in the United States, one that much of mainline America (and certainly the WWE) have determinedly chosen to disregard: the fact that it’s a risk just to go out in public. AEW is willing to label gun violence as the blight on America that it is, rather than tacitly accepting it as an ignorable downside to sacrosanct Second Amendment freedoms. In acknowledging that America is far from perfect, AEW has demonstrated a moral maturity that the WWE simply does not have. Believe it or not, professional wrestling can (and does) have a socially responsible side, and by cultivating this at Fight for the Fallen, AEW defined itself in marked contrast to the amoral late-capitalist jingoism of WWE.

The Writer's Guide to Weapons

If you’re going to be writing any story set in the United States, you’re going to need a working knowledge of a variety of firearms. That’s where Benjamin Sobieck’s Writer’s Guide to Weapons comes in. Sobieck writes with an obvious passion for firing guns and neutralizing targets, taking aim at writers who write poorly about weapons. He shoots down a lot of misconceptions in the process. Did you think the AR in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle”? Nope. It doesn’t stand for “Alt-Right”, either. It means Armalite, you ignoramus. In the presence of a gun nut, a faux pas of this magnitude could prove fatal, and Sobieck’s book makes sure you won’t end up a target of an NRA lifer’s ire. Sure, the skeptical may be saying, “hey, gun nuts don’t actually read.” True though that may be, do you want to be the writer who pisses them off when and if they learn how? In the meantime, reading The Writer's Guide to Weapons can at the very least help when you’re passing through rural areas—now you just might have an easier time making small-talk with sons of the soil.

Game Over

Game Over by journalists Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak provides a serviceable chronicle of linebacker coach-cum-pedophile Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of adolescent boys, and the listless efforts of Penn State higher-ups—none higher than college coaching legend Joe Paterno (right)—to put a stop to it. While the book is dated, going to print just before legal proceedings had begun against Sandusky, and also prone to repeating itself vis-à-vis some of the developments, it is still a worthwhile read. Its value endures on the grounds that the book is a repository of Sandusky-related public discourses that, quite frankly, reverberate with perversion, and affirm the man’s guiltiness in an intuitive way that transcends the mere verdict put forward by a jury of his peers.

Consider these examples, all of which are compiled throughout the course of Game Over. Early on, there is a quote from a former Penn State linebacker Gary Gray, who describes Sandusky as “always touchy feely” (p. 27). When Sandusky himself retired abruptly and unceremoniously in 1999, he issued a statement about how he wanted to dedicate more time to the Second Mile, the charitable organization through which Sandusky harvested many of his victims: “As the organization has grown,” he explained, “the demands for my hands-on involvement have increased dramatically” (p. 30). Upon the news of Sandusky’s retirement, Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who would later plead guilty to child endangerment charges for failing to report the abuses, offered the following: “His achievement as a human being is splendidly demonstrated by the thousands of youngsters he touches annually through the Second Mile” (p. 31). A couple years after stepping aside, Sandusky would put out his autobiography, ghost-written by Kip Richeal and published via a vanity press. Its title, you ask? Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in discourse analysis to read between the lines here. With the emphasis on “touching” in descriptions provided of and by Sandusky, how could anyone say they were “surprised” at the allegations? It seems like everyone who spoke of Sandusky knew on some unconscious level (verging on the surface consciousness) that the man was a pervert. Everything that Sandusky was involved with (I don’t want to say “had a hand in”) became steeped in perversion via the very fabric of the words that characterized his activities. 

Even when Sandusky’s attorney, Joseph Amendola, publicly went on the defensive in front of the media, the all-pervading perversity of his client managed to seep into the lawyer’s words. Amendola was incredulous that so many onlookers believed that Penn State higher-ups like Tim Curley would not, as men of immense character and responsibility, take seriously alleged child abuse and carry it forward to law enforcement. As such, he issued a challenge: “If you believe that, I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” That number, the authors of Game Over inform us matter-of-factly, was at the time a “phone service offering gay and bisexual pornography” (p. 145).

The quintessential telos of Jerry Sandusky, then, is salacious sodomy.* Once again, we see how the perverse and pornographic permeates the entire sphere of Sandusky. Sandusky’s substrate is grimy, illicit sex. So deep is the level of synchronicity between Sandusky and indiscriminate, amoral sexuality that the entire thought-universe generated around him inevitably thrums and vibrates with lasciviousness. And for that reason, I’m going to end this attempt at reviewing this book, before Sandusky’s inhering stain seeps into me now inexorably on account of having tried myself to frame the man in words and paragraphs. In fact, Sandusky’s monstrous Midas touch, where everything he handled turned savagely and unlawfully sodomic, might be reason enough not to get your hands on a copy of Moushey and Dvorchak’s book.

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*Now, I want to be clear here that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with gay sex. However, commodified, commercialized sex of any orientation is, I think we would all agree, at least a bit seedy. So what I’m saying here (following from Moushey and Dvorchak) is that there is something profoundly off when the lawyer representing an outwardly Christian man like Sandusky unintentionally references gay phone sex. The synchronicities are just too profound.