Posted 9:15 PM by sport

Thought I'd get off the lugubrious lectern tonight and write about something less "personal" and more on the "food for thought" wavelength. I realize that this isn't everyone's interest, but maybe it'll raise a few points for future reflection.

Sometimes I'll wind up in an argument with someone regarding an admitted prejudice of mine, which favors the Visigoths over the Ostrogoths. I don't think it's anyone's right to second-guess my preference any more than I feel in any way obliged to justify it. Certainly any preference for either of these barbarian tribes - over run-of-the-mill favorites like the Huns or the Vandals - reveals a special nuance of mind which should encourage a mutual respect between partisans of either horde; sadly, such commonsense tolerance is rare in this most heated of debates. By now I'm beginning to see the whole conflict as counter-productive, but feel just as strongly that some explanation for my position would be helpful, if only as a show of support for newer Visiphiles unprepared for the kind of gutter tactics employed by Ostrocentrics in pressing their poignantly ignorant case. To be perfectly Frank (heh heh), I am - in the full maturity of my years, and after considerable reflection - prepared to extend more than my formerly patronizing largesse toward those who express ambivalence toward both the Ostros and Visii in favor of a maverick enthusiasm for the Jutes: I am, as it happens, almost persuaded that they are on to something.

Hold on! I know that this statement might "ruffle a few feathers," and I am by no means Jute-happy just yet. I'm merely recognizing that there is a "shock of the new" element involved in the conventional dismissal accorded the "Yout' for Jute" crowd (incidentally, though their accepted taxonomic designation "Jautists" looks like it should be pronounced JOWT-ists, it is correct to pronounce it as JOOT-ists... go figure). We who flatter ourselves as "connoisseurs" for eschewing the easy path of Hunnish/Vandalian orthodoxy might do well to recall the scorn with which our first tentative declarations of Ostro-Visipreciation were greeted. In these callow Jautists I see the same questioning spirit that informed my early passion. At this late date, I see no disgrace in loosening the straps of my hide-bound Visigothic perspective to allow some latitude to the arguments these young Turks (or are they Lombards? Heh heh) contribute. Before I continue into my comprehensive pro-Visigoth argument, let me explain why I say all this.

By now we're all familiar with the apoplectic impasse usually reached in short order every time the classic question is posed. We who have graduated from timidity ("well…um… I sort of like the Visigoths…") to bold assertiveness - nay, pride - ("Damn right I'm for the Visigoths! You're not? What the HELL is your problem?") sometimes forget how fragile we felt in the early blush of Visigothic boosterism; we've earned a few bragging rights, sure, but oh what short memories we have! It is in this healthy spirit of retrospect that I view the young Jutesters: they are what we were, regardless of where we now stand on Euro-barbarism. But there's more to this than simple corrective humility or bland indulgence. As we engage in these initially bracing discussions, armed with our "facts" and our "stats," we often lose sight of our own higher impulses and allow the debate to crumble -like those very cities of antiquity - into volleys of cliché; exchanges clanging ooftily with the thrust and parry of minutiae and meander; we venture incropotically into a sargasso chowder of mixed metaphor, received wisdom and oddly non sequiturian digressions into nonsensical asmatrophy. Before you know it, it's the same old catfight. "You say Amalaric, I say Roderic… You say Theudis, I say Theudisclus…" Let's call the whole thing Goth! Heh heh. Please excuse the levity.

Or should I even say this? We would do well to remember to keep a measure of levitas in our struggle to make sense of why we choose - given the range of possible positions and the seemingly infinite well (or seldom) trodden pathways of exposition, example, insinuation, blunt assertion, vile threat, fatuous claim, preposterous conflation of incongruent particulars etc. (to give only a small sample of the range of rhetorical options at our - advised or otherwise - disposal) - to cling to what may be a comforting… albeit incomplete and ultimately unsatisfying (or not)… stance in our ongoing but perhaps (and we should face this) ultimately pyrrhic battle for dominance in this "small-to-many-but-not-to-us" conflict within the larger conflict of ideas, which started for so may of us with that simple urge to find "our" barbarian people, lest we lose all sense of proportion and, yes, enjoyment. Allow ourselves to be misled thusly, friends, and truly we are taking the primrose path less traveled toward a slippery slope indeed.

With that illuminating -it is hoped - digression disposed of, perhaps I can return to the central topic in a spirit of light-hearted conciliation: the Ostrogoths setting up shop in Italy and the Visigoths keeping house in France. Which neo-krautic, proto-froggadago kingdom would this celtomickoyank prefer, and why? For this we'll have to turn back the clock to the 5th century AD.
Oh! Look at the time! Fuck it.