A Son is a Son
When we were recently at the Lodge at Red River Ranch in Southern Utah, we had one evening when our plans to go stargazing got temporarily postponed due to a bull bison on the loose on the ranch grounds. The Lodge proprietor and general buffalo wrangler, Dave, was out with the cowpokes trying to do two things simultaneously. They needed to corral the young bull bison that had escaped its enclosure and they needed to isolate and contain the older bull bison that was the alpha male of the small heard on the ranch grounds. It seems that the older bull had decided that the younger bull was overstepping his bounds and needed to be brought back into line, so he got aggressive with him and was threatening him and physically nudging him to the point where the young bull determined that he needed to get the hell outa Dodge. At that moment, that corral wasn’t big enough for the both of them, so the younger bull just waltzed through the barbed and electrified wire without so much as a “how do you do”. Dave has told us over the years that the fencing with regard to bison is a mere suggestion and that no matter how many barbs or volts you put on or through the fence, it takes very little for a bison to decide he would rather be other there there and here and then to simply waltz through it without even noticing. Dave would tell us this particularly in regard to getting too close to a young bison calf when the mother might not have paid attention. Dave himself has a 2023 10-inch gore scar emblazoned on his chest to prove that he has grounds for distrusting bison fencing. He had to me medivaced out thanks to that same big older bull deciding he wanted to remind Dave who was really in charge at the ranch.
Once the older bull had chased the younger bull out of the corral, I can imagine he spent some time taking a victory lap, strutting around the corral not just for the benefit of the herd’s cows, but also for both the young bull that was still in the corral and the one who had absented himself from the corral. The older big bull was the father of the two younger bulls, but in the realm of herd dynamics, father/son relations are somewhat irrelevant to the domination issues at hand. We see nature operate this way in lots of species, but it remains hard for me to believe that there isn’t at least of glimmer of hesitation in a father to inflict pain on his son. There must be some sense that he has an obligation to do more than just teach hard lessons to his sons, but also to show them some modicum of compassion for the familial connection, just as he would to say a young male bison of another unrelated herd rather than, say a young elk or moose bull. Family must count for something, even between father and son.
Kim and I have just recently gotten into watching the Peaky Blinders series which debuted in 2013 and ran for six seasons. It is about the rough and tumble tale of a Romany Gypsy gangster family from Birmingham, England starting at the end of WWI and running into the era of the Great Depression. Even in the gangster community, Peaky Blinders are considered more ruthless and less evolved than the Italian or Jewish mobsters. While the main protagonist, Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy … a.k.a. Robert Oppenheimer in this summer’s blockbuster) is actually quite thoughtful and kind towards his next-generation kin, we see the roots of this more barbarous and crude nature when the father to Tommy and his siblings beats and threatens his troubled son, Arthur. There appears not to be an ounce of fatherly kindness in his harsh and uncaring demeanor. The argument that its a cruel world and a father owes it to his son to toughen his skin to the realities of it all, do not fully explain this primitive manner. I do believe that there are simply some people who are wired to be more primitive and less cerebral and empathetic. Every generation has these sorts and in the Shelby family, this trait seems to run deep into their Celtic souls. Indeed, Celtic, Slavic and Germanic cultures are often accused of being more primitive and barbarian. Those are hard biases to prove, but they do persist and there have been some genetic discoveries like a gene governing the tendency for revenge that give those accusations continued currency.
Strangely enough, the same tendencies that get associated with such barbarism are also the ones that most often connect to things like extreme familial loyalty, so I think this father/son juxtapositioning might have a lot going on with it on multiple levels. Brotherly love and the Caine & Abel syndrome seem to often go hand in hand so it is not such a stretch that a similar conundrum exists between fathers and sons.
I thought of fathers and sons today because of the plea bargain hearings being conducted with Hunter Biden, the younger and now only son of President Joe Biden. The Republicans have been relentlessly dogging Hunter to gain political advantage against his father. They are prepared and eager to inflict harm on the son to stymie the father. Joe and Hunter are hardly the only ones to ever suffer this fate. I recall Jimmy Carter’s brother Billie (not a son, but close) being put upon for his Georgia country-boy ways. Ronald Reagan worried long and hard that his son Ron might be gay and was certainly an avowed Atheist. George H.W. Bush was plagued with a rogue son in George W., who eventually redeemed himself enough to become president, while his more straight-arrow son, Jeb, never made it out of Florida and past the governorship there. I won’t bother reciting the father/son intricacies of Donald Trump either with his own father or with his two questionably ethical sons, or, for that matter, his even more questionably ethical son-in-law Jared Kushner. Many presidents have children that get their share of unwanted or less than complimentary attention ranging from Chelsea Clinton and Baron Trump to John-John and Caroline Kennedy. The point is that it is hard to be the child of a great or even just high-profile father, but it must be just as hard to be the high-profile father that has a child that may be wayward or may just be in the bullseye of the paparazzi. God knows, Charles, William and Harry suffer from this as do the likes of Prince Andrew and Princess Margaret. So, it is and has always been all around us and yet when you see Hunter going through it and see the naked pictures Marjorie Taylor Greene wants us all to see, you feel both a touch or displeasure with the process and some distaste for the offending child.
I will say about Joe Biden, that he continues to do the right thing and perhaps the only thing a father can do in those circumstances. He repeats his fealty and love for his son, regardless of his latest accused transgressions. Joe knows the pain of losing a son, so he has good cause for standing by Hunter and all his foibles regardless of Hunter’s guilt or innocence. It is the right thing to do and I hope I would do the same.
I have two sons from two different mothers and who are thirteen years apart in age. What was a big difference in their youth is now not so very different as one is 41 and the other is 28. One sits on the upper edge of the Millennial cohort and the other sits on the lower edge. Technically, the older could be Gen X and the younger could be Gen Z, but they both agree that they are really both Millennials. I am fortunate that neither of my sons has done anything that has ever caused me to wonder if I should support them in whatever misfortune might befall them. So, I understand Joe and respect him for his way of handling this like I respect so many of the things he is doing these days. After all, all that can be said is that a son is a son.