Six days in LA with the 15 and 16 yo Wombettes, and Dr Mrs W: celebrities, movie studios, Getty and Disney museums, aquariums, like that.
I'm alone in being more interested in the mental geography of LA I've absorbed from countless books and movies: wealth, corruption, mean streets where I might run into Harry Bosch or Philip Marlowe. Looking around, 'til I see a woman whose blouse isn't too loose, whose skirt isn't too long, and whose legs go all the way to heaven. Or a piece of angel food cake with a tarantula walking on it. A dog barked, alone, in the alley...
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
GHW Bush's Resignation from the NRA
Mark Thoma's economics blog led me to this letter, via which GHW Bush resigned in outrage from the National Rifle Association, of which he was a life long member:
Dear Mr. Washington,
I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as "jack-booted thugs." To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms" wanting to "attack law abiding citizens" is a vicious slander on good people.
Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country -- and serve it well he did.
In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.
I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as "jack-booted thugs." To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms" wanting to "attack law abiding citizens" is a vicious slander on good people.
Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country -- and serve it well he did.
In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.
John
Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of
the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last
to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The
same is true for the F.B.I.'s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr.
Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond
question.
Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government's "go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens." (Your words)
I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.'s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.
However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.
You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre's unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list. Sincerely, [ signed ] George Bush
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/us/letter-of-resignation-sent-by-bush-to-rifle-association.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview
He'd never have survived the primaries today. They'd have read his lips, and realized that, though a conservative, he was also capable of doing what he had to do.
Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government's "go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens." (Your words)
I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.'s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.
However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.
You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre's unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list. Sincerely, [ signed ] George Bush
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/us/letter-of-resignation-sent-by-bush-to-rifle-association.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview
He'd never have survived the primaries today. They'd have read his lips, and realized that, though a conservative, he was also capable of doing what he had to do.
Merry and Happy
Now that the Solstice has passed, we're into the second limb of the Scarecrow's obdservation to Dorothy: 'It's going to get darker before it gets lighter.'
Here's Dar Williams' wonderful song about Christians and pagans celebrating together: merry and happy to one and all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_KiHRHwaAs
Here's Dar Williams' wonderful song about Christians and pagans celebrating together: merry and happy to one and all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_KiHRHwaAs
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Hayek to House Republicans: Play Nice And Grow Up
Reading about House Republican intransigence regarding the so-called fiscal cliff, I was reminded of an essay written by Friedrich Hayek, whose 'Road To Serfdom', in which he claimed that government regulation of the economy inevitably leads to totalitarianism, is an intellectual touchstone of the right. He's more complicated than that; for instance, he thought national health insurance was acceptable government function. He titled the essay, 'Why I Am Not A Conservative':
Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty...
When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them. I have little doubt that some of my conservative friends will be shocked by what they will regard as "concessions" to modern views that I have made in Part III of this book. But, though I may dislike some of the measures concerned as much as they do and might vote against them, I know of no general principles to which I could appeal to persuade those of a different view that those measures are not permissible in the general kind of society which we both desire. To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.
It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.
http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/cons.htm (read the whole thing)
Hayek knew intimately that ideology can't be imposed on a society without force, and that was unacceptable. He saw that as a danger regardless of the specifics of ideology. He recognised that in any society opinions will differ, and that the work of the nation must go on regardless: working together, muddling through (see post below) rather than marching arm in arm with ideological compatriots toward the Radiant Future, or perishing gloriously before a deluded, evil opposition.
The House Republicans don't know that. They're proud of their readiness to bring the temple down. And they project onto Obama, who, I think, is too willing to compromise, their utter intransigence. Hayek would have taken them aside and told them to fight for their beliefs, but to play nice anyway. He'd have had a point...
Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty...
When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them. I have little doubt that some of my conservative friends will be shocked by what they will regard as "concessions" to modern views that I have made in Part III of this book. But, though I may dislike some of the measures concerned as much as they do and might vote against them, I know of no general principles to which I could appeal to persuade those of a different view that those measures are not permissible in the general kind of society which we both desire. To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.
It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.
http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/cons.htm (read the whole thing)
Hayek knew intimately that ideology can't be imposed on a society without force, and that was unacceptable. He saw that as a danger regardless of the specifics of ideology. He recognised that in any society opinions will differ, and that the work of the nation must go on regardless: working together, muddling through (see post below) rather than marching arm in arm with ideological compatriots toward the Radiant Future, or perishing gloriously before a deluded, evil opposition.
The House Republicans don't know that. They're proud of their readiness to bring the temple down. And they project onto Obama, who, I think, is too willing to compromise, their utter intransigence. Hayek would have taken them aside and told them to fight for their beliefs, but to play nice anyway. He'd have had a point...
Friday, December 21, 2012
In Praise of Muddlers
Charlie Pierce, in a terrific post today, suggests muddling is the right way to get through the holidays:
...To be a muddler is to recognize that the movement forward, however tentative the movement or however small the steps, is more valuable than a brief look at temporary tinsel. To be a muddler is to understand what optimism really is. To be a muddler is to be an American. There was muddling at Valley Forge. There was never a better muddler born than Abraham Lincoln. We do not celebrate our liberties because someone framed the Constitution one day, hanging a shining star, as it were, on the wall of the National Archives. We celebrate all the decades of muddling that we as a people — that We, The People — have done to make those words a living reality. When Martin Luther King, Jr. explained to the country, "Why We Can't Wait," he was announcing that the muddling had to accelerate. He wasn't asking for the results. He was demanding the effort. He was making a moral claim to the muddling.
So, on we go, muddlers all, toward what may or may not be a better day, trying not to be distracted by the shining stars hung on all the highest boughs by the people who fear where all our stubborn muddling as a people may lead, because they see and fear where all our stubborn muddling has led in the past. They want us to stop and stare at the artificial gleam of their private stars high up on the boughs they have designed forever to be out of our reach. They are still wrong...
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ (scroll to 'Out on the Weekend')
Old pulp science fiction space ships usually had names like 'Polaris' or 'Far Star' or some other inspirational moniker. Poul Anderson's Nicholas Van Rijn, a merchant trader in a galactic federation, named his spaceship 'Muddlin' Through'. Loved it...
The muddlers do the actual work that needs to be done, that the purists usually disdain. The muddlers live in the real world, and try to make it a better place. They remember that living, breathing human beings are involved, and that people are more important than ideas. God bless them, every one, mostly...
...To be a muddler is to recognize that the movement forward, however tentative the movement or however small the steps, is more valuable than a brief look at temporary tinsel. To be a muddler is to understand what optimism really is. To be a muddler is to be an American. There was muddling at Valley Forge. There was never a better muddler born than Abraham Lincoln. We do not celebrate our liberties because someone framed the Constitution one day, hanging a shining star, as it were, on the wall of the National Archives. We celebrate all the decades of muddling that we as a people — that We, The People — have done to make those words a living reality. When Martin Luther King, Jr. explained to the country, "Why We Can't Wait," he was announcing that the muddling had to accelerate. He wasn't asking for the results. He was demanding the effort. He was making a moral claim to the muddling.
So, on we go, muddlers all, toward what may or may not be a better day, trying not to be distracted by the shining stars hung on all the highest boughs by the people who fear where all our stubborn muddling as a people may lead, because they see and fear where all our stubborn muddling has led in the past. They want us to stop and stare at the artificial gleam of their private stars high up on the boughs they have designed forever to be out of our reach. They are still wrong...
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ (scroll to 'Out on the Weekend')
Old pulp science fiction space ships usually had names like 'Polaris' or 'Far Star' or some other inspirational moniker. Poul Anderson's Nicholas Van Rijn, a merchant trader in a galactic federation, named his spaceship 'Muddlin' Through'. Loved it...
The muddlers do the actual work that needs to be done, that the purists usually disdain. The muddlers live in the real world, and try to make it a better place. They remember that living, breathing human beings are involved, and that people are more important than ideas. God bless them, every one, mostly...
Prof. Umbridge, Packing Heat
Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association's self-caricature, today came out with his solution to the problem of school firearms violence. One thing he called for was the presence of armed guards in the schools. He thinks there's too much violence in the media. Like that. Nothing whatever the slightest bit unpredictable or helpful. He also spoke of handling the mentally ill better, a cause for which Republicans have been notably unwilling to appropriate funds for, siting the adequacy of private sector responses to the problem and the dangers of Stalinist tyranny destroying America as we know it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/nra-calls-for-armed-guards-at-schools.html?hp
Now, I went to school, and recall my teachers. They ranged from the saintly to the ridiculous, on both superficial and deep levels, as yours did too. One of my favorites was later found to have liked middle school boys rather better than he should have. Another, whose bitter right wing diatribes introduced his every class, became a friend, and gave me a life long love of poetry at a time when I wasn't reading anything other than pulp science fiction.
The vision of each and every one of these carrying a firearm to school does not suggest to me a solution to any problem at all...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/nra-calls-for-armed-guards-at-schools.html?hp
Now, I went to school, and recall my teachers. They ranged from the saintly to the ridiculous, on both superficial and deep levels, as yours did too. One of my favorites was later found to have liked middle school boys rather better than he should have. Another, whose bitter right wing diatribes introduced his every class, became a friend, and gave me a life long love of poetry at a time when I wasn't reading anything other than pulp science fiction.
The vision of each and every one of these carrying a firearm to school does not suggest to me a solution to any problem at all...
The Future Is A Foreign Country
Carlo Rotella, in this morning's Boston Globe, notes that a flying car is being tested. He recalls a time when visions of the future extrapolated airplanes, telephones, cars, electric power, radio and ocean liners into a Radiant Future full of technological mastery and freedom, and then notes the turn towards a mostly darker anticipation of descent into apocalypse, slow or fast:
By 1982, in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” an enormously influential science-fiction portrait of the near future, the flying car had turned definitively noir. Cops lifted off in them from decaying, ungovernable streets, nosing through the perpetual twilight of neon-lit pollution.
These days we seem to have even less use for sunny visions of the future, instead favoring zombie plagues, enslavement by machines, endless young-adult dystopias, and apocalypses of every stripe. (Today being the big day for Mayan doom, I trust you’re watching the heavens for the approach of Nibiru.) Then, in the real world, there’s climate change, peak oil, and more esoteric forms of resource depletion (we’re running out of magnesium?!), the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent, and the imperial tristesse that infuses the idea of America’s declining power in the world.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/12/21/terrafugia-transition-flying-cars-not-just-for-escaping-zombies/0dT7ws8cAcvgaYhKvysMRK/story.html?event=event12
He then admits to being happy that expectations have changed: his vision of flying cars isn't freedom to travel, but millions of Boston drivers up there doing on the skies what they do on the roads.
But an apocalyptic future is no more probable than a Utopian one. Utopia means 'nowhere' for a reason. And extrapolation, which is to some extent all we've got to define the future, is the very Devil's work: there will always be completely unexpected game changers. We don't have flying cars these days, but neither do we have computers that grew in size from basement-filling 7094s to whole cities or planets. And they haven't taken over, and artificial intelligence remains not only a distant goal but one whose very definition, even the possibility of its achievement, remain the subject of dispute.
Problem is, there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy to all this. An apocalypse is nothing if not a breakdown of civil order and relations. In the fifties and sixties, one thought of nuclear war, and, perhaps, built a fallout shelter. Now, people imagine zombies. But those zombies all too often turn into Ayn Rand's moochers and looters, and, all too often, people buy guns. They buy ammunition. They practice with them sometimes, and every shot fired reminds them that they're preparing to defend themselves against the Other, who becomes dehumanbized. Trying to understand the Other is not only useless, but a sign of weakness. Coming together to solve problems is not just a betrayal of values, but bringing a guitar to a gun fight. Talking to someone with whom you disagree--negotiation, it was once called--is, as in the Bush-Cheney administration, viewed as concession to an enemy, rather than something adults do.
Me, I'll take a flying car over all that...
By 1982, in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” an enormously influential science-fiction portrait of the near future, the flying car had turned definitively noir. Cops lifted off in them from decaying, ungovernable streets, nosing through the perpetual twilight of neon-lit pollution.
These days we seem to have even less use for sunny visions of the future, instead favoring zombie plagues, enslavement by machines, endless young-adult dystopias, and apocalypses of every stripe. (Today being the big day for Mayan doom, I trust you’re watching the heavens for the approach of Nibiru.) Then, in the real world, there’s climate change, peak oil, and more esoteric forms of resource depletion (we’re running out of magnesium?!), the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent, and the imperial tristesse that infuses the idea of America’s declining power in the world.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/12/21/terrafugia-transition-flying-cars-not-just-for-escaping-zombies/0dT7ws8cAcvgaYhKvysMRK/story.html?event=event12
He then admits to being happy that expectations have changed: his vision of flying cars isn't freedom to travel, but millions of Boston drivers up there doing on the skies what they do on the roads.
But an apocalyptic future is no more probable than a Utopian one. Utopia means 'nowhere' for a reason. And extrapolation, which is to some extent all we've got to define the future, is the very Devil's work: there will always be completely unexpected game changers. We don't have flying cars these days, but neither do we have computers that grew in size from basement-filling 7094s to whole cities or planets. And they haven't taken over, and artificial intelligence remains not only a distant goal but one whose very definition, even the possibility of its achievement, remain the subject of dispute.
Problem is, there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy to all this. An apocalypse is nothing if not a breakdown of civil order and relations. In the fifties and sixties, one thought of nuclear war, and, perhaps, built a fallout shelter. Now, people imagine zombies. But those zombies all too often turn into Ayn Rand's moochers and looters, and, all too often, people buy guns. They buy ammunition. They practice with them sometimes, and every shot fired reminds them that they're preparing to defend themselves against the Other, who becomes dehumanbized. Trying to understand the Other is not only useless, but a sign of weakness. Coming together to solve problems is not just a betrayal of values, but bringing a guitar to a gun fight. Talking to someone with whom you disagree--negotiation, it was once called--is, as in the Bush-Cheney administration, viewed as concession to an enemy, rather than something adults do.
Me, I'll take a flying car over all that...
Thursday, December 20, 2012
You Cannot Conquer Time
Talking about Tolkien's One Ring on the docs' blog Sermo, and got to thinking: its destruction ended Sauron and Mordor, broke the power of evil.
Occam's Bushmaster
There's lots of talk about action heroes as dangerous fantasies these days, especially those you can pretend are yourself as you mow down the zombie hordes on the Alienware. But action heroes make sense in the world constructed around them, which they inhabit. Absolute good,
absolute evil, unambiguous, easily distinguished in the blink of an eye and a flash
of a muzzle, where physical violence has a simple, crystal clear origin
and physical violence the righteous and inevitable solution.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Welcome, Keep Calm and Carry On, And Thank You
A friend from the doctors' blog Sermo, whose denizens are mostly (but not all) rightie and libertarian sorts, and many of whom I count as friends regardless, ran across this blog and asked me if I was keeping it a secret. I haven't, and I welcome all who want to come here. If you read back, and find things you disagree with, feel free to let fly; I'll respond. But I've an odd reservation, as I replied to him thus (crossposted from the Sermo 'private' messaging board:
My screen name comes from my eldest daughter, who loves wombats after seeing 'em on an Animal Planet show when she was little. She'd ask me a question, and I'd usually respond, 'That's complicated', and go down to the basement library and come up with five books. So, she called me 'Prof. Complicated'. I merged the two out of my love for her, and to remind myself not to take myself too seriously. Works well, doesn't it? (dives into blast shelter)
Thanks so much--I've let the blog lapse and thanks for reminding me of it; I'll start posting on it again. I hadn't spread the news far and wide about it because the stuff i wrote for it i did mostly in a vacuum, which means I didn't get feedback from those with whom I disagree, but want to maintain a conversation with anyway. There are a couple of people on Sermo like that... So, some of the political posts aren't all that temperate and reasoned on the blog, more like venting my spleen than debating with intelligent people using facts and logic.
I don't hide my views under a rock here 'zackly. But neither do I let fly with all cannons firing with respect to how I feel about that stuff. It's pretty obvious, I'd guess, that I feel deeply about it--wouldn't keep it up otherwise. And I've said most of what I've said anywhere else here, too. But neither do I want to offend, or make it impossible to keep the conversation up. My goals here are to make room for the notion that one can be human and sane and be left of center anyway, to the extent that mutual respect in disagreement is possible, that one can disagree without dismissing someone else's common humanity, the possibility that despite our disagreements we could work together to find enough common ground to move the case along. That's harder sometimes than just letting the rhetorical flag fly marching into battle. Less fun sometimes. Requires restraint and forethought on my part. And also, harder because I don't want to compromise my views in doing so: that would be hypocrisy in service of the illusion of community, and would vitiate the whole exercise. I'm the first to admit that I don't always get it right, but I try.
I love sharing all the non-political stuff, always, and love talking with people who don't think the way I do because I learn something from them, every time. So anyone who comes to the blog is always welcome, not a secret, Kumbaya and like that. I just don't want people to come there expecting reasoned dialogue and finding what they might see as partisan diatribe, getting turned off and ending the conversation. If they have comments in disagreement, I'll answer them the way I do here, semicolons and all, and I'd hope that'd be OK. Hope all that makes sense.
Long answer to your short question--I do that a lot--with deep respect, and gratitude.
I'll be back here often enough to keep you coming back, assuming the content's at all worth it to you. Go ahead. Teach me something. Make my world bigger. I get stupid if I only talk to myself...
My screen name comes from my eldest daughter, who loves wombats after seeing 'em on an Animal Planet show when she was little. She'd ask me a question, and I'd usually respond, 'That's complicated', and go down to the basement library and come up with five books. So, she called me 'Prof. Complicated'. I merged the two out of my love for her, and to remind myself not to take myself too seriously. Works well, doesn't it? (dives into blast shelter)
Thanks so much--I've let the blog lapse and thanks for reminding me of it; I'll start posting on it again. I hadn't spread the news far and wide about it because the stuff i wrote for it i did mostly in a vacuum, which means I didn't get feedback from those with whom I disagree, but want to maintain a conversation with anyway. There are a couple of people on Sermo like that... So, some of the political posts aren't all that temperate and reasoned on the blog, more like venting my spleen than debating with intelligent people using facts and logic.
I don't hide my views under a rock here 'zackly. But neither do I let fly with all cannons firing with respect to how I feel about that stuff. It's pretty obvious, I'd guess, that I feel deeply about it--wouldn't keep it up otherwise. And I've said most of what I've said anywhere else here, too. But neither do I want to offend, or make it impossible to keep the conversation up. My goals here are to make room for the notion that one can be human and sane and be left of center anyway, to the extent that mutual respect in disagreement is possible, that one can disagree without dismissing someone else's common humanity, the possibility that despite our disagreements we could work together to find enough common ground to move the case along. That's harder sometimes than just letting the rhetorical flag fly marching into battle. Less fun sometimes. Requires restraint and forethought on my part. And also, harder because I don't want to compromise my views in doing so: that would be hypocrisy in service of the illusion of community, and would vitiate the whole exercise. I'm the first to admit that I don't always get it right, but I try.
I love sharing all the non-political stuff, always, and love talking with people who don't think the way I do because I learn something from them, every time. So anyone who comes to the blog is always welcome, not a secret, Kumbaya and like that. I just don't want people to come there expecting reasoned dialogue and finding what they might see as partisan diatribe, getting turned off and ending the conversation. If they have comments in disagreement, I'll answer them the way I do here, semicolons and all, and I'd hope that'd be OK. Hope all that makes sense.
Long answer to your short question--I do that a lot--with deep respect, and gratitude.
I'll be back here often enough to keep you coming back, assuming the content's at all worth it to you. Go ahead. Teach me something. Make my world bigger. I get stupid if I only talk to myself...
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Bipartisanship Requires Two Partisans
Paul Krugman today reduces the Ryan phenomenon, as he has repeatedly, as emerging from the willful blindness of those, especially in the media, looking for credible Republicans with increasing desperation:
...the Ryan phenomenon wasn’t primarily driven by the hard right, which has plenty of heroes. It was driven, instead, by “centrist”, self-righteously nonpartisan pundits who seized upon Ryan as their demonstration that see, there are honest, reasonable conservatives who must be taken seriously.
And these people have been hit really hard by Ryan’s precipitous plunge from icon to punchline, which is made much worse from their point of view by the fact that some of us warned years ago that Ryan was in fact an obvious con man.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-make-bipartisan/
...the Ryan phenomenon wasn’t primarily driven by the hard right, which has plenty of heroes. It was driven, instead, by “centrist”, self-righteously nonpartisan pundits who seized upon Ryan as their demonstration that see, there are honest, reasonable conservatives who must be taken seriously.
And these people have been hit really hard by Ryan’s precipitous plunge from icon to punchline, which is made much worse from their point of view by the fact that some of us warned years ago that Ryan was in fact an obvious con man.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-make-bipartisan/
The
astounding, egregious Republican primary sequence was an exercise in
hailing one absurd candidate after another as the Great Not-Romney Hope,
only to be dashed on the rocks of reality. We now have Romney
elevating Ryan, demonstrating that Romney himself isn't much better.
Those looking for the moderate, centrist, reality-connected candidate, with an actual plan to deal with the economy, should vote for Obama, who is all of those things. Were the Republican party not dominated by liars and crazies, it'd be easy to see him as bipartisan. And those of us (raises hand) who find Obama too centrist have no alternative at all but to vote for him.
Those looking for the moderate, centrist, reality-connected candidate, with an actual plan to deal with the economy, should vote for Obama, who is all of those things. Were the Republican party not dominated by liars and crazies, it'd be easy to see him as bipartisan. And those of us (raises hand) who find Obama too centrist have no alternative at all but to vote for him.
Obama: Devoid of Republican Substance
David Brooks often suggests that Obama's government is defensive, and that neither the Republicans not Obama have had substantive plans for changing things for the better. Consider today's article, in which he offers Obama his skills as a speech writer:
Obama has been reactive. He has been defined by the various negotiating positions he has taken in his confrontations with Congress. He’s used a more partisan political style to mask his small-bore policy substance. It’s not clear what he is passionate to do if he is elected for another four years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/opinion/obamas-elevator-speech.html?hp
Small-bore policy substance? Mr Brooks obviously hasn't read the president's jobs program, not even taken up by the Republican-controlled House. Nor Obama's budgets, dismissed a priori. Nor Obama's negotiations with the Republicans over the budget, in which they refused to consider the slightest bit more spending or a penny of tax increase, holding simultaneously and irrationally that the deficit and high taxes are both problems needing to be addressed urgently and forgetting unemployment. Nor Republican intimidation of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Takes two. If there's only one at the table, that one makes concession after concession and meets only obduracy, that isn't symmetry. Add on the constant drumbeat of doubt as to Obama's birth, religion, association with dangerous radicals, apologies for America, attacks on religion and other nonsense, and it's even worse. Perhaps Mr Brooks should reconsider...
Obama has been reactive. He has been defined by the various negotiating positions he has taken in his confrontations with Congress. He’s used a more partisan political style to mask his small-bore policy substance. It’s not clear what he is passionate to do if he is elected for another four years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/opinion/obamas-elevator-speech.html?hp
Small-bore policy substance? Mr Brooks obviously hasn't read the president's jobs program, not even taken up by the Republican-controlled House. Nor Obama's budgets, dismissed a priori. Nor Obama's negotiations with the Republicans over the budget, in which they refused to consider the slightest bit more spending or a penny of tax increase, holding simultaneously and irrationally that the deficit and high taxes are both problems needing to be addressed urgently and forgetting unemployment. Nor Republican intimidation of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Takes two. If there's only one at the table, that one makes concession after concession and meets only obduracy, that isn't symmetry. Add on the constant drumbeat of doubt as to Obama's birth, religion, association with dangerous radicals, apologies for America, attacks on religion and other nonsense, and it's even worse. Perhaps Mr Brooks should reconsider...
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Can I Get A MIttless? A Modest Suggestion for a Campaign Ad
The visual would depict Mitt Romney's dressage horse, prancing about the ring in a manner which all but those involved in the sport would find ridiculous. Overlaid, a soundtrack detailing Romney's proposals that the rich get further tax cuts, that the middle class gets increases, that the poor and those dependent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid take one for the team. And, closing, mentioning the cost of such a horse and its maintenance, and, finally, pointing out that Romney deducts the horse as a business expense from his taxes, which means that every citizen of the USA helps pay for it.
Hold That Tiger?
There's a fascinating article on Chinese education in the Times today, on Nicholas Kristof's blog, by an American college student who spent a year in a Chinese high school. He'd noted the very high science and math scores Chinese students have with respect to the rest of the world, very much including the USA, and had hoped to learn a lot. He became disenchanted quickly:
But we cannot take those successes and implement them here. A cafeteria approach to Chinese culture – “I’ll take the work ethic, but not the stress-producing, creativity-killing exam, please” – doesn’t work; the baby is inseparable from the bathwater. Kristof often measures his praise with criticism of the Chinese model, acknowledging that it causes stress or stifles creativity. But these criticisms are more than disclaimers, they are inextricably linked to the model’s successes. The same gaokao that puts heavy stress on students also makes them willing to do homework over the summer and the emphasis on mindless rote memorization is precisely why students score highly.
The question we need to ask is not “How have the Chinese produced such hardworking students?” but rather “Is it possible to instill such a work ethic without a high-stakes exam to scare students into submission?” Instead of “How have the Chinese achieved such measurable success?” we must ask, “Is it possible to succeed without revolving around tests?”
China’s solutions won’t work – what we need are answers of our own.
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/que...
Richard Feynman, in (I think) 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?', told of his experience in Brazil, where he found a similar system, restricted to rote repetition at the expense of creativity. A friend whose daughter attended the Sorbonne in Paris had similar stories to tell. In Japan, entrance into Tokyo University is key to advancement, as is the Ecole Polytechnique in France. Once the ferocious competition is over, students in such places slack off considerably, perhaps (don't know for sure, speculating here) behaving as do, say, Harvard legacy students 'earning' gentlemen's C's.
I'm reminded of John Searle's Chinese Room argument against the notion of artificial intelligence arising solely out of algorithm, as a digital computer program would. He imagined a man, speaking no Chinese, in a room with a Chinese dictionary and other books. Through a slot, questions would appear in Chinese. He'd take the books, and render them into Chinese, and send them out the slot. The man would know no Chinese at all. Neither would a computer doing the same thing. So, in another example, the computer chess program Deep Blue, executing a gazillion instructions a second, beat then world champion Garry Kasparov, who couldn't possibly match it in its method, and used, perhaps, another. This isn't universally accepted, and can be attacked in several ways. But would the man in the room be encouraged to creativity, to brainstorm with others, to solve problems or even define previously unrecognised ones to solve? Dunno...
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Tea Partiers: the Sokol Hoax Lives?
Ron Suskind quoted an unnamed source during the Bush administration, famously, as claiming the right to construct their own reality arising out of their power. The Tea Partiers seem to all but themselves increasingly at odds with reality, and the Republican Party increasingly unwilling to challenge them on even their most ludicrous beliefs. Such as Krugman, shaking their heads, say outright that their numbers don't add up, their assumptions at odds with data, that Ryan's and Romney's proposed budgets are fraudulent and out of fantasy rather than reality.
I've wondered in this context about the philosophical distance at which some on the left have positioned themselves from the notion of the correspondence theory of truth, the existence of an objective reality, the alleged hegemony of scientific over humanistic takes on life and the hard-to-define demarcation between the two. The right, trying to claw back shared power and reassert its claim to exclusive possession of it, demonstrates a potted caricature of postmodernism, raising the possibility that there's a fundamental problem with it. Or, perhaps, a less fundamental one, whose desperately needed clarification would exclude righty abuse of the notion. The Tea Partiers and, well, sane people, are obviously at odds. Their world views are irreconcilable, and not merely, seems to me, because of intrinsic assumptions equally valid though different, their validity a matter of social construction and nothing else, neither side privileged, but rather because one side is entirely crazy and the other is trying to deal with the real world. I don't see how that can be argued. I see their assertions as not stating facts, but, rather, laying out social markers, by which identification with the group is granted, and, therefore, unchallengeable by assertion of fact. For many of them, the Obama-as-Kenyan and Obama-as-Muslim assertions are completely unfalsifiable. And 58% or so of Republicans discard the theory of evolution despite vast, unchallenged scientific evidence.
The Tea Partiers, of course, would disagree with me, and assert precisely the same thing about, well, sane people, and are immune to factual and logical disputation of their positions. I'd like to refute them with more than a Potter Stewart hand-waving 'I know it when I see it'. I'd like to assert, with absolute confidence, that there's a way to objectively distinguish between socially constructed world views based on external correspondence, or lack of it, with reality. Then again, I'd like to do so with respect to science and other human enterprises--an exercise most scientists take as obvious or unnecessary, but which has resisted most rigorous philosophical attempts to do so. Or, perhaps, I can just say they're all bigoted, intolerant, ignorant, dogmatic poopyheads, and that lefties aren't. Obviously...
I've wondered in this context about the philosophical distance at which some on the left have positioned themselves from the notion of the correspondence theory of truth, the existence of an objective reality, the alleged hegemony of scientific over humanistic takes on life and the hard-to-define demarcation between the two. The right, trying to claw back shared power and reassert its claim to exclusive possession of it, demonstrates a potted caricature of postmodernism, raising the possibility that there's a fundamental problem with it. Or, perhaps, a less fundamental one, whose desperately needed clarification would exclude righty abuse of the notion. The Tea Partiers and, well, sane people, are obviously at odds. Their world views are irreconcilable, and not merely, seems to me, because of intrinsic assumptions equally valid though different, their validity a matter of social construction and nothing else, neither side privileged, but rather because one side is entirely crazy and the other is trying to deal with the real world. I don't see how that can be argued. I see their assertions as not stating facts, but, rather, laying out social markers, by which identification with the group is granted, and, therefore, unchallengeable by assertion of fact. For many of them, the Obama-as-Kenyan and Obama-as-Muslim assertions are completely unfalsifiable. And 58% or so of Republicans discard the theory of evolution despite vast, unchallenged scientific evidence.
The Tea Partiers, of course, would disagree with me, and assert precisely the same thing about, well, sane people, and are immune to factual and logical disputation of their positions. I'd like to refute them with more than a Potter Stewart hand-waving 'I know it when I see it'. I'd like to assert, with absolute confidence, that there's a way to objectively distinguish between socially constructed world views based on external correspondence, or lack of it, with reality. Then again, I'd like to do so with respect to science and other human enterprises--an exercise most scientists take as obvious or unnecessary, but which has resisted most rigorous philosophical attempts to do so. Or, perhaps, I can just say they're all bigoted, intolerant, ignorant, dogmatic poopyheads, and that lefties aren't. Obviously...
Republicans: Bring Back Noblesse Oblige
Ross Douthat in today's Times tries to recast Mitt Romney as not a Mormon but a classic WASP, one of those worthies schooled in the Values That Made This Country Great. Wrong, seems to me, on both counts. Dwelling on Ann Romney's speech, he concludes thus:
Her best line evoked generations of reticent, public spirited Brahmins: “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” The same was true of her strongest passage:
No one will work harder. No one will care more. And no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live.
This is not an ideological or policy-oriented argument, calculated to reassure conservatives worried that Romney is too moderate or moderates worried that he’s too conservative. Nor is it a promise that Romney would actually be a great guy to have a (non-alcoholic) beer with. And while it evokes the hope of a better tomorrow, it doesn’t cast the mere act of electing Romney president as a kind of grand apotheosis in its own right, in the style of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Instead, it’s an argument for Ann Romney’s husband that could have been made on behalf of the old White Anglo Saxon ruling class with whose Social Registered members he shares so many qualities. You don’t have to love him, the more effective parts of her speech implied, or relate to him, or even always necessarily agree with him. But you can trust him with the presidency, because he’s suited to public service, and he was born and raised and trained to do this job.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/the-case-for-noblesse-oblige/?hp
He titles his column 'The Case For Noblesse Oblige'. Wrong, seems to me, on both counts. It's hard to be more of a Mormon than Romney, who ministers, tithes, missionaried and raised five Mormon sons. And one of those Values was never flip-flopping on issues such as abortion, or joining the NRA while running for president out of a lifelong love of hunting, or renouncing one's principal political achievement (Massachusetts health care). Nor did Romney, with Bain Capital, actually build anything. But Douthat's wrong on a deeper level. Consider, for instance, the egregious Niall Ferguson, who waxes nostalgic for the British Empire--though not in a bar in Perth or Dublin, nor in Amritsar or Johannesburg. In reviewing a book by Philip Bobbitt, Ferguson, descending into self-caricature, delivered himself of this gem:
Philip Bobbitt, however, is homo atlanticus redux. A dapper Southerner, renowned almost as much for his sparkling literary allusions as for his acute thinking, he divides his time among Austin, Tex.; New York, where he teaches law at Columbia; and London, where he has lectured in war studies. His new book, “Terror and Consent,” is in many ways a manifesto for a new Atlanticism, not just a reassertion but a reinvention of the dominant role of the trans-Atlantic alliance. It will be read with pleasure by men of a certain age, class and education from Manhattan’s Upper East Side to London’s West End.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/books/review/Ferguson-t.html?pagewanted=all
Such rhetoric expresses profound regret that people formerly excluded from power--women, black folk, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, former Colonial wogs, others, constituting solid numerical majorities in the USA and the world--are demanding, and sometimes asserting, a share of that power, and recognition of their common humanity. And not just regret, but anger, resentment and resistance by any means necessary, attempting to reverse time. It cuts to the Republican position on issue after issue.
So, Obama isn't even a citizen of the country, and won because of voter fraud--itself a falsehood arising in part out of record turnouts of black and Hispanic folk in 2008--after a lifetime where every achievement was due to affirmative action--reverse racism, they call it. Control over women's bodies, abortion, even contraception. Romney's bellicose nonsense about Russia as geopolitical enemy and China as requiring stern resistance. Foreign aid and the United Nations. Obama kissing the Saudis and 'apologizing for America'. Ayn Rand's 'virtue of selfishness.' All of it.
Not only wrong factually, morally and ethically, but, if implemented as policy, utterly doomed to failure, arising out of fantasy, stupidity and outright lie. And, apparently, appealing enough to many to, quite possibly, get Romney elected.
Her best line evoked generations of reticent, public spirited Brahmins: “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” The same was true of her strongest passage:
No one will work harder. No one will care more. And no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live.
This is not an ideological or policy-oriented argument, calculated to reassure conservatives worried that Romney is too moderate or moderates worried that he’s too conservative. Nor is it a promise that Romney would actually be a great guy to have a (non-alcoholic) beer with. And while it evokes the hope of a better tomorrow, it doesn’t cast the mere act of electing Romney president as a kind of grand apotheosis in its own right, in the style of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Instead, it’s an argument for Ann Romney’s husband that could have been made on behalf of the old White Anglo Saxon ruling class with whose Social Registered members he shares so many qualities. You don’t have to love him, the more effective parts of her speech implied, or relate to him, or even always necessarily agree with him. But you can trust him with the presidency, because he’s suited to public service, and he was born and raised and trained to do this job.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/the-case-for-noblesse-oblige/?hp
He titles his column 'The Case For Noblesse Oblige'. Wrong, seems to me, on both counts. It's hard to be more of a Mormon than Romney, who ministers, tithes, missionaried and raised five Mormon sons. And one of those Values was never flip-flopping on issues such as abortion, or joining the NRA while running for president out of a lifelong love of hunting, or renouncing one's principal political achievement (Massachusetts health care). Nor did Romney, with Bain Capital, actually build anything. But Douthat's wrong on a deeper level. Consider, for instance, the egregious Niall Ferguson, who waxes nostalgic for the British Empire--though not in a bar in Perth or Dublin, nor in Amritsar or Johannesburg. In reviewing a book by Philip Bobbitt, Ferguson, descending into self-caricature, delivered himself of this gem:
Philip Bobbitt, however, is homo atlanticus redux. A dapper Southerner, renowned almost as much for his sparkling literary allusions as for his acute thinking, he divides his time among Austin, Tex.; New York, where he teaches law at Columbia; and London, where he has lectured in war studies. His new book, “Terror and Consent,” is in many ways a manifesto for a new Atlanticism, not just a reassertion but a reinvention of the dominant role of the trans-Atlantic alliance. It will be read with pleasure by men of a certain age, class and education from Manhattan’s Upper East Side to London’s West End.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/books/review/Ferguson-t.html?pagewanted=all
Such rhetoric expresses profound regret that people formerly excluded from power--women, black folk, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, former Colonial wogs, others, constituting solid numerical majorities in the USA and the world--are demanding, and sometimes asserting, a share of that power, and recognition of their common humanity. And not just regret, but anger, resentment and resistance by any means necessary, attempting to reverse time. It cuts to the Republican position on issue after issue.
So, Obama isn't even a citizen of the country, and won because of voter fraud--itself a falsehood arising in part out of record turnouts of black and Hispanic folk in 2008--after a lifetime where every achievement was due to affirmative action--reverse racism, they call it. Control over women's bodies, abortion, even contraception. Romney's bellicose nonsense about Russia as geopolitical enemy and China as requiring stern resistance. Foreign aid and the United Nations. Obama kissing the Saudis and 'apologizing for America'. Ayn Rand's 'virtue of selfishness.' All of it.
Not only wrong factually, morally and ethically, but, if implemented as policy, utterly doomed to failure, arising out of fantasy, stupidity and outright lie. And, apparently, appealing enough to many to, quite possibly, get Romney elected.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Money Talks, Republicans Walk
The Times today has two Republicans and two Democrats discussing the utility of presidential conventions in their 'Room For Debate' series. It's fun to read:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/08/26/do-party-conventions-matter-anymore?hp
Interesting that the two Republicans have little use for conventions, and the Democrats like them. Also interesting that Dan Schnur, a Republican, called for the parties, rather than the taxpayers, to finance the conventions.
It's almost as if the Republicans, who have far more money after Citizens united than do the Democrats--Sheldon Adelson alone could finance the GOP convention--want to put the Democrats at a further financial disadvantage, and as if the Republicans don't want the Democrats to have an opportunity to place their message before the electorate. Imagine that.
NB: been ill, better now and will show up here. Thanks for understanding
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Gee, Officer Zimmerman, We're Sociologically Sick
I remain baffled by those discussing the Trayvon Martin killing out of ideology trumping tragedy. There is one unassailable, absolute, 100% true aspect to this case: an armed man killed an unarmed kid. That shouldn't have happened, and should be prevented in the future if at all possible. Such an event should be found horrible by all who contemplate it.
When liberals/lefties/whatever seek explanations for social problems with a view towards mitigating them, they're routinely accused by conservatives/righties/whatever of not merely explaining, but justifying. Extending a common humanity across the board to all is oft viewed as an abdication of morality, an abandonment of holding people personally responsible for their actions, denial of a moral sense of right and wrong, and so fundamentally flawed as to perpetuate, even worsen the very problem under study. That's usually (not always) wrong: there's a fundamental difference between explanation and justification, and personal responsibility is more, rather than less, necessary in a world where easy certainties are more elusive than any of us would like.
We have here an event, as I said, that should not have happened. And we have here emerging from the right precisely the sort of reasoning that they so oft accuse the left of in caricature: a framing of the death of an unarmed kid at the hands of an armed man as not merely explainable, but justifiable.
When liberals/lefties/whatever seek explanations for social problems with a view towards mitigating them, they're routinely accused by conservatives/righties/whatever of not merely explaining, but justifying. Extending a common humanity across the board to all is oft viewed as an abdication of morality, an abandonment of holding people personally responsible for their actions, denial of a moral sense of right and wrong, and so fundamentally flawed as to perpetuate, even worsen the very problem under study. That's usually (not always) wrong: there's a fundamental difference between explanation and justification, and personal responsibility is more, rather than less, necessary in a world where easy certainties are more elusive than any of us would like.
We have here an event, as I said, that should not have happened. And we have here emerging from the right precisely the sort of reasoning that they so oft accuse the left of in caricature: a framing of the death of an unarmed kid at the hands of an armed man as not merely explainable, but justifiable.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Philip Larkin
Michiko Kakutani in the Times today reviews an exhaustive, meticulous new complete works of Philip Larkin:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/books/philip-larkins-complete-poems-edited-by-archie-burnett.html?hpw
My hat's off to her; I've loved Larkin for a long time, but would never dream of subjecting myself to that big a dose of him at once. His work isn't, in bulk, exactly a ringing affirmation of human possibilities. Sometimes, though, his humor mitigates his gloom, even when he's at his most pessimistic:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
-----
Another of my favorites:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
---
His concision and effortless form, everyday diction and combination of humor and seriousness in these two echo Auden, are instantly memorable and, even if I disagree with them somewhat, are far too serious at root to be dismissed.
But my favorite of his poems is 'The North Ship', which would have annoyed him: an early work from his first book (1945), extensively anthologized, that he himself didn't like his work reduced to. It begins thus:
I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.
The first ship turned towards the west,
Over the sea, the running sea,
And by the wind was all possessed
And carried to a rich country.
The second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.
The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.
The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:
But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.
--
So Larkin would be annoyed. Why should the toad of middle aged disillusion squat upon my life?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/books/philip-larkins-complete-poems-edited-by-archie-burnett.html?hpw
My hat's off to her; I've loved Larkin for a long time, but would never dream of subjecting myself to that big a dose of him at once. His work isn't, in bulk, exactly a ringing affirmation of human possibilities. Sometimes, though, his humor mitigates his gloom, even when he's at his most pessimistic:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
-----
Another of my favorites:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
---
His concision and effortless form, everyday diction and combination of humor and seriousness in these two echo Auden, are instantly memorable and, even if I disagree with them somewhat, are far too serious at root to be dismissed.
But my favorite of his poems is 'The North Ship', which would have annoyed him: an early work from his first book (1945), extensively anthologized, that he himself didn't like his work reduced to. It begins thus:
I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.
The first ship turned towards the west,
Over the sea, the running sea,
And by the wind was all possessed
And carried to a rich country.
The second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.
The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.
The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:
But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.
--
So Larkin would be annoyed. Why should the toad of middle aged disillusion squat upon my life?
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
'War Crime' is Redundant. 'Just War' is Oxymoronic.
David Brooks explores today the transition of a good, decent civilian who now stands accused of appalling atrocity in Afghanistan, going to the notion of original sin and to research demonstrating human capacity for violence. It's an important, interesting column, too short a piece on too deep a topic. I think it's a good start, and would go further as below.
We learn nothing from the Nazis worth learning unless we acknowledge that they were human, as human as we are, and that which can make a human a Nazi exists in all of us. It is something not to be denied but to be watched for, and fought, not least within ourselves. And yes, heroes, too, are human, as human as Nazis, which is precisely why one must reject despair, which aids and abets Naziism far more than it enables heroism.
It should be old, old, very old news indeed that war produces atrocity, on all sides, in people who would not so behave otherwise. There has never in human history been a war devoid of it. The notions of 'just war' and 'war crimes' are willful denial of the fact. There is no such thing as just war. There is no war without crime. One can say that it was necessary to defeat Hitler's evil, even if it required acts such as massive civilian bombing and alliance with one of history's most monstrous regimes, but one cannot pretend that victory, even in a war as necessary as any, can come without its price to the soul of the victor, or that 'necessary' and 'just' are synonymous.
One of the curious, profoundly unsettling things about nuclear weapons is that they are so powerful that they have forced upon many of us a moral consensus that their only just, moral and ethical use is the deterrence of their use by others. A world otherwise full of horror has not seen a nuclear weapon used in war since 1945. We have, of course, not entirely embraced that yet. A single ballistic missile submarine has 240 or so warheads which can be individually targeted to destroy the infrastructure and population of even the largest country on earth within 30 minutes of the order. We now have around 10,000 warheads, and that is celebrated by some as an improvement, and railed against by others as unilateral disarmament. Meanwhile, even such as Kissinger, Scowcroft and Shultz have joined in calling for an end to nuclear weapons. Some of us might add that one might call for an end to war in general under similar grounds: easy to begin, difficult to limit or control or end, inevitably producing atrocity not just from an enemy but from ourselves, and far more often than not preparing the ground for the next war.
We now live in times when one of the two major parties' rhetoric constantly calls for more personal responsibility, but, in general, only finds it lacking in others. That is absurd on its face, offers no way forward at all, and opposes the teachings throughout history of the greatest teachers humanity has produced. We also constantly hear saber rattling over the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, as if war is the default position, to be proceeded with absent guarantees of total success were it not embarked upon. It isn't hard to hear a dismissal of the inevitable 'collateral damage' of such a war, as if Iran's government and its people are one and the same, as if a war could not possibly have negative consequences as large as those of not going to war. Not so.
If any of us can be Nazis, if any of us might under some circumstances commit or abet atrocity, then it seems to me amongst the very highest of our obligations to prevent that. It's obvious that it can be prevented: most people do not so behave. That requires us to understand both what exists within ourselves, and what circumstances encourage evil behavior from us. And there are no more confirmed data about humanity than that war brings terror, atrocity and death, that politics and religion which dehumanize others result in man's inhumanity to man, that weapons designed to kill facilitate killing.
Cite to Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/brooks-when-the-good-do-bad.html?_r=1
We learn nothing from the Nazis worth learning unless we acknowledge that they were human, as human as we are, and that which can make a human a Nazi exists in all of us. It is something not to be denied but to be watched for, and fought, not least within ourselves. And yes, heroes, too, are human, as human as Nazis, which is precisely why one must reject despair, which aids and abets Naziism far more than it enables heroism.
It should be old, old, very old news indeed that war produces atrocity, on all sides, in people who would not so behave otherwise. There has never in human history been a war devoid of it. The notions of 'just war' and 'war crimes' are willful denial of the fact. There is no such thing as just war. There is no war without crime. One can say that it was necessary to defeat Hitler's evil, even if it required acts such as massive civilian bombing and alliance with one of history's most monstrous regimes, but one cannot pretend that victory, even in a war as necessary as any, can come without its price to the soul of the victor, or that 'necessary' and 'just' are synonymous.
One of the curious, profoundly unsettling things about nuclear weapons is that they are so powerful that they have forced upon many of us a moral consensus that their only just, moral and ethical use is the deterrence of their use by others. A world otherwise full of horror has not seen a nuclear weapon used in war since 1945. We have, of course, not entirely embraced that yet. A single ballistic missile submarine has 240 or so warheads which can be individually targeted to destroy the infrastructure and population of even the largest country on earth within 30 minutes of the order. We now have around 10,000 warheads, and that is celebrated by some as an improvement, and railed against by others as unilateral disarmament. Meanwhile, even such as Kissinger, Scowcroft and Shultz have joined in calling for an end to nuclear weapons. Some of us might add that one might call for an end to war in general under similar grounds: easy to begin, difficult to limit or control or end, inevitably producing atrocity not just from an enemy but from ourselves, and far more often than not preparing the ground for the next war.
We now live in times when one of the two major parties' rhetoric constantly calls for more personal responsibility, but, in general, only finds it lacking in others. That is absurd on its face, offers no way forward at all, and opposes the teachings throughout history of the greatest teachers humanity has produced. We also constantly hear saber rattling over the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, as if war is the default position, to be proceeded with absent guarantees of total success were it not embarked upon. It isn't hard to hear a dismissal of the inevitable 'collateral damage' of such a war, as if Iran's government and its people are one and the same, as if a war could not possibly have negative consequences as large as those of not going to war. Not so.
If any of us can be Nazis, if any of us might under some circumstances commit or abet atrocity, then it seems to me amongst the very highest of our obligations to prevent that. It's obvious that it can be prevented: most people do not so behave. That requires us to understand both what exists within ourselves, and what circumstances encourage evil behavior from us. And there are no more confirmed data about humanity than that war brings terror, atrocity and death, that politics and religion which dehumanize others result in man's inhumanity to man, that weapons designed to kill facilitate killing.
Cite to Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/brooks-when-the-good-do-bad.html?_r=1
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But the evil of Saruman and Grima in the Shire persisted after the Ring's destruction, and people started setting off for the Grey Havens. That wasn't a voyage of striving, seeking, finding and not yielding; it was an elegiac fade, not at all an exuberant victory.
I'm talking more out of my hat than out of deep analysis here, but perhaps the Ring is Time Bound, and its destruction Time's Release, as the Ring as evil, which it surely is. I see the seduction of the Ring as that of the power to bind Time to one's own ends, the preservation and consequent ossification of one's life, the infinite extension of an illusion of power rendered unchallengeable thereby. And, in the event, the Ring's destruction required an act of the entity most completely enslaved by it--made immortal by it--taking a piece of the living in his mouth as he fell to doom. Time's Release, as well as Time's Binding, may be one of those things one should be cautious to wish for...