WordPlay - Language, Culture, Media, and Meaning

The Good That Men Do . . .

    Ted  Kennedy has been dead now nearly six months. His memorial service was as impressive an example of Catholic liturgy as ever you will see, which - when it is good, is very, very good. The eulogies spoken thereat seemed to me thoughtful and sincere. Collectively, they portrayed a personality of more nobility and depth than I thought the man possessed, for I was not sympathetic to him in life. These days, when I wander into Border's or the like, I see his posthumous book - I don't recall any prehumous - True Compass, with a picture of his handsome, weatherbeaten face on the cover, on the beach. The reviews are generally sympathetic. 

      Which leads me to my question, and the subject of this piece.

      Where is it?

      Where is the personal, truthful account of what really happened on the night of June 25th, 1969?  I'd prefer the document handwritten, but print would do. Most of the persons I respect would have perceived a moral necessity to account for the 40 years of life (plus two months) that Ted Kennedy had, that Mary Jo Kopechne did not. The event also had major consequences for the political history of this nation. Jimmy Carter likely became President in 1976 because the scandal prevented Kennedy from mounting a viable candidacy. The presidential election of 1980 was also affected. 

     But mostly it is required to do the right thing by a poor forlorn girl who died long before her time was due. 

     I can understand why the account might not be published at this time. The brutally direct account written by Seymour Hersh (back when he was an actual reporter) 'Chappaquiddick Plus Five', that appeared in the New Yorker, is not available on line. As I recall, there were five married men between 45 and 55 on that island. There were five unmarried women under thirty. There was a lot of vodka and party stuff. There is an implication in those basic facts that may still matter to living people even after 40 years. So maybe a few more years have to pass before the full truth can be aired. Just about the only thing that is known about that long ago night is that no one did tell the whole truth or even partial truth about what happened. 

     Maybe there are good reasons for the silence. I'm not suggesting criminality or major scandal, just . . . .good reasons. Perhaps it is still too soon for full disclosure.  But I do believe that it is essential to know that such a document exists. If Ted Kennedy went to his grave without addressing that night, leaving the ghost of that girl wandering around restlessly, then all that beautiful liturgy was wasted. The singers might as well have been performing in concert, the speakers might as well have been addressing empty pews. However lovely the ceremony might have been, it was as empty of real humanity as the saints in the stained glass windows. No matter how wonderfully handsome the rugged, weather-beaten face might be, if he did not attempt to do right for someone whom he wronged so mightily (directly or indirectly), Ted Kennedy remains forever the insubstantial, irresponsible contemptible playboy of more cold-blooded assessment.  

      'The good that men do? Shakespeare finishes the thought, is oft interred with their bones. When I gave this piece that title, I wasn't thinking of Ted Kennedy. I was thinking of Mary Jo Kopechne. Ted Kennedy did not truly earn his beautiful funeral unless he gave her a send off of her own - so that everything she was or could have been does not go to her grave with her. 

Defining Victory in Afghanistan and Elsewhere

    On the civilized chat board on which I normally hang out, two posters from opposite ends of the political spectrum really go after each other. One is a literate, committed Annapolis grad and career navy officer, the other a well-read business executive committed to the view that the interventions of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are doomed to futility. They agree on almost nothing. But they are in agreement that 'victory' in Afghanistan and elsewhere, in general on, the war on terror, is an impossibility. There is too much tribal rivalry to overcome, too little infrastructure, and too much history of futility. 

    This to me raises exactly the kind of linguistic issue I began this blog to address. It is obviously impossible to 'win' a war against 'terror', or a war against 'drugs' or 'crime' in the same way the South surrendered at Appomattox. 'Terror'  'drugs' (meaning drug sale or usage), and 'crime' are all concepts, or types of behavior. So let's for starters modify the meaning of 'victory' to a usage that actually has practical application to such abstractions. Let us say victory means 'the maximum positive result in practical terms'. Well and good - we at least have a working definition that can be applied to abstractions. But it is still devoid of content. What exactly is the maximum practical positive result in concrete terms?

     Philip Bobbit, a legal historian at the University of Texas, has written two enormously influential books in this decade - 'The Shield of Achilles' and 'Terror and Consent'. The second of these addresses this issue directly. The author attempted to write a book that would be academically credible as well as accessible, with the result that the book is a mite on the tomish side, and not as widely known as it should be. But the thesis is persuasive., Examining a variety of national and international conflicts over the last millennium, Bobbit postulates that organized nation states bring forth (for want of a better phrase) enemies that mirror their organization. For example, the city states of medieval Italy, whose armed forces were essentially bands of knights, were opposed by mercenaries, condottiere, organized in a similar way. The more sophisticated nation states that arose between the 17th and 20th Centuries generated opposition in the same way, with the military organizations of the rival states aping each other's military organization.

       Bobbit argues that the nation states that dominated world affairs until the end of the Cold War have been outmoded, replaced by what he calls the corporate state. The term is unfortunate, for 'corporate' has a connotation of 'business enterprise', which is not (I think) Bobbit's meaning. He uses the term to reference the extent to which the institutions of government and culture have become distributed globally, without any fixed locale, in the same manner in which a corporation does not have a physical identity. Thus, the financial institutions of global society cannot be said to be located on Wall Street, or the Bourse, or the Street, or the Rialto, or anywhere. They comprise a network which cannot even be described as 'international' (which implies a relationship of national identities), but metanational or transnational. Films and television programs are released now all over the world at the same time. Satellite capability makes any significant event a global event, no matter how localized. The corporate state exists independent of any locale or nation state.

     Per Bobbit's historical view, the corporate state will inevitably produce its own enemy, its nemesis, which will ape its primary characteristics. The adversaries of the corporate state, its deadly foes, are similarly 'corporate' and networked, without any fixed national base. The most notable of these is Al Quaeda, which has no physical location and only a vague ethnic center. Something of the same can be said of the other enemies of the corporate state, opponents of globalization and the like.

       This raises an obvious question. The historical motivation for nearly all conflicts - tribal, intranational, international, and so on - have been disputes over territory and resources. But these are not. (A witty friend of mine jokes that US involvement in the MidEast occurs because 'our oil is under their land'.  A nice turn-of-phrase, but I don't think that the United States has saved a single dollar on a single barrel of oil as a result of its involvement in Iraq and elsewhere. Christopher Hitchens recently put paid to the notion more trenchantly.) So if these conflicts are not about territory, what do they involve?

      Bobbit addresses this issue in the title of his book. He sees the great global conflict in progress at the moment as a war between governmental systems based on the consent of the governed (the model for most civilized nations on earth) and those who would undermine consent by force or terror, in the name of a religious utopia, worker's paradise, or what not. The use of the word 'consent' has a nice precision, as opposed to 'democracy', i.e., there are forms of consensual government that are not formally democratic. Note, too, that the concept embraces the most vigorous opponents of an established government, so long as their method of opposition is based on winning the consent of the governed. The enemies of consensual government are literally enemies of consent itself - seeking to undermine the foundations of consensual government itself, either by direct seizure of power or forcing the established government to respond to terror and the threat of terrorism with police measures that effectively destroy its own legitimacy. 

     (This implies a fairly cynical view of the motives of terrorists, but for better or worse, it's one I share. If there is one single characteristic that has marginalized modern liberalism, it is its inclination to rationalize and condone political violence when the stated reason therefor is perceived to be just.  Not so - murder is first of all murder, and this is one case where the end not only does not justify the means, but the means effectively corrupt whatever end there was, becoming an end in themselves.  Always and everywhere.)

     Putting all this together, it is possible at last to define 'victory' in Afghanistan in concrete terms. Victory in Afghanistan can be said to have been achieved when the conditions become such that a government of consent becomes possible. i.e., when the campaign of terror has been sufficiently marginalized that does not obstruct the processes of consensual government. 'Marginalized' means exactly that. All sorts of nations tolerate degrees of organized crime and violence - the United States has endured the existence of ethnic gangs, some of considerable size and power, for more than a century without any posing any real threat to the foundations of the nation. It was not possible to 'defeat' the Ku Klux Klan, the Cosa Nostra, the Blackstone Rangers, or the the Mexican Mafia, any more than it is possible to defeat the Taliban - not without destroying the foundations of the consensual state from the opposite direction, by stumbling into fascism. There is some residual criminality that a free society, alas, must endure if it is to remain free.  

     But what is possible is to diminish the effect of that criminality, the influence of terrorist opposition, to the extent that it doesn't signify all that much, so that the people who really matter can build an orderly and responsive society without being obstructed by those acts - a society based on the consent of the governed. It can't be eliminated, but it can be marginalized. The establishment of the conditions of a consensual government, freed from the obstructive influence of terrorist acts (since the complete elimination of such crimes is unfortunately not possible), is what constitutes victory in this milieu. Only a fool would predict whether these conditions ever will be established, or in what direction history will take the Afghani people if they are. 

     But to say that victory in Afghanistan and elsewhere according to this definition is not achievable is simply not correct. It is well within the realm of possibility, indeed, even probable. 

A Review of the Novel 'Admission', With Some Thoughts About College Admission Philosophy and Practice

    Recently I read a novel I really liked, 'Admission', by Jean Hanff Korelitz.  The title of the book is actually rather subtle. In the first instance, it seems to apply simply and directly to the quasi-vocation of the heroine, Portia Nathan, a Princeton admissions officer.But as the story unfolds, the title turns out to also refer to the legal meaning of admission (i.e., a confession of a sort) and finally, to one particular admission decision of one candidate to Princeton, on which the heroine stakes her career.

    The basic appeal of the book is obvious. Ms. Korelitz has published four novels, but her day job the last few years has been as a reader of Princeton admission applications.  So the book offers a peek behind the curtain from someone who knows, at the actual workaday process of Ivy League admissions, a subject of absorbing interest to anyone who's been through it (twice in the last seven years, undergrad and professional school, with oldest child). The novel spans roughly an academic year, September to April, during which Portia Nathan makes presentations to secondary schools in her assigned area, reads and evaluates admissions application - this being a novel, the essays of the applicants are of particular interest to her - discusses her job and Princeton admissions with all sorts of students and parents ar various stress levels, participates on the admission committee that makes the ultimate decision on these matters, and finally becomes so involved in one special application that she puts her job on the line for that young person. It's all fascinating stuff for an outsider, written by someone in a position to know who writes awfully well.

    (Some full disclosure here. My stepson graduated from Princeton in May of 2008, so the setting of the novel was of particular interest to me. I attended the graduation. If I can believe the novel - and on this point, I do - Princeton seeks to admit a class of brilliant kids who are not self conscious about either the brilliance or the Ivy League status. From what I saw, admissions does a great job on the brilliance. The absence of self-consciousness? I'm not so sure.

    Also, Portia Nathan makes the same point to just about every one she meets, that Princeton is looking for more than academic ability, that 'little extra something' that sets the applicant apart. That would be just wonderful if Princeton were the only elite institution with that criterion. But Stanford also looks for that little extra something, as does Harvard, as does Yale, as do all of them. The practical result is that an entire cottage industry exists, specializing in creating that little extra something on a mass produced basis. Obviously, when everybody has that special cachet, no one does.     

    The practical effect of all this is a strong statement to the youth of the land, that, if you want to join the establishment, you had better have done something noteworthy before you're 17. This is almost certainly an appalling thought to both the author and her alter ego. (One of the best short passages in the book is a little section where Portia speculates how many Princeton undergrads wrestle uneasily with some version of impostor syndrome.)  But I do believe that an insistence on some sort of labored, artificial precocity in applicants is one of the consequences, doubtless unintended, of this emphasis on 'something special'. Two generations ago, James Michener opined that nothing a man (sic) did before he was 40 was really of much value, that that time was all preparation. That's probably too emphatic the other way. But if I had to choose between the two, I'll take Michener.

        One other point. There's a big emphasis throughout the book on the importance of diversity, the end of the white male bastion of privilege. Well and good - I don't think any one really disagrees with this. But I was struck by one factoid I ran across while reading the second volume of Rick Atkinson's history of American troops in Europe, The Day of Battle. In commenting on the extraordinary demographic breadth of the US Army in World War II, he used Princeton as an example. (These days, Princeton and/or Stanford seem to be the universal stand-ins for elite universities.) Eighty-four percent of the graduating class of 1942 joined the armed forces. Both the valedictorian and salutatorian joined as enlisted men.

     So I don't know. Sixty years ago, Princeton may have been a fortress of privilege, but when push came to shove, the privileged joined the rank and file. Looking back at the brilliant young people of the class of 2008, I wondered how many of them would have the same sense of obligation in a true national crisis. For sure I couldn't envision too many of them doing KP. The thought crossed my mind that underlying all this diversity (with that 'little something special' yet) was the same old 'noblesse', but without the same old 'oblige'. I wondered whether that was really all that much of an improvement.

      The background was not the only thing I liked about 'Admission' - a slight, but well written, well executed little book. The book has other interesting aspects, and I am going to devote another post to them. But this one is long enough. 

   

Sarah Palin, Jeremiah Wright, and PreacherSpeak

    When Sarah Palin became the Republican nominee for the Vice Presidency in August, 2008, her membership in the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Christian fundamentalist congregation, immediately came to the fore. Many of the best and brightest reacted reflexively. Her membership in such a church constituted at least presumptive evidence that she was, if not actually dangerous, at the very least, stupid.   

    I march to my own drummer. Sarah Palin had been too spectacularly successful in achieving too many goals - beauty pageants, girls's basketball, Alaskan municipal and regional politics - to be dumb, IQ scores and Ivy League degrees be damned. There was one success in particular that interested me. This was her renegotiation in 2006 of the Alaskan pipeline construction and lease with a consortium of oil companies. This was almost universally regarded as a triumph for Governor Palin, before her ascent in Republican politics provided cause to question her competence in all areas. There was some fairly neutral journalism written by a couple of local reporters documenting her success.

    I found this interesting in view of the former Governor's membership in the Wasilla Assembly of God. Think about it for a second. The simple existence of oil, the mere fact that such a substance is, is a devastating commentary on Biblical fundamentalism - unless a True Believer takes the position that God used this glop to cement the Earth together on Day Three or Four or whatever. I am not aware of any such theological approach. This is not to say a governor negotiating an oil pipeline contract has to become a petroleum engineer, because she obviously does not. But she does have to communicate with petroleum engineers, oil executives, and the like, all sorts of people and personalities with hyper-sophisticated scientific and technological backgrounds. She also has to be able to evaluate her own advisers and their advice, and distinguish the good from the bad - all of which Sarah Palin did, with considerable success.

    There are also those 80 percent approval ratings, obviously a demographic a lot larger than Christian fundamentalists. Those approving must have included a lot of erudite and sophisticated Alaskan citizens. All of this bespeaks a world view a lot larger than that of a Biblical literalist. Yet she is a member of the Wasilla Assembly of God, and clearly comfortable in the congregation. Interesting.

     So what goes on here? Does Sarah Palin's membership in the fundamentalist church brand her as stupid? The mainstream media thought so. Or does her ability to lay the tenets of the church to one side when dealing with the practicalities of Alaskan oil make her a hypocrite? That would certainly be the alternative position of the mainstream media, which has not exactly been charitable towards this particular public personality. My own thought is that both answers are way, way too simple. I think the answer lies elsewhere.

    I live in Santa Clara Valley, California, which most of the world calls 'Silicon Valley'. It's an extremely multicultural community - the high tech opportunities have brought, eager technologists from all over the world - and extremely sophisticated, dominated by Stanford and Santa Clara Universities, and only 35 miles south of San Francisco. In this ultra-civilized environment, there are more than 150 private schools in operation. Here's a list. Maybe two-thirds of these have religious affiliations, and maybe half of  those are committed to a philosophy most would characterize as Fundamentalist. (I am not including any Catholic or Episcopal schools in that number.) The vast majority of these institutions are Christian. There are a half-a-dozen Jewish affiliated schools, and one Islamic elementary school. Based on the school descriptions, these are apparently Fundamentalist as well.

   The enrolment in most Christian Fundamentalist schools is a mixture of Caucasian and Asian students, with Asian enrolment averaging around 40 percent. Here's another list, which contains that information. To the best of my knowledge, there is no site that summarizes the annual costs systematically, but from what schools DO disclose the figure, tuition begins at about $6,000 for elementary school. High schools cost around $10,000. Valley Christian, the flagship of these institutions and a local athletic power, charges a little over $13,000 for the first child, $12,000 for a second - many of these families will educate two or more children at such a school. 

    The point should be obvious. The parents who pay this sort of money to send their sons and daughters to these sort of schools are not doing so with the expectation that these students will go on to divinity schools at bible colleges and become pastors of small, revelation churches. They have the same dreams and ambitions for their children as those who send theirs to secular schools. The academic presentation at The King's Academy, a Christian school in Sunnyvale, is typical. The school is unambiguously and unapologetically Christian,  describing itself as a "Christ-centered college preparatory middle and senior high school for students who have teachable hearts and coachable spirits. We offer a loving, family environment where students are encouraged to grow in their relationship with Jesus, their family, teachers, and other".  This is a philosophy that can fairly be described as Fundamentalist. Enrollment is about 800, a quarter of whom are Asian, 10 percent Black/Hispanic, and the balance Caucasian. Annual tuition is just under $10,000.

    To these students, the school offers AP classes in chemistry and biology, as well as calculus, history, and English. According to its presentation, about 60 percent of the AP candidates score 3, 4, or 5.  College counseling focuses at the University of California and California State University system. The students who attend the school fully expect to matriculate there, or at a any number of quality schools around the country.

    I don't want to overdo this. Santa Clara County abounds with private schools that emphasize intense academic performance and achievement. The King's Academy is not one of them. But it should be apparent that the families who choose this secondary education for their children have pretty much the same ambition for them as any of the families who go the secular route. Also, it is not possible for the King's Academy students even to sit for AP examinations in biology and chemistry without a thorough grounding in contemporary scientific theory. Yet the school's emphasis on a direct, personal  relationship with Jesus clearly marks it as fundamentalist in nature.

    One preliminary point before heading toward the crux. It's a big mistake to equate Fundamentalist Christianity with Biblical literalism, or even that a believer is necessarily unscientific. Congregants in Fundamentalist sects exhibit the same infinite variety and degrees of belief in the orthodoxy of the faith, and the same flexibility with respect to difficult facts, as believers in any other faith. (I hope that does not sound too patronizing.) That's why Palin could be a devout member of the Wasilla Assembly of God, and simultaneously handle oil pipeline negotiations so capably. The apparent cognitive dissonance no more troubles her than it troubles religious people in faiths that are more 'acceptably' mainstream.

    Which segues neatly to the major point. It's a fair bet that the parents who choose The King's Academy have the same awareness of the difficulty of truth, the same experience of the problems of faith, the same issues reconciling higher principles with self-interest, the same doubts as to any absolute in a universe in which so much is relative, as those of my neighbors who adopt the more conventional, secular humanistic point of view. The core theology of all the traditional religions flies squarely in the face of scientific fact and theory that they accept without question in every day life, that some of them use daily - they know that, too. They know also of the social stigma that attaches to adherents of Fundamentalist congregations. So there is a real question as to why these choices are made by intelligent people, in the face of so much they know and experience - for, as noted above, I believe it's a slander to think that this is a matter ot diminished intelligence. 

    It has been my own belief for many years that these are actually ethical and values decisions masquerading as metaphysical and religious. Fundamentalists don't accept the dogma of the religion and then adopt its values. They seize on the values and then adopt the dogma to reinforce and emphasize their significance. The dogma serves two purposes - first, grounding the values in religious text of infallible quality makes the values themselves immune from the attack of relativism. Second, the dogma is a mechanism for unifying the community, a set of shared symbols under which the believers can gather. The fact that the belief system is the object of scorn and derision generates a nice stigma of oppression that gives the unifying religious metaphors all the greater unifying force. Fundamentalists defend the truth of Genesis because they're scared to death that, if it goes, the Ten Commandments go with it. As committed members of a community of the committed, they are likely to undercut publicly these unifying symbols. But at the personal level, one individual and the next, the ultimate privacy of the soul, belief in their literal truth? I doubt it very much - and this fact, though unacknowledged, is implicitly understood throughout the community.

    That's the reason why The King's Academy can describe its principal goal as developing the personal relationship of its students with Jesus, and simultaneously offer classes in AP biology and chemistry. The two different languages don't correlate. The first is  'preacherspeak', an articulation of a moral and metaphysical approach to the problem of finding meaning in this dark and obscure universe. The second is scientific. The first don't signify with respect to the second. Stephen Gould, the wonderful and much missed Harvard palaeontologist, made this same point at much greater length and infinitely greater eloquence in his 1999 book 'Rocks of Ages. The applicable acronym is 'NOMA', Non Overlapping MagisteriA'.

  It's as easy to nod your head in recognition of the insight of the Harvard public intellectual, as it is to overlook the fact that the fundamentalists at The King's Academy are practicing exactly what Gould preached. The difference - and it is not at all a small one - is the tacit acceptance of the duality. That has to do (in my opinion) with the hostility the fundamentalists perceive towards their social and moral values. They feel too besieged to admit the obvious fact that they do not apply the religious Magisteria to scientific matters.  

    The same insight applies to some of the more extravagant stated beliefs of the members of Jeremiah Wright's megagchurch in Chicago, Trinity United - for example, the notion that the AIDS virus was concocted by the United States government for some fiendish genocidal purpose. Talk to the Wright's congregants one at a time, and my belief is that you will find few, if any, that will sign on to this set of beliefs as individuals. What they are is a set of shared symbols that serve to express the collective - and rather profound - social alienation felt by the community as a whole.

    (And why not? I am not African-American, nor do I believe that AIDS is a form of state-created germ warfare. But if I were, I might just possibly answer affirmatively to a pollster's question, regardless of what I thought. Why should I undercut the community of which I am a member, the friends that I like, in favor of an abstract and irrelevant truth? Besides, the expression of that belief says something important about what I think the of the relationship between the inner city African-American community and larger society. The bottom line is that talk is cheap. How I answer the poll isn't going to change anything - I know that - and the incorrect answer says much more about how I actually feel about the world than the literal truth.)

    I don't want to press the analogy to the point of foolish consistency. There are some obvious differences between adherence to ancient religious orthodoxy and modern urban legend. But both are ultimately instances of 'preacherspeak' - a set of shared icons and/or social beliefs that, though expressed collectively as factual truth, in reality have metaphorical significance, as a statement about moral and social values. The individuals in the respective communities have a tacit understanding of the limitations of the symbol set,  demonstrating an instinctive understanding of Gould's NOMA. That's why Sarah Palin can negotiate oil pipeline leases skillfully, The King's Academy can post proud reports about the good performance on AP biology tests, and the members of the Trinity Church can do business with a health establishment that in theory of the same membership s trying to kill them all.

    So what are the conclusions from all this? The basic point is the reason I wrote this post. The kids at The King's Academy, the congregants in Trinity United, aren't stupid. You can make them sound stupid by focusing on the symbols in which they express the strength of their convictions, but you'll be saying something about yourself, not them. If you want to engage them, you discuss the values that underly the metaphors, not the metaphors themselves.

    But that leads to the second point. The stridency arises because the governing conventional wisdom of this culture never does engage with its opposition. It derides, it scorns, it excludes. it ignores - it never debates. Almost its primary governing characteristics is its snarkiness. Oh, so that's the sort of person you are. When Charlton Heston spoke to the membership of the NRA, the point that brought down the house wasn't his insistence on Second Amendment rights. They don't take us seriously, he said. They call us all nuts and crazies. They don't listen. That was the theme that resonated, not any of the substantive issues of gun ownership. They respond to the ridicule with zealotry, because dialog simply isn't possible.

    I don't like zealotry, or, for that matter, fundamentalist religions, or true believers in urban myth. It seems to me that the challenge of living authentically in these times of feverish information overflow, is to insist on the core values of enlightened Western culture, a combination of basic Judaeo/Christian and English liberalism, without descending into any absolute. But on those annoying occasions when I'm mistaken for a conservative (I'm too idiosyncratic for any categorization, but more the oldest of old-style liberal than anything else), it's because I do share the same sense of embattlement with respect to these traditions. An insistence on the fundamental worth of all human beings, tolerance for others in the sense of letting them alone, a demand for equal treatment for everyone - this stuff began in churches like Wasillia and Trinity, not in faculty lounges or editorial offices. With few exceptions, the trendsetters all go over like ten pins when the bad times come and the winds change. If history is any gauge, they'd all be wearing armbands within a fortnight if a Fascist regime actually came to be. The only thing that never changes is the sneer.

    Finally, the bottom line in all this is that the Wasilla Assemby of God and the Trinity United Church have a great deal in common - most notably, an understanding of the limits of preacherspeak and a profound sense of alienation. One fine day, Sarah Palin, or her like, who knows those feelings, is going to stroll in the Trinity United Church, or the likes of Jeremiah   Wright will find his way to Wasilla - and then maybe, just maybe, we will experience the kind of bloodless revolution in which this nation has specialized since 1965 - a searching look at the power structures that dominate our legal, financial, political, and educational landscapes, maybe a scorching look at the massive accumulations of wealth and influence we have allowed to build up since the turn of the last century. My most fervent wish for my country is that that day is not too long in coming. 

'Snapped'

    A commentator on MSNBC suggested last night (11/05/09) that the horrors at Fort Hood occurred because the perpetrator, the Army psychiatrist, had 'snapped' due to the stress of doing post-combat counselling of combat soldiers. So another mass murder has occurred because someone snapped. Shortly after Columbine, I recall someone on a call-in show insisting that society could gain nothing from the disaster until someone figured out what had made the two youthful murderers 'snap'.

    An interesting word, 'snap', in this context. The notion it conveys is of a personality under great, perhaps unbearable stress, who 'snaps' in the manner of a steel girder or two-by-four when the pressure becomes too much. There's a kernel of sympathy at the base. Maybe you, maybe I, maybe anyone, would 'snap' if we were subject to the same conditions. So maybe anyone, everyone might succumb. To that extent, moral judgment becomes blurred, maybe even suspended, in a warm blur of empathy. How can we blame the gun wielder for being overtaken by fate?

    There's only one small problem with this metaphor. It doesn't apply.  The Army psychiatrist, the Virginia Tech zombie, the Columbine killers, innumerable others - the process is remarkably similar in all these cases, and it has nothing to do with snapping. What it does have to do with is a morbid fascination with the commission of a spectacular, self-glorifying act of violence, that a long, systematic process of self-brutalization and enurement transforms from a horrific fantasy into an act that can actually be done in real, concrete life.

    The Columbine case is typical and illustrative of the process. The two young thugs spent more than a year, planning, scheming, and daydreaming about their rampage. To be sure, some of this time was necessary to procure firearms and fabricate explosive devices. But the vast majority of the time and emotional energy was spent by the two, closeted together, playing video games, talking, discussing, gradually making what seemed incredible and obscene, practical and commonplace. (The actual 'plan' was incredibly juvenile. The two killers were dead by each other's hand less than 15 minutes after they began.) Over time, the real human presence of their classmates fades and blurs into the cyber reality of video game victims. Gradually, systematically, they nurse the trivial slights and insults they experience into a cause for righteous anger - they infuriate themselves. (Neither boy was a victim of bullies. The leader was a lifelong bully himself.) Over a year, what at first was the aeriest fantasy of revenge becomes something they might do, then something they could do, then something they will do. An unspeakable crime becomes ordinary, acceptable behavior.

    It takes a long, long time to get from first period homeroom to mass murder.

    The Army psychiatrist went through the same process, immersing himself in the phenomena of suicide bombing and extreme Islamic fundamentalism. The metaphor he used may be different than Columbine, but the process of systematic de-sensitization, self brutalization, and the like, is identical. The same may be said of the Virginia Tech killer and all the others. None of them 'snap'. One and all, over a significant period of time, they work the petty annoyances and frustrations of everyday life into causes for rage, dehumanize the class of victims who will become their eventual targets, and finally act. The final impetus may appear random (e.g., deployment to Afghanistan), but the process is anything but. 

    In short, these are anything but impulsive crimes, perpetrated as the result of great stress. They are repulsive, deeply premeditated acts of utter viciousness, intended to satisfy a self-indulgent morbid fantasy and the narcissistic demands of a pathologically inflated view of self.  Neither the acts nor the actors are entitled to the least bit of sympathy. 

    So for my money, save your tears and sympathy for the victims of these appalling acts - for these people actually do experience a 'snapping', of the ties between husband and wife, between parent and child, between friend and companion, of life threads that were intended to be spun out far longer and spread wider than they are. "Spare me your expressions of regret" (a line of Robert Bolt's from the movie Dr. Zhivago that I really like) for the criminals. Trust me, they have already lavished all the sympathy on themselves anyone could ever hope for.

    (P.S. Some readers may have noticed the absence of proper names in the essay above. It's not a coincidence. Years ago, I attended still another seminar, this one in evidentiary law. The presenter, a DA from some county in Southern California, was a very funny guy, with an Eastern seaboard accent. Most his stuff was based on street hypotheticals, encounters between cop and suspect. But every once in awhile, he'd touch on real cases. He always spoke indirectly about the perpetrators of these - 'the Heisman Trophy wife killer' or 'the people who came to Sharon Tate's house.'

    In the midst of all this, he suddenly paused and became dead serious. "I never use the proper name of a murderer," he said. "Never." This expression of moral purposefulness was all the more striking, coming as it did in the midst of what was basically a light hearted presentation.

    In any case, it seemed like a good principle to me, and I've tried to stay with it.)

   

Three Movies About Unique Subjects

    Movies have been made about every conceivable subject and in every conceivable style - love, hate, war, peace, life, death, music and art, horticulture and agriculture, straight narrative, flashback, experimental, the works.  But I'll give you three movies that (in my not-so-humble opinion) are absolutely unique in terms of the subject matter they address. 

   1. The Hustler. There are all kinds of movies about winning and losing, the agony of victory and the ecstasy of defeat, in just about every kind of sporting activity. But The Hustler is the only movie I know about the actual process of winning, i.e.,  of gaining and keeping the mindset necessary to master the art of winning. Let me apologize in advance for something - a large part of that art consists of alterations in attitude and self-awareness subtle to the point of being subliminal, and for that reason difficult to describe in concrete language. So if some of what follows sounds a little ersatz and flat, bear with me.  

    Early in the movie, Fast Eddy loses, to Fats at pool and to others in the larger aspects of life, because he literally doesn't know how to win. He has an appreciation of his own enormous talent, but none at all of what it is he really wants or how to obtain it. The theme of the picture is established with some brilliance in the prologue, in which - while en route to the big meeting with Fats - Eddie executes an ordinary hustle with a panache that is absolutely unnecessary and even dangerous. The object of the exercise should be to leave the suckers in ignorance of the fact that they've been hustled. Eddie doesn't understand that. He delights in showing off his brilliance in a way that actually endangers the real object of the game. That's the point of departure for the plot.

    In the first big meeting with Fats, Eddie easily establishes himself as the superior player. But he is too callow and immature to set the limits, i.e., he knows how to play the game, but doesn't understand the constraints of the game itself. 'The game isn't over until Fats SAYS it is!' he declares, ridiculously - and of course Fats will not say any such thing until he can claim victory. (A note to all gamblers and particularly poker players - if you don't quit at some point when you're ahead, the only possible way to quit is when you're behind. An inarguable, gruesome point of common sense and mathematical fact.) 

  The basic movement of the picture is the story of Eddie acquiring (at significant personal cost) the perspective and maturity, the mindset, necessary to prevail.  The second (and final) encounter with Fats is deliberately anti-climactic and perfunctory - Eddie knows now who he is, what he intends to prove (much more than superior skill at rotation pool), and - above all - what the limit of the game actually is, what winning actually means. He's learned how to win, and become a mensch in the bargain.    

    The Hustler thus stands as a unique picture. (By the way, I disliked the sequel made some 25 years later, 'The Color of Money', as much as I liked the first. There is no way that the Eddie Felson who emerges at the end of The Hustler emerges as the Eddie Felson of the sequel. No way.)      

    2. All That Jazz.  Life and death are of course the staple of all drama, maybe even a universal theme, the ultimate subject of all. But All That Jazz is the only one I know that is actually about the process of dying. The most vivid scenes in the picture, the musical numbers set in the hospital and themed around open-heart surgery, are the ones that stay with the audience, and rightly so. But, as with The Hustler, the theme is consistent throughout. Thus, the first dialog in the movie is a colloquy between the hero (Joe Gideon, the alter ego of the director, Bob Fosse) and a lovely Lady in White who turns out to be Death herself. The picture goes on from there. 

     I could discuss any number points of interest that illustrate the point, but I'll stick to just one. Intercut throughout the movie are scenes of Gideon doing an endless edit of a comedian doing a bit based on the discussions of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on the various psychological stages of dying. (The picture-within-a-picture is entitled 'The Comedian', obviously referencing - in this autobiographical movie - Fosse's picture 'Lenny'.) The subplot is interesting in its own right, but it simultaneously provides an ongoing rumination about the death process, becoming more acute and focused as the edits become sharper and better. They form a counterpoint for the increasing debilitation of the hero. His eyes become redder, his cough becomes heavier, his discussions with the Lady in White become more intimate. All That Jazz may be the most thanatophiliac movie ever made.

    The star scenes, the ones that every one remembers, are the ones in the last third of the movie, when Gideon is hospitalized. It is a near-certainty that no one else will ever stage a musical number based on open heart surgery. The most unsettling scene, in my opinion, is the one in which Gideon, having escaped from his hospital room, comes across an elderly woman, bedridden and moribund, and impulsively mounts the bed and gives her an impassionate soul kiss. That shook me up immensely the first time I saw it. It is a truism, of course that the inevitable decline of the body is matched by a decline in passion, but that was the first time I saw the fact starkly dramatized. It occurred to me, then and now,  that maybe the worst part of aging might be the frustration of remaining passionate while the flesh weakens and then deserts. Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas advised. Maybe that's the exact ungentleness he meant. If so, like a lot of good advice, there's a lot more edginess in it than you'd think at first.

    The movie ends with the hero metaphorically in the arms of the Lady in White, and corporeally in a body bag. The picture has moved vector-like towards that conclusion from its very first frame to the last syllable of its recorded time. There are a lot of movies that feature death as a theme or event, but All That Jazz is the only one I know that is about dying.

    3. Lust, Caution. I have a number of Chinese friends and acquaintances. To a man and woman, they admire Ang Lee and his accomplishments as a filmmaker. To a man and woman, they all  agreed that Ang Lee had lost his mind with the movie Lust, Caution. The reason is the notorious bedroom scenes, which go to verge of hard core porn and maybe beyond.

    The critics were not as shocked as my friends, but many had problems with this picture. The reason, stated in more than one review, was the coldness and distance of the hero and heroine. Talk about missing the point! There are ten zillion movies about love, in all its varieties, but Lust, Caution is the only one I know that's about lust. The picture is absolutely faithful to its title.

    The famous scenes are not at all erotic, but actually rather off-putting. They are edgy, ugly, angry encounters, laced with violence and raw hatred. The couple at the center are physically attracted to each other, no question - but they are also locked into a relationship based on mutual contempt and self-loathing. A nearly murderous intensity runs throughout everything they do. This is passion, to be sure, but it is not love - the opposite, in fact, lust in action, as the poet would say.   

    If the movie was only concerned with sexual combustibility, and the hero and heroine matchstick people, it would not be worth writing about. But that's not the case. Both hero and heroine are complex, intelligent individuals, who deserve better - it's the war, the occupation, and the compulsion of larger moral duties that ensnare them.  Although their relationship is lust-based, it is as complicated and multi-dimensional as any love story.  The picture is long, and plot driven - a story of wartime intrigue and spy melodrama. The story moves slowy, logically,and consistently toward the point of departure at which this sort of destructive affair is possible for person who might have deserved better.

     The ending of this movie is extraordinary. The climax turns on the first unambiguously loving act done by either character, which act leads to disaster for both. The action is emotionally and dramatically appropriate, but why the character does what is done is next to impossible to articulate in any but the largest terms. (My apologies for being so vague, but this is essential plot stuff.) Events follow quickly thereafter, leading to one of the most complex denouements in all film, in terms of the variety of emotions it evokes. It's next to impossible to describe in full - there is literally too much to say.

    If I haven't been clear, let me be so now. Lust, Caution is a masterpiece, likely the best picture Ang Lee has ever made (which is really saying something), and one of the greatest in the canon. (While in this mode of unrestrained enthusiasm, let me say that the score by Alexandre Desplat is absolutely superb, haunting and completely appropriate.) That said, it does have a flaw. Those famous notorious scenes are somewhat miscalculated by the genius director. They go on much too long and in too much detail. They are so extremely explicit, so far beyond the normal pale, that they distort the larger movement of the picture. The first time I saw the movie, I was frankly rattled, and a little embarrassed to be viewing this stuff in mixed company. I watched the rest of the movie waiting for another shoe to drop, and for that reason missed a lot of nuance. But I had a sense there was more, much more to it, and went back to it when it came out on blu-ray. Once inured to the shock scenes, I discovered the masterpiece I have described here.

    It would be a shame if the explicit scenes were too offputting, because Lust, Caution is actually a relationship movie, very much the work of the director of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and Brokeback Mountain. There are very few persons of  romantic implication, particularly women, who would not be touched and moved by this story.

   

   

   

The Notch Effect

    I have often used the 'belling the cat' metaphor as shorthand for the difference between high concept strategy (always extremely easy) and actual implementation (always extremely difficult). I'm way overdue for a concrete example. Given the current discussion about health care reform, the 'notch effect' is a good illustration.

    The notch effect bedevils social welfare schemes. I first learned the phrase in a book published by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1971, 'The Politics of A Guaranteed National Income'. It may be hard to believe post-Watergate, but the first Nixon Administration actually produced some innovative ideas. Many environmentalists would be astonished to learn that the EPA was founded then. Moynihan, the resident token Democrat intellectual in the Cabinet, attempted a massive overhaul of the welfare system, based on the notion of a guaranteed base income, which was borrowed from Milton Friedman's concept of a negative income tax. The reform failed completely, under merciless fire from both Left and Right. Moynihan wrote about the experience in the book I mentioned. Good reading, although the ordinary arithmetic (sic - not math) becomes mind bending within the first hundred pages. In any case, it was in that reading I became aware of the Notch Effect.

    Suppose you are a conscientious Out. You make sincere speeches to the effect that a nation that can create the Internet can provide decent education, housing, health care to all the uninsured Poor. Now, suddenly, you are an In, and you have to translate that goal into practice. How do you do so?

    I'll use 1970 type numbers for convenience. Who exactly are the Poor? You are a reformer, not a mad man, so you eliminate able bodied adults who can support themselves even if they choose not to. You restrict the definition to the disabled, and families with dependent children, with income of  less than $5,000, You structure a system of education, housing, and health benefits to remedy the effects of this poverty. Well and good.

    It is here that the notch effect shows up. When you set the poverty line at $5000 and provide substantial benefits for those below, you create a notch at that level. Someone who earns $4,999 a year receives benefits worth a several thousand dollars. However, if that someone works one more hour at the Burger King, and end up with $5,001, he or she gets nothing. A 2 dollar difference makes a (say) $5,000 difference. You unutterable fool. You are going to pin down the poor to permanent welfare dependency, unless the family (improbably) can leapfrog to an income position at which it can do without the subsidized benefits.

       That obviously won't do, so you are going to have to include some graduated scale according to which benefits are phased in, and then fazed out. Well and good, but your simple little system just went up several levels in complexity. (That's why the arithmetic in Moynihan's book began simple but became mind numbing).

    And of course, we are only thinking of income as a simple, one dimensional variable.  What about illegal and non cash income? Drug dealers? Madams? Applicants with huge undisclosed cash resources? That clearly won't do. You obviously can't effectively police this sort of fraud at the administrative level, but you can regulate against it and criminalize the receipt of benefits when such conduct is turned up by other police investigations? But that's a whole new set of regulations, and another layer of complexity.

    Are you talking about one income or two? The core issue of American social aid systems. Are you going to determine poverty on the basis of individual or family income? Individual? You fiscal idiot. By that measure, every minor child qualifies, no matter that his daddy's rich and his ma is good looking. You'll break the bank.

    Ok. so eliminate minor kids and determine their eligibility by reference to parent's income. Sorry, but you still have a problem. Every stay-at-home mom with a conniving soul has suddenly become eligible, no matter that her loyal husband is a rock star. You fiscally irresponsible rad-lib.

    Ok, so let's include the husband's income. WHAT????? You've just disincentivized and demoralized the most marginal fathers in society, if the benefits you are offering equal or exceed the income the father can provide.

    Ooooooooooookay . . .  why don't we include a 'presumptive minim income' from the father, regardless of actual earnings, so that he has no motive to leave? WHAT???? You heartless bastard. You are going to deny or limit benefits to needy families on the basis of PRESUMPTIVE income? Money that is non existent? Don't you know how difficult it is for a single mother of limited education actually enforce her rights?

    And on and on and on. What about parental support? What about families headed by single women with children of multiple fathers? And I am simplifying by treating housing and health as unitary variables. Easy enough with the basics, but what about the grey area? Take acne with adolescents. Maybe it's a single zit below the lip of an impossibly vain cheerleader, or maybe it's the kind of major disfigurement that turns a formerly well-adjusted child into a social misfit. How do you decide coverage? By pimple count?

    I have made (I hope) my point, without (I hope) insulting anyone's intelligence. The target here isn't anyone on the Left or Right. The target is empty sloganeering. For what it's worth, I think there's a moral imperative to assist the poor, and in such a way -  to the extent practicable - that they are not disempowered. (This is my version of belling the cat.) I think most Americans have exactly the same value. Persons who are skeptical about this program or that do not necessarily have different values. They may have a different view of just what the task of belling involves, and how well it will really work.

Truly Guilty Pleasures

Lots of moviegoers talk about 'guilty pleasures' that are not all that guilty, i.e., movies that actually have some reputation in certain circles. But I'll give you four that are truly guilty, that you might like on one these hot summer nights.

1. Radioland Murders (1994). This offbeat homage to screwball comedy was produced by George Lucas, and almlost universally despised by the critics. The conventional wisdom is that it has the same place in Lucas' career that '1941' has in Spielberg's. The plot takes place in 1939, on the evening that a Chicago radio station (clearly modeled after WGN) is about to go national. The station is going to showcase all of its programs. The major sponsor announces that he hates all the scripts, which have to be rewritten while the show is in progress. Meanwhile, homicides keep occurring. The picture includes bows to all the famous radio drama prototypes, as well as radio music - Spike Jones, the Andrew Sisters, Gene Autry - the works. The picture was widely denounced as sophomoric in the extreme, and just plain silly in parts.

So what are its redeeming features? It is by miles the fastest paced movie I have ever seen in my life. It makes the Marx Brothers look like they're walking in molasses. The plot takes off in the opening credits and does not slow down for two hours. (In fact, I think that is one of the reasons the critics disliked it so much - on the big screen, the pace of action would been numbing.) Although it IS silly, it is also great fun, with any number of good gags. The musical numbers are superb. The overall affect is wonderfully energizing.

Seond, it looks terrific on a reasonably sized TV. The cast is first rate, and manages to convery most of the jokes as they fly by. A good movie for a late, hot night, if you can focus your attention. My daughters and I had great fun with it.

2. The Escape Artist (1982). I am probably the only Bootie who thinks of Emily and Zooey Deschanel first as the daughters of Caleb Deschanel. Father Deschanel is a world class cinematographer, who won an Oscar for 'The Black Stallion' and (I think) 'Cold Mountain'. 'The Escape Artist' is the only picture he ever directed, one of the last movies done at Zoetrope Studios for Coppola. The picture chronicles the adventures of what can only be called a magic prodigy - a teen-age sleight-of-hand wizard - in a corrupt town. The movie has all sorts of problens. For one thing, the scene designer couldn't decide whether the action took place in the 30's or 50's or some time in between. The casting is positively weird, with Joan Hackett and Desi Arnez in their last roles.

But I don't know anyone who doesn't like this movie. The hero's use of his repertoire to escape from one tight spot after another is fascinating. The score, by Georges Delerue, is absolutely terrific and deserved a better fate. (The picture got a cup of coffee in limited release in 1982, and promptly disappeared.) With all its obvious flaws, a truly haunting movie.

3. Mack the Knife (1979). At least the first two are on DVD. Good luck in even finding this one. I saw it on laser disc years ago. It is the Globus Brothers version of 'Threepenny Opera' and came in for the usual round of denunciations on the grounds of sacrilege. But the truth is that the Threepenny Opera isn't all that good, apart from the songs, and this movie is actully quite good. It starred Raul Julia (who is also in 'Escape Artist'), Julia Mignenes, Richard Harris,  and Roger Daltrey as a street singer who provides narration of the action in the form of versions of 'Mack the Knife' written for the movie. No matter what the critics thought, the production values are really good, Julia is superb, and the movie is actually very solid.

4. Return to Oz (1985). This picture is cheating a little. Although it was the most universally despised movie of the 80's, it has won support and a following over the years. An amalgam of the second and third OZ books, it is far darker than the MGM musical, a sin that the contemporary critics in 1985 were unable to forgive. They were particularly incensed that Dorothy is snatched away to Oz as she is about to undergo a quack electroshock procedure circa 1890.

However, what they overlooked is that this version of Oz is actually much closer to Baum's books than the musical. More to the point, both my daughters when younger vastly preferred THIS Oz to the musical - and I have heard the same thing universally from parents whose children have seen both. It's an odd thing - the light-as-air musical with the color and funny costumes is actually the adult movie, while the dark and sombre movie is the kids' version.

In any case, it's an awfully good movie, that both children and grandchildren will enjoy. Another great score, this one by David Shire.

"Talk" - A Poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko

read the poem quoted below in Time or some such when I was 14. I think Yevtushenko was on the cover. The poem isn't very good even in Russian, and the translation is a disaster.

But the concept has stayed with me my whole life. God, what I wouldn't give for a little integrity, not even honesty, just the attempt at honesty, from any of the myriad public personalities, pundits, politicians, etc. But these days image is everything, as the long ago commercial put it, which may be a good mantra for a tennis player but is a lousy motto for a statesman.

At any rate, here is the poem, written in the first years of the Kruschev thaw:

Talk

You're a brave man, they tell me.
I'm not.
Courage has never been my quality.
Only I thought it disproportionate
so to degrade myself as others did.
No foundations trembled. My voice
no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
I did no more than write, never denounced,
I left out nothing I had thought about,
defended who deserved it, put a brand
on the untalented, the ersatz writers
(doing what anyhow had to be done).
And now they press to tell me that I'm brave.
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.

-- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Why the United States (and the West) Has Won the Iraqi War

Because a day like today (June 30th, 2009) has dawned in Bagdhad.

I am fully aware in writing this that there are formidable issues of ethnic and religious rivalry that still threaten the new nation, and will persist into the indefinite future. But are these any different than the ones that beset this nation not so long ago? Or any other nation?  There are two schools of thought in English political philosophy, one descending from Hobbes, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and humankind the prisoners of its appetites, the other from Locke and Hutcheson, that human beings are fully capable of self-governance and freeing themselves from the historical nightmares of tyranny and theocracy. The second theme is, of course, fully embodied and articulated in the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson actually semi-plagiarized a great deal of Locke.

You either believe this stuff or you don't. I do. A lot of the editors who are going to be publishing copies of the Declaration and Gettysburg Address this next Saturday (July 4th) give that legacy only lip service. What has been enormously disheartening to me in the last six years is to see the Deranged Opposition turn its back on the most basic ideas that the United States offered to the world, embracing fascism and racism - anything to justify its loathing of George Bush.

I actually opposed the war in 2003, worried that the human cost would outweigh the benefit. But I never descended into the moral fury that seemed to engulf the opposition. That a positive outcome might be possible, that the United States even in its worst days was grimly and clumsily going about the business of nation (not empire) building - that seemed to me apparent. It was a basic truth that the anti-Administration faction went to almost any lengths to deny.

To say that a government based on the free consent of the governed is possible doesn't mean that it is going to come to pass. Our own nation was not able to bridge a colossal cultural gulf, and the related issue of slavery, without a monstrous civil war. (A Hobbesian writing in 1789 who could envision the later war would have smugly cited that catastrophe as proof that the new democratic nation was a failure.) The United States was also almost miraculously blessed with the right kind of heroic personalities at the right time, both on the macro scale(Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt) and micro (that a man of the stature of Joshua Chamberlain happened to command the volunteer Maine regiment stationed on the extreme left flank of the Union forces on the second day of Gettysburg.)

But the plain fact is that victory in a conflict of this sort cannot consist of more than the providing to a free people the opportunity to escape the dead hand of history that has held them in its grasp, to establish in concrete reality that government based on the consent of the government - and that is where we are today. There is still a long way to go? The stability created in the last few years is fragile and may fall apart? Absolutely true - but also true of every nation on the face of the earth, including this one. I am simply not going to accept the notion that any people are condemned to despotism and/or the rule of priests forever and ever. 

So congratulations to all those who labored and sacrificed to achieve such a day. God speed to the Iraqi people, and their nation, may God smile upon them as He (She, It, or They) did upon this fractured land once upon a time.