Volume 52

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008

 

52. 15. SHUTTING OUT THE SUN, by Michael Zeilensiger 2006 [BR] 10.27.2008

                                

I have always had an odd fascination with the Japanese. The story goes in my family that when I was a baby I looked very “Asian.” My mother said that she was nervous about taking me out in the pram or stroller during WWII because people might think I was Japanese. There are photographs of me that support the story. But I don’t think that is why I am fascinated with Japan and the Japanese. I was fascinated by them even before I came to have three beautiful grandchildren who are a quarter Japanese.

Maybe it was the dubbed Godzilla and Mothra movies, with some guy in a monster suit tromping through a scaled-down city and spitting fire. Or, maybe it was those photos of Hiroshima, flattened with the new fire-spitting dragon of warfare that got my attention. The first images may well be a psychological product of he second.

All cultures have their weird stuff, but Japan, isolated and insular with minor intrusions until the mid-19th Century, is a place that developed a cultural exoticism of Galapagos extremes, yet with an astounding solidarity. I was once at an airline ticket counter in England checking in an American group I was leading. The counter beside me was a British Airlines and a group of about forty middle-aged to elderly couples were lined up to get their seat assignments. The couples were concerned that they might be assigned seats away from one another, but I overheard their English agent telling the Japanese guide to tell any concerned couples to say to the agent that they are a “honeymoon couple” and they will find seats for them together. I then watched, as astounded as the giggle-suppressing airline agent who served them, as one superannuated couple after another approached the counter and announced without the slightest expression of irony, “we are honeymoon cupper.”

It is a story that might fit someplace in Shutting Out the Sun. Conformity, to tradition, to social forms, to conformity itself, and the social response to conformity, is one of the defining features this book by Far-East journalist Zeilenziger. He appropriately begins with a discussion of the cases of several hikikomori, who are mostly young people who are unable to handle various aspects of Japanese society. They withdraw and hole up, usually in their rooms in their parents’ homes, often for years at a time, hardly communicating with the outside world at all. America may have its own hikikomori, in the form of the reclusive computer-game playing kids who can spend as much as eighteen hours each day with Grand Theft Auto IV, but hikikomori appear to have a more complex genesis than the western phenomenon.

Thousands of Japan’s young people are cloistering themselves from their society, ostensibly, according to professional opinion, because of its overbearing pressure to conform. Those who do not fit the norms—one of the reasons for hikikomori being that brutal bullying of “different” kids at school is a common and apparently not un-approved practice in Japanese grade schools—so better to drop out and stay home.

Were that some anomalous bizarre behavior, the emergence of hikikomori might be just an interesting article. But Zielenziger sees this phenomenon as almost a metaphor for the state of Japanese society today. In his view it is not only hikikomori who are “shutting out the sun,” it’s the entire society. That example of “honeymoon cuppers” is, for example, illustrative of the importance of “group harmony” to the Japanese. Obedience to harmony stifles independent action when everyone is always looking the approbation of the group before doing anything. Zielenziger, a journalist, provides the example of Japanese journalism, which, he writes, is dominated by “press clubs,” that essentially determine that Japanese newspapers carry “identical stories each day.” Japanese journalists also forge very tight relation ships with the politicians and other public officials they “cover.” The same group mentality results in a political system that is unchanging, the LDP being a single political party that has ruled since 1955.

The hikikomori also describes the features of the Japanese economy. Since WWII the Japanese have been locked in what some have called a “sensual embrace” of co-dependency with the American economy. Retaineing their sense of insularity Japan has employed merchantilist policies of minimizing imports and expanding their exports to accumulate huge dollar reserves. (Japanese have historically high personal savings rates as well, hoarding most of it in their postal system’s bank.) The rigidity of that economic system is partly responsible for the protracted economic recession of its economy through the 1990s.

The hikikomori mentality of the economy has also been problematic in several social dimensions. The Japanese “sarariman” or salaryman is somewhat legendary. Notorious for their allegiance to their companies (Zielenziger says his prime allegiance is to the firm, not his family), and for his group, he often works exceedingly long hours (hence spending little time with his family), and also engages in group activities such as heavy social drinking (see Morley, below). Descriptions of Japanese corporate behavior sometimes read like that of an immature American college fraternity.

The bonds and “lifetime job” guarantee of the sararimen were broken during the long recession, leaving many former workers with a habit for booze and rising psychological depression. Work stress, depression, and suicide are common features of the Japanese workplace; they even have a word for working themselves to death—karoshi. “In fiscal 2002, a record 317 cases of death from overwork were formally recognized by the national worker’s compensation system, in addition to a record forty-three karoshi-related suicides.” (P. 204).

Zielenziger uses the comparison of South Korea and Japan during the decade of the 1990s to illustrate what he regards as the inability if the Japanese to fit their economic practices to the global economy. The Koreans have comparatively done much better—in part the author argues due to their adoption of Christianity in greater numbers—because they are more willing to migrate and to accept foreigners and foreign workers and ideas. The grou0 and class traditions, lack of political debate and opposition, and single-party domination kept Japan closed and insular.

Perhaps the most publicized and controversial illustration of the refusal to change is the inability of the Japanese to accept full responsibility for the abuses of their colonial and military past and their racism. Japanese textbooks and museums still do not tell the truth about the origins o WWII and atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking in 1937-38. This keeps relationships tense with Korea, from which thousands of “comfort women” for the sexual use of Japanese soldiers during the war were kidnapped, and the Chinese, who were victims not only in Nanking, but in brutal medic al experimental facilities such as Unit 741 in Manchiria. Japanese schoolchildren grow up without the facts.

Other traditions contribute to the national hikikomori effect. The traditional Japanese family structure is built on the papering of boys and the commodification of girls. Boys are supposed o grow up to be wage earners and heads of new families; girls are supposed to follow their husbands to his home in which his parents may well reside, becoming a cook, maid, caretaker and breeder of the next male heir. However, that scenario has bee breaking down in recent years. More young women prefer to remain unmarried and pursue work careers of their own. In consequence, the birthrate has declined o the point where some villages and small cities consist mainly of old people, often with no family members to look after them. The work force has declined, which has not been helped by the Japanese resistance to admitting foreign workers into the country.

Zielenziger closes with an interesting observation. “Now, we in America run the risk of becoming over time as insular and isolated as modern Japan, as our two nations are apparently turning out to be enablers of one another’s social pathology. We have encouraged Japan to withdraw and retreat and to loyally follow our commands, while Japan has quietly bankrolled our own overstretched global ambitions. Like an overprotective mother of a hikikomori, we promise food and protection as long as the child agrees not to become too disruptive. This may be pushing he metaphor a bit too far; but then this book was published before American initiated the meltdown of the global economy.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

John David Morley, Pictures from the Water Trade, 1985.  See also, Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons, The Fall of Modern Japan (2001), especially on the subject of environment and urban planning, and Nicholas Bornoff, Pink Samurai, Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan (1991), if you like the kinky side of things.

 

52. 14:      “MY FELLOW PRISONERS”     10.21.2008

                 

                                                                             UrbisMedia 2008

No introduction of Sen. John McCain, it seems, comes un-preambled without the obligatory benediction of his “heroic service” in Vietnam. Should there be an exception we may be assured that McCain himself, who is as much a professional P.O.W. as a professional politician, will find a way, as he did in addressing us as “my fellow prisoners,” to remind us.

I, for one, will have no more of it. John McCain did not, as is often remarked, bomb Hanoi to keep me from having to trade my pasta for pho noodles for the rest of my life (anymore than the current stupid war he supports is to keep my daughters from having to wear burkas). I regard these wars has his wars, wars of his preference. So screw him if he gets shot down while dropping bombs on people who never attacked us. Getting shot down is not heroism, it’s ineptitude.

John McCain is lucky that the No. Vietnamese didn’t let him drown, or worse. Had I been subject to his bombing raids I would have called the kids to watch the bubbles surface on the lake he landed in. In paraphrase of Adrian Kronhauer, “Thaaaank You, Vietnaaaam.” That was even before the N. Vietnamese knew that John McCain, was the princeling of a line of Navy Admirals and might have some propaganda value. Just like Prince George of the Bush line, he came to his sense of entitlement from the same exclusiveness and hubris.

Unlike the other flop pilot, George, John McCain does have a sense of regret. George, as we know, never admits mistakes, never regrets anything. But McCain, who at least has undergone considerable physical discomfort, wears regrets like campaign ribbons—regretting that he let his captors break him down, or that he dumped his faithful first wife (and he my yet regret Sarah Palin.)

Even many Obama supporters, most recently Colin Powell, will cut McCain considerable slack—despite his windsocking on policy positions, his ridiculous and cynical choice of Sarah Palin, and his tacit approval of false charges and racist attacks on Barack Obama—by implying that he might make a good president. Powell himself said that “either man would make a good president,” displaying the same stupidity that got him fragged by the neo-cons to take the fall on the non-existent Iraqi WMD.

Such attitudes—again because of the faux “hero” reputation of McCain—are ignorant of the fact that McCain, a man who notoriously, even by his supporters, has a mean and quick temper, who has shown signs of emotional instability, and who will sacrifice his principles by kissing up to the extreme right wing and religious fundamentalists of the Republican Party, would likely be even more dangerous a president than his dim-witted predecessor. As a well-reasoned article in The Atlantic Monthly recently argued (“Why War is His Answer,” by Jeffrey Goldberg, October 2008), McCain still believes, as did his Admiral father, that the Vietnam war was winnable. A “victory” in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, however that might be defined, would not only vindicate his belief that these wars are “winnable,” but would also “prove” that, without the “meddling” of politicians, the Vietnam war, his war, would also have been winnable. What makes John McCain more dangerous than George Bush is that Bush only needs the appearance that his conduct of the Iraq war is in a pre-victorious state by the time he leaves office—victory for Bush is what his legacy will say. Bush needs to be able to say, as a Marine helo pilot said to me several years ago, “When I left we were winning.” McCain will need to actually (again, however one defines victory in these forms of conflict) win. He is not joking when he says “as long as it takes.” Of course, with Palin just a heartbeat away, a person who has consented to fewer press conferences than Joe the Plumber, Iraq might be turned into a moose hunt of epic proportions.

It is time to set aside this man who has made a career out of being a professional P.O.W.. He has been accorded more deference than he deserves and more chances at high office than he is qualified by intelligence or other qualifications to hold, most particularly the office of president. He calls himself a “maverick” despite having voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. He has been for and against the religious right, Bush’s tax cuts, torture, and his own immigration policy, depending upon the prevailing political advantage. He has shown, in selecting an abysmally unqualified running mate that his mantra of “country first” is second to his ambitions and the willingness to compromise any principle to realize them. He is a human contradiction. If America decides not to turn from its self-inflicted madness of the past eight years, we still would truly know exactly what it means when John McCain calls us to attention with “My fellow prisoners.”
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 13: THE SMALL TOWN VS THE GLOBAL METROPOLIS 10.17.2008

                    
                                                                        © Warner Bros.

I got out my DVD of Meet John Doe after watching the “debate” between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. In the 1941 Frank Capra film a cynical newspaper reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) creates a phony letter to the editor from a man who says he is so despondent over political conditions that he is going to commit suicide on Christmas Eve (Capra loved Christmas Eve as a movie motif). When the paper needs to produce this John Doe (Gary Cooper) is selected, an apolitical hobo who only cares about his failed baseball career. It’s a great fast-paced Capra film and you should rent it every political season.

This year you might also want to rent Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). In this one Jimmy Stewart is a Boy Scout leader from a rural state who runs for congress, wins and, when he gets there, finds it corrupted by career politicians. It also has a cynical newspaperwoman, but is famous for its filibuster scene. Along with Meet John Doe, this film encapsulates several attitudes about America and its politics that prevail to the present day. They also help to explain the phenomenon of Sarah Palin.

Back around 1940 women were relegated to the non-political roles in both film and politics. These films are only two data points, but one wonder what might be made of the fact that Capra chose women to represent “the media” in both of these movies. Both are urban, cynical, and too smart for their own good. Typically (of Hollywood) they fall in love with the heroes in their film and figure in their righteous crusades (which, in today’s terms, would be the equivalent of Keith Olbermann falling for Sarah Palin). But suffice to say that the media were also vilified by politicians in those days. There is probably more to the media equals women equation than we could get into, but let’s save that one for later (or never).

Where I am heading with this piece is (for me) safer and more familiar territory. What the Palin candidacy reminds us of is that Americans have not lost their love affair for the rural or small town politician who aspires for higher office out of the worthy motive to bring honesty and cleanliness and true American mores to governance. Politicians used to invent “log cabin” birthplaces for themselves to connect with this tradition, which was almost as important as a military pedigree. So Palin invokes her Wasilla, Alaska (pop. ca. 8000) background regularly to contrast herself with those evil big cities like New York and Washington. Just an innocent small town “hockey mom” married to a “Joe six-pack.”

America has long been a country with an identity crisis. Our roots are in the soil; we started out mostly as farmers, not townsmen. Some of our founding father deeply distrusted cities. Jefferson called them a “sore upon the body politic.” We tolerated small towns because they were places where “everybody knew everybody else” sort of a gossip-driven behavioral policing system, and where you knew who were churchgoers, and family-values were the norm and people knew their place from their skin color. They were also places where vital farm-to-market roads led; American farmers were no interested in subsistence, but were capitalists who were interested in producing a surplus for profit.

But contrary to these attitudes, by 1920, when Americans became predominantly "urban" in habitat, we have moved inexorably into the metropolitan age. In that process we have left behind that significant part of the American experience that was shaped by the small town. Scores and scores of small towns have withered and died, abandoned by their youth or economic bases, or bypassed by the freeways that connect the big cities. Others, swallowed by metropolitan expansion, struggle to preserve what small town identity remains. Today, for most of us, the small town is a place we know mostly through movies, novels and TV, and whose reality lies somewhere between often contradictory myths. One of these myths is of the idealized small town: an almost utopian preserve composed of "Andy Hardy" or "Our Gang" type kids playing happily on elm-lined streets with white picket fences. It has little red schoolhouses, town squares with band gazebos, the requisite general store and protestant generic clapboard church. Everybody knows everybody, perhaps too well, but it's much preferred over big city anonymity. There are, in addition, the small town social archetypes: the pastor, the school marm, a town drunk and town floozie, the two old maid sisters who live in the big Victorian house on Elm street, the local constable, the publisher of the Elmtown Gazette, and, of course, the chorus of solid, small town families knitted together by unshakable allegiance to God, the flag, football or hockey, and extended-familism.

There's a host of people to whom we can credit these images: Regionalist painters, Samuel Clemens, sociologists of the early Chicago School, and Frank Capra films, among others. But more and more, such places exist (maybe only ever existed) in the nostalgia-misted recesses of the American mind. One reads or hears occasionally of a revival of small towns, of disenchanted stock brokers and corporation executives (and their wireless routers) emigrating from the hyper-urbanism of New York or Chicago to small towns in Vermont or Oregon in search of the grail of small townism, with its slower pace, small scale, and, if not love, at least know-thy-neighbor values. But the demographics soundly demonstrate that for most of us the metropolis is the habitat of choice or necessity.

Perhaps, too, the rhapsodized reputation of the American small town has been tarnished by the same sources of myth-making that exalted it. Today, when we assay this bedrock of American idealism we find it adulterated with a mixture of myth, reality and revenge. While the mass media have given us the skewed romanticized perspective of the small towns of Andy Hardy and the Waltons they have also fed our imaginations on a staple of Peyton Place and the generic small Southern towns of mean-spirited, bigoted, xenophobic, reactionaries. Andy Hardy has grown up to knock up Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter or lead a gang of unemployed, sexually-frustrated small town youth ready to commit atrocities on any alien they can chase down in their gun-racked pickup trucks. It is unlikely that they would be deterred by the obese, cigar-munching sheriff who is blinded by his mirrored sunglasses to any malfeasance he can't snare in his speed trap.

Maybe this negative imagery has come about in the same way as the idealized myth of small towns--a modicum of reality made stereotype by our hopes for a promised land, or the loss of it. Maybe the negative image is as much the result of revenge on the small town for not having lived up to its mythology. And just maybe, some of us need to destroy the myth of the ideal small town to ease our urban discontent. After all, if Emerald City turns out to be a dreadful place, then there is indeed no place like home.

What is more certain is that more and more of us will have to choose either myth from less and less real experience with the small town. More and more, our images of small towns will likely be formed by scriptwriters and novelists with little or no small town experience. But since myth-making is a proven staple of mass media, it is also fairly certain that, no matter how metropolitan or cosmopolitan we become, politicians like Sarah Palin will always try to tap into, if only in our imaginations, a small town somewhere in each of us.

While you are renting those other Capra films you might want to rent (unless you have it memorized by now) It’s a Wonderful Life. Almost everything in the current political context seems to have a precursor in this 1946 film: there is the run on the Bailey family’s savings and loan bank; there is the difficulty of immigrant families assimilating into he community and affording homes; and there is the rich and greedy Mr. Potter, the equivalent of the present Wall Street “master of the universe.” You will see that what goes around comes around in American politics, but, doggone it, you will enjoy it more than those useless debates. All that is needed is a re-write if the films last line, spoken by little Zu-Zu to her father, Jimmy Stewart. I hear her now, “Every time a bell rings, a Wall Street Master of the Universe gets his golden parachute.” You betcha.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 12:    THE McCHURIAN CANDIDATE    10.13.2008

                    

                                                        ©2008, UrbisMedia

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.” [from John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1962

There are a lot of reasons not to trust John McCain. He has Cain in his name; didn’t you read your Bible? Remember what Cain did? He killed his brother and then went off to the land of Nod (which is where Ronald Reagan napped).

OK, if that won’t work, the guy’s a liar. He lies a lot, and at first when he is called on it he denies he is lying. Then he says, “OK, so I lied,” and then goes on about how he was a P.O.W. for five years, for which we are to forgive him for lying and call him a “hero.”

But he still tells lies. Like this one; last Wednesday, National Public Radio's Steve Inskeep asked McCain if there would be "an occasion where you could imagine turning to Governor Palin for advice in a foreign policy crisis?"

McCain answered: "I've turned to her advice many times in the past. I can't imagine turning to Senator Obama or Senator Biden, because they've been wrong."

How can that be? McCain met Palin only twice before he selected her. Where did the “many times in the past come from”? And what would he ask her advice about, which direction is Russia? She herself lies like a . . . a . . . McCain. She was for (the part she leaves out), then against the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Then she said that she had gone to Ireland as part of her “international experience,” where the plane she was on stopped there to re-fuel. She said she’s been to Iraq, but only went to Kuwait. But, hey, what the heck.

So what is it with McCain? Maybe it’s this. There is a clip from his first presidential debate with Barrak Obama that shows him blinking 138 times in sixty seconds. During much of this he is issuing some blather about how he feels the economic pain of the American people. A lot of people associate blinking while being declarative with prevarication. It’s like lying takes some extra mental effort because the brain knows the truth and that causes this little blinking in the eyes while the brain fabricates something in place of he truth.

So, you might ask, why then doesn’t Palin blink; she lies just like McCain. That’s a good question, you betcha. Well, you need to look more carefully. If you watch her during the VP debate, you will see that there were a couple of winks in there. Many people thought these were just sexy little advances to Republican wankers like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but they were reflexes from the deep programming she was subjected to by her handlers in the days leading up to her debate. Palin was programmed to repeat a mindless lop of works and phrases, such as “the corruption in Washington and on Wall Street,” “there ya go again, Joe, talkin’ about the past,” “I’m a ‘maverick’ just like John McCain,” and “Doggone, it, I’m gonna shoot and field dress Charles Gib . . . I mean Osama bin Laden.” Each blink was a sign that the tape in her head had to re-wind. She was programmed the same way as the Manchurian candidate, but instead of being shown the Queen of Hearts she was flashed a photo of a smiling Katie Couric.

The difference between McCain and Palin is that Palin actually believes what she says. When she says that she “didn’t blink” when McCain asked her to be his Vice President, she meant it. It’s the same sort of self-assurance you need to believe you’re the best looking babe in Wasilla (must have half of your teeth). The same assurance that thinking Russia is close by is international diplomatic experience. This would be the most dangerous Vice President since . . . since, Jesus, Dick Cheney, you betcha!

So what is afoot here? A little review of The Manchurian Candidate might help. It is the movie that helped popularize the term “brain washing.” American P.O.W.s in the Korean War are brainwashed (in Manchuria) and programmed in some gripping scenes in which they will even unemotionally kill one another when ordered. When they are repatriated they don’t even know they are programmed, until one day when Raymond Shaw (Lawrence Harvey) is coincidentally looking at he Queen of Hearts and hears someone say “go jump in the lake” and he heads for Central Park and walks into the pond.

The plot is too twisty to fully recount here, but it turns out that Raymond is the son of a right-wing political couple, the Joe McCarthy-like step-father a Senator Iselin, and his conniving wife and mother. See, just like McCain comes from a line of Navy admirals. Moreover, their son, Sgt. Shaw has been awarded the Medal of Honor for his “bravery,” although even Shaw can’t seem to recall what that act of bravery was (something like the same way McCain got to be a “hero” for getting shot down). In any event, Shaw is programmed to robotically and, with the connivance of his power-lusting mother (Angela Lansbury) commit an assassination at a political convention that will allow his Senator step-father (the VP nominee) to step into the place of the victim and become elected president himself and give a speech that will plunge the USA into political chaos. Turns out that the Russians are behind the whole thing. I won’t spoil the ending for you if you haven’t seen the Manchurian Candidate. (It was hard to get hold of for several years. Co-star Franck Sinatra bought the film and reputedly took it out of release because of the similar elements to the assassination of JKF.)

So now back to blinky John McCain. Could this rather unstable Senator be the McChurian candidate? Could he be the irascible “maverick” president who is (was) “programmed” by the N. Vietnamese over five years of captivity to someday be called upon to take irrational actions like “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran and to even further politically and economically destabilize the USA with endless wars in Iraq and Iran. Does all that blinking betray an unstable mental state that not only flip-flops on issue positions from poll to poll, but also might fire off nuclear missiles with the same abandon and anger that he attacks his own wife with nasty expletives? Only recently have we learned of the relationship between McCain and his N. Vietnamese jailer, Cao Pham Phong (see DCJ No. 52. 10, about “Love in the Hanoi Hilton”). And what might be the role of Sarah Palin in all of this? Was McCain programmed to choose some dim-witted, easily-programmned, but egregiously ambitious politician from a state uncomfortably close to Russia for some reason we will only know when it is far too late, when she is even less than a heartbeat away? Hmmmmm, the plot thickens? What is this sinister relationship between Mr. Blinky and Ms Winky?

Be afraid, America. And be alert. You just might hear Sara Palin say at one of their rallies: “John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."  (wink, wink)  Then we will know for certain that Blinky McCain is indeed The McChurian Candidate.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 11:   THE SECRET SUPPER, by Javier Sierra (2004) BR 10.7.2008

                           

I have poked some fun at Da Vinci’s Last Supper over the years, depicting it like a scene from Barry Levinson’s 1983 film, Diner, in which a bunch of guys bitch and kibbitz over ordering the food and who is going to pick up the check. I have even alleged that the Last Supper took place in a 1st century establishment called Max’s Jerusalem Deli, where one of the “twelve” appropriately ordered rack of lamb for Jesus because, after all, he is the Agnus Dei, and not long after would be the sacrificial “lamb” in the centerpiece of Christian Liturgy.

When it was being painted on the wall of Milan’s Santa Maria della Grazie, a project that took Da Vinci three years overall (1495-98), it was called the Cenacolo, (cena, Italian for dinner). The Cenacolo was a big deal, eagerly awaited by the public, as were all works of art by famous artists in Tuscany. Artists were the “rock stars” of the time. Moreover, most works of art were commissioned by religious authorities and dealt with religious subjects. So, given the times in which there was even less separation between church and state than there is in America these days, the way in which the subject was depicted was charged with both political and religious consequences.

The intrigue of Sierra’s novel will remind some of The DaVinci Code. It has all of that secret stuff, with oddball monks, unexplained murders, and especially, coded messages and riddles imbedded in Latin and, in this case, the famous painting. DaVinci has become the prime vehicle for this sort of genre; he was brilliant polymath, the model of the “Renaissance man,” and quirky. His sexuality, or lack of it, has always been in question, he worked on projects that were related to military concerns, new technologies, he visited morgues and apparently dissected corpses to better understand human physiology, and he wrote about these things in a mirror script. (Some allege that, because he was left-handed, Da Vinci found it more comfortable to write from right to left.)

It must be admitted that the Renaissance is a good period for mining material for the historical politico-religious thriller. There were a lot of activities that might remind one of today. There were the rivalries between the states in Italy, especially between the city-states, such as Florence and Milan, as well as rivalries between the powerful families, such as the Medici, Borgia, d’Este and Sforza contending for secular and religious power, and there were heresies, such as the Cathar heresy in Southern France (the same place that figures prominently in The DaVinci Code) that was regarded as a diabolical threat to the Roman Catholic Church, and the liturgical differences between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. And we must not leave out that instrument of the “extraordinary rendition” of the time—the Inquisition.

Sierra chooses Fr. Agostino Leyre as his narrator. He is, appropriately, a Dominican, since they were most active as inquisitors and, we learn, writing about the events of the story as an old man who has taken up a hermetic retirement in Egypt. Agostino is one of several fictional characters set in amongst a cast that includes actual characters and events in addition to DaVinci and the painting. He provides a cast of characters at the end of the book and one can distinguish which are the historical figures because the vital dates are provided for real persons.

Agostino’s narration begins with the sudden death of Beatrice d’Este, the 22-year-old Duchess of Milan, who dies in childbirth. But these were the days when there was a lot of poisoning going on. That event really doesn’t go anywhere and the story gets ff to a rather sluggish start with much setting up about riddles and word play, which is an interest of Agostino, who has been dispatched by higher authorities to find out if there is anything suspicious going on in Milan.

DaVinci, who is not a very religious man, is suspect. Then there is a mysterious monk called the “Soothsayer” who is a master interpreter of riddles, a one-eyed monk and another who is a librarian that apparently sells mysterious books to a rich merchant from Spain. At the center if it all is a Latin poem of a few lines than makes no sense by itself and, of course, the painting of the Last Supper.

There are also a couple of murders, both of monks, one of which is the librarian, and grisly death of the on-eyed monk, apparently because they ”knew too much” about a conspiracy that is deeper still in the plot. These plot thickeners don’t really do all that much for the reader except to throw suspicion in several directions, including at Leonardo himself, since he is notoriously insouciant about such matters, as is not only demonstrated by this book, but in reference (to those who know his story) to the manner in which he sketched the hanged Pazzi conspirators in the murder of Giulano de Medici back in Florence.

This all unravels rather incredulously for this reader with relationships drawn among the variable of the poem, nicknames assigned to the apostles, and eventually, ecco, that you need to read things in reverse when you are dealing with Leonardo, and in so doing the sets of letter derived from the positions of the apostles at the last (and secret) supper spell out a word that points to Leonardo (or his patron) being part of the dreaded Cathar hersey

But one ends up asking this question: If the intent of the clues to the Secret Supper are so complexly-imbedded in the positions, arrangements, and portrayals of the attendees at the last supper such that it painfully reveals some cipher that ends up spelling out a single word that represents the Cathar heresy, then why should anyone give a damn about this? If one has to read an entire book just to get at this rather fabricated and not very interesting result, it is about as consequential as finding Mickey Mantle’s 1958 batting average represented in some passage in Deuteronomy.

It may be that, because religion relies upon a willing suspension of rationality, writers of this sort of genre rely upon a willingness to accept an interpretation of meaning that can be gratuitously extracted from most any set if circumstances. Indeed, religion very much about assigning meaning, often recondite meaning (which makes it even more meaningful) to things. Those with fatalistic religiosity walk around in a self-constructed (deluded?) world in which everything has meaning because it is a universe of god(s), spirits, contending forces of good and evil in some cosmic drama in which they are a player/spectator. If everything has a meaning, then nothing has meaning.

Not that the Cathar heresy (they regarded themselves a “pure” Christians and gave no allegiance to the Pope) is inconsequential. Eventually the Roman Catholic Church, which in those days tolerated no competition, wiped out the Cathars rather ruthlessly. Sierra writes that, “When the papal troops would enter a city in which the heretics had taken root, they killed all men, women and children, making no distinction between Cathars and Christians. When they reached Heaven, the soldiers said, God would distinguish his own.” (P. 234) Sound familiar?
____________________________________________________
© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 10:    A DRAGON CITY JOURNAL ELECTION SPECIAL INTERVIEW    10.2.2008

DCJ’s Asian Bureau Chief, Ba Feng Gu, who is fluent in Vietnamese, spoke with former North Vietnamese Prison Guard (and now proprietor of Cao’s Oodles of Noodles Diner in Hanoi) Cao Pham Phong. Read the full, un-expurgated transcript. Then, read the book that will make or break the 2008 presidential election.

                                                       

                                                                                      ©2008, UrbisMedia

DCJ: So, Mr. Cao, surely you must realize that some of the American public might think that the Democrats have put you up to releasing your book just now, when Mr. McCain is just a month away from the election of the next president of the United States?

CPP: No sir, not at all. My book has nothing to do with politics. It is about love, the love that grew between Johnny and . . .

DCJ: Let’s be clear here: Are you referring Senator John McCain when you say “Johnny”?

CPP: Yes, he was always my Johnny, and he always will be. I actually called him “Little Johnny,” but don’t ask me to explain why, it’s too . . . ah, well, personal.

DCJ: So why now, after all these years, are you publishing this book? You must be aware that America has a lot of homophobic bigots, most of whom support Senator McCain’s candidacy. This could end his chances to be another shot down Navy pilot to become president.

CPP: I want him back. Yes, after all these years I can’t get over Johnny. I want him back and, if I have to destroy his ambitions to be president to get him, I will. We can get married in California and then go back to Vietnam and take up where we left off. I have fixed up a little flat just like the cell that Johnny had, where our love blossomed, but with new drapes and some nice wall sconces for that low, intimate lighting. Then we can open a little Bed and Breakfast place in Halong Bay . . .

DCJ: Mr. Cao, with all respect, you can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that an American war hero and a man they are calling “the next George Bush” would give it all up to go back with you to a torture cell . . .

CPP: Don’t say “torture” cell, Mr. Ba, or I will have to bring great discomfort to your genitals with my boot. Remember, I am a NVA prison guard and I am trained in such measures.

DCJ: Sorry, Mr. Cao, I’ll wear a cup to our next interview . . .

CPP: [rather emphatically] I did not torture Johnny! What do you take me for, Dick Cheney? Sure, we were not signatories to he Geneva Conventions, but we did sign the articles of the Indochinese Pet Groomers Convention.

DCJ: Excuse me, sir, but I don’t see the relevance . . .

CPP: Johnny loved it when I spent hours brushing the lice out of the hair on his back.

DCJ: Yes, I read in the accolades for your book that his colleague, Senator Larry, “Wide Stance” Craig found that one of the most tender passages of your book. Is it true that you actually met Senator Craig? Most people don’t get to meet even one senator.

CPP: Well, not quite, but it sounded like him. I was passing through Minneapolis Airport on my book tour and, . . . well from the tapping of his shoes it sounded like he wanted to meet me. It was like Fred Astaire was in the adjoining stall.

DCJ: Let’s just leave it at that. To return to the, ahem, torture matter—is it true that the North Vietnamese actually fixed Senator McCain’s injuries?

CPP: Yes, we did. Johnny was a mess when we fished him out of that lake. He might have drowned, you know. His arms were in pretty bad shape. You know when he does that little thing with his arms, like that music leader, what’s his name, Mitch Miller, used to do, like he is some silly old puppet—sooo cute! Well that’s from Johnny’s arms being so messed up. We used to get out some Mitch Miller tapes and Johnny would lead the guards in a sing-along and do that thing with his arms— sooo cute! Johnny loved those Barbra Streisand tapes, too; he loved to dress up as Yentil, and dance . . . well, hobble, around the cell.

DCJ: How did you get hold of these tapes, may I ask.

CPP: Didn’t you read the book? Jane brought them.

DCJ: Jane? Oh! Jane Fonda! Really?

CPP: Of course, silly. She also brought Johnny some of her panties. He loved them. She used to give us the locations of your missile solos in Hollywood and we would let her bring anything in.

DCJ: Then why didn’t she get him out of the Hanoi Hilton?

CPP: She could have gotten him out. You know, there is this myth about when Johnny was asked if he wanted to go home and he declined because his fellow prisoners were not allowed to leave with him . . . ?

DCJ: Yes, it is one of the reasons Johnny . . . rather, Senator McCain is regarded as a military “hero” is America.

CPP: Well, Jane set that up. But I think you are sitting across from the real reason Johnny didn’t want to leave. [Pause] We were so happy together. Johnny always said that our . . . ah, “relationship” gave a whole new meaning to the Stockholm Syndrome. [Mr. Cao begins to tear up]

DCJ: But Mr. Cao, it is unrealistic to think that Senator McCain, an important man, with several children, thirteen cars and more houses than he can remember, is going to go back to Vietnam and operate a B & B with a former prison guard. He’s a married man.

CPP: Oh, that bitch. Excuse me. But Johnny has called here worse than that, you know. Look at me; not one cosmetic surgery, tight as a kettle drum. When Johnny loses the election he’ll dump her just like he dumped the other one and become his real self again. And if that Palin woman tries to make babies with weird names with my Johnny I will field dress her like a cow moose.

DCJ: Whoa, I guess you are serious, Mr. Cao. But what if he is indeed elected, sir?

CPP: But I believe Johnny will not be elected. Not when people read my book. I want him to come back with me to Vietnam. It can be like the old days. I even saved the little Yentil suit Jane brought him. I’m the only one who can make him feel like a real hero.

DCJ: And if you are wrong . . . ?

CPP: Well . . . I have applied to become a presidential intern.
______________________________________________________________
© 2008, UrbisMedia

 

52. 9: ECON 101 FOR McBUSH 10.1.2008

                
                                                                          © 2008, UrbisMedia

The “dismal science” is producing some real doomsayers these days. Doomsayer-ness is, of course, directly proportional to the amount of personal income (including stock options, executive jets and golden parachutes for bailing out of them) of the so-called “masters of the universe” who play with our currency, jobs, banks and pensions as though it were their personal Monopoly game.

They, guys like Bernake and Paulson and the ever-lurking in the background Mr. Greenbacks Greenspan, are doing a lot of doomsaying of late. They have invoked Code Red for of their economic version of 911 to scare the bejeesus out of us into sheepishly giving them $700,000,000,000 of our tax money with as few strings attached as possible.

Way back in 1962 I received a bachelor’s degree in Economics. A few years later, a third of my Ph.D. was devoted to urban economic and political economy. Those achievements don’t quite make me an “economist,” since I never really “did” economics beyond some economic base reports as a planning consultant. But I am much more of an economist than some of he right-wing clods and Libertarians from Mars who go to (anti) taxpayer meetings and think they know what the hell they are talking about. The supply of economic idiots well exceeds the demand. There is also a guy named Bush who reputedly has an M.A. from the Harvard Business School. I will put my B.A. up against that dolt any day.

Bush not only has batted 1000 in his personal business failures in oil drilling and baseball teams, he is the CEO of the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression. But we can’t put all of the blame on Georgie. No, his party shares that with him. He had help from his fellow Republicans.

Now the Repubs are between a rock (their contributors from Wall Street who want a bailout), and a hard place (their ideological aversion to what they see as impending “socialism”) and can’t seem to figure out, Harvard M.A.s, or not, what the hell to do. Bush has cajoled Republican congressmen (who would like to get re-elected) to go along with his Treasury Secretary (who owns millions of Goldman-Sachs stock), and acts like this was a crisis that sort of just came along, just now that it’s here—like his war in Iraq and hurricane Katrina—we must deal with it.

Well, here the B.A. in Econ from Le Moyne must instruct the (reputed) M.A. from Harvard in a little Econ 101. Here is how we got here, Georgie. So listen up, doofuss.
1. Your hero, Ronnie Reagan famously said in his first inaugural address, that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." From that simple-minded base he started four processes—never levying new taxes and changing the tax code to favor the rich because he believed, as you do, in “trickle-down economics.” By the way, your father called it “voodoo economics.” Then he started the practice of “de-regulation” of everything he could, including the financial sector because, remember now, “government is the problem.” This did not stop him from creating the largest public debt (on behalf mostly of his defense contractor friends) until you bettered him. But then “supply-side” economics was illustrated for him on the back of a napkin. Ronnie was about as good an economist as he was an actor. But he became the “hero” of the Republicans.

2. This set up the preconditions for the perfect storm new are in now. Wealth was moved from the lowest to the richest, who now began using their credit cards with wild abandon, for everything. They built the largest private debt in the universe. The banks got rich on them. They were encouraged to keep buying what they don’t really need—big houses with three-car garages, SUVs as big as houses, expensive recreational toys, etc. The Chinese produced cheap crap from Wal Mart, television created a dozen “shopping channels,” and even when 911 happened the second thing out of Bush’s mouth was that we should “go shopping.” And when we were finished shopping we could continue spending money “on the tab” at the “tables.” Local governments (remember, all governments are evil) were fiscally hamstrung because the right wing “never raise a tax” mantra was extended to municipalities and school districts, but local government couldn’t raise debt the way the Fed does. So casinos and lotteries popped up everywhere, trickling down a bit of the take to hook the local governments.

3. Meanwhile, Reagan created the atmosphere that the rich deserved to be rich. The people, he workers, who he Republicans call the “strong fundamentals of the American economy,” were becoming convinced that there was “easy money” out there. They could play the stock market, too, buy junk bonds, maybe become a master of the universe themselves. Or, if that’s too complicated, they could (but you have op be a Filipino postal worker) hit the big Lotto by just scratching some numbers on a card. That usually didn’t work out, so both parents could go to work to keep up the consumption. But meanwhile the “deserved rich” were doing much better. They were arbitraging companies, outsourcing jobs, raiding pension plans, all under the non-watchful eyes of the de-regulated regulators. CEO’s were paying themselves in the hundreds of millions in salaries and stock options, but as long as gas was cheap and inflation was in check American workers were like the proverbial frogs in the pot of slowly boiling water. The Reagan financial legacy was that—as Dick Cheney has now famously said: “deficits don’t matter”—and regulations do matter either. So, we got the S & L Crisis of the late 1980s (with Neil Bush of Silverado in the middle of it and John McCain taking 200K in campaign contributions from Keating) and the idea that bailing out reckless financial institutions is OK, too.

The absence of war and the economic boost of the IT revolution kept the incipient drains of rising heath care costs, the elderly living longer, rising energy costs and lurking dangers of environmental ignorance in the background. But when the Bush administration came on more were slipping below the poverty line, more jobs were outsourced, and more companies were screwing their workers out of the pensions and other benefits.

4. Bush was the catalyst—the perfect combination of ideological stupidity to compliment corporate cupidity. We may never know whether it was uncanny prescience or dumb luck that caused Osama bin Laden to select his moment, but Bush was he perfect “target,” someone who would under-estimate a threat and over-react to its results. All that was needed was to light the fuse and Bush would destroy the American economy in a war of choice. The destruction of the American international reputation was a bonus. The war bled $10 billion/month into the Iraqi sand, allowed the Taliban back into Afghanistan, pushed inflation in America, sold of hundreds of billions of American debt to China and Japan. But never would a tax increase to pay for it would be levied so that Americans would know the true cost. Never would a draft be levied to show the true human cost.  We have become a people who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

5. Americans, a people badly in need of an Econ 101 class, just didn’t get it. Frightened that they just might be forced to go to mosques and wear burkhas to the mall the bought four more years of Bush and his war and his de-regulation of Wall Street. The debt continued to be outsourced to China (along with more jobs) and he was the first president not to raise taxes during wartime (our longest wartime).

But Americans had money to keep up acting like the “richest country in the world.” Wall Street knew where that money was—in the very place that most Americans have most of their personal wealth—their houses. Enter the sub-prime bomb. Here’s how it works. First, tell Americans that their houses are worth a lot more than they are. Worth is tricky in economics, but this is no place to get into the territory of “value in use” and “value in exchange.” Suffice to say that inflated home prices (hence, inflated equity) would allow Americans to tap into all that “wealth” via the mortgage re-fi. Wow! Take that cruise, buy that boat, head for Vegas! Moreover, there was money to be made in commissions: get an adjustable rate mortgage for some guy who is unemployed and has alimony payments and a drug problem. No problem—until the Fed nudged its prime rate up a touch. Just wrap that crappy future default in with some other securities and sell the package everywhere you can, from Boise to Beijing. Nobody’s looking, nobody’s checking, everybody’s on he take, digging the delusion.

6. It couldn’t last. The metaphors abound—the bubble burst, the house of cards came down, the credit tsunami rolled over the banks and securities industry—things weren’t worth what they needed to be worth. The Fed had been pumping money into the bloated credit market for years, and a virtual Ponzi was in the making. Wall Street couldn’t resist getting into the mortgage game and “securitizing” it, hence infecting themselves with bad debt. Everybody borrowed from everybody, every body owed everybody. Things are fine if nobody calls in their debt, or gets nervous and goes to the bank and fills out a withdrawal slip. Into the bargain America, which has pissed off much of he world dues to the preemptive war Bush Doctrine (are you listening Sarah?), and the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib gulags, has now pissed off much of the world by doing what is tantamount to spitting in their soup.

7. Bailout time. Now politics, the realm of the possible, not the calculable, takes over. The very people who contributed most to the credit crisis are the ones pushing to take charge of its solution. Now the rotten mortgages will be dumped back on the shoulders of the very public they were sold to. For the Republicans every principle has its price—the free market, anti-de-reg, socialist practices, you name it, goes out the window. Just today and email was sent to me with an old NYTimes clipping where Democrats objected to Bush creating a new regulatory agency for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—answerable only to the Executive Branch—as “evidence” that Democrats are—can you believe this!—anti-regulation! So now they are scaring us with the “D” word, people will be out on “Main Street” without jobs and food.

Maybe we need a good economic depression, sort of a cleansing, so we can create a new New Deal. First requirement of a new New Deal—an Econ 101 course, for everybody, Wall Street, too.
________________________________________________________
© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 8: ON BEING (SORT OF) ‘WHITE’ 9.27.2008

                

Three posters in shop windows in a mall in Hong Kong. Getting white is a big business in Hong Kong, and products abound to get that bleached look. Laneige is supposed to produce that “Snow White” appearance. These three shops, where shop assistants are often chosen for their whiteness, are within thirty meters of one another. One almost feels the melanin being sucked from your epidermis just walking past them.

Although it was many years ago, an incident in my classroom still remains fresh in my mind. A young African-American student was in my class in Urban Government. During a class discussion there was a difference of opinion on urban finance between him and an Anglo student. When I addressed the African-American’s opinion he dismissed my words by saying that I was looking at the question “through the eyes of a White man.”   I replied that that my remarks were about economics per se and asked him for the “racial” inference in what I said.   He basically replied I would not understand, because I was White.”

After class he came to me and said he wanted to drop the class. When I asked why, he implied that because of what he said I would not give him a good grade. I said I would give him what he earned, as I did with every student, but he was un-deterred. I didn’t like the implication that I was a racist, but I signed his drop card for him. But I also told him that he needed to deal with his racist attitude. He turned from leaving and said, as I suspected he might, “what,” my racist attitude. I also suspected he hadn’t heard that applied to him before.

“Yes,” I said, “your racist attitude is going to ruin your education.” He looked somewhere between astonishment and proficide. Before he could respond I added, "You must realize that you are playing right into the hands of true White racists when you say that people cannot see things the same way who are from different races. That’s exactly what the racists say, and why they oppose integration.”

He turned and left without saying another word, either believing sill that he White guy didn’t get it because he was White, or maybe I had given him something to think about. I wanted to have a conversation about what things are influenced by our sub-cultures, but also those things, the many, many of them, that transcend our color and culture. I wanted to tell him that two bucks plus two bucks equals four bucks whatever color you are. Yes, four bucks might mean more to a Black guy who is poorer, but the math is the math. But I never encountered him again.

I don’t define myself as “White.” To the extent that I care at all about human chromatics I color myself as a “swarthy” guy. Racially, I’m not from the Caucuses, I’m from Swarthia, that place of tawny-tone in which most of the world falls, and the rest is, by interbreeding, inclined. So, someday we will arrive at a point where bigots will have to find some other reason to act superior to people shaded diffrerently than themselves. However, members of the American White People’s Party and the KKK will continue to breed exclusively with their sisters to ensure the continuance of both whiteness and double-digit IQs.

These thoughts are inspired by the fact that America might have its first president who is at least (though hardly mentioned) half African American—a century and a half after we had to fight a war to just allow African-Americans freedom from slavery. But racial prejudice is not a de jure matter; it lurks in the mental recesses just above red necks and blue perms and in the wink-wink, nudge-nudge universe where exclusion and inferiority complexes find snide and sneaky comfort.

I frankly don’t get what the hang-up with whiteness is all about. It is not restricted to American bigots. As the above ads (and these three are just a sample) indicate, Asian women must be obsessed with getting any color at all out of their skin. Star actresses, newsreaders and, naturally, the women in television commercials and print ads for whitening creams, are so white (or photographically bleached) that only eyes, lips and an occasional nostril appear against a blindingly-blanched background. Indian woman seem no less obsessed. Check out a Bollywood film and the lead actress will be several tones lighter than any women you might encounter on the streets of Mumbai or Delhi. And, as if to hammer the point home, the villains in these films are quite dark-skinned.

The female obsession with epidermal whiteness may owe something to association with social class. Numerous statues of couples in ancient Egypt, for example, show females with very white skin, contrasting with their husbands’ brown skin. This is sometimes misinterpreted at evidence of racial intermarriage between women from Lower Egypt and men from Upper Egypt (Nubia); but it reflects that high class women did not have to work (if at all) out of doors, where their skin would become darkened, whereas men were expected to do (manly) out of door activities like overseeing the fields, hunting and such, hence their brown skin. The “trophy wife” thing apparently started early in human experience.

Speaking of which: it must rankle white racists when they hear paleontological theories like “the out of Africa” thesis that humans originated in south-east Africa, and where re-creations of hominids and early man are dark-skinned (of course, they were out of doors all the time). This would imply that we are all descended from the same source, a double-whammy for the racist who also happens to be a Christian Fundamentalist with a literal belief in Genesis.

Being (sort of) White has both advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that one is confined to the experience one’s color dictates. I was, for example, surprised to observe how surprised that African-Americans were that Barrak Obama got as far politically as he has. Their surprise was far greater than mine because I had come to assume that there was more integration and interracial acceptance than apparently there has been. Moreover, what also surprised me was that it seems a higher percentage of African-Americans mentioned their concern for the “safety” of Obama should he become president.

This leads to the worry that a substantial number of Americans might just not be able to see past Senator Obama’s skin color (even slightly modified by his having a White mother). Judging by the enthusiasm shown for his candidacy by foreigners, including nearly a quarter million (white) Germans at his appearance in Berlin, there appears to be more racial maturity in Western Europe (although tolerance does not extend to ethnic and religious differences). Americans are still hung up to the extent that a mixed-raced man, highly-educated at the best schools, who has done community work as well as university teaching, who is a Christian (that’s right, he’s not a Muslim), is still married to his first (and only) intelligent and eloquent wife, and has two delightful children, cannot be accepted by many Americans because, although he has, they just can’t get past his skin.

This is a shameful and appalling fact of American life, until one reflects that we had legal enslavement of other human beings just 143 years ago—and, it took a war to end it. Still, slavery is something that can be dealt with de jure; racism is another matter.

So, I ask myself is that the reason for my discomfort with being called “White.?”   Partly, because our history of slavery and racism in America is a constant reminder of what is not great about my country. But, being a “Whitey” is also a reminder that racism goes many ways. Some African-Americans posed the question of whether Barrak Obama was “Black enough”; is this some perverse twist of the notion of “uppityness” that has been suggested about Obama because of his eloquence and confident demeanor?  First and foremost we are all human.

We deserve neither credit nor blame for what race we were born. It is what we make of the racial hand (and what goes with it) that we are dealt—and the respect we accord other to do the same—that determines, for me, how we should judge people. Skin color is an accident of birth derived from a long evolutionary heritage that includes us all. (Or, it’s some divine joke or test, or just a diversion, if you are inclined to metaphysical explanations. See also, DCJ Archives, 27. 4: Swarthy Guy in a Polychrome World 12.20.2005.)

It is because of that student from long ago that I resist being called “White.” He didn’t know it but he was prejudging me. Moreover, he was unwittingly acting in a racist manner by implying I was racially incapable of seeing things his through is African-American eyes. Had I turned around and said, “You should not be in a class taught by a White man because you are incapable of seeing things in the White way,” he would have had a just case of racial discrimination against me.

There is far more we can see he same way—as fellow humans—than there is that is inflected with sub-cultural differences that come from racial differences. We can’t change race, but we can change the culture. It will take open and facile minds to lead us further in the direction that the candidacy of Barrak Obama has lead us. In fact, I think Barrak Obama’s mind is just such a mind.
_______________________________________________________
© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 7: LAND OF DENIAL/NATION OF LIES 9.23.2008

 

                  

 

Nothing owes its preciousness to rarity more than Truth.*

When I watched Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the late Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, endorsing Barak Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver I was probably not he only one who was surprised. But then, her grandfather would have fit much better at the Democratic convention than he would have at the party of the Republican convention, a party that Eisenhower would probably not have recognized. Eisenhower was a heroic general, and a politician who supported unions, increasing taxes, and coined the term “military-industrial complex.” On today’s ideological continuum he would qualify as a “liberal.”

Things have changed in political ideology since the 1950s, mostly in a rightward shift. But something else has changed, a change that Susan Eisenhower did not directly refer to, but cannot be denied—the Republican Party has undergone a fundamental change, and much of that change has been a result of its unholy alliance with the Religious Right of America. The most deleterious outcome of that change has been a moral posture—born of righteousness—that the end justifies the means, and from that has come a practice of not telling the Truth.

There are reasons that wise political thinkers have tried to keep church and state in separation—religion is concerned primarily with belief, belief in what cannot be validated or proven; statecraft must be concerned with knowledge, that which can be tested, proven and validated with evidence. Belief is, in some sense, denial, a refusal to accept that ha which cannot be explained or known, has a “truth” that comes from “revelation” to certain anointed persons, such as prophets. To insist that God exists and has a plan for humankind is not a lie, per se, but it is manifestly a delusion, a belief in something that cannot be apprehended by the senses or the intellect. It is in the category of a fairytale.

Now, does this means that the credulous are more likely to be liars because they believe in the unknowable? Not necessarily; many people who believe in God are also scrupulously honest people. But, are people who believe in what is tantamount to a fairytale more likely to accept as unquestionable Truth, say that Iraqis flew he 911 planes, unproven existence of weapons of mass destruction, “mission accomplished,” that the surge (and not bribery of the Sunnis) accounts for diminished violence in Iraq, that “trickle down” tax cuts help the middle class, that Barrak Obama is a Muslim, that Sarah Palin never supported the “Bridge to Nowhere,” one could go on for hours?

My answer is a qualified “yes.” It is not so much that all these people actually believe the lies they are being told, but they want or need to believe versions of “reality” that are a variance with the truth. That is, their approach to politics is somewhat like their approach to metaphysics: they can’t prove that there is a God, or that angels and devils exist, but they much prefer that “truth” to the contraposition. The political right wing has found a very effective political formula that conflates religious belief and political belief. The so-called “values-voter” is essentially a “negative voter,” and voting against something is the strongest motivation for voter participation. The values-voter also fits better the concept of political conservatism, because they are more likely to believe that ”things used to be better” in society and society needs protection from any circumstances or ideas that would threaten the “status quo.”

Ultimately the values-voter must be willing to go without health care, have their job outsourced, have their home foreclosed, their sons shipped off to useless wars, but will turn out and vote for the political party responsible because they cannot abide a world in which gays can get married or women can decide for themselves what they want to do with their bodies. Theirs is a world in which their country has become regarded as the axis mundi ---the place where there is a connection between Heaven and Earth, where a geographical connection exists that mirrors the conflation they have made between politics and religion. Indeed, the symbolic and linguistic connections are all about us: the fight to keep “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, for prayer in schools, the constant reference to “God’s country,” the wrapping of the flag around the crucifix, and the endless coddling and sucking up of politicians to religious authorities.

The values-voter is a committed soldier on the political battlefield because he/she believes with “certainty” that this life is merely preparation for an afterlife, and that secular “evils” must be avoided and eradicated, and that they are enjoined by a politico-religious obligation to build a nation, if not a world, that follows that righteous path. Politics and faith become fused for them, and the political party—often with great cynicism—that courts that commitment, can count on them to accept almost any worldly price for their “eternal salvation.” It is a model that fits the Taliban, Christian fundamentalists, ultra-orthodox Jews, and other theopathic faiths and cults equally.

That the re-emergence and growth of this denial and acceptance of lies and untruths has come about with such vehemence in the 21st century is frightening. It is a seeming rejection of the human advances that were made in the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

There is a line of dialogue in Stanley Kramer’s great movie, Judgment at Nuremburg, that has always stayed with me. At the end of the movie Spencer Tracey (Judge Dan Haywood) is asked to come to the cell of Burt Lancaster (Nazi Judge, Dr. Ernst Janning), a once renowned and respected jurist. Janning says to Haywood: “the reason I asked you to come... Those people... those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it.” Haywood responds: Herr Janning... it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death... you knew to be innocent.”

Analogously, somewhat the same might be said for those who employ lies and deceits for political purpose. Those, who by spin,” omission, and outright commission of lies and deceptions, who have no respect for the truth, destroy the integrity of any political system. Lies and deception have always been a part of political competition and discourse; but the practice, with assistance of media and political operatives and lobbyists, has come to characterize the political process in America. The practice of telling and re-telling lies and un truths, combined with a substantial credulous polity that is inclined to believe what it wants to believe rather than exercise a skeptical demand for the facts and evidence, has produced a disastrous eight years of misguided militarism, a badly damaged economy with widened social disparities, and ignorance and denial of impending environmental catastrophe, and the ruined reputation of America around he world.

George Bush has been the most overtly and demonstrable religious president in this country’s history. He has also been its biggest and most consistent liar, both about his personal circumstances and in his public behavior. That it might seem inconsistent for a “religious” man to be such a consummate prevaricator should by now be explicable by not only his own credulity, but the fusion of religious righteousness and so-called “revealed” truth over “researched” truth in is administration. He has been a president by who by his own words “has no regrets” and does not change his mind. He compounds this distance from the truth by surrounding himself with sycophants and “yes” men.

Moreover, these practices appear to be a staple of American politics. Can there be any more arrogant and dangerous assertion than for someone to say that the war in Iraq is “part of God’s plan,” as Republican vice-president nominee confidently asserted not long ago to a church group. A person who might hold the kind of power as American head of state holds and to believe that they know what cannot be known, to know not what is the truth, but what is pure fabrication, is a delusional person of great danger.

The typical response one gets from Republicans when their politicians are caught in lies is that “all politicians lie.” That not true, and is only designed to put an end to the discussion. But lying sometimes catches up with you. Recently, John McCain was caught in a lie about Barrak Obama (alleging that Obama calls for “sex education in kindergarten”) in an interview. He was called on it. His response was that it was not a lie—deny the lie. Cindy McCain recently had to remove from her website a statement that said Mother Theresa has convinced her to adopt her children. Cindy McCain has never met Mother Theresa. This sort of thing can be contagious. In fairness, Hillary Clinton never did come under rifle fire in Bosnia.

It is no longer just politics; it is a war for our very reality.
________________________________________________________
© 2008, James A Clapp
*From Lifelines, by Sebastian Gerard (Peter Pauper Press, 2005)

 

52. 6:     EVOLUTIONARY CAPITALISM     9.19.2008

                     

Ever wonder where does all that wealth goes when the hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions just “go away”? Well the big boys at Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bothers and Avarice and Greed, will probably have more than enough socked away that the selling off of a few houses and yachts won’t put them in too much distress. The top management at AIG will be removed, but no doubt heir “parachutes” will provide them a cushy landing. A few rungs down the corporate ladder things get ugly. Merrill Lynch will be laying off 25,000 into a Wall Street wallowing in ex-Masters of the Universe. Much will depend upon how heavily they were vested in their company’s pension system. Further down are the ones who depended upon what they thought was the integrity of Capitalism and its financial system. These are the folks who bought into the subprime adjustable rates and/or whether the company they work for will be collateral damage in the big popping of America’s economic bubble.

A lot of the wealth was never there in the first place. It was wealth that you could monetize if you wanted to use it to play monopoly, you know, flipping houses, or pretending you live in Park Row by mortgaging yourself to death to have a big house in a gated community, or trips to Vegas, and such. My condo might have dropped fifteen percent in exchange value, but it still has the same value in shelter, view and comfort that it always had. Its high value, like everybody’s, was part of the bubble but, because I didn’t mortgage it out on an adjustable, I’m not looking at it from the street.

Then, a lot of that “housing value” was built on commissions for selling those re-fis. A lot of money was made, as they say, “on the come”; this was money that would be there so long as the risk against some economic reversal(s) would be worth it. It was also made in a giddy-greedy atmosphere that was enabled by thirty years of conservative tearing down of safeguards and regulations. It was too risky. The big boys knew the risks, but they forget to tell the little guys. The big guys usually don’t take the hit until things really start to get bad. They’re bad.

“Fat cats” is perhaps an apt term for the Wall Street boys and CEOs who pay themselves big salaries, commissions and bonuses. Big cats are the top of the food chain in the animal world. The billions of worms and bugs produce the grains on which the millions of herbivores feed, so that the thousands of feline carnivores at the top can dine on the fruits of their labors. It is the “natural order” of things’; a lot of us are worms, some are fat cats.

But, of course we know that the “system” is integrated; the fat cats need the worms. And, of course, the analogy breaks down pretty fast on the reality that we humans are one species, and the food chain analogy involves a myriad of species, all of them well-programmed to act according to the roles nature has assigned them—a scorpion has no desire to be a frog.

So now the question is how to stop the bleeding. John Q loses his house because he can’t meet his mortgage. He’s at the bottom of the food chain. Now there’s an empty house and his equity is gone. He as to stop spending and businesses that used to rely on his spending are in trouble. Sales tax revenues go down, people get laid off, and the economy goes into “survivor” mode. At the metaphorical water hole the fat cats and the big herbivores nudge out and drive away the little critters.

The same politicians who will be eloquent on the individual housing consumers getting in over their heads with mortgage debt and must take the consequences of their injudicious decisions, will quickly flip the argument on behalf of the huge financial institutions—that have been both responsible for dangerous financial instruments and should know better—and fashion an argument that they need be bailed out for the good of the country. The AIGs and Bear Stearns’ get “a (powerful, bought, lobby) vote” in how American tax money is used, the taxpayer gets zip. This is what American “capitalism” has evolved to. The fat cats don’t lose. They grew and clawed their way to the top of the economic food chain, and they threaten gloom and doom if government doesn’t come to their rescue when they have been allowed by the same government of de-regulation to literally “run wild” with their greed.

The great economic ideological battle of much of the 20th century was that between Capitalism versus Socialism. It would, of course, become conflated with their “container” ideologies of Democracy versus Communism but, as we have seen in several instances, particularly in the case of the former Communist USSR and the former Socialistic China, it is Capitalism, however semantically-mediated, that has been the replacement system those Socialistic economies. This may well be, in some people’s minds, the “natural progression” of things. Human beings, they might argue, are naturally inclined (or, if you are Calvinistic, or Reaganistic, divinely endowed) to “possess” property (sometimes even people) and the means of production. And so, in the “natural order of things,” some will end up with more of it than others through hard work (or better theft). Ironically, this evolutionary thinking comes from that part of the political spectrum that draws its political support from that part of the polity that typically rejects “evolution” as the explanatory theory of human change, if not progress. In further irony, that anti-evolutionary support comes mostly from “so-called” Christians who take their name from a 1st century Jewish rabbi who was overtly socialistic in his social thinking. History is scrambled eggs.

The ironies do not stop there. There was great gloating in many Western countries over the fall of the social systems in Eastern Europe and he USSR and he capitulation of Chinese by the 1980s (falsely attributed to the political activities of the likes of Reagan and Thatcher). It’s not so much that their “systems” were unworkable (look a Scandinavia, for example), but that their leaders were made of the same crooked, greedy stuff as ours. Plus, they had the power to enforce bad decisions.

So, they decided to try market economies and the same kinds of people are the “fat cats” of the “cowboy capitalism” systems installed in Russia and China. It is not systems that corrupt people—it’s people who corrupt systems. The irony is that these countries that could not deal with America militarily will suck the economic marrow out of us by buying our debt, making our outsourced products and, in the case of Russia, eventually selling us energy and premium prices. Americans may become nostalgic for the good old Cold War days. They may wish a return to he days in which Mao and Stalin were not just paranoid politicians, but major screw-ups running authoritarian command economies.

Capitalism is the first great “religion” of America. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of markets or private ownership of the means of production. But concepts are no guarantee against the evolutionary tendencies in social systems toward dominance. If capitalism is about competition for these assets, there is the likelihood—as has been shown—that the virtual “playing field” will, over time, become uneven and the rules will become skewed in favor of the successful to guarantee only success. This is what has happened in America; in Russia and China this stage has been skipped because heir “evolutionary capitalism: has simply grafted the moral features of the previous system upon it.

But the greatest irony in America is that the second great religion of America, Christianity, has also “evolved” to be nothing more than a political organization and mouthpiece for the transmogrification of the social order into the very opposite of what its founder intended.

Natural selection also produces a variety with species that get tested by environment for their suitability. And so we get some odd misfits like fascism, theocracy, and Libertarianism, which is sort of the Scientology of political thought. These sometimes become fairly lengthy branches on the tree of evolution, but eventually die out and return in another sub-species (theocracies), or are rapidly superseded in an induced die out (National Socialism). Notions such as Libertarianism just await the extraterrestrial invasion for which it is aptly suited.

And so, to the extent that the evolution metaphor is instructive, it is Darwin (and Freud) who have the superordinate models within which Adam Smith and Karl Marx (and Ron Paul) must operate. In the lesser models sometimes “shit happens.” But in the big models change is always happening. That’s the lesson of evolution. The fat cats at the top had better pay attention when the worms at the bottom start dying off, or the insects become more venomous. What that usually means is,” you’re next.”
__________________________________________________________
© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 5:     IN THE MOMENT, a short story 9.14.2008

                       by Sebastian Gerard

                     

                                                                                                                         2008, UrbisMedia

Is that the last face I am ever to see; that Iraqi kid? He must be no more that twelve, and wearing some knock-off Michael Jordon No. 23 jersey, cheapo flip-flops, and a half grin. He flipped that cell phone into the debris and donkey shit at the curb like I used to toss the television remote to my brother. Bobby is twelve, too, but probably playing a video game right about now, probably close to the violent “video game” that is my existence.

Oh, wow! What a concept. My brother is playing some war game back in Rochester blowing up pixilated bad guys, thumbing his controller with determination and termination. And, in some crisscross of dimensions he is blowing me up. He is No. 23, the roadside-kid in this godforsaken outskirt of Baghdad where I am riding shotgun in this godforsaken tin can Humvee, dressed and armed like a freakin’ Robocop and with the sinking sense that my existence is completely out of my control. Christ, what a thought—Bobby controlling my life with a video game controller. Man, I had better hydrate; I’m hallucinating in this 105-degree cauldron.

Just what I was doing when I glimpsed that Iraqi kid, all distorted at first through the plastic of the water bottle I keep shoving in my face. I knew immediately when I saw that cell phone is not at his ear. He wasn’t calling anybody but that detonator, waiting for its number—and for this Humvee to be just where he wants it to be. In some invisible cyber-dimension those numbers are one their way, flashing right by me to where I can’t see, but only imagine—to that cart just ahead, or that pile of rubbish by the curb, or maybe in that pothole we’re about to drive over. My fate is written in the most mundane detritus of this Allah-besotted neighborhood. In the moment those numbers will get there.

Now I am in that moment. I am so into this existentially-compressed nano-second, because now, in this moment, the blinding flash takes over, and I cannot discern whether time is exploding or imploding, to or from this nano-compressed instant of time. It’s just the flash, that dying super-nova flash. No sound . . . yet. Light is the fastest thing in the universe, nothing faster. I remember those documentaries about the dropping of he atomic bomb on Hiroshima. From the B-29, the guys saw the flash first, before the sound, before the shock wave. The speed of light; 186,282.397 miles per second; now how the hell did I know that? But that’s why I see the flash first. My brain is fast, too, that’s why it connects the flash to what it already knows comes with such flashes.

No sound here . . . yet. No shock wave . . .yet. Still in the moment.

I thought I’d be confused, terrified—maybe that comes later, if there’s a “later”—but why this sort of clarity, these self-conscious thoughts—all in simultaneity, like dozens of windows piled on top of one another on my computer screen, all “open” and sharing the same two-dimensional space. I can see them all—together, at once. I didn’t think there would be a moment like this.  It seems like everything is compressed, like I am peering into worlds that I was never able to see before—the space that exists in the universe of an atom, the variety of life that lives in a single drop of sea water. I remember hearing about this in high school science class, but this . . . this . . .

What’s making my brain do this? It never could think like this before. I could never handle more than one thought at a time. Now it’s like some computer, spilling out everything at once. Is this what they mean by “your whole life passing before you . . . ?” No, it’s not the same. It’s not the record of life, like times with mom and dad, and playing football, feeling up Alice in my car, eating hot dogs, and that stuff; it’s about the process of life, about how it happens. I feel like I am looking at my own DNA and understanding how it works.

Hey! Maybe this is what they mean by “heaven?” Nah, I never really believed that bullshit. The sergeant made us form up for a little prayer session before we set out on this patrol. He says God is on our side. Yeah, well Allah might have something to say about that. So, is this can’t be what heaven is supposed to be like—my brain downloading everything it knows, or rather uploading everything it didn’t know. Nah, Sister Ignatius told me in first grade that heaven was “looking into the face of God for eternity.” Christ, that really sounds like fun. For eternity?

Eternity. That would be longer than this nano-second, this moment between the flash and . . . what comes after the flash. I feel momentarily locked right in that moment, like a grape hovering in a square of lime Jello. No, make that like an insect suspended in . . . what’s that stuff called . . . c’mon, c’mon, c’mon brain . . . amber! Thought I wouldn’t get it in time. What is a “moment” anyway? Something tells me it is a sub-part of a nano-second, some basic, irreducible particle of time—the ultra-present. I am in it, in the moment. But, hey, maybe eternity is really no longer than a moment. Right? There you are, “looking into the face of God,” but if that’s all you are doing, the only thing you are doing, then the unit of time doesn’t make any difference, be it a second, or a millennium. Doesn’t matter, because you wouldn’t know the difference. Something has to change for you to tell the difference.

But it seems I am about to change. This moment won’t last an eternity. It’s the transition moment; I am going to be someone else, or something else. The “me,” or what was me, is going to change. To what? A crippled human, without some limbs, or senses? Do I want to live without my arms, or legs, or eyes, or testicles, picking up “repairs” and prostheses at Landstuhl and Walter Reed. Or, I’m going to be bits and pieces, like that poor bastard I saw them mopping up in Sadr City. There wasn’t much to ID that guy beyond his DNA. So, what happens if I become a blob of DNA. Maybe it’s no big deal, because that’s what we are, our DNA; I‘m just this tiny strand of stuff you could carry around in a test tube. Freeze me, then take me out some day and grow a shiny new me. Here he is folks, the new Mike Rossi, version Rossi 2.0. Bring on the Army recruiters. Tell Carney 2.0 he’s going to be a “hero” for going out there and getting those terrorists, the Terminator in Camos, Bobby’s search and destroy pixeled “Army of One.”

How the hell did I get into this moment? Am I supposed to be wasted like this? How did I get to the point where this is all right and proper, and patriotic, and keeping America’s democracy and way of life safe? Safe from what? The kid in the No. 23 jersey, with the flip-flops? Hey! I am an “army of one,” and a kid like my brother is going to take me out with a freakin’ cell phone! There is something wrong with this picture! Whoa, soldier, you are almost getting regretful, and angry. You don’t have time to think about that stuff. You’re starting to sound like your liberal sister. Angie, with her stuff about Iraq never attacking us. Then uncle Frank, still stuck in Vietnam; wants me to “win this one” because he didn’t get a parade. Well, that’s where I am, Uncle Frank—here, in Iraq—and some kid is attacking me. I don’t want to think about it. They make a new me and I’m going to journalism school, like I intended.

Hold on a moment, Lance Corporal Rossi. That wouldn’t really be a new me, would it? Unh, uh. A new physical me it would be; but the real me is me—my consciousness. The me of all those twenty-two years of life and experience, is the real me—my personality. No DNA generated facsimile could be a real me. I would be a biological “replicant.” If the new me had no consciousness of the old me . . . well, it means that what I am is not material, it’s my consciousness. Where does that go after this moment? It has to go somewhere. I don’t buy into all this soul and heaven stuff, but my consciousness has to go somewhere.

I know what’s happening here. I know I am in the front part of that nano second before everything will start flying apart. It can blow my body apart, but will it also blow my consciousness—the real me—apart? I have thought about it, dreamed about it, a hundred times, so it is all programmed into my brain. I know the concussive force of blasted superheated air, filled with particles of explosives, rock and steel and cow shit from the street are going to be like a mini-“big bang” that will blast matter into a new order, or just dis-order. No, not really. The “order” of things contains the dis-order. The dis-order is just the temporary state of things tat di not seem orderly to our fragmentary comprehension of things. So, if I become part of what seems dis-order, it’s not really so because I would just be part of a process that it so much bigger and longer and more complex than me and this stupid war, and that kid with the cell phone, and Iraq and Bush and the oil, and . . . it’s only a temporary arrangement of some carbon atoms inn some cosmic scheme I am only getting a fleeting glimpse of . . . I can’t see the forest because I am one of the tree . . . one of the leaves . . . . This is just a momentary glimpse between the flash of light and the shock wave. But I am not supposed to have this moment; I’m supposed to experience the classic refrain: “he never knew what hit him.”

Improvised Explosive Device, I.E.D.; you put a D in front of it and it spells D.I.E.D.

Hey! Am I lucky? Or not? You tell me. Gotta go sometime. This is early; but it’s quick. No lingering with Alzheimer’s, or cancer. People will say “he never knew what hit him,” not knowing that’s a pretty good epitaph for a soldier. An I.E.D., or a round right through the head, is quicker than a stroke or heart attack. Maybe too quick for pain. Problem is that I have been thinking about this for a long time, and every time you think about it you die a little bit. But I didn’t expect this moment, did I. Why bother me with all these thoughts if it’s check out time?

Hell, I never had thoughts like these, never thought I could think thoughts like these. I thought that there were thoughts like these that there were people who could even think thoughts like this. See! Is this what happens in the last nano-second; everything starts to become clear to you? Isn’t that a screwed up way if life: you go through it not knowing a damn ting about what it is, what it’s for, or anything, and then you get flash clarity as a going away present.

Hey, maybe No. 23 was just making a phone call and the phone was broken and he just throwing away a broken phone. Maybe he flash was something else, some reflection of a shiny surface, some bright sun coming through the space between the buildings. Nah. You were given this moment for a reason . . . or no reason at all.

I really wanted to be a journalist. Why all this revelation now, in this instance, this moment? What use is it to me now? By the end of this moment there might be no me, just what can be collected, bagged, flown in the dead of night to some cold warehouse in Delaware, welcomed home like some cargo of plastic crap for the shelves of Wal Mart. I wish I had time to write this down. It feels insightful. Why now? Some philosopher said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” some Greek guy. So why shove it all into a final moment? Just a moment of self-realization. I can’t believe I thought all these things in just a mo . . . .
__________________________________________________
©2008, UrbisMedia

 

52. 4:   JOCKSTRAPS FOR EUNUCHS        9.11.2008

                   

                                               ©2008, UrbisMedia

Every four years my mind resets the same questions: Are most American people incredibly stupid? And, does the American political system ensure that its people will ultimately make the choices that are best for the country?

I grew up believing, like many Americans, that we were exceptional. We had beaten Hitler and Tojo, we had cured polio, we were first on the moon. We believed we had the best political system and the most productive economy in the world. The 20th century was America’s century. Those historical accomplishments and attitudes have been sorely tested in the first decade of this century.

My parents’ generation have been termed “The Greatest Generation.” Indeed, they were the ones who beat Hitler and Tojo, cured polio, and financed the moon landing. But they also elected Nixon and Reagan and are badly implicated in the election of the Bushes. Many of them are also the ones, even in their dotage, who are squandering much of what they have built in casinos and in other excesses. They rose to achieve great things from their historical circumstances, but they were fallible. It is frightening to read deeper into heir history to see how close things came to going the other way, to see the blemishes of the racism, of the shortsightedness and material acquisitiveness, and of the stupidity.

As if to prove our character is not exceptional and our historical destiny is not to prove that Americans are not the “best that we [humans] can be,” along came the 21st century. We had already mistakenly believed that we had beaten the two big communist monster states and that their becoming capitalist wouldn’t be an even bigger threat. We had already misread that threat in our Vietnam debacle and in so doing rendered our polity and mortgaged our economy. By the last two decades we had retreated into some sort of mystical primitivism by rejecting what the Enlightenment won at such great cost three centuries before and flirting with the most dangerous of attitudes of history—that we are God’s chosen people.

A “perfect storm” (metaphor of the decade, and maybe the century) was brewing. We first reneged on our celebrated “free and fair” electoral process to allow an inferior man to occupy the Oval Office largely because he had not had an affair in it and because he was that most dangerous of leaders, a “saved” man of faith.

And then it came, the event that could well undo so much of that American century achievement, that could show much of the world that also had come to believe in our “exceptionality,” that Americans could be incredibly stupid—911. The “biblicality” of it is almost breathtaking. It was the great re-defining event for America that has since undergone almost continual political re-definition. No sooner did the twin towers crumble than America seem to ratchet back centuries and, although the word “crusade” was considered politically-incorrect after its first few usages, the mentality of it remained and dictated policy. Americans were afraid, they were kept afraid by lies and political rhetoric and that made them stupid. Fear makes people embrace two irrationalities—denial and desperation. It also make them run when they are on fire. And Americans were ready to deny the facts behind 911, and desperate for someone to come up with a nice simple solution to make it go away.

We had never been psychologically tested like this before—even by World War II. Indeed, distracted by our economic depression and political isolationism, it took some pushing to get Americans concerned enough about what was happening in Europe and Asia in the 1930s. The next civil war might have been between the Japanese-speaking Westcoasters and the German-speaking Eastcoasters, had not the event that is most likened to 911—Pearl Harbor—happened. But in 1941 Americans were asked to sacrifice, in 2001 they were exhorted to “go shopping.”

If it takes dramatic events such as Pearl Harbor and 911 to roust Americans, they are like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot when it comes to accretive economic problems such as rising debt, the shift to a global economy, infrastructurally–insidious fiscal parsimony, and environmentally-destructive pollution and global warming. Could anything have been more dramatic, more illustrative of craven political interest, of insensitivity and neglect, of residual racism, of betrayal of oath and public trust, than the governmental response to Hurricane Katrina? Could anything, by any American’s definition, be more UN-American, than the torturing of unindicted detainees? Would Americans ever have countenanced being spied upon by their own government and having the rights of habeas corpus rescinded? Can they have become so sheepishly stupid in their fear that, to paraphrase a spin phrase from the Vietnam ear, we would “burn [our own] village in order to save it”? Deflective blame-shifting and denial are easier than facing up to the realities, especially when you are a country with God’s “most favored nation” status.

Americans became a people who went from JFK’s notion that we must make history, to a people who have become convinced that our history is predestined, that we are ordained to be the richest, most powerful and, of course, the greatest nation the world has ever known. No pride goeth before our fall. Our destiny is to lead, to dominate, to bully if necessary, to be the exemplar of God’s mission on earth.

This has all been said and done before, and there are Ozymandian ruins and wrecked “civilizations” scattered throughout history and around the globe that expressed the same hubris, and the same stupidity. Eventually, circumstances or countervailing forces emasculated them. They all believed that they were the civilizations of destiny.

Such is the danger of biblical thinking and, when biblical thinking is putatively “confirmed” by events such as 911, faith rules over rationality and stupidity rules over reason.

America has had seven years to emerge from the denial and desperation it has lived in since 911. That’s more than long enough. The exposures of corruption in Washington, criminal neglect in the wake of Katrina, and the meltdown of an economic system mired in war debt and profiteering, and the ominous signs of unheeded global warming should be more than enough to bring the country to its senses. But is it?

There are a lot, way too many, of stupid Americans. We saw many of them at the Republican Convention (but there are many from other political parties as well). They offer nothing different than the behaviors, policies and values that have prevailed for the past seven years. They see expertise as (so-called) military heroism combined with the “intelligence” of a “hockey mom.” It is an appeal to what the present administrations has termed “useful idiots,” knee-jerk theocrats who hold their party hostage.

Are there enough really stupid Americans to elect a McCain-Palin ticket? Yes. Does America need a McCain-Palin presidency. Like a eunuch needs a jockstrap.
__________________________________________________
© James A. Clapp

 

52. 3: THE SHARK GOD, by Charles Montgomery, 2004  [BR]    8.8.2008

                        

There is a passage that alone is worth the price of this book, at least for me. Anyone who has read the pages of Dragon City Journal is aware of the contempt we have for evangelists—soulsnatchers, we call them. We are ecumenical about it; it doesn’t matter what faith they come from, we detest soulsnatchers of any religion.

The following is from page 22. It is about Nova Scotian Presbyterians George and Ellen Gordon, who landed in Erromango in the Vanuatu Islands (New Hebrides) in 1851. “They managed to convert [only] a handful of people in the course of a decade, but then they made a fatal error. When an epidemic of measles broke out and killed hundreds of Erromangans, the Gordons announced that Jehovah was punishing the islanders for remaining heathen. The couple were blamed for the epidemic, hacked down with axes, and eaten.”

I admit it, I got a big laugh out of this. Serves them right. I saw the admonishing hand of Jehovah guiding those axes into those arrogant skulls of those soulsnatchers. I have a fascination with cross-cultural encounters, but the permutation of crossed-cultures, crossed social-evolutionary periods, and crossed-cosmologies, is akin to what an encounter will be with an extraterrestrial. The Gordons learned to their regret that they had brought their god with them and it was they who were responsible for bringing his wrath down up the heathens.

Montgomery, a Canadian photographer and journalist followed in the wake if his great-grandfather, the Right Reverend Henry Hutchinson Montgomery in search of some answers not about the Gordons, but another Protestant missionary martyr, John Coleridge Patteson, whose skull was split open by the natives of a Nukapu, a tiny atoll in Melanesia, where he was the first Bishop. Montgomery was also in quest of his own beliefs and, what makes that endeavor such a fascinating journey is the mystery it creates as to whether he will find those beliefs in the faith of his ancestor, or in the ancestor spirit world of the primitive peoples of the Coral Sea.

Protestant Missionaries followed in the wakes of voyages of exploration and then whalers and were the advance troops of colonialism. Sent out by the London Missionary Society and other missionary organizations, zealous and courageous missionaries, often married couples, softened up the natives, bringing their monotheism that challenged the prevailing power structures and social systems. No doubt there were meetings that would rival Close Encounters of the Third Kind, at least for the natives. The smart thing to do from the native perspective would be to put these people into martyr status as quickly as possible. Little good could come from the encounter; the missionaries threatened their souls with their new god, and their bodies with their new diseases. Introducing a new religion caused, in many cases, schisms that resulted in civil wars and corrupted long established cultures.

By way of the writings of missionaries Montgomery’s travels among these peoples takes place in temporal parentheses that span well over a hundred years. But even today he finds some things unchanged. Among some tribes men still wore nothing more than he nambas, the penis sheath that is held erect with a cord tied around a man’s waist. There was still the deep fear of the spiritual dangers of being near a menstruating woman. And there was that lingering matter of the “taking of heads.”

Montgomery was a descendant of the new religion, but there were elements of atavistic and primal faiths that clearly attracted him. He admits, “I had always traced the impulses of faith to environment. In the years after I abandoned my family’s church, I found that the universe spoke to me most loudly in the fullness of mountains, the endlessness of the sea, the fury of storms, the boom and crack of living physics . . . that’s when the world itself seemed to offer a voice and a breath that felt something mana [sort of a grace], and which begged to be given a name and a shape and myth to explain it all.” (70)
Those who preceded the author had already found their faith. Conflating Christianity with “civilization,” they were not only bringing the natives the right god, they were bringing them the right way to live. The natives had their own ways of doing things, called kastom, that included long-practiced traditions, folkways and beliefs related to ghosts, myths and magic. Anglicans tried to incorporate kastom into Christian ways, whereas the Presbyterians saw them as “pagan.”

The Christians also brought death. The natives had no immunity to pneumonia and influenzas that were part of the cargo of their ships. What added to the destructiveness of these diseases was that the natives “tended to give up and wait to die rather than fight their illnesses.” They behaved similarly when they believed that they were the victims of black magic. Even when the missionaries admitted that they were the cause of plagues that devastated the populations of these islands some of them seemed more concerned that they send the natives to their graves “as Christians.” What chaos and destruction they didn’t bring with their Bibles and diseases, Christians also brought with their introduction of guns to these islands.

Montgormery’s account of his travels and encounters with the naives of these islands is part travelogue, part journalism, part anthropology (and commentary on formal anthropology). But it also turns mystically murky at points. This is most noticeable in his account of the Shark God, where, on the island of Honiara, he seems to encounter the holy beast while observing the dive of guide who he calls “the shark boss” in the lagoon. The dive takes place at night and, as the shark boss sits cross-legged on the floor of he lagoon, he recounts, “[b]etween the halo of his flashlight and the impenetrable void, in the grey murk between certainty and imagination, I saw something like a great drifting shadow. It was sleek, as along as a car and as black as cooking charcoal.” In recollecting it later it becomes more certain to him that what he saw was a huge shark circling “around my friend the shark boss.” Now, “the story became whole, and I grew more certain every time I repeated it. Now there is no doubt. Yes, it was a shark. Yes, it was Bolai. Yes, an ancestor could be summoned from the darkness. I would believe and it would be true because I believed. . . . Myth, like love, is a decision. What it answers is longing. What it demands is faith. What it opens is possibility.” (294)

My reading of this is that this is where the author both experiences and explains that religion—of whatever sort—is a decision to set aside a concern for rational explanation for the need to believe. In the religious imagination anything is possible, even that God is a shark.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 2:    BRRRRING, BRRRRING, 3AM 9.4.2008

                 

                                                                         ©2008, UrbisMedia

When Hillary Clinton’s ad people came up with the now infamous “3AM Phone Call” to suggest that Barrak Obama would not be ready because if : “inexperience” to take a call about an imminent international crisis, the idea seemed to backfire. Maybe we were supposed to think that Hillary would be sleeping next to Bill, to whom she could hand the phone. Apparently, it didn’t work. So we have to imagine how the occupants of the current tickets would react to such a call.

Brrrrrrring! Brrrrrring!

Obama: Hey, whazzzup?

Putin: Mr. President we have a crisis that might create a nuclear confrontation between our countries because Boosh wasn’t looking into my soul when he put those missiles in Poland. Are you prepared to deal with it?

Obama: I can do it, Pooter, let’s get it on, man. You name the court and I’ll be there. We’ll settle this with a little “one on one,” winner’s outs, bro. OK? And look, the last time we played and I was draining 3-point jumpers on you from “downtown” and then I took you into the paint to finish you with a slam dunk? Well, you nearly broke my leg with judo stuff. That’s a two-point foul man. This is hoop, bro, street hoop, Chi-style, but that judo defense of yours does not go down in my hood, man. Ya know what I’m sayin’?

Putin: Da, da (I break both your legs this time, skinny man).

Brrrrrrring! Brrrrrring!

McCain: Hello. Hanoi Hil . . . I mean White House. Cindy, which house are we in; I can never seem to remem . . .?

Putin: Wake up old man! It’s Vladimir, Judo Champion of Russia. I’ve been up since five throwing KGB agents on their asses.

McCain: Wait a sec while I put in my hearing aid. What are you doing calling at this hour. I need my sleep so I can get up and govern this greatest country in the world.

Putin: Mr. President we have a crisis that might create a nuclear confrontation between our countries because Boosh wasn’t looking into my soul when he put those missiles in Poland. Are you prepared to deal with it?

McCain: Not really. It’s not easy being a “Maverick” you know. I can never remember what I am for or against. Cindy, am I for or against starting a nuclear war with Russia? No, no, that was torture; I’m for torture now. (Dumb, plastic surgery cow.) Love ya, babe.

Listen, Vladimir. Can you hold off on launching your missiles for a while. I’m having a cabinet prayer circle tomorrow led by Secretary of the Rapture, Reverend Dobson. We’ll pray on it and get back to you.

Putin: Da, da, Maverick. (Boy, the North Vietnamese really turned this guy’s brain to borscht. Our missiles should arrive there just in time for the prayer circle.)

Brrrrrrring! Brrrrrring!

Biden: Top ‘O the morning t’ya!

Putin: Vlad Putin here. Wow, you sound chipper, Joe.

Biden: Yeah, my first week as President and I’m takin’ the train into Washington as usual. I never expected that Barrak would resign and take that contract with the Chicago Bulls. They say he’s leading the league in assists and might get them into the playoffs even though he rap on him is that he doesn’t have much “experience.”

Putin: Da, I thought those broken legs would end his playing career.

Biden: What can I do for you, Vlad?

Putin: Mr. President we have a crisis that might create a nuclear confrontation between our countries because Boosh wasn’t looking into my soul when he put those missiles in Poland. Are you prepared to deal with it?

Biden: We don’t have to have any trouble between us, Vlad. Why don’tcha come over Sunday. We’re having a family gathering in Pennsylvania; just dinner with the kids. You can bring Medv . . .Myedv . . . Myeyudv . . . you know, what’s-his-name, the little President guy. Hey, Vlad, how about this one: A Russian walks into a bar with a mujahideen on his shoulder . . . the Russian orders a beer and the bartender says “what’s your friend having? The mujahideen says, “I’ll have a Stinger.” Hah! Just kidding, my friend.

Putin: Good one, Joe. Very funny. That’s like the one where Boosh walks into a bar with a Talban on his shoulder and the Taliban takes out an AK and blows his brains out.

Biden: Now, Vlad, let’s be nice.

Brrrrrrring! Brrrrrring!

Palin: Oh, my God, is it feeding time again. Who’s hungry now, Trig? Alg? Calc? (I gotta stop naming my children after mathematics.)

Putin: It’s Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia. We are sorry to hear about Mr. McCain. He was a true hero for men who have been shot down with our fine Soviet . . . I mean Russian, surface-to-air missiles while bombing a communist country that never attacked America. Who would have thought Maverick would be assassinated by his former North Vietnamese gay lover.  Well, Mrs. President we have a crisis that might create a nuclear confrontation between our countries because Boosh wasn’t looking into my soul when he put those missiles in Poland. Are you prepared to deal with it.

Palin: Are you kidding me? I’ve got sore nipples from breastfeeding, two pregnant unmarried daughters, three sons named after math courses, I’m pregnant again, I can’t tell my own children from my grandchildren, my husband smells so much like fish that I feel like I’m making love to a halibut, and I need to stop eating mooseburgers with fries so I can lose ten pounds and win the Mrs. Wasilla Termite Queen Breeder Pageant. . . . Anyway, where’s Poland? (Hmmmm, Poland. Poland Palin. That has a nice ring to it; maybe I’ll name my next kid “Poland.”). By the way, shouldn’t I be talking to some little guy named Medv . . .Myedv . . . Myeyudv . . . you know.

Putin: You could just give is back Alaska and we can forget the whole thing?

Palin: No way, I still haven’t wiped out all the mooeses . . . meese? bears and wildelife preserves. Hold on a sec, I gotta switch Calc to the other boob. . . . You know I have to set an example for the country of my new policy to have all of America’s teenage girls get pregnant. Now that we’ve repealed Roe v. Wade we can out-breed those Muslims with their multiple wives. They’ll never be able to make us wear burhkas.

Putin: It’s brilliant, Madam President. But for now we have a crisis.

Palin: I have a thought, Mr. Putin, that I think will forge peace between out great nations. How about bridge, a bridge to “Somewhere.” It will be a bridge that will be a big barrel of pork for my home state, and it will go from Anchorage to . . . a . . . a . . . --wait, I’m looking at a map-- to Vladivastok! We’ll call it the “Bridge to Vlad”! You should like that, Vladimir.

Putin: Da, da. (I guess America has just switched boobs, too.) Dobroi Notsyi, Madame President.

Palin: Oh, I couldn’t do that Mr. Putin; I’m pregnant.
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©2008, James A. Clapp

 

52. 1:    MADAME OVARY     9.1.2008

                     

Historic as the nomination of Barrak Obama as the first African-American presidential nominee by a major political party might be, in a number of respects this election and its primaries may end up highlighting attitudes about gender more than race—especially with the selection of Sarah Palin, the governor and Wonder Womban of Alaska, as John McCain’s VP.

This will be a little like running barefoot through a cow pasture in the dark, but I will venture a few thoughts on that premise and worry about washing my toes later.

CINDY: John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin is quite in character for the professional POW. Will the women voters he hopes to attract see that? This is a guy who dumped his first wife who waited for him to come home, but not before dallying with some other ladies, one of whom had the inheritance income he was looking for. Cindy McCain is the reason for those seven multi-million dollar homes that McCain can’t seem to remember he owns. It is difficult to judge what it says of Cindy that she remains with a guy who referred to her in front of several member of the press as a four-letter crude word for a woman’s sex organ that causes both women and men to blush. The women I know and respect would have unmanned him in less time that it would have taken to repeat the rotten joke he told about Chelsea Clinton to a Republican audience: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Her father is Janet Reno?” aking the opportunity to gleefully slur a cute, innocent young woman and lesbians. (One wonders if Republican “lovelies” like Mary Matalin, Bay Buchanan, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Condolezza Rice, were among the gigglers.) Cindy must be more needy of that eighth house than her self-respect.

SARAH: Palin is an abortion opponent and, having eschewed the procedure to birth her Downs child (her fifth), will be anti-choicers poster girl. She made her choice, but doesn’t want other women to have a choice. She also wants Creationism taught in schools, the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve turned to Swiss cheese and, to know what the job of Vice President entails (because she admits to not knowing). Well, of course, with credits from being the mayor and beauty queen of an Alaskan “Podunk” and 18-months the governor for a state known for its political corruption, she obviously needs more than having been a heck of a “Political Science major in college.” Up there in the “coldest state, with the hottest governor” they like to refer to her comely looks as something to get those Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch guys a little warm in the drawers. Somehow, by the end of the Republican convention (which might be saved from an appearance by George Bush, by hurricane Gustav), serial pregnancy will be fashioned into “appropriate experience” to be a “heartbeat away” from he Oval Office. One suspects that she is too dumb even to realize she is just another women being cynically used by John McCain. Even if she could see that, were she not “Madame Ovary,” the mother-of-five-anti-abortion candidate who sill solidify his appeal to the Far Right, he wouldn’t offer her a bite of his mooseburger if she were starving to death on the Iditerod trail.

And are Hillary’s feminists going to like those accolades? The question to be answered is how many women will fall for the cynical blandishments of a serial woman user. McCain is counting on women as being as compliant and stupid as his first wife, Cindy, and even Sarah Palin, appear to be. He’s counting on those wild-eyed, angry, Hillary-ites [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVHZHuyVeio], one of whom looked suspiciously like Ann Coulter, to turn and vote for him while he insults their gender. Will those disaffected Hillary supporters take the bait? Or, will they see his windsock values on women’s choice, which he was once for, but now against? Will they want him to put the crucial Roe-rejecting justice on the Supreme Court? This will all be parsed to pieces in the next weeks.

HILLARY: The Republicans are already cynically making much of the fact that the Democrats didn’t put a woman on their ticket, but McCain has. Never mind why. Never mind how they went after Geraldine Ferraro. They were hoping that Hillary and Bill would blow up the Democratic Convention with a challenge. They were counting on Hillary being the “whiner” that Sarah Palin has called her. Hillary needed to be handled very carefully during and after the primary process. Even though the Clintons no longer run the Democratic Party, it appears that Hillary will be its maternal face. To her credit, she got on the team, pledged her support to Obama, and called for her supporters to do the same. It was power she earned and it was hers to dole out. The respect she was paid was as much to that power as to her gender. But we know Hillary Clinton—and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.

MICHELLE: Smart, self-possessed, extremely attractive, and eloquent. The mom of two cute daughters, she can give a stump speech with grace and power. Clearly, Michelle has the cred and the credentials to go beyond the reading to kindergartners, but the intelligence (now) to not show too much of her feelings. Everything about here says ,“This ‘girl’ can take care of herself.” And Barrack has no good reason to wander. A better case can be made for Michelle as a Vice President than the ex-mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Then there is the woman that most wouldn’t think if for this list; a woman who married and had a child by a Black man around 50 years ago.

MOMMA OBAMA: I feel for the mother of Barrak Obama. Obama is an “African-American” because in this country (and others) a drop of Negroid blood is considered enough to make that distinction. But when we see Obama family photos there is his mom, and there are Obama’s grandparents, incongruously as Caucasian as it gets. Somehow, in this cockeyed racist world, 50% of this guy—the part that is the beloved mother that raised him—doesn’t get recognized in his census definition. We don’t seem to have a way (other than Limbaugh’s clearly mean-spirited “Halfrican-American”) of expressing that this guy is really multi-racial.

So much was made of the necessity for Obama to “explain” himself to the voting public that seemed an oblique reference to the awkwardness in handling his racial composition. It is gratifying to see the pride African-Americans displayed at the convention, and the education, poise and eloquence of so many who addressed it. Barrak Obama is, to anyone with half a working brain, the man who has the intelligence, grace, and charisma to rescue our country from the disaster of eight years of George Bush and the Republicans. Momma Obama deserves some credit for that.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp