History – Page 4 – HystericallyBored

2011-07-282022-05-01

Trinity Christian College – Dr. Martin Vrieze

Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois, was founded in 1965 or thereabouts. It is a reformed Christian college, founded on the idea that science is not neutral, that all knowledge is influenced and shaped by a person’s worldview, and that Christians, therefore, need to study in a Christian College to reach an understanding of the world that is in harmony with their faith

You can buy it or not buy it. As a student, it was clear to me that the history and philosophy departments were trying their best to follow the program, but English classes seemed to me to be pretty well the same kind of classes you would be taking at York or the University of Toronto or the University of Western Ontario or the University of Chicago.

If you took art and needed to learn how to draw the human figure, you had to go to Saint Xavier University down the street to see a nude model because, apparently, Christians didn’t do nudes. Well, at least not on Trinity’s campus. I’m amazed we had a pre-med program– when did they ever get to look at a human body?

As for the business and accounting departments, they were all eager little capitalists who believed that religion was largely relevant to Sunday mornings. The philosophical perspective of my friends in these departments could be summed up thusly: “Hey, watch your language guys– there are girls around.”

Philosophy, at Trinity, was like the art: we didn’t do nudes. You had to go elsewhere to study the shapes and contours and shadows of an undraped human mind. We studied rationalism and humanism and scholasticism and Marxism and read Kant’s Transcendental Critique and always, near the end of the course, bang, biff, whap! we put them in their places.

Christian Reformed Doctrine held that all of us have a prior faith commitment which coloured all of our conclusions about science and truth. So Kant could write ten critiques if he wanted but he would be no closer to the truth because he was, at heart, a humanist. Geez, that’s a gross simplification. But it will have to do: I don’t have all day.

So, at the end of the course, our professors would expose these philosophers’ hidden biases, offer the “correct” Christian perspective, and then we would move on to the next great fraud.

Now, this Christian philosophy was not supposed to be the same as a reactionary, conservative philosophy. Heavens no! Even if, at the end of the long torturous journey through the Bible, Augustine, Aquinas, and Herman Dooyeweerd, and Abraham Kuyper, we ended up, lo and behold, agreeing with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I didn’t get that at the time. I didn’t get it until I was at a Christian Labour Association of Canada banquet five or six years later where the guest speaker, Bernie Zylstra, attacked the media for attacking Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I didn’t get it until I realized that a lot of these devoted “Reformed Christian” thinkers were astoundingly similar, in outlook, to neo-conservatives like Daniel Bell, Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol. (Oddly, they opposed support for Solidarity in Poland at first, because they thought it was doomed to failure, and because they fervently believed that communist regimes never liberalize, while our cuddly U.S.-friendly capitalist autocratic regimes– like Pinochet in Chile, and Somoza in Nicaragua, and the Shah of Iran– do.)

Reformed Christian Philosophy…. in a word, we believed that truth was handed down from high, given to us in the Bible, but also– as per some Scholastics– through “general revelation”, evidence to be found in creation itself, and in natural law as divined through science. That explained why non-Christian scientists occasionally or often hit on a “truth” or two even while blinded by their own humanistic determinism– they were working from evidence from God’s own hands, his creation, which is an expression of divine will, and part of the way God communicates with us sinners.

I don’t mean to be too glib. Our professors, Dr. John Roose and Dr. Martin Vrieze, were respectful of their achievements, and properly awed by the depth and breadth of their insights. But we were convinced that the great reformed thinkers– Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Bob Goudzwaard, and others could hold their own with these mighty intellects. Especially Dooyeweerd who was rumoured to be almost as smart as Kant, and maybe even smarter, if not at least equally incoherent.

And then there was Contemporary Philosophy. (Actually, it may have been “Philosophy of History”.)

I took this course in my senior year, I think it was, with a few philosophy die-hards, with Dr. Marten Vrieze. I have no idea why I thought this but I had the idea that Dr. Vrieze was a bit pissed off at the Reformed establishment for some reason. It may have been because, unlike some of the other reformational professors like Calvin Seerveld and Robert Vandervennen, he hadn’t been asked to sign on to The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, one of the other, bigger Reformed Christian Colleges, or the new King’s College in Edmonton. I had a feeling he was fed up with something. Whatever the reason, the course was an eye-opener and it completely altered my perception of Christian philosophy.

There was no text-book, no digest, no over-view: content was taken from philosophical journals and books by the philosophers. These philosophers were not dusted off from their positions in the pantheon of all-time BIG thinkers, buffed and admired, then discredited. These were living, breathing philosophers, mostly, who were engaged with living, breathing currents of philosophy and were way ahead of the constructs and discredited frameworks of Hume, Descartes, and Kant.

It would be impossible to do justice to their ideas here, so I’ll do an injustice instead, just so you know what I’m talking about. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a logical positivist, believed that truth was a construct of language and formal structures of thought, within which we distilled our experiences of the world into a coherent narrative. It wasn’t so much the ideas that mattered, as the way the ideas were expressed, shackled, as they were, to the expression itself.

Karl Popper believed that we formulated our perspective on the world in a sort of complex of patterns and systems of thought called paradigms. A paradigm was “true” as long as it was useful. As human knowledge would begin to exceed the framework of this paradigm, it might be overthrown, and a new paradigm would take it’s place. Again, it didn’t really matter if a paradigm was really true or not– there probably was no such thing as a “true” paradigm.

Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend developed these ideas even further, and I remember, in particular, and argument from Paul Feyerabend that demonstrated, finally, to my satisfaction, that the idea that 2 + 2 does not necessarily equal 4 is not nearly as silly as it sounds. You can’t make any person who hasn’t taken advanced philosophy believe this.

What these gentleman called into question was the idea that you could measure a worldview, such as reformed Christianity, against it’s own reference points. Reformed Christianity would argue that even without the Bible, the evidence of creation is sufficient to explain a just and loving God and a purpose to life. Popper would argue that this world view prevailed only as long as it was “useful” to humanity. With the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, this paradigm was challenged, and eventually over-thrown.

More to come…

Some neo-cons like Irving Kristol support the idea of “intelligent design”. It’s very difficult to imagine that Kristol really believes in it. Maybe he does. Or maybe it just confirms the idea that neo-cons are just a bunch of neo-prudes with reactionary instincts who really don’t care for facts and information unless they can be marshaled in support of their conservative politics.

Forrest Gump is a neo-con’s wet dream of a movie.

2011-04-222022-04-30

Zapruder Notes: Oswald, Kennedy, Connally

This is a rambling, improvisational discussion of some elements of the Kennedy Assassination. Look, it’s been a rambling, improvisational assassination. A good conspiracy theorist is allowed to wander.

A friend of mine is convinced that he Zapruder film shows that Kennedy and Connally were hit by the same shot. A version of the Zapruder film we looked at about five years ago seemed, to me, to be ambiguous on the issue.

There are now clearer reproductions of the frames of the Zapruder film available.

Firstly, it seems reasonable to me that there was a first shot that missed the limousine entirely, and many if not most of the eye-witnesses remember it. In fact, Kennedy himself, and Connally, appear to be startled by the sound and seem to be looking in the direction it came from just before the first hit.

Kennedy was hit while blocked from Zapruder’s view by the Stemmons Freeway sign. He emerges from the sign beginning to clutch his throat with his hands, in obvious pain. Connally does not emerge from behind the sign puffing his cheeks out and clenching his fist. He has not yet been hit. And if he has not been hit, there is a second gunman, because Oswald could not have fired again by frame 234.

Here are links to the critical frames:

Frame 160: First shot fired, a miss; reactions of people in limo and out. Poignantly, a young girl (Rosemary Willis, aged 10) running alongside the limousine stops and looks in the direction of the crowd on the opposite side of the road. She is on record: she remembers that she stopped running because she heard the first shot.

Frame 230: Kennedy is definitely reacting to the throat wound. I don’t think anybody seriously disputes this. Connally may or may not have been hit by now but if he was hit by the same bullet as Kennedy it is very odd that he is not reacting at all.

If you watch the Zapruder film in motion, you can see Connally’s sudden, involuntary, abrupt movement a few frames later which could only have come in response to a shot. If you watch the film in motion, the two reactions seem almost simultaneous– but that is partly because Kennedy has been hidden behind the sign. His reaction obviously started earlier than Z230. If you examine it frame by frame– which, logically, is the way you should look at it to understand what really happened– the two reactions are not simultaneous.

Dale Myers, among others with an axe to grind, insists that Connally was hit by the same bullet, and that his reaction at 234 proves it. But Kennedy has already been reacting for at least four frames, probably more. Four frames– 1/4 of a second– may not seem like much, but it is much, much longer than it takes for a bullet to travel through two bodies. For all practical purposes, Connally’s and Kennedy’s reactions should have been at exactly the same instant. Myers has to argue that Connally’s reaction was delayed, even though this bullet struck his ribs and shattered his wrist bone because Oswald could not have fired two shots between the time that Kennedy disappears behind the sign and the time he emerges clutching his throat.

And no matter how you cut it, you can’t really argue that Connally’s reaction was delayed if he was reacting to the same physical event as Kennedy. The bullet took out a piece of his rib and shattered his wrist. Connally’s jacket puffs forward after Kennedy is already clutching at his throat. Well, yes you can argue it…. In this age of instant, omnipresent video, we have seen lots of strange things. We see the driver of the limousine applying the brakes after hearing a shot. That’s about as crazy as you can get.

There are literally hundreds of books on the issue but in my mind there is no way around “conspiracy” if Connally was not hit by the same shot as the one that caused Kennedy’s throat or back wound (or both).

Frame 224: Connally’s jacket flips in front of his shirt. This is probably the point at which Connally was actually hit. Since Kennedy is already reacting to a shot, it simply is not possible that it was the same bullet.

Frame 236: Connally is clearly in pain, and his shoulder has dropped. If you jog between the two frames repeatedly, it seems pretty clear to me that Connally is trying to see what is happening in all the frames from emergence behind the sign to 230. Somewhere before 234, he has been hit.

Dale Myers, among others, argues that 224 and 225 show Connally being hit. This page contains links that defend that point. Well, no they don’t. They slip and slide around the issue, but the truth is Kennedy had to have been hit earlier. He is already reacting with his hands to his wound while Connally has not even grimaced yet. This is consistent with John Connally’s own memory of the event.

It’s not a slam dunk and people should learn to live with the uncertainty. You can make a case for 225, but the same arguments– sudden movement, body twisting, grimace– apply equally well to 234, suggesting a third possibility: that Connally was indeed hit by the shot that made Kennedy’s throat wound, but then was hit by a second shot at 234. Since Kennedy was hit shortly afterwards again, there would have had to have been two shooters.

However, because Kennedy is already reacting to the shot as he emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, it is possible that Connally was hit immediately after Kennedy. The famous jacket flap– the movement of his dark jacket over his white shirt– argues for it.* Those who are opposed to a conspiracy theory have to argue that it was the same bullet because it is impossible for Oswald to have fired two shots in such a short period of time (perhaps 1/2 second). But it is equally impossible that the bullet hung in the air for 1/4 second before continuing on to hit Connally. This was one of the first points seized upon by conspiracy theorists and it remains one of the most persistent.

Politics colours everyone’s perceptions of what the facts mean in the Kennedy assassination. Conservatives know that if there was a conspiracy, it was their conspiracy. The conspiracy was the expression of powerful and corrupt institutional forces determined to assert their control over government in the face of the self-confident, independent, sophisticated. liberal Kennedys.

John Connally’s own testimony is that he heard the first shot, and he thought it hit Kennedy. He didn’t hear the second shot which hit him. That leaves it possible– if, admittedly, less likely, that two shots were fired so close together that many witnesses thought they only heard one. As everyone knows, there would have been an echo. And some witnesses reported a “flurry” of shots, though most seem to have heard one shot distinctly, and then a “flurry”. In some ways, the reactions of Kennedy and Connally and Connally’s extensive wounds would be better explained by a “flurry” of shots– but the Warren Commission, of course, desperate to economize on assassins, made it all the work of a single bullet.

*Finally, another website points out — eureka! — that the bullet did not even go through the jacket lapel in the first place! So what the hell is that black thing flapping up in front of John Connally’s shirt? You got me. Or maybe it’s a kind of fluke combination of his shoulder going down in pain, the jacket pushed out where the bullet came through, the momentum of the car….. who knows.

The very last thing I will point out is that it is possible that one shot hit both Kennedy and Connally at the same instance and for reasons undiscovered they reacted at different speeds. After all, Kennedy was President. His reaction time should have been faster. (I’m kidding.) Connally was turning. Kennedy was waving. Who knows? It’s not the craziest idea in the world.

In either case, I must point out two obvious facts: firstly, the timing of the the shots does not, in any case, prove that Oswald fired them, or that he was alone. Secondly, Dale Myers, who glibly asserts that his “analysis” proves the shots could only have come from the 6th floor window “sniper’s nest” is a total dink and completely discredits himself on this account. If the conspiracy analysts are ridiculous sometimes with their assumptions about pristine bullets and manholes and post-assassination alterations to the body, his claim that his data about the angle of the shot is so accurate and precise that he can positively identify the exact window– as if he didn’t know already which one it was– that it came from… it’s beyond ridiculous. Talk about junk science. Why or why could he not have simply made his point without leaping to a conclusion which can only be political.

The only way to give credibility to a conclusion like that would be if you could take the raw information about the assassination, the physical properties of the car and the road and the buildings, give this information to a scientist who had never even heard of the Kennedy assassination, and ask him to please try to determine where the shots came from. I’ll bet he would not come back with “exactly” this or “exactly” that or “exactly” anything.

Although, it would be pretty funny, and not to Dale Myers, if he came back with: behind the car, about 6th floor, in some kind of book depository.

And he still cannot prove that Oswald acted alone (or that he even acted, other than to flee when he realized he had been set up) and he should know that and stick to what he can or cannot prove– not to the grand conclusion he really cares about. Given the incompetence of the investigation– which is all a conspiracy really needs to succeed– we will probably never know the truth. And that’s probably the way the real powers that be like it.

Overlooked in almost all of the discussions about conspiracy is the truly remarkable web of relationships between Oswald and various people associated with the CIA and the government. To argue that these relationships are not, at the very least, extremely suspicious, is ridiculous.

Note: it’s striking that not one of the secret service agents in the follow-up car looked up in response to the sound of the first shot. They looked back and to the right. One of them looked down and to the left. (In fact, Connally, Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy all looked briefly to their left just after the first shot was fired.)

True, that’s where the crowd was. Also true: they did not distinguish a sound coming from above and back of the limousine.

Even more striking? Governor Connally stated that he immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle. Why? Because he had served in the military, as had Kennedy. In fact, watching the film today, it is easy to imagine that Kennedy’s reaction to the sound of the first shot is that of a man who knows what he just heard and is processing it.

The Secret Service agents have only one job: detect threats to the life of the President and take immediate action to protect him. It is very striking that not a single one of them seemed to have a clue that their job was calling them on November 22, 1963. In fact, William Greer, the driver of the limo, famously applied the brakes, as if to make sure that Oswald or whomever was holding the rifle, got a good shot at the President.

Rather odd and ironic and strange that the one thing Will Greer should have been trained for during all his years as a Secret Service agent was how to react to someone shooting at the President… and how does he react? He puts on the brakes. It’s really amazing.

The most annoying thing about theorists on both sides? Their tired insistence that, after 50 years, they have incredibly discovered something new that nobody else knew before and that nobody else had ever thought of and which is of the ultimate significance.

The truth is that almost all of the real, substantive issues about the Kennedy assassination were uncovered within the first few years, and almost none of them have been explained or solved in a satisfactory, conclusive manner.

It is also true that paranoids have real enemies.

Zapruder Film: download.

All frames individually archived.

The Last Christian President

I have long regarded Jimmy Carter as the only real Christian president of the last 50 years. He has recently given a number of interviews with the publication of “White House Diary”, an account of his four years in the White House.

Carter used to carry his own luggage, even as president. He also put a stop to the absolutely inane practice of playing “Hail to the Chief” every time the president enters a room.

Did you you hear that, tea party Republicans? You howl about your politicians being corrupted by Washington. So how did people react when Carter put a stop to paid musicians following him around with idiotic tributes every time he met with the public? They hated him. They hated him when he put solar panels on the White House and Ronald Reagan, in a monumental act of mindless spite, had them removed. They hated him most of all when he preached to America, when he suggested that people learn to postpone gratification, make sacrifices for the greater good, and stop indulging in mindless consumerism.

Frank Capra used to make movies about naive innocents of pleasant virtue suddenly being thrust into corporate or political rats’ nests of corrupt decadence. In the Capra films, virtue triumphed and “the people” came to the rescue. Well, no they didn’t– check out “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. It’s actually one of the most darkly cynical movies about politics ever made.

So Carter kept America out of a war with Iran, and he cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil by substantial amounts, and his conservation policies produced stunning gains in efficiencies. And he was vilified by Republicans for leaving office with a deficit of about $45 billion. Ronald Reagan came in and tackled that deficit problem: he ran it up to $450 billion by the time he left office, but you should hear Republicans wax nostalgic about the “great” Ronald Reagan. It took another “liberal” (by American standards), Bill Clinton, who got the deficit under control.

The closest recent presidential candidate to Jimmy Carter was Al Gore, who, similarly, understood that some self-restraint and sacrifice is good for the country. Gore was smart and fairly virtuous– as politicians go– and he seemed more rueful than disappointed when the Supreme Court paid its debt to the Republican Party and put Bush into office. Gore, like Carter, was a bit of a moralist. He liked to lecture people about social virtue. Americans don’t like that. Gore might well be the best president the U.S. never had.

Since he left office, Carter has made a career out of volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, various peace missions, and living modestly on his farm indulging his grand-children. Everyone calls him the best ex-president there ever was. He may also have been the most responsible president there ever was, but his reward was to be ridiculed by the very people who elect those characterless, corrupt politicians over and over again to undo all the good policies Carter implemented.

The greatest compliment to President Jimmy Carter: the scads of third world dictators, torturers, and murderers who expressed their relief when he was knocked out of office by Ronald Reagan. Thank god! Finally an end to all the hassles about human rights, for heaven’s sake.

The attitude of many European leaders to Carter: I remember reading about it at the time and being rather flabbergasted that they seemed to prefer the worldy and “sophisticated” Nixon. I thought Nixon was the bad guy, bombing Cambodia, rattling the sabres, promoting the nuclear deterrent.

It turns out the Europeans appreciate someone who understands that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelets, as they say. Well, no, let’s say: you have to kill people to get what you want.

It’s complicated.

2010-07-242022-05-10

I just happened to be wandering around Kursk one day with 1 million men and a few tanks and…

At the end of World War II, German Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein surrendered to the British and was incarcerated at a camp in Bridgend (somewhere in England) for about 8 years. His health, apparently, was a concern, so he was released early from an 18-year sentence (after a mere 4 years). Then he lived for another 20 years, during which he apparently enjoyed the confidence of the new, democratic West German government.

Von Manstein had lots of friends, including Churchill and General Montgomery. They testified to his good character. Von Manstein, you see, was one of those “honorable” Prussian generals who only wanted to serve his country with courage, dignity, and good grooming.

How he suddenly found himself in Stalingrad with a million Germans with guns and tanks remains a mystery to this day.

Von Manstein wrote in his biography that if Hitler had only left the generals alone to manage the war in the East, Germany would have won the war. What a shame. Isn’t that what comes to mind when you read a statement like that? What a shame. If only…

Aside from the fact that it probably wasn’t true– Russia was not France– you would think Von Manstein would have been glad– given his avowed personal reservations about Nazism— that someone prevented Hitler from taking over the world. Especially since it couldn’t be him, what with duty and honor and all that.

Like Rommel, Von Manstein claimed he never carried out many of Hitler’s criminal directives and that appears to be partly true. Other than the one to kill 5 million Russians and bomb Stalingrad to the ground, of course.

So conservatives love to point to a guy like Von Manstein because, from a certain, twisted perspective, he seems to represent the idea that war-making can be ethical, uplifting, spiffy, and delightful. What fun it would have been if that parvenu Hitler hadn’t spoiled the party!

Unfortunately, one has to accept the fact that, like Rommel, and Beck, Von Manstein didn’t really seem to have that big of a problem with Hitler as long as he was winning. The ethical issues only seemed to come up when the possibility of war crimes trials appeared on the horizon.

That’s the problem with the entire “conservative resistance” to Hitler– they almost all supported him regardless of his policies as long as he was winning. The problem with the Jews? Well, you had to obey orders or you would be shot. Except that the Italians weren’t very good at obeying those orders and they didn’t get shot. They were elbowed aside by people like Von Manstein so the real Fascists could get he job done: round up those Jews.

When Hitler started to lose, like Kurt Waldheim, the good generals suddenly seemed to realize that the concentration camps were a bad idea. “I knew it! I knew we would get in trouble for that…”

Would Nazi Germany have defeated Russia if Hitler had left it up to the Generals? Maybe. Suppose the Generals had decided that a two-front war was not viable– suppose they would have concentrated all of their fire power on Russia. And suppose they would have prepared better and started in April instead of June…. Suppose they had seized the oil fields in the Caucasus before attacking Stalingrad?

But even the generals did not anticipate the T-34 tank, in the huge numbers the Soviets were able to muster, or the millions of soldiers they could eventually hurl into the war.

More importantly, they had anticipated that Russia would surrender after massive defeats on the battlefield. Russia was not going to surrender under any circumstance. There was no “there” there, for the “victorious” generals to arrive at. Just desolation, destruction, and eternal resistance.

Von Manstein vs Rudolph Hess

Hess: left Germany in May 1941, years before most of the worst Nazi atrocities were committed.

Von Manstein: fought to the end of the Reich.

Hess: betrayed Hitler who ordered that his plane be shot down.

Von Manstein: loyal to the fuehrer to the end.

Hess: wanted to negotiate a peace deal with Britain, possibly with the aim of turning the Reich’s full force upon the Soviet Union.

Von Manstein: I was just following orders, except when I didn’t. Critical of the officers who attempted to assassinate Hitler.

Hess: life in prison.

Von Manstein: released after serving 4 years of an 18-year sentence.

… because of his health. He died in 1973.

2010-07-122022-05-10

I am an Important Person

They cite my favorite piece of sociological data: In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves an “important person.” Twelve percent said yes. In the late 1980s, another few thousand were asked. This time, 80 percent of girls and 77 percent of boys said yes. David Brooks, NY Times, July 18, 2010

That’s a fascinating piece of information. If it is to be taken at face value– and I’m not sure it is– our society would seem to be in big trouble. Our kids think it’s all about them.

The social workers and therapists rise as one in a chorus of outrage: but everyone is important. This is great. This is progress. Finally, we have society in which most of us have positive self-esteem.

And I think that is probably correct, if regrettable on some level. Have you ever worked with someone who had low self-esteem? It can be unpleasant. Sometimes a person with low self-esteem can be a bit paranoid and resentful and lacking in initiative– because they are afraid of screwing up. People with healthy self-esteem seem to me more willing to take initiative, trust their own judgment, and expect good results.

Brooks connects this stat to Mel Gibson–he of the infamous drunken tirades– even though Gibson is from the humble generation, the low self-esteem group. In fact, I think Brooks has it all wrong. A lot of Gibson’s fury probably derives from his low self-esteem, not from his ego. This is a man who has to demand respect from people, because, deep down, he knows he will never be able to earn it on his own merits.

And I note the adventures of Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the Mendelsohn Statue in Leipzig (May 22, 1930–March 31, 1937).

Who was this strange, puzzling man, who advocated the destruction of Poland, the ascendancy of Hitler, .. and, most mystifyingly, the preservation of a statue of the composer Felix Mendelsohn in front of the Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig? He traveled around the world warning everybody about the danger of the Nazi regime, while begging foreign governments to respect Germany’s desire to regain control over their colonies, and the Sudentanland. He spent hours trying to decide which of the Hohenzollerns would occupy the throne once he had personally removed Hitler.

2010-06-222022-05-10

G20 Opium Wars

The biggest Security Theatre show in the world takes place in Toronto this week. The people who are supposed to represent us, the voters, will do everything they can to keep as much distance as possible between their lavish affair, their snack bars and drinks, their banquets and soirees, and us, the smelly, worried, unprivileged mob.

In fact, they clear the expressways so the cavalcade of bulletproof limos and security mobs can proceed from airport to conference center without having to meet the gaze of frustrated travelers. You wait so Obama can glide. You have to wonder if any of these leaders have the slightest clue anymore of what real life is like for their own citizens.

It’s not surprising that some terrorists out there might think it’s a good target: the display of monumental privilege must surely excite them. The fences and guns and helicopters — it’s all like a wonderful, violent opera.

It also creates a perception among the easily persuaded that these leaders are so important, so indispensable– such marvels of brilliant leadership and vision– that no expense can be spared in keeping them safe. In fact, every one of them is very dispensable— the graveyards are full of them, as De Gaulle observed. The security services don’t mind colluding with the politicians because, if politicians are important, the jackboots protecting them are necessary.

If you think, well, it’s a lot to put up with, but, after all, these meetings are important. No, they aren’t. The idea of public disagreement is so horrifying to the organizers that they have their cronies work out all of the language of all the announcements weeks before hand. If there is real disagreement, the announcements only cover the areas where they agree: we will improve the environment, encourage economic growth, seek justice and purity and the preservation of our bodily fluids. Amen. So, surrounded by security theatre, we have political theatre.

Have you considered… how come they don’t shut down the nation’s capital every time parliament is in session?

History is full of oddities.

In the 19th Century, Britain and other European nations were trying to develop a healthy trade relationship with China. Chinese ceramics, silk, and tea were in huge demand in Europe. Britain sent a delegation to the Qing dynasty to show them some of Europe’s most exciting new technologies to be offered in exchange. The Chinese were not impressed, and demanded silver instead. As supplies of precious metals began to dwindle, the European nations settled on a different product they wished to offer the Chinese. Wait for it: opium. Yes, the British East Indian Company was your local drug pusher.

Those crazy Chinese– they didn’t see the wonderful upside to this innovative trade relationship, and decided to ban opium. This led to the First Opium War, in which the European powers humiliated the Qing dynasty and forced it to sign a humiliating armistice, the Nanking Treaty, granting the European powers the right to brutally exploit Chinese markets and labour. The treaty also ceded Hong Kong to the British, if you’ve ever wondered why the British eventually ceded it back.

I’m always impressed by the righteous outrage expressed by oppressors when their victims summon the courage to fight back. The Boxer Rebellion was portrayed in the West as an attack on missionaries and Christian Chinese. The missionaries themselves only seemed dimly aware of their function as cultural emissaries of British and American imperialism. They didn’t see any problem with associating Christianity with gunboat diplomacy.

Another historical oddity:

In 1945 when Japan surrendered, Chiang’s Chongqing government was ill-equipped and ill-prepared to reassert its authority in formerly Japanese-occupied China, and asked the Japanese to postpone their surrender until Kuomintang (KMT) authority could arrive to take over. [From Wikipedia entry on Chiang Kai-shek]

This is not the only time an ally– a freedom-loving, democratic, liberal, enlightened, western power– actually asked the Japanese– spawn of Satan just moments before– to hold a population down so a new oppressor could take over for the old oppressor without the local people being given a chance to form a representative government.

Well, let’s all not get patriotic here. This is what governments do. They do it with far more sophistication and polish in the west, but they do it nonetheless: pin you down long enough to have your pockets picked clean. You can spot the patriots easily: they have flag pins in their lapels. They get teary-eyed when you play the anthem. They invite the press to view them touring the graveyards for the men they sent to die for your sub-prime mortgage, your derivative, your Enron stock, your gasoline.

You almost never find them in uniforms themselves.

2010-02-052022-05-09

A Saint in Every Dream

And they all pretend they’re orphans and their memory’s like a train
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away
And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget
That history puts a saint in every dream
(“Time”, Tom Waits)

A great phrase in a great lyric comes to mind as readily as a lovely image you remember from a distant place of important events in your life. In this case: “history puts a saint in every dream”. I’ve wondered for years what exactly that means.

It’s not the kind of line you sing while hanging upside down, wet, on a trapeze dripping over those awestruck young women who all seemed, in their faces, to be screaming “I want to be her!” It’s something you overhear in a bar, over the smell of urine and stale beer, and the rumble of streetcars or trains, and the dismal cuckold of useless tears.

I think it means that what we don’t remember–that we are not conscious of– constantly intrudes on our interpretation of past events, especially when our memory of those events is suspect.

History is written by the victors, of course, including the emotional victors, and we typically interpret events in light of the prejudices adopted afterwards. Most of us probably remember that the Americans entered the war against Germany to stop them from killing Jews. They did not– they entered because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and Germany happened to be allied with Japan. Most of us probably remember a kind thing or two about someone who later treated us shabbily.

Only a few years before Pearl Harbor, Great Britain had negotiated a great peace with Hitler and Nazi rallies were held in Madison Square Gardens. A few years later, Stalin became our best friend, our comrade, until he too had to be reanimated. America supported Bin Laden when he took on the Soviets– we know how that ended.

But “history puts a saint in every dream”.

2010-01-252022-05-09

Mr. Pendergast

Across the street from us, in St. David’s, Ontario, lived an old farmer whose name, if I recall correctly was Ed Pendergast. He lived in a small cabin on the property of his son or son-in-law Fletcher. I don’t know if Fletcher was a first name or last. Mr. Pendergast must have been in his late 60’s or even 70’s when I was a kid, but he continued to farm, year after year, with his horse and wagon, his overalls, his harness for holding baskets, his soiled cap.

It is odd sometimes to think back, as an older adult, upon something you knew only as a child and never really gave much thought to since. This was the 1960’s. Most farmers, of course, had tractors by then, but old Mr. Pendergast continued to use an old white mare named “Nellie” to work his orchard, which was about a mile down the road from his shack.

Nellie was an old, sour-looking horse, and she farted constantly as she cantered down the road pulling Pendergast’s old wagon. As kids, if we saw him going by, we’d rush out to hop on for a ride. He would sometimes stop the wagon for us, but as we got older, he didn’t need to– we’d just run along side and then hop up. It was probably a little dangerous, now that I think about it.

He was neither friendly nor mean, that I can remember. He put up with us riding on his wagon for whatever reason. When he came back at the end of the day, he would back the wagon into one barn, and then lead Nellie into her stall in the other barn. We could ride her if we wanted to, and if we arrived at the right time, for this last little leg of the journey. My brother fell off once and broke his shoulder, and Mr. Pendergast was convinced that my parents were going to sue him. My parents would have no more sued him for that than they would have sued a teacher for failing one of us.

The farts were hilarious, of course. Mr. Pendergast would curse at Nellie as if they were her fault. He just generally cursed her all the time. When he picked his fruit, he would move from tree to tree calling Nellie to move along with him. Sometimes she would and sometimes she wouldn’t. But at least once, she decided she’d had enough of standing in the sun waiting and set off for home without Mr. Pendergast. I saw the wagon coming down the road and heard Mr. Pendergast running, trying to catch up to the wagon, yelling and cursing at the top of his voice. When Nellie reached the driveway, she just turned and gallomped right up the incline, which caused baskets of fruit to go careening off the wagon and onto the road. I remember thinking that the horse was smart enough to find her own way home but didn’t understand how you had to take a wide, outside swing so that the wheels would hit the slope of the curb at the same time and keep the wagon level.

I estimate the photo to be from about 1962 or 1963. You can see the way the driveway slopes down to the road. The kids on the wagon are my brothers and sisters except maybe for the kid in the white shirt climbing on from the left. I think that might have been someone named Kasper. I’m at the front beside my sister Coby, I believe. Mr. Pendergast has probably caught sight of my mother with her Brownie camera– he’s looking right at her. It’s a sunny day.

2009-05-252022-05-11

Patton vs Bradley

Patton vs. Bradley

George Patton was Munchausen: bold, self-possessed, and a little demented. His strategy was to push forward boldly, quickly, without always paying adequate attention to supply lines and coordinated strategies. Sometimes his approach clearly cost lives unnecessarily, but he was also enormously successful on the battlefield.

Omar Bradley, on the other hand, gave a good deal of weight to the idea of minimizing casualties. He knew the war was won– it was won the minute American factories kicked into the production of war materials on a grand scale– and he didn’t always think it was necessary or desirable to race to the finish. Bradley cared about his men. He was also a fairly rational, logical strategist. He didn’t like waste.

You might think Patton’s approach was better– didn’t he win the war? Patton, also like Munchausen, tried very hard to project an image of himself that was much larger than reality. He also appropriated supplies, especially fuel, that was intended to serve the needs of other divisions besides his. He also had the benefit of superb intelligence– the allies had cracked the Enigma machine and Patton knew what the Germans were planning at every stage of his advance.

Most of all, as noted, Patton had the huge benefit of massive supplies and support, through the industrial might and economic capacity of the entire United States, Canada, and Britain.

The Germans were said to have been frightened of Patton– but they probably should have been more frightened of Bradley, whose patient good sense kept Patton’s recklessness in check. Patton might have been lulled into an improvident move, a reckless gesture. Not Bradley.

In fact, Goering is said to have known the war was over when he became aware of the massive productive capacity of the United States.

More Bradley than Patton.

Patton, incidentally, liked the deficient Sherman tank. It was only after repeated demonstrations of how inferior it was to the Panzers and Tigers that he began to request the Pershing instead. Even though the Pershing had the same engine as the Sherman. it was bigger and had better armor, and could take on a Tiger.

“When we land against the enemy, don’t forget to hit him and hit him hard. When we meet the enemy we will kill him. We will show him no mercy. He has killed thousands of your comrades and he must die. If your company officers in leading your men against the enemy find him shooting at you and when you get within two hundred yards of him he wishes to surrender – oh no! That bastard will die! You will kill him. Stick him between the third and fourth ribs. You will tell your men that. They must have the killer instinct. Tell them to stick him. Stick him in the liver. We will get the name of killers and killers are immortal. When word reaches him that he is being faced by a killer battalion he will fight less. We must build up that name as killers.” – George Patton

I do admire this about Patton: no bs about what he wants soldiers to do. They are not there to rescue their brothers, feed the orphans, or rebuild a nation: they are there to kill.

2009-05-252022-05-11

Gilliam the Conservative

Don’t we all usually regard as artistic and ingenious those artists whose views of the world happily coincide with our own prejudices?

And yet, “12 Angry Men” is one of the most popular movies on IMDB. Are any of the people watching this movie any less inclined to believe the government needs to get even more tough on crime? That those who are accused are almost always guilty? That accusers never lie?

Terry Gilliam is one of a few directors I both admire and disagree with. His films are often wildly inventive, original, and satisfying, yet I find myself disagreeing completely with what he is saying. His message is very clear: Reason sucks; go with your feelings.

The most definitive expression of that philosophy is the scene in the theatre in Baron Munchausen, when the heroic soldier (played by Sting) is brought in to meet the mindless functionary, The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson (Jonathan Pryce) who is running the town. It seems the soldier risked his life to lead a bold counter-attack to drive back the enemy and rescue his comrades. The functionary orders him executed. You can’t have idiots like that going around demoralizing the rest of the troops by making them feel inferior, can we?

The functionary is the embodiment of the “Age of Reason”, given as the time period of the events of the movie (at half past ten). We are given to understand that he aspires only to reasonableness, and tries to do what is logical and rational.

There’s something repellent in this characterization– I immediately thought of all the soldiers who die when fanatical idealist leaders, delusional, faithful to their ego-centric visions of their own greatness, order troops to attack against overwhelming odds, in defiance of “reason”.

Like? Like Napoleon, with his vision of defeating Russia? His dream of a greater France dominating the world?

In “Baron Munchausen”, there is a traveling theatrical group in town and it is performing a play based on wildly improbable exploits of Baron Munchausen. The real Baron shows up too, and stops the production to lecture the audience on what “really” happened. Munchausen has a soft spot for the ladies, and a hint of dementia. When Horatio Jackson’s efforts to save the town from the Turks fail (Munchhausen is also, incidentally, responsible for the Turkish attack), Munchhausen makes a balloon out the ladies’ underwear and sails off to fetch help. First stop, memorably: the moon.

Gilliam might argue that the millions who died in the Soviet Gulags, died in the name of “Reason”. Dialectical materialism. They certainly died in the name of collectivism, but then, all nationalist philosophies are, at heart collectivist. I might argue that the millions who died in the two world wars died in the name of romantic, nationalist feelings. A core component of Nazism, certainly, was a romantic belief in Germany’s “destiny”, in the cultural and intellectual superiority of the German peoples. The Nazis also believed in science– conducting medical experiments on many of their victims. But then, so did the allies– inventing and using the nuclear bomb.

Or is it more prosaic than that? Would you rather live in a world of logic and order, or a world of feeling and surprise?

We always use examples of the worst extremes to prove our points. The odd thing about Gilliam is that he mocks reason because he doesn’t believe in it. If you scan the history of satire in the western world, most of the mockery is directed at people who claim to be rational but, in fact, are not. No– Gilliam doesn’t believe in reason. He believes in magic.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds out that she could have returned home any time she wanted to, by simply clicking her heels together and repeating “there’s no place like home” to herself. That’s the bourgeois fantasy of people who find exciting, daring adventures entertaining because they never actually live them. In a reasonable world, Dorothy needs to ask for directions, and then follow them.

But it’s the dominant belief of our time– if you want something, go after it, keep at it until you succeed, and never give up.

William Blake said “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”. Or, better: “Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.”

Gilliam’s Movies

The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen
Time Bandits
Brazil
Fisher King
Brothers Grimm