Why Are Almost All Paintings Rectangles and Squares?
Why not circles or triangles?
Clement Greenberg was the most influential art critic in history and through him his philosophy of art became dominant in the mid-twentieth century. That philosophy had precisely to do with rectangles and squares.
It was Greenberg's philosophy that each of the arts should distill out its essentials, those things that it had and that the others didn't, and concentrate on advancing those differences.
For painting, and Greenberg was almost exclusively a "painting," not an "art," critic it was the canvas and the physical characteristics of the paint itself that should be emphasized, to the exclusion of figuration and beauty for example.
So with so much attention that got, and still gets paid, to the physical properties of painting art, why do we almost exclusively have paintings on parallelograms?
One can see how the format for painting would have evolved from cave walls to canvases by the demands of art's benefactors, the royal court, and later an aristocracy and still later a prosperous bourgeoisie, none of whom would want to trudge off to a cave to look at his likeness.
But that doesn't account for the shape. Mirrors were ovals, windows were sometimes; the circle had philosophic symbolism of eternity going for it. The triangle's solidity and stability was celebrated by the Egyptians in their greatest monuments.
In Philosophizing Art, Arthur Danto, a ying to Greenberg's yang, convincingly explains why so many paintings of the "New York School" were so huge:
"More likely, living as they did in lofts, out of necessity then rather than fashion, artists in their natural sensitivity to such matters must have felt a discrepancy between the size of their studios and the disproportionately reduced dimensions of the easel painting, and since nobody was going to buy things anyway, why not make things more suitably sized?"
Voila, sometimes the simplest explanations are the right ones.
But with so much experimentation going on at that time, when you had artists dripping paint onto canvasses lain on the floor of a barn, when you had artists making gargantuan sized works, to say nothing of what was to follow in the '60's,when you had all these rules being questioned and broken, why didn't someone think, "Wonder how this'd look in a circle?"
To state the obvious, I'm not talking about the odd painting here and there that may have been painted on a circular or oval canvas, although I've thought about it and I can't think of one prominent one, but I'm talking about a "school" or a "movement" that caught on, however briefly.
I don't think it exists. Whatever else they were doing they were doing it on parallelograms damn it.
The only other art of a culture other than the west that I'm even passingly familiar with is that of China and there of course you have the hanging scroll format. There may be simple reasons, involving ease of rolling for example, to explain why scrolls are rectangular rather than circular, but even Chinese canvas painting is still four-sided.
Talk about the need to "think outside the box." What would account for this?
-Benjamin Harris
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Art: Emotion and the Intellect
Art: Emotion and the Intellect
Anybody who thinks about art even a little, those of us in the general public when confronted with an unfamiliar instantiation, and scholars who write about it for a living have been asking and attempting to answer--for the past century really-- the question, "What is art?"
Arthur Danto defines art as (1) being about something, and (2) embodying that something's content. I've read a lot of Danto and I don't know exactly what that means but it's Hegel's definition of art as Danto says. For Danto, art is philosophy. He has vigorously objected to that distillation of his thinking but that's what it is.*
Clement Greenberg by contrast was a Kantian art critic. For him, each art form had to find it's true essence, the one thing that seperated it from other art forms, and to work single-mindedly toward advancing and refining that thing apart. Famously-now infamously-Greenberg held that painting was defined by its physical forms: the frame of the canvas and the qualities of paint itself. This definition allowed Greenberg to be the first to identify the genius of Jackson Pollock.
Pop art, installation art, art "happenings", video, et al blew Greenberg's definition all to shit and as Danto notes Greenberg essentially stopped writing art criticism after the early 1960's.
Art is not philosophy either, however. Philosophy is a construct of, and appeals to, the intellect. What people think of when they think of art is something, however it's defined, that appeals to their souls, that "moves" them. That is not an adequate definition of art, it's not even an exclusive component of art, it might have to do with distinguishing good art from bad art but there is something to that that is closer to capturing what art is, or should be, than either Danto's or Greenberg's definitions. Its appeal should be to the soul not the mind.
Recently, Dennis Dutton, of Arts and Letters Daily, wrote one of his ever insightful blurbs on some articles on the art of Henry Darger. Dutton asked rhetorically whatever Darger's work is, "Does it move anybody?"
I haven't seen enough of Darger's art to answer that for myself but two things struck me about Dutton's comment. The first is what I've said above about the definitions of art that I've read, and second was the emphasis, also admittedly present in all serious writing on art, on the subjective component of art appreciation. "I don't know if it's art but I know what I like," is a cliche, and a crutch for those--all of us to some extent, let's be honest--who don't "get" a painting or an artist.
Clearly, art is "hard" today. There are no rules. I agree with Danto that that is a good thing but when there are no rules it's hard to judge. We can educate ourselves and read about art and the various schools and the creator's intent and the art historical context in which it was executed and so on and we can better appreciate art as a result. And as a result of all of that we can be emotionally moved by it. Greenberg went so far as to say that noone had the right to comment on, much less criticize, the art of his day unless he/she had this intellectual background for it.
There's much to be said for that view but not for Greenberg's ultimate conclusion which is the logical extension of the intellectual immersion view. It is elitist and exclusivist, to which Greenberg would say, "And your point is?" The point is that it elevates the intellectual over the emotional and who is Greenberg or anyone else to say that that's perforce true? You don't have to go back very far--to Nietzsche--in western thought to get to a profound contention of that principle, or you can go back as far as you want, to the Greeks, as Nietzsche did.
I love Jackson Pollock, I always have. I "understand" him better now than when I first saw his paintings but I always liked him. I can't say that he moved, or moves me, though.
I never "got" Roy Lichtenstein until I went to a lecture on him at a museum. After that it was like that place in The Wizard of Oz when the movie changes from black and white to color. I saw him in a whole different light and now I'm delighted by his work, his creativity, his playfulness and above all by the intellectual content of his work. But again, I don't know if I can say that I'm actually "moved" by him.
This is not a subtle or backhanded criticism of contemporary art. I don't know that I'm moved by the Mona Lisa. I get the mystery of her provenance, of the proverbial enigmatic smile, of Da Vinci's use of vague shading to produce the mystery, the importance of the background, etc. Very interesting, beautiful, wouldn't have missed seeing it for the world but-nail me to a cross-I wasn't moved by it.
Same thing with Guernica. Powerful, powerful depiction of the horrors of war, painted at the height of Picasso's groundbreaking painterly style. But I wasn't moved by it as I have been by some other art, and some other "art."
I have had a few soul-shaking experiences with art. This is switching fields, which might not be wise here but I'll come back to painting in a moment. I was moved the first time I heard Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, I forget which one. I had gone into a record store in college to buy some pop pap, i don't know what, and the Brandenburgs was playing as the store's background music. I had never heard them before and I was stopped in my tracks. I went up to the cashier and asked him what it was and immediately bought it, foregoing Alone Again, Naturally, or whatever I had come for. It "spoke to me," that's all I can say to describe it but familiarly enough to all of us who have had similar experiences.
Same thing when I first heard Sarah Vaughn sing. Stopped dead in my tracks and hooked right then.
Getting back to painting, a couple of years ago I was in a friend's apartment and she and I were about to go out to get some dinner. She had a copy of Artforum in her apartment and as she got ready to go i leafed through the magazine looking at the pictures. There was a small, no bigger than 2"x2," photograph of a large purple painting, just a monochrome, wall-sized. It moved me. The accompanying article was about the deterioration of the painting, which was in a museum in Texas somewhere and the efforts of conservationists to preserve it. My friend came into the room ready to go and I put the magazine down and we left for dinner but the painting stayed with me. It had spoken to me at a very deep level and I was very moved by it.
The greater distance I had from it the more it effected me and the more I reflected on it. Every time I went back to my friend's apartment I looked for it but couldn't find it. I mentioned it to her and we looked together and seperately.
It's effect increased on me over time. It made me soulful, introspective, sad in a way. It had mezmerized me, the more so with time. I looked for it on the internet, I even called museums in Texas. "Hi, I'm trying to locate a large purple painting that I saw in an edition of Artforum a while back. It was wall-size and it was deteriorating and there were efforts being made to preserve it?" I felt really stupid. Nobody knew what I was talking about.
I had not even remembered the artist's name but Rothko was one of the contenders. Eventually I found it on the internet in the Rothko Chapel outside Houston. Since then, I've read everything I could about it, got a picture book on it, read a lot about Rothko too. I "appreciate" the chapel paintings more and was more moved by them after reading about Rothko's history, his suicide and especially the time he spent on his monochromes, sometimes just sitting in front of an uncompleted one for hours. Just reacting to it.
Of all contemporary works of art certainly, maybe of any painting of any era ever, those Rothko Chapel paintings moved me. When I moved into my new apartment two summers ago I even had my walls painted in that same purple. I matched the color paintstakingly, mixing a little black here and some red there until I got it just right. At least I think so, and so did my 13 year old son. I had my painter seperate the segments of the wall with white borders to give the effect of canvases, because although wall-sized, the Chapel paintings are still canvases, not walls, and I gravely instructed him to paint only in horizontal strokes, as Rothko himself had done. It's the equivalent of my teenager lining his bedroom walls with posters of his bands, I know, but the point is, who is anybody to make fun of this very intense soulful reaction I had, and still have, to them? They moved me. I'm glad that I was moved by a respected painter like Rothko rather than by Thomas Kinkade (sp?) but that I was moved seems to be more important than by what. You shouldn't have to justify or apologize for feeling deeply, even if the object is considered low brow or maudlin.
Which brings me to the conclusion here. I am proud of my ephiphanies at the hands of J.S. Bach, Sarah Vaughn and Mark Rothko. Their works are among humankind's greatest artistic masterpieces but I am unmoved by others equally great and I have been, and still am, moved by some hideously low-brow art. I am ashamed that I am and have been but the catharsis I seek by this admission is not that they are equally "art" to the others, but the self-acknowledgment that there is nothing wrong with being deeply moved by anything.
I have long divorced myself from most aspects of popular culture. The process has been gradual and over a period of twenty-five years or so, but I now own no television, no computer and I rarely go to movies. I buy into the idea that that stuff rots my brain and I am glad I am a luddite.
BUT, I actually was moved by Alone Again, Naturally by whoever-that-was, that pop song about an obviously depressed guy who, among other things, stands up his girlfriend at the alter. I actually went to see him in concert in college. Oh god, I'm glad I write this blog pseudonymously.
I liked The Carpenters and I'm not going to justify it on the grounds that Karen Carpenter really did have a nice voice, I liked them because their songs were romantic and soft, OK?
And whoever out there says he or she doesn't occasionally hear an old song on the radio and go "ahhh" inside at a memory is either a lying mother-fucker or a Vulcan.
Actually most people do admit this, in fact they revel in it. That's why there are so many "oldies" radio stations and socials held for people of this or that generation to get together and listen to "their" songs and relive the good old days.
It's just people like me--and there are a lot of us--who don't like to admit this, who have, and who more importantly think of ourselves as having, "moved on" and who don't like to admit it.
I'm glad I've moved on, I'm glad I no longer listen to that music. I can make the case that life is about moving on and growth and opening oneself up to new experiences and the possibility of being "moved" by other things, especially "better" things; I think it's pathetic to go to an Eagles concert now and see "Nikon Don" Henley etched with age and flecked with gray, or God help us, Keith Richards. Leave it go.
But the feelings. Then. Those feelings were real, as real and pure when we felt them as any we feel now.
That is what art, however defined, however particular examples of it may not effect others, that is what art can do. Alone of all human creations. Move us, go directly to our souls.
*For example, in the chapter, "The Philosopher as Andy Warhol" in his book Philosophing Art, Danto writes, "Hegel had proposed that art and philosophy are two 'moments,' as he put it, of Absolute Spirit...In a certain sense, if he is right, there must be a basic identity between the two, and Hegel believed that art fulfills its historical and spiritual destiny when its practice is disclosed as a kind of philosophy in action." (p. 63)
-Benjamin Harris
Anybody who thinks about art even a little, those of us in the general public when confronted with an unfamiliar instantiation, and scholars who write about it for a living have been asking and attempting to answer--for the past century really-- the question, "What is art?"
Arthur Danto defines art as (1) being about something, and (2) embodying that something's content. I've read a lot of Danto and I don't know exactly what that means but it's Hegel's definition of art as Danto says. For Danto, art is philosophy. He has vigorously objected to that distillation of his thinking but that's what it is.*
Clement Greenberg by contrast was a Kantian art critic. For him, each art form had to find it's true essence, the one thing that seperated it from other art forms, and to work single-mindedly toward advancing and refining that thing apart. Famously-now infamously-Greenberg held that painting was defined by its physical forms: the frame of the canvas and the qualities of paint itself. This definition allowed Greenberg to be the first to identify the genius of Jackson Pollock.
Pop art, installation art, art "happenings", video, et al blew Greenberg's definition all to shit and as Danto notes Greenberg essentially stopped writing art criticism after the early 1960's.
Art is not philosophy either, however. Philosophy is a construct of, and appeals to, the intellect. What people think of when they think of art is something, however it's defined, that appeals to their souls, that "moves" them. That is not an adequate definition of art, it's not even an exclusive component of art, it might have to do with distinguishing good art from bad art but there is something to that that is closer to capturing what art is, or should be, than either Danto's or Greenberg's definitions. Its appeal should be to the soul not the mind.
Recently, Dennis Dutton, of Arts and Letters Daily, wrote one of his ever insightful blurbs on some articles on the art of Henry Darger. Dutton asked rhetorically whatever Darger's work is, "Does it move anybody?"
I haven't seen enough of Darger's art to answer that for myself but two things struck me about Dutton's comment. The first is what I've said above about the definitions of art that I've read, and second was the emphasis, also admittedly present in all serious writing on art, on the subjective component of art appreciation. "I don't know if it's art but I know what I like," is a cliche, and a crutch for those--all of us to some extent, let's be honest--who don't "get" a painting or an artist.
Clearly, art is "hard" today. There are no rules. I agree with Danto that that is a good thing but when there are no rules it's hard to judge. We can educate ourselves and read about art and the various schools and the creator's intent and the art historical context in which it was executed and so on and we can better appreciate art as a result. And as a result of all of that we can be emotionally moved by it. Greenberg went so far as to say that noone had the right to comment on, much less criticize, the art of his day unless he/she had this intellectual background for it.
There's much to be said for that view but not for Greenberg's ultimate conclusion which is the logical extension of the intellectual immersion view. It is elitist and exclusivist, to which Greenberg would say, "And your point is?" The point is that it elevates the intellectual over the emotional and who is Greenberg or anyone else to say that that's perforce true? You don't have to go back very far--to Nietzsche--in western thought to get to a profound contention of that principle, or you can go back as far as you want, to the Greeks, as Nietzsche did.
I love Jackson Pollock, I always have. I "understand" him better now than when I first saw his paintings but I always liked him. I can't say that he moved, or moves me, though.
I never "got" Roy Lichtenstein until I went to a lecture on him at a museum. After that it was like that place in The Wizard of Oz when the movie changes from black and white to color. I saw him in a whole different light and now I'm delighted by his work, his creativity, his playfulness and above all by the intellectual content of his work. But again, I don't know if I can say that I'm actually "moved" by him.
This is not a subtle or backhanded criticism of contemporary art. I don't know that I'm moved by the Mona Lisa. I get the mystery of her provenance, of the proverbial enigmatic smile, of Da Vinci's use of vague shading to produce the mystery, the importance of the background, etc. Very interesting, beautiful, wouldn't have missed seeing it for the world but-nail me to a cross-I wasn't moved by it.
Same thing with Guernica. Powerful, powerful depiction of the horrors of war, painted at the height of Picasso's groundbreaking painterly style. But I wasn't moved by it as I have been by some other art, and some other "art."
I have had a few soul-shaking experiences with art. This is switching fields, which might not be wise here but I'll come back to painting in a moment. I was moved the first time I heard Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, I forget which one. I had gone into a record store in college to buy some pop pap, i don't know what, and the Brandenburgs was playing as the store's background music. I had never heard them before and I was stopped in my tracks. I went up to the cashier and asked him what it was and immediately bought it, foregoing Alone Again, Naturally, or whatever I had come for. It "spoke to me," that's all I can say to describe it but familiarly enough to all of us who have had similar experiences.
Same thing when I first heard Sarah Vaughn sing. Stopped dead in my tracks and hooked right then.
Getting back to painting, a couple of years ago I was in a friend's apartment and she and I were about to go out to get some dinner. She had a copy of Artforum in her apartment and as she got ready to go i leafed through the magazine looking at the pictures. There was a small, no bigger than 2"x2," photograph of a large purple painting, just a monochrome, wall-sized. It moved me. The accompanying article was about the deterioration of the painting, which was in a museum in Texas somewhere and the efforts of conservationists to preserve it. My friend came into the room ready to go and I put the magazine down and we left for dinner but the painting stayed with me. It had spoken to me at a very deep level and I was very moved by it.
The greater distance I had from it the more it effected me and the more I reflected on it. Every time I went back to my friend's apartment I looked for it but couldn't find it. I mentioned it to her and we looked together and seperately.
It's effect increased on me over time. It made me soulful, introspective, sad in a way. It had mezmerized me, the more so with time. I looked for it on the internet, I even called museums in Texas. "Hi, I'm trying to locate a large purple painting that I saw in an edition of Artforum a while back. It was wall-size and it was deteriorating and there were efforts being made to preserve it?" I felt really stupid. Nobody knew what I was talking about.
I had not even remembered the artist's name but Rothko was one of the contenders. Eventually I found it on the internet in the Rothko Chapel outside Houston. Since then, I've read everything I could about it, got a picture book on it, read a lot about Rothko too. I "appreciate" the chapel paintings more and was more moved by them after reading about Rothko's history, his suicide and especially the time he spent on his monochromes, sometimes just sitting in front of an uncompleted one for hours. Just reacting to it.
Of all contemporary works of art certainly, maybe of any painting of any era ever, those Rothko Chapel paintings moved me. When I moved into my new apartment two summers ago I even had my walls painted in that same purple. I matched the color paintstakingly, mixing a little black here and some red there until I got it just right. At least I think so, and so did my 13 year old son. I had my painter seperate the segments of the wall with white borders to give the effect of canvases, because although wall-sized, the Chapel paintings are still canvases, not walls, and I gravely instructed him to paint only in horizontal strokes, as Rothko himself had done. It's the equivalent of my teenager lining his bedroom walls with posters of his bands, I know, but the point is, who is anybody to make fun of this very intense soulful reaction I had, and still have, to them? They moved me. I'm glad that I was moved by a respected painter like Rothko rather than by Thomas Kinkade (sp?) but that I was moved seems to be more important than by what. You shouldn't have to justify or apologize for feeling deeply, even if the object is considered low brow or maudlin.
Which brings me to the conclusion here. I am proud of my ephiphanies at the hands of J.S. Bach, Sarah Vaughn and Mark Rothko. Their works are among humankind's greatest artistic masterpieces but I am unmoved by others equally great and I have been, and still am, moved by some hideously low-brow art. I am ashamed that I am and have been but the catharsis I seek by this admission is not that they are equally "art" to the others, but the self-acknowledgment that there is nothing wrong with being deeply moved by anything.
I have long divorced myself from most aspects of popular culture. The process has been gradual and over a period of twenty-five years or so, but I now own no television, no computer and I rarely go to movies. I buy into the idea that that stuff rots my brain and I am glad I am a luddite.
BUT, I actually was moved by Alone Again, Naturally by whoever-that-was, that pop song about an obviously depressed guy who, among other things, stands up his girlfriend at the alter. I actually went to see him in concert in college. Oh god, I'm glad I write this blog pseudonymously.
I liked The Carpenters and I'm not going to justify it on the grounds that Karen Carpenter really did have a nice voice, I liked them because their songs were romantic and soft, OK?
And whoever out there says he or she doesn't occasionally hear an old song on the radio and go "ahhh" inside at a memory is either a lying mother-fucker or a Vulcan.
Actually most people do admit this, in fact they revel in it. That's why there are so many "oldies" radio stations and socials held for people of this or that generation to get together and listen to "their" songs and relive the good old days.
It's just people like me--and there are a lot of us--who don't like to admit this, who have, and who more importantly think of ourselves as having, "moved on" and who don't like to admit it.
I'm glad I've moved on, I'm glad I no longer listen to that music. I can make the case that life is about moving on and growth and opening oneself up to new experiences and the possibility of being "moved" by other things, especially "better" things; I think it's pathetic to go to an Eagles concert now and see "Nikon Don" Henley etched with age and flecked with gray, or God help us, Keith Richards. Leave it go.
But the feelings. Then. Those feelings were real, as real and pure when we felt them as any we feel now.
That is what art, however defined, however particular examples of it may not effect others, that is what art can do. Alone of all human creations. Move us, go directly to our souls.
*For example, in the chapter, "The Philosopher as Andy Warhol" in his book Philosophing Art, Danto writes, "Hegel had proposed that art and philosophy are two 'moments,' as he put it, of Absolute Spirit...In a certain sense, if he is right, there must be a basic identity between the two, and Hegel believed that art fulfills its historical and spiritual destiny when its practice is disclosed as a kind of philosophy in action." (p. 63)
-Benjamin Harris
Friday, February 25, 2005
Life on Mars
Life on Mars
I've started and restarted this post several times, not sure how to do it. I don't want to sound dumber than I can help it or more moon-beamy but on the other hand when I tried to write about it in neutral journalistic tones it was just redundant to what could be read elsewhere.
So, I'll just wear my emotions on my sleave. We're going to find life on Mars and sooner rather than later and it gives me goose bumps and will represent the most significant discovery in mankind's history and it's impossible to overstate my excitement at the prospect.
Three things happened this week. The first were reports from the European Space Agency that their Mars orbiter had found evidence that convinces them that there is a large, recently formed ocean of ice at Mars' equator. Scientists were struck by the similarities of the Martian sea to that covering Antarctica, where we know there's life.
The second of the week's events was additional evidence from the Europeans that volcanic activity continues to exist on Mars. As I understand it that augurs well for life for two reasons. One, we have discovered previously unknown and undreamt of life forms, tubular worms, that live off the heat and sulfuric excretions from the earth's crust at depths where sunlight, until then thought essential to life, could not penetrate.
Second, there had been tantalizing photographic evidence previously that volcanic activity on Mars had been so recent that it had caused liquid water to however briefly break the surface and run in rivers before evaporating into the Martian atmosphere. Everywhere on earth that we know of where liquid water exists life exists. Why would Mars be different?
The third development this week came from evidence found on earth. A NASA scientist examined a 30,000 year old chunk of ice under a microscope and saw frozen bacteria of an unknown form. When he thawed out the ice the damned bacteria starting swimming! They were still alive! Again, if that can happen on earth, why not on Mars? Even if there is no liquid water found on Mars (and there will be) we will find frozen life in the ice there, maybe even life that can be thawed out and made to "live" again.
It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Not only on Mars, but on Europa, and maybe in other places in our own little solar system and it makes me so excited I can't contain myself.
-Benjamin Harris
I've started and restarted this post several times, not sure how to do it. I don't want to sound dumber than I can help it or more moon-beamy but on the other hand when I tried to write about it in neutral journalistic tones it was just redundant to what could be read elsewhere.
So, I'll just wear my emotions on my sleave. We're going to find life on Mars and sooner rather than later and it gives me goose bumps and will represent the most significant discovery in mankind's history and it's impossible to overstate my excitement at the prospect.
Three things happened this week. The first were reports from the European Space Agency that their Mars orbiter had found evidence that convinces them that there is a large, recently formed ocean of ice at Mars' equator. Scientists were struck by the similarities of the Martian sea to that covering Antarctica, where we know there's life.
The second of the week's events was additional evidence from the Europeans that volcanic activity continues to exist on Mars. As I understand it that augurs well for life for two reasons. One, we have discovered previously unknown and undreamt of life forms, tubular worms, that live off the heat and sulfuric excretions from the earth's crust at depths where sunlight, until then thought essential to life, could not penetrate.
Second, there had been tantalizing photographic evidence previously that volcanic activity on Mars had been so recent that it had caused liquid water to however briefly break the surface and run in rivers before evaporating into the Martian atmosphere. Everywhere on earth that we know of where liquid water exists life exists. Why would Mars be different?
The third development this week came from evidence found on earth. A NASA scientist examined a 30,000 year old chunk of ice under a microscope and saw frozen bacteria of an unknown form. When he thawed out the ice the damned bacteria starting swimming! They were still alive! Again, if that can happen on earth, why not on Mars? Even if there is no liquid water found on Mars (and there will be) we will find frozen life in the ice there, maybe even life that can be thawed out and made to "live" again.
It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Not only on Mars, but on Europa, and maybe in other places in our own little solar system and it makes me so excited I can't contain myself.
-Benjamin Harris
Thursday, February 24, 2005
There Will Always be an England: Nature Magazine's Attributions
"Tell me what a man does and I'll tell you what he is," is an old English saying.
Nature magazine takes it one step further. Their attributions read, e.g.
"Virginia Trimble is at the University of California, Irvine..."
"At?" Yes, one assumes Ms. Trimble is a professor rather than a custodian "at" Cal-Irvine but it is a curious English circumlocution to accredit their contributors in that manner.
It can be a little jarring too. At the end of an article "The power of natural selection," Nature tells us that the author,
"Andrew P. Hendry is IN the Redpath Museum and Department of Biology, McGill University..." (emphasis added), which if literally true would indeed be a remarkable instantiation of the power of natural selection.
Their own staff writers do not always suffer the same vague description. "Heike Langenberg is a physical sciences editor at Nature," is one. "Allison Abbott is Nature's senior European correspondent" is another. But another article is authored by an outside scholar, Russell G. Foster, who the magazine alarmingly tells its readers, "is in the Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Charing Cross Hospital..."
Indeed.
-Benjamin Harris
Nature magazine takes it one step further. Their attributions read, e.g.
"Virginia Trimble is at the University of California, Irvine..."
"At?" Yes, one assumes Ms. Trimble is a professor rather than a custodian "at" Cal-Irvine but it is a curious English circumlocution to accredit their contributors in that manner.
It can be a little jarring too. At the end of an article "The power of natural selection," Nature tells us that the author,
"Andrew P. Hendry is IN the Redpath Museum and Department of Biology, McGill University..." (emphasis added), which if literally true would indeed be a remarkable instantiation of the power of natural selection.
Their own staff writers do not always suffer the same vague description. "Heike Langenberg is a physical sciences editor at Nature," is one. "Allison Abbott is Nature's senior European correspondent" is another. But another article is authored by an outside scholar, Russell G. Foster, who the magazine alarmingly tells its readers, "is in the Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Charing Cross Hospital..."
Indeed.
-Benjamin Harris
Friday, February 04, 2005
Donald Kuspit, Quote Machine
Donald Kuspit, Quote Machine
Calvin Trillin once wrote of advising his friend R.W. Apple to donate his expense accounts to The Smithsonian, so laden with extravagances and excesses as they were.
Motivated by a similar concern for posterity's interest in the excessive I hereby nominate the following passage by Donald Kuspit from his book The End of Art for most authorities quoted in a single paragraph:
"According to Pater and Greenberg, aesthetic experience is heightened sense experience, separated from all other experience. It is inherently beautiful and affords pleasure. This was also the view of antiquity. In Plato's Philebus Socrates states: 'Thus pleasures are those which arise from the colors we call beautiful and from shapes; and most of the pleasures of smell and sound....such sounds as are pure and smooth and yield a single pure tone are not beautiful relatively to anything else but in their own proper nature, and produce their proper pleasures.' In the Tusculan Discussions, Cicero writes: 'There is a certain apt disposition of bodily parts which, when combined with a certain agreeable color, is called beauty.' St. Augustine agrees, using almost exactly the same words in On the Kingdom of God (xxii, xix). The idea survives in modern philosophy. Thus, for Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Idea (1818), the pleasure of beauty arises from 'disinterested...sensuous contemplation.' As the phenomenologist Mikel Dufrenne writes, 'the being of the work of art yields itself only through its sensuous presence, which allows us to aprehend it as an aesthetic onject.' Meaning is 'immanent in the sensuous, being its very organization.' More complexly, but in a related way, Hegel, in his Aesthetics (1835), writes: 'art has the function of revealing truth in the form of sensuous artistic shapes and of presenting to us the reconciliation of the contradiction [between sense and reason, between what is and what ought to be, between desire and duty]. Consequently it contains ifs end in itself, in this very revelation and presentation.' The beautiful work is one in which this aesthetic reconciliation seems inevitable. As Hegel says, 'the greatness and excellence of art...will depend upon the degree of intimacy with which...form and subject-matter are fused and united.' " (pp. 34-5)
-Benjamin Harris
Calvin Trillin once wrote of advising his friend R.W. Apple to donate his expense accounts to The Smithsonian, so laden with extravagances and excesses as they were.
Motivated by a similar concern for posterity's interest in the excessive I hereby nominate the following passage by Donald Kuspit from his book The End of Art for most authorities quoted in a single paragraph:
"According to Pater and Greenberg, aesthetic experience is heightened sense experience, separated from all other experience. It is inherently beautiful and affords pleasure. This was also the view of antiquity. In Plato's Philebus Socrates states: 'Thus pleasures are those which arise from the colors we call beautiful and from shapes; and most of the pleasures of smell and sound....such sounds as are pure and smooth and yield a single pure tone are not beautiful relatively to anything else but in their own proper nature, and produce their proper pleasures.' In the Tusculan Discussions, Cicero writes: 'There is a certain apt disposition of bodily parts which, when combined with a certain agreeable color, is called beauty.' St. Augustine agrees, using almost exactly the same words in On the Kingdom of God (xxii, xix). The idea survives in modern philosophy. Thus, for Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Idea (1818), the pleasure of beauty arises from 'disinterested...sensuous contemplation.' As the phenomenologist Mikel Dufrenne writes, 'the being of the work of art yields itself only through its sensuous presence, which allows us to aprehend it as an aesthetic onject.' Meaning is 'immanent in the sensuous, being its very organization.' More complexly, but in a related way, Hegel, in his Aesthetics (1835), writes: 'art has the function of revealing truth in the form of sensuous artistic shapes and of presenting to us the reconciliation of the contradiction [between sense and reason, between what is and what ought to be, between desire and duty]. Consequently it contains ifs end in itself, in this very revelation and presentation.' The beautiful work is one in which this aesthetic reconciliation seems inevitable. As Hegel says, 'the greatness and excellence of art...will depend upon the degree of intimacy with which...form and subject-matter are fused and united.' " (pp. 34-5)
-Benjamin Harris
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Hack Job: Technology Review and Nuland's Attack on de Grey
What the heck is going on at Technology Review?
The "oldest technology magazine in the world" started out as the official MIT alumni magazine but over the last 15-20 years has deliberately transformed itself into a mid-major mass circulation magazine with articles of interest to scientists, private sector elites as well as educated and curious general readers. It has trumpeted its success in this transformation by citing its drastically increased circulation numbers.
If memory serves, the current February '05 issue, is the first under a new editor. If so, the new editor is a person named Jason Pontin. Whatever, the tone of the magazine, and perhaps its purpose has changed drastically.
That new tone, agenda-driven and personal, was what first caught the eye with its cover story, an article on human aging and a researcher named Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University. Under a head-shot of de Grey is the title,
"living forever? Audrey de Grey thinks he can defeat death."
"Is he nuts?"
"IS HE NUTS?"? When was the last time that question or anything like it appeared on the cover of TR? Has it ever?
The article, which it is no exaggeration to call a diatribe, is preceded by editorials, the most prominent of which is one by Mr. Pontin titled Against Transcendence in which he writes the following:
"de Grey thinks he is a technological messiah."
"But what struck me is that he is a troll."
A troll.
Likewise, the words that the article uses to describe de Grey?:
"Whether one chooses to believe that he is a brilliant
prophetic architect of futuristic biology or merely
a misguided and nutty theorist..."
...
"In the photo [on his website] his eyes are...gently
warm...But I would see none of that warmth during
the 10 hours we spent together, though it reappeared
in the 15 minutes during which we chatted with
Adelaide de Grey [his wife]..."
Those are borderline ad hominem words, again at odds with anything I had ever read in TR before. They would get worse but before doing so would include another merely borderline description, a weird one given the magazine's MIT geekdom roots and audience:
"He was dressed like an unkempt graduate student,
uncaring of tailoring considerations of any sort,
wearing a hip-length black mackinaw-type coat that
was borderline shabby. Adorning his head was a
knitted woolen hat...crafted by his wife 14 years ago.
As if to prove its age, the frazzled headgear...was not
without a few holes. When he removed it I saw that
de Grey's long straight hair was held in a ponytail..."
Even de Grey's wife is subject to this kind of comment. She is described as "just as uncaring about her appearance or grooming."
There is no serious point to this. It is simply to create the image of de Grey as "an obviously odd and driven duck."
This is such unusual language for TR and so unusual to be coming from another scientist, Sherwin Nuland, a Yale Medical School professor. One feels sorry for the people so described, the comments are so personal and unkind.
Husband and wife are an "uncommon pair" and it is striking to Dr. Nuland that "neither of them has ever wanted to have children."
This personal decision of husband and wife gets tied by Dr. Nuland into what he says is behind de Grey's work, "self-interest--or what some might call narcissism...":
"de Grey has some interesting notions of human
nature. He insists that, on the one hand, it is basic
to humankind to want to live forever regardless
of consequences, while on the other it is not basic
to want to have children."
Dr. Nuland concludes his article with broad similarly ad hominem characterizations of de Grey's work and underlying purpose:
"[His] purpose is only secondarily to overcome
resistance to his theories. His primary aim is to
publicize himself...as a means of raising the consid-
erable funding that will be necessary..."
...
"He has safeguarded himself against the informed
criticism that should give him cause to rethink some
of his proposals. He has accomplished this self-protection
by constructing a personal worldview in which he is
inviolate. He refuses to budge a millimeter."
Nothing appears as factual support for this characterization. In fact, Dr. Nuland details the amazing achievement of de Grey, a computer scientist, in mastering natural science to the point of having published peer-reviewed articles in leading biogerontology journals co-authored by many of the greatest minds in the field.
Nuland accuses de Grey of "unhesitant verbal trashing of those who disagree with him." Likewise, there is nothing in the article to support this charge.
"But the most likeable of eccentrics are sometimes the most dangerous." that's the first sentence in the last paragraph of Dr. Nuland's article.
In another editorial TR says of de Grey:
"He dresses like a shabby graduate student and affects
Rip Van Winkle's beard; he has no children; he has few
interests outside the science of biogerontology; he drinks
too much beer...His ideas are trollish."
de Grey makes his arguments "loudly and angrily."
On de grey's idea for extending life span, "Is this absurd? Yes, of course it is."
TR vouches for the opinions of Dr. Nuland:
"Sherwin Nuland would not be satisfied by anything
less than rigorous scientific reasoning and evidence.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine a writer more qualified
to profile the eccentric de Grey."
"Indeed" indeed, since this is how Dr. Nuland himself describes his qualifications in the article:
"What would it be like to come face to face with such a man? Not to debate him--A TASK FOR WHICH, AS A CLINICAL SURGEON, I WOULD IN ANY CASE BE SCIENTIFICALLY UNQUALIFIED..." (emphasis added).
Dr. Nuland's is a hatchet job, written by one who is self-admitted to be unqualified to write any serious review of Dr. de Grey's work. The article is part of the new editorial policy of TR to advance their briefs even if degrading personal characterizations are necessary, and the science be damned.
-Benjamin Harris
The "oldest technology magazine in the world" started out as the official MIT alumni magazine but over the last 15-20 years has deliberately transformed itself into a mid-major mass circulation magazine with articles of interest to scientists, private sector elites as well as educated and curious general readers. It has trumpeted its success in this transformation by citing its drastically increased circulation numbers.
If memory serves, the current February '05 issue, is the first under a new editor. If so, the new editor is a person named Jason Pontin. Whatever, the tone of the magazine, and perhaps its purpose has changed drastically.
That new tone, agenda-driven and personal, was what first caught the eye with its cover story, an article on human aging and a researcher named Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University. Under a head-shot of de Grey is the title,
"living forever? Audrey de Grey thinks he can defeat death."
"Is he nuts?"
"IS HE NUTS?"? When was the last time that question or anything like it appeared on the cover of TR? Has it ever?
The article, which it is no exaggeration to call a diatribe, is preceded by editorials, the most prominent of which is one by Mr. Pontin titled Against Transcendence in which he writes the following:
"de Grey thinks he is a technological messiah."
"But what struck me is that he is a troll."
A troll.
Likewise, the words that the article uses to describe de Grey?:
"Whether one chooses to believe that he is a brilliant
prophetic architect of futuristic biology or merely
a misguided and nutty theorist..."
...
"In the photo [on his website] his eyes are...gently
warm...But I would see none of that warmth during
the 10 hours we spent together, though it reappeared
in the 15 minutes during which we chatted with
Adelaide de Grey [his wife]..."
Those are borderline ad hominem words, again at odds with anything I had ever read in TR before. They would get worse but before doing so would include another merely borderline description, a weird one given the magazine's MIT geekdom roots and audience:
"He was dressed like an unkempt graduate student,
uncaring of tailoring considerations of any sort,
wearing a hip-length black mackinaw-type coat that
was borderline shabby. Adorning his head was a
knitted woolen hat...crafted by his wife 14 years ago.
As if to prove its age, the frazzled headgear...was not
without a few holes. When he removed it I saw that
de Grey's long straight hair was held in a ponytail..."
Even de Grey's wife is subject to this kind of comment. She is described as "just as uncaring about her appearance or grooming."
There is no serious point to this. It is simply to create the image of de Grey as "an obviously odd and driven duck."
This is such unusual language for TR and so unusual to be coming from another scientist, Sherwin Nuland, a Yale Medical School professor. One feels sorry for the people so described, the comments are so personal and unkind.
Husband and wife are an "uncommon pair" and it is striking to Dr. Nuland that "neither of them has ever wanted to have children."
This personal decision of husband and wife gets tied by Dr. Nuland into what he says is behind de Grey's work, "self-interest--or what some might call narcissism...":
"de Grey has some interesting notions of human
nature. He insists that, on the one hand, it is basic
to humankind to want to live forever regardless
of consequences, while on the other it is not basic
to want to have children."
Dr. Nuland concludes his article with broad similarly ad hominem characterizations of de Grey's work and underlying purpose:
"[His] purpose is only secondarily to overcome
resistance to his theories. His primary aim is to
publicize himself...as a means of raising the consid-
erable funding that will be necessary..."
...
"He has safeguarded himself against the informed
criticism that should give him cause to rethink some
of his proposals. He has accomplished this self-protection
by constructing a personal worldview in which he is
inviolate. He refuses to budge a millimeter."
Nothing appears as factual support for this characterization. In fact, Dr. Nuland details the amazing achievement of de Grey, a computer scientist, in mastering natural science to the point of having published peer-reviewed articles in leading biogerontology journals co-authored by many of the greatest minds in the field.
Nuland accuses de Grey of "unhesitant verbal trashing of those who disagree with him." Likewise, there is nothing in the article to support this charge.
"But the most likeable of eccentrics are sometimes the most dangerous." that's the first sentence in the last paragraph of Dr. Nuland's article.
In another editorial TR says of de Grey:
"He dresses like a shabby graduate student and affects
Rip Van Winkle's beard; he has no children; he has few
interests outside the science of biogerontology; he drinks
too much beer...His ideas are trollish."
de Grey makes his arguments "loudly and angrily."
On de grey's idea for extending life span, "Is this absurd? Yes, of course it is."
TR vouches for the opinions of Dr. Nuland:
"Sherwin Nuland would not be satisfied by anything
less than rigorous scientific reasoning and evidence.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine a writer more qualified
to profile the eccentric de Grey."
"Indeed" indeed, since this is how Dr. Nuland himself describes his qualifications in the article:
"What would it be like to come face to face with such a man? Not to debate him--A TASK FOR WHICH, AS A CLINICAL SURGEON, I WOULD IN ANY CASE BE SCIENTIFICALLY UNQUALIFIED..." (emphasis added).
Dr. Nuland's is a hatchet job, written by one who is self-admitted to be unqualified to write any serious review of Dr. de Grey's work. The article is part of the new editorial policy of TR to advance their briefs even if degrading personal characterizations are necessary, and the science be damned.
-Benjamin Harris
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Man City's Opportunity
manchester city can firmly position themselves among the top half of the premiership table and make a run at a spot in the champions league in their next three matches.
the blues play home against sixteenth place crystal palace on saturday, at bottom-inhabiting west branch albion on jan. 22 and then home against newcastle united which is two points under city on feb. 2.
boom. boom. boom. three wins, 9 points, hello europe! after all, this is the ONLY team that has beaten chelsea ALL YEAR.
but sports, fate, kevin keegan, nicholas anelka and maybe some cloud permanently hanging over the east side of manchester will prevent it.
team schizoid has beaten chelsea, tied man-u at old trafford, and tied arsenal at highbury in their last league match. they can play with anybody.
but they often play at the other team's level. they just lost to first division oldham in the f.a. cup and in the premiership have also been tied by relegation-threatened norwich and the aforementioned w.b.a. AT HOME and tied southhampton on the trot.
this is a team that plays in one of the best and newest facilities in all of europe and yet stinks up the joint more often than it rewards the faithful. i think i'm right that they won the same number of matches at eastlands last year as they did on the road.
the board gave kevin keegan 60 million pounds when they entered the premiership two years ago and king kev promptly wasted it on the likes of claudia reyna and, most abysmally, robbie fowler, among others.
everytime you think they have turned the corner, there's another corner. they were on one of their rolls a few weeks ago and then nicholas anelka ran his mouth about how he wanted out so he could play for a "big club" and compete in the champions league and the roll morphed into a tumble.
they are in ninth place and coming off a 1-1 draw at arsenal. they have three matches coming up that they can win, that a disciplined, professional, selfless, ambitious team WOULD win.
but they won't. if they win these next three matches i will walk to manchester and kiss kevin keegan's bum.
they will tie one or two or lose one outright, and the saturday night arrests for disorderly intoxication and domestic violence will swell on the east side.
and then they have their rematch with chelsea on the trot.
-benjamin harris
the blues play home against sixteenth place crystal palace on saturday, at bottom-inhabiting west branch albion on jan. 22 and then home against newcastle united which is two points under city on feb. 2.
boom. boom. boom. three wins, 9 points, hello europe! after all, this is the ONLY team that has beaten chelsea ALL YEAR.
but sports, fate, kevin keegan, nicholas anelka and maybe some cloud permanently hanging over the east side of manchester will prevent it.
team schizoid has beaten chelsea, tied man-u at old trafford, and tied arsenal at highbury in their last league match. they can play with anybody.
but they often play at the other team's level. they just lost to first division oldham in the f.a. cup and in the premiership have also been tied by relegation-threatened norwich and the aforementioned w.b.a. AT HOME and tied southhampton on the trot.
this is a team that plays in one of the best and newest facilities in all of europe and yet stinks up the joint more often than it rewards the faithful. i think i'm right that they won the same number of matches at eastlands last year as they did on the road.
the board gave kevin keegan 60 million pounds when they entered the premiership two years ago and king kev promptly wasted it on the likes of claudia reyna and, most abysmally, robbie fowler, among others.
everytime you think they have turned the corner, there's another corner. they were on one of their rolls a few weeks ago and then nicholas anelka ran his mouth about how he wanted out so he could play for a "big club" and compete in the champions league and the roll morphed into a tumble.
they are in ninth place and coming off a 1-1 draw at arsenal. they have three matches coming up that they can win, that a disciplined, professional, selfless, ambitious team WOULD win.
but they won't. if they win these next three matches i will walk to manchester and kiss kevin keegan's bum.
they will tie one or two or lose one outright, and the saturday night arrests for disorderly intoxication and domestic violence will swell on the east side.
and then they have their rematch with chelsea on the trot.
-benjamin harris
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Foreign Policy Analysis: Deconstructing John Lewis Gaddis
Deconstructing Gaddis
Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis gives President Bush a thumbs up in Middle East policy in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
On the first page of his article, Grand Strategy in the Second Term, Prof. Gaddis states,
"George W. Bush...has presided over the most
sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since
the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt." (2)
Throughout the article Prof. Gaddis expands on the particulars of the President's historic paradigm shift:
"...the fact that more than three years have passed without [another 9/11-like] attack is significant."
"...the first and most fundamental feature of the Bush strategy--taking the offensive against the terrorists and thereby surprising them--has so far accomplished its purposes." (3)
"The military campaign [against Iraq] proceeded as anticipated..." (8)
...
"...on October 9, 2004, millions of Afghans lined up to vote in an
election that had no precedent in their nation's long history.
Had anyone predicted this three years ago, the response would
have been incredulity--if not doubts about sanity." (13)
...
"A conservative Republican administration responded by embracing a liberal Democratic ideal--making the world safe for democracy...if that does not provide the basis for a renewed grand strategic bipartisanship...then one has to wonder what ever would." (14)
...
"[Bush has achieved] far more...than any previous American administration has achieved in the Middle East." (14)
So, bravo, Mr. President. the war against Afghanistan was a success, the war against Iraq was successful and worthwhile, the war on terror generally has been pursued competently and efficaciously, and all this was done according to a "sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy" with bipartisan appeal.
Right? How could all of those statements be read otherwise?
They can't.
But that's not all that Gaddis says, nor is that the tone of his article as a whole.
It's not a matter of quoting out of context. Readers can read the whole article easily enough, it's only fifteen pages long. To quote out of context is to isolate specific portions of a piece that unfairly distort a clear, and different, meaning.
It is not that Prof. Gaddis makes one point that is clear when one reads the article as a whole. rather, it is that Gaddis SAYS things that are different.
Further he talks in code to avoid having one clear meaning attributed to him and he constantly jumps back and forth between similar sounding but completely different ideas so as to veil the bankruptcy of some of his ideas.
Consider the following, taken from the same first page on which appears the "grand strategy" quote above:
"Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can
ignore what the events of September 11, 2001, made clear:
that deterrence against STATES affords insufficient protection
from attacks by GANGS, which can now inflict the kind of damage
only STATES fighting WARS used to be able to achieve." (2)
(emphasis added)
This is a radically different statement than those at the beginning of this post and Prof. Gaddis does not so much as acknowledge the difference.
This is talking in code. Lubriciously, Prof. Gaddis has now completely recast the entire discussion.
First, according to the above, it is not a "war" that the U.S. is in. This is a crime problem, in which America must protect itself from attacks by "gangs."
This is in fact how Richard Holbroke and John Kerry conceptualized the terror issue according to the famous New York Times Magazine cover story near the end of the presidential campaign.
Gaddis clearly seperates state violence against America ("wars"), which can be defended by "deterrence," and murder by "gangs" which, in his view, september 11 only demonstrated can now be carried out on as massive a scale as previously only wars could.
This is not an isolated instance of careless wording by Gaddis. Later he writes,
"...the survival of the STATE SYSTEM itself could be at stake. Here lies the common ground...securing the STATE..." (7) (emphasis added)
These do not "clarify" the other statements that Gaddis made that are quoted at the beginning of this post. These do not provide "context" for their real meaning. These are in addition to, in contradiction with, and an obfuscation of, those statements.
The language itself, "the state system," "securing the state" is Stalinesque. This framework treats all "States" as existentially equal and with the same legitimacy in the fight against terrorism. Totalitarian or authoritarian, theocratic or democratic, they are all in this context equal: "Here lies the common ground."
the author of the times magazine cover story stated that according to Holbroke and Kerry the conflict as they saw it was not between one state, America, and Islam or particular states like Iraq and Afghanistan, or even with a general problem like "terrorism." Rather the fight was between "Civilization" and anarchy. It's the theme of the old tv show "I Spy" where the enemy was "CHAOS."
Gaddis continually weaves this "I Spy" framework in with other nearly identical sounding language that has a totally different meaning. In the next to the last page of the article he writes,
"What September 11 showed was that the United States
can no longer insulate itself from what happens in that
part of the world: to do so would be to ignore clear and
present danger." (p. 14)
Thus, he flips back to framing the discussion in the more comfortable and familiar way as a problem for the United States and away from the radical, crackpot notion that it is a problem of all "States" against anarchy.
Not only does Gaddis refrain from clearly articulating and taking responsibility for the "I Spy" framework but he doesn't even allude to its practical implications, which are staggering and frightening.
Gaddis even adopts Kerry's campaign speech assertion that he would never give some other body a "veto" over his authority as Commander in Chief:
"[Gaining multi-lateral support] will not involve giving anyone else a VETO over what the United States does to ensure its security and to advance its interests." (p. 7) (emphasis added).
But just as Senator Kerry said in the next breath that there SHOULD be a "global test" for U.S. intervention, so Gaddis says,
"It will, however, REQUIRE persuading as large a group of states as possible that these actions will also enhance, or at least not degrade, their own interests." (p. 7) (emphasis added)
This is not accidental language. Prof. Gaddis knows what "require" means. He knows that it's a command, a condition precedent to its referrent. He knows that it's different from something like "demonstrates a need for," or "makes desirable."
Neither did Sen. Kerry misspeak in the first debate when he used the phrase "global test." He simply coupled it with the reassurance that he would not give any other body a "veto" over his authority as Commander in Chief.
Here is one example of what Gaddis' "I Spy" framework means.
Saudi Arabia was the home of fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers and of Osama bin Laden himself.
The kingdom was founded on and supports Whhabbism, one of the most radical strains of Islam.
Saudi Arabia is a brutally authoritarian monarchy that deflects internal dissent by allowing its mullahs to preach calls to violence against America and Israel. A member of the official Saudi delegation that visited President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the summer of 2002 was a religious leader who in April of 2002 had preached a sermon calling for the enslavement of Jewish women for the pleasure of Muslim men.
It is a country that places copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in prominent places in its airports.
It is a country that is regarded by most (I thought all until I read Gaddis) as one of the keys to solving the problem of Islamic terror.
Under Prof. Gaddis' "I Spy" framework Saudi Arabia has the same legitimacy in the fight against terror as does the United States.
"I Spy" also unifies all terrorists. the I.R.A, the Basques, the Chechens, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, they're all the same. They all threaten equally legitimate states which are part of a single "Civilization." In fact, this is the argument that President Putin made after the Beslan school massacre.
This is obvious nonsense, morally repugnant and strategically bankrupt. It is this though what provides Prof. Gaddis with the basis for his criticism of Bush's foreign policy "redesign."
First, Gaddis discusses the violence that the Bush administration has done to the distinction between "pre-emption" and "prevention," two long-used concepts in theoretical and legal discussions of war. Gaddis thus shifts his language back to the level of state-to-state theory and interaction.
The dangers of Bush's "conflation" mistake are many as Gaddis sees it:
"...the United States itself will appear to much of the world as a clear and present danger." (5)
...
"For the world's most powerful state to suddenly announce that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states whenever it chooses cannot help but make all other states nervous." (5)
...
"As the political scientist G. John Ikenberry has pointed out, Washington's policy of pre-emption has created the image of a global policeman who reports to no higher authority and no longer allows locks on citizens' doors." (5) [ed note: He needed a political scientist as authority for that?]
...
"[The invasion of Iraq has resulted in] an unprecedented collapse of support for the United States abroad."(6)
...
"...Americans within a year and a half [of 9/11] found their country widely regarded as an international pariah." (6)
There are many points of note to be made on these quotes which are all taken from a section ironically titled "Speaking More Softly--and More Clearly."
First, using the pre-emption/prevention issue is not necessary to make his point, which is clear enough from the quotes above, that is, that the U.S. must act more multi-laterally in the future.
Second, he states that "John Kerry made it clear during the 2004 campaign that he would not have relinquished [the pre-emption] option had he won the presidency."
What I assert that Gaddis is doing here is once again using language to deliberately veil the true radical nature of his ideas.
The quotes above are very strident. Gaddis feels very passionately about the Bush mistake of conflating pre-emption and prevention. That John Kerry would have continued use of the pre-emption doctrine is not apposite to Gaddis' point, which is that Bush conflated that internationally accepted principle with a new, more controversial and dangerous one, preventive war. Of course he does not say that John Kerry would have continued THAT.
Third and most obvious, is the language that Gaddis uses. It is jarringly over-the-top and out of place with the language he uses in other sections of the article and simply schizoid when placed in the same article with his laudatory language of Bush.
Fourth, its content, Gaddis' "meaning" here, is just bizarre.
The United States is "WIDELY REGARDED" as an "INTERNATIONAL PARIAH."
The United States, in pursuing a course of preventive war, will appear, to "MUCH OF THE WORLD" as a "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER."
Wow.
"Widely regarded," "much of the world;" not as bad as "universally regarded" or "most of the world," but still pretty bad obviously.
But, question: Who exactly? Who exactly does Gaddis allege feels this way?
France? Does Gaddis mean that the French think that the U.S. is a "clear and present danger" to them?
China? Do the Chinese regard us as an "international pariah?"
Prof. Gaddis, exactly which countries have the image of the U.S. as a "global policeman...[who] no longer allows locks on citizens' doors,"--as the political scientist G. John Ikenberry pointed out to you? Professor Ikenberry, can you help out here?
Russia? Does Gaddis believe that Bush's friend "Poot-Poot" is "nervous" that the U.S. may attack his country?
How about if we take it by continents.
Europe, who amongst you doesn't like Nascar... er... Who amongst you believes that America is a "clear and present danger" to you? Do i see one hand? Poland, I can't see you back there. Bulgaria, where are you hiding?
Prof. Gaddis, which country(ies) in Europe feel that the United States is a "clear and present danger?" There must be many, since, according to you, "much of the world" feels that way. Is there one?
How about Asia? Japan, the U.S., pariah or no? Cambodia? Tibet? Richard Gere, what say ye? Prof. Gaddis, who are we missing?
Australia?
Sub-Saharan Africa? South Africa, are you building underground bomb shelters and instructing your school children in the art of "duck and cover" for fear that Bush may drop atomic bombs on the beloved country? You're not?
South America: You Brazilians, Chileans, and Argentines, anybody battening down the hatches down there?
Gaddis' contention that the U.S. "has suddenly...announce[d] that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states...," is wild. One imagines Bush and Cheney in the Oval office each morning, Cheney spinning a globe and a blind-folded Bush laughing malevolently and randomly pointing to some country and saying "THAT ONE!," and plans for the invasion of Luxembourg are put in motion.
Gaddis asseverates that "ALL OTHER STATES" are nervous about this. Is Gaddis' vcr permanently stuck on Dr. Strangelove? Did Michael Moore vet this article for him?
Who says something like that, much less writes it in a scholarly article?
WHICH COUNTRIES, Professor Gaddis, are "nervous" that the U.S. may willy-nilly decide to invade them randomly, "whenever it chooses?"
Prof. Gaddis well uses language to sugarcoat the strong medicine of his ideas. He is also a practiced user of the bogeyman overstatement masquerading as scholarship.
And of the straw-man argument. For example, he states that,
"The President and his advisers seem to have concluded"
that the international "status quo everywhere needed
shaking up. Once that had happened, the pieces would
realign themselves in patterns favorable to U.S. interests."
(p. 14)
Yes, one can see in one's mind's eye Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld sitting in their bunker the night of September 11 saying to each other, "I think if we just shock and awe the world a little and really shake things up the pieces will just naturally realign themselves in our favor."
And what, in the paragraph from which the above quote is taken, was just a "seeming" mode of thought on the part of the Bushies, becomes in the next paragraph on page 15, a FACT:
"The assumption that things would fall neatly into place after
the shock was administered was the single greatest misjudgment
of the first Bush administration."
How did we get from here to there?
This is what passes for foreign policy analysis these days.
-Benjamin Harris
Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis gives President Bush a thumbs up in Middle East policy in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
On the first page of his article, Grand Strategy in the Second Term, Prof. Gaddis states,
"George W. Bush...has presided over the most
sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since
the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt." (2)
Throughout the article Prof. Gaddis expands on the particulars of the President's historic paradigm shift:
"...the fact that more than three years have passed without [another 9/11-like] attack is significant."
"...the first and most fundamental feature of the Bush strategy--taking the offensive against the terrorists and thereby surprising them--has so far accomplished its purposes." (3)
"The military campaign [against Iraq] proceeded as anticipated..." (8)
...
"...on October 9, 2004, millions of Afghans lined up to vote in an
election that had no precedent in their nation's long history.
Had anyone predicted this three years ago, the response would
have been incredulity--if not doubts about sanity." (13)
...
"A conservative Republican administration responded by embracing a liberal Democratic ideal--making the world safe for democracy...if that does not provide the basis for a renewed grand strategic bipartisanship...then one has to wonder what ever would." (14)
...
"[Bush has achieved] far more...than any previous American administration has achieved in the Middle East." (14)
So, bravo, Mr. President. the war against Afghanistan was a success, the war against Iraq was successful and worthwhile, the war on terror generally has been pursued competently and efficaciously, and all this was done according to a "sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy" with bipartisan appeal.
Right? How could all of those statements be read otherwise?
They can't.
But that's not all that Gaddis says, nor is that the tone of his article as a whole.
It's not a matter of quoting out of context. Readers can read the whole article easily enough, it's only fifteen pages long. To quote out of context is to isolate specific portions of a piece that unfairly distort a clear, and different, meaning.
It is not that Prof. Gaddis makes one point that is clear when one reads the article as a whole. rather, it is that Gaddis SAYS things that are different.
Further he talks in code to avoid having one clear meaning attributed to him and he constantly jumps back and forth between similar sounding but completely different ideas so as to veil the bankruptcy of some of his ideas.
Consider the following, taken from the same first page on which appears the "grand strategy" quote above:
"Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can
ignore what the events of September 11, 2001, made clear:
that deterrence against STATES affords insufficient protection
from attacks by GANGS, which can now inflict the kind of damage
only STATES fighting WARS used to be able to achieve." (2)
(emphasis added)
This is a radically different statement than those at the beginning of this post and Prof. Gaddis does not so much as acknowledge the difference.
This is talking in code. Lubriciously, Prof. Gaddis has now completely recast the entire discussion.
First, according to the above, it is not a "war" that the U.S. is in. This is a crime problem, in which America must protect itself from attacks by "gangs."
This is in fact how Richard Holbroke and John Kerry conceptualized the terror issue according to the famous New York Times Magazine cover story near the end of the presidential campaign.
Gaddis clearly seperates state violence against America ("wars"), which can be defended by "deterrence," and murder by "gangs" which, in his view, september 11 only demonstrated can now be carried out on as massive a scale as previously only wars could.
This is not an isolated instance of careless wording by Gaddis. Later he writes,
"...the survival of the STATE SYSTEM itself could be at stake. Here lies the common ground...securing the STATE..." (7) (emphasis added)
These do not "clarify" the other statements that Gaddis made that are quoted at the beginning of this post. These do not provide "context" for their real meaning. These are in addition to, in contradiction with, and an obfuscation of, those statements.
The language itself, "the state system," "securing the state" is Stalinesque. This framework treats all "States" as existentially equal and with the same legitimacy in the fight against terrorism. Totalitarian or authoritarian, theocratic or democratic, they are all in this context equal: "Here lies the common ground."
the author of the times magazine cover story stated that according to Holbroke and Kerry the conflict as they saw it was not between one state, America, and Islam or particular states like Iraq and Afghanistan, or even with a general problem like "terrorism." Rather the fight was between "Civilization" and anarchy. It's the theme of the old tv show "I Spy" where the enemy was "CHAOS."
Gaddis continually weaves this "I Spy" framework in with other nearly identical sounding language that has a totally different meaning. In the next to the last page of the article he writes,
"What September 11 showed was that the United States
can no longer insulate itself from what happens in that
part of the world: to do so would be to ignore clear and
present danger." (p. 14)
Thus, he flips back to framing the discussion in the more comfortable and familiar way as a problem for the United States and away from the radical, crackpot notion that it is a problem of all "States" against anarchy.
Not only does Gaddis refrain from clearly articulating and taking responsibility for the "I Spy" framework but he doesn't even allude to its practical implications, which are staggering and frightening.
Gaddis even adopts Kerry's campaign speech assertion that he would never give some other body a "veto" over his authority as Commander in Chief:
"[Gaining multi-lateral support] will not involve giving anyone else a VETO over what the United States does to ensure its security and to advance its interests." (p. 7) (emphasis added).
But just as Senator Kerry said in the next breath that there SHOULD be a "global test" for U.S. intervention, so Gaddis says,
"It will, however, REQUIRE persuading as large a group of states as possible that these actions will also enhance, or at least not degrade, their own interests." (p. 7) (emphasis added)
This is not accidental language. Prof. Gaddis knows what "require" means. He knows that it's a command, a condition precedent to its referrent. He knows that it's different from something like "demonstrates a need for," or "makes desirable."
Neither did Sen. Kerry misspeak in the first debate when he used the phrase "global test." He simply coupled it with the reassurance that he would not give any other body a "veto" over his authority as Commander in Chief.
Here is one example of what Gaddis' "I Spy" framework means.
Saudi Arabia was the home of fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers and of Osama bin Laden himself.
The kingdom was founded on and supports Whhabbism, one of the most radical strains of Islam.
Saudi Arabia is a brutally authoritarian monarchy that deflects internal dissent by allowing its mullahs to preach calls to violence against America and Israel. A member of the official Saudi delegation that visited President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the summer of 2002 was a religious leader who in April of 2002 had preached a sermon calling for the enslavement of Jewish women for the pleasure of Muslim men.
It is a country that places copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in prominent places in its airports.
It is a country that is regarded by most (I thought all until I read Gaddis) as one of the keys to solving the problem of Islamic terror.
Under Prof. Gaddis' "I Spy" framework Saudi Arabia has the same legitimacy in the fight against terror as does the United States.
"I Spy" also unifies all terrorists. the I.R.A, the Basques, the Chechens, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, they're all the same. They all threaten equally legitimate states which are part of a single "Civilization." In fact, this is the argument that President Putin made after the Beslan school massacre.
This is obvious nonsense, morally repugnant and strategically bankrupt. It is this though what provides Prof. Gaddis with the basis for his criticism of Bush's foreign policy "redesign."
First, Gaddis discusses the violence that the Bush administration has done to the distinction between "pre-emption" and "prevention," two long-used concepts in theoretical and legal discussions of war. Gaddis thus shifts his language back to the level of state-to-state theory and interaction.
The dangers of Bush's "conflation" mistake are many as Gaddis sees it:
"...the United States itself will appear to much of the world as a clear and present danger." (5)
...
"For the world's most powerful state to suddenly announce that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states whenever it chooses cannot help but make all other states nervous." (5)
...
"As the political scientist G. John Ikenberry has pointed out, Washington's policy of pre-emption has created the image of a global policeman who reports to no higher authority and no longer allows locks on citizens' doors." (5) [ed note: He needed a political scientist as authority for that?]
...
"[The invasion of Iraq has resulted in] an unprecedented collapse of support for the United States abroad."(6)
...
"...Americans within a year and a half [of 9/11] found their country widely regarded as an international pariah." (6)
There are many points of note to be made on these quotes which are all taken from a section ironically titled "Speaking More Softly--and More Clearly."
First, using the pre-emption/prevention issue is not necessary to make his point, which is clear enough from the quotes above, that is, that the U.S. must act more multi-laterally in the future.
Second, he states that "John Kerry made it clear during the 2004 campaign that he would not have relinquished [the pre-emption] option had he won the presidency."
What I assert that Gaddis is doing here is once again using language to deliberately veil the true radical nature of his ideas.
The quotes above are very strident. Gaddis feels very passionately about the Bush mistake of conflating pre-emption and prevention. That John Kerry would have continued use of the pre-emption doctrine is not apposite to Gaddis' point, which is that Bush conflated that internationally accepted principle with a new, more controversial and dangerous one, preventive war. Of course he does not say that John Kerry would have continued THAT.
Third and most obvious, is the language that Gaddis uses. It is jarringly over-the-top and out of place with the language he uses in other sections of the article and simply schizoid when placed in the same article with his laudatory language of Bush.
Fourth, its content, Gaddis' "meaning" here, is just bizarre.
The United States is "WIDELY REGARDED" as an "INTERNATIONAL PARIAH."
The United States, in pursuing a course of preventive war, will appear, to "MUCH OF THE WORLD" as a "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER."
Wow.
"Widely regarded," "much of the world;" not as bad as "universally regarded" or "most of the world," but still pretty bad obviously.
But, question: Who exactly? Who exactly does Gaddis allege feels this way?
France? Does Gaddis mean that the French think that the U.S. is a "clear and present danger" to them?
China? Do the Chinese regard us as an "international pariah?"
Prof. Gaddis, exactly which countries have the image of the U.S. as a "global policeman...[who] no longer allows locks on citizens' doors,"--as the political scientist G. John Ikenberry pointed out to you? Professor Ikenberry, can you help out here?
Russia? Does Gaddis believe that Bush's friend "Poot-Poot" is "nervous" that the U.S. may attack his country?
How about if we take it by continents.
Europe, who amongst you doesn't like Nascar... er... Who amongst you believes that America is a "clear and present danger" to you? Do i see one hand? Poland, I can't see you back there. Bulgaria, where are you hiding?
Prof. Gaddis, which country(ies) in Europe feel that the United States is a "clear and present danger?" There must be many, since, according to you, "much of the world" feels that way. Is there one?
How about Asia? Japan, the U.S., pariah or no? Cambodia? Tibet? Richard Gere, what say ye? Prof. Gaddis, who are we missing?
Australia?
Sub-Saharan Africa? South Africa, are you building underground bomb shelters and instructing your school children in the art of "duck and cover" for fear that Bush may drop atomic bombs on the beloved country? You're not?
South America: You Brazilians, Chileans, and Argentines, anybody battening down the hatches down there?
Gaddis' contention that the U.S. "has suddenly...announce[d] that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states...," is wild. One imagines Bush and Cheney in the Oval office each morning, Cheney spinning a globe and a blind-folded Bush laughing malevolently and randomly pointing to some country and saying "THAT ONE!," and plans for the invasion of Luxembourg are put in motion.
Gaddis asseverates that "ALL OTHER STATES" are nervous about this. Is Gaddis' vcr permanently stuck on Dr. Strangelove? Did Michael Moore vet this article for him?
Who says something like that, much less writes it in a scholarly article?
WHICH COUNTRIES, Professor Gaddis, are "nervous" that the U.S. may willy-nilly decide to invade them randomly, "whenever it chooses?"
Prof. Gaddis well uses language to sugarcoat the strong medicine of his ideas. He is also a practiced user of the bogeyman overstatement masquerading as scholarship.
And of the straw-man argument. For example, he states that,
"The President and his advisers seem to have concluded"
that the international "status quo everywhere needed
shaking up. Once that had happened, the pieces would
realign themselves in patterns favorable to U.S. interests."
(p. 14)
Yes, one can see in one's mind's eye Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld sitting in their bunker the night of September 11 saying to each other, "I think if we just shock and awe the world a little and really shake things up the pieces will just naturally realign themselves in our favor."
And what, in the paragraph from which the above quote is taken, was just a "seeming" mode of thought on the part of the Bushies, becomes in the next paragraph on page 15, a FACT:
"The assumption that things would fall neatly into place after
the shock was administered was the single greatest misjudgment
of the first Bush administration."
How did we get from here to there?
This is what passes for foreign policy analysis these days.
-Benjamin Harris
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
FASHION AND SEX
FASHION AND SEX
i have this recurring argument with a friend. i contend that true fashion has more to do with art; he contends that it's all about sex. obviously, the line is a fine and often blurred one.
vogue's big spring fashion issue last year seemed to have more ads with more overt appeal to sex in the photography than i had remembered previously. from memory i think there was a talbot's ad with a leg-splayed model and a diamond industry ad of a model wearing jeans and one of her hands casually posed between her wide-open legs. on the ring finger of that hand was of course a diamond which lit up her crotch like a sun.
another one of the big designers, maybe calvin klein, was advertising a shorts set with a dead-on shot of the model with her legs spread.
off that issue of vogue i actually began a draft of a post on this subject but never finished it.
a couple of days ago i picked up an old copy of elle that one of the employees had left as reading material in the visitors waiting area. it's the august, 2002 issue.
the back cover ad was for anne klein. it shows a model leaning back on her elbows on a large red cube. she's wearing thick-strapped black sandals a white t-shirt and jeans. her right leg is up on the cube, her left leg is draped over the side. her legs are spread and the central focus of the shot is her crotch. it's a classic porn pose. there's no double entendre there. there's just one entendre.
then on page 148, part of a multi-page layout on shoes, is a model in another classic porn pose. she's kneeling on a leather couch wearing a frilly SHORT skirt. her butt is thrust out and she's wearing a pair of above-the-knee leather boots. which i didn't notice on first glance.
i'm not offended but i'm not showing that issue of elle to my friend. i ain't got no argument against evidence like that.
-benjamin harris
i have this recurring argument with a friend. i contend that true fashion has more to do with art; he contends that it's all about sex. obviously, the line is a fine and often blurred one.
vogue's big spring fashion issue last year seemed to have more ads with more overt appeal to sex in the photography than i had remembered previously. from memory i think there was a talbot's ad with a leg-splayed model and a diamond industry ad of a model wearing jeans and one of her hands casually posed between her wide-open legs. on the ring finger of that hand was of course a diamond which lit up her crotch like a sun.
another one of the big designers, maybe calvin klein, was advertising a shorts set with a dead-on shot of the model with her legs spread.
off that issue of vogue i actually began a draft of a post on this subject but never finished it.
a couple of days ago i picked up an old copy of elle that one of the employees had left as reading material in the visitors waiting area. it's the august, 2002 issue.
the back cover ad was for anne klein. it shows a model leaning back on her elbows on a large red cube. she's wearing thick-strapped black sandals a white t-shirt and jeans. her right leg is up on the cube, her left leg is draped over the side. her legs are spread and the central focus of the shot is her crotch. it's a classic porn pose. there's no double entendre there. there's just one entendre.
then on page 148, part of a multi-page layout on shoes, is a model in another classic porn pose. she's kneeling on a leather couch wearing a frilly SHORT skirt. her butt is thrust out and she's wearing a pair of above-the-knee leather boots. which i didn't notice on first glance.
i'm not offended but i'm not showing that issue of elle to my friend. i ain't got no argument against evidence like that.
-benjamin harris
Monday, January 03, 2005
TRUE CRIME STORIES
"I AM BECOME DEATH" *
an englishman once said, "tell me what a man does and i will tell you what he is."
i grew up in a household influenced by that protestant work ethic. my town once flooded and one of the coal trains coming through was stranded on the tracks. my dad walked on the top of the boxcars to get to work . he was around newsprint all his life. he died of a rare cancer that only struck people in certain occupations, one of them being newspaper printing. tell me what a man does and i'll tell you what he is.
for nineteen years all i've done is murder cases. i know murder well and i know little else. i am still fascinated by every case i get. i never get tired of them . i can be obsessive-compulsive and murder is a good subject for my personality.
of course there is pathos in every murder, some more than others. but in evey case there is horror, violence, the end. you become very aware of the finality of death. survivors often parrot one of the religous sayings like "he/she's in a better place," or "we'll be together in the next life." i can't help feeling jaded when i hear that time and again when my work belies the sentiment and only reinforces the opposite, the finality.
you do your job for nineteen years, you immerse yourself in every case. you meet the next of kin. to do it for that long you have to develop some distance.
it's a little jarring looking at death scene photos the first time. but that quickly goes away. they're just pictures. for a very long time, i've been able just to look at them for their evidentiary worth, not for the broken human bodies that are the reason i have this job in the first place. i can eat lunch and study the photos without being bothered.
scene visits were once a different thing for me. seeing a "live" dead body made me squeamish. if i could avoid it i wouldn't view the body, but that is not possible at most scenes. but even this changed after one homicide call.
one sunday afternoon i had my baby boy alone at home and was just starting to watch a football game. i was relaxed and enjoying life when the beeper went off. i cursed. i was exasperated. i had to call around to friends to get someone to babysit. as i drove to the scene i got more aggravated at the imposition and by the time i got there i was in full bloom.
i remember it was a domestic murder. that frustrated me even more. i am not a very jealous person so when i hear that a MURDER has been committed out of jealousy i become contemptuous. "if i can't have him/her nobody will." that is the mantra of all "domestics" and i know i should be more understanding but it angers me to hear it. this murder was at the apex of that senselessness.
a mother came home from church with her two children. her estranged husband confronted her at the house. they quarreled. he pulled out a gun and shot her. right in front of the kids.
he then went inside the house and shot himself in the living room. i remember he had fallen awkwardly, his legs bent under him. the gun was large caliber, a .45. the bullet tore a big hole in his shirt. his eyes were open.
the cops had already turned on the tv set before i got there. i sat on the couch--his couch--propped my feet on his coffee table and watched the game on his television with his body right underneath me. i was angry at him for what he did, for the reason he did it, for what he did to his children and for ruining my sunday afternoon. "fuck you," i said to him in my head. "i don't give a shit about you."
i have never been that callous since, but the point is the work had changed me a little. i have not been as squeamish around the destroyed bodies since then. now i was able to contemplate a scene and a body in strategic terms alone. what can i do to make the case better? what problems can i head off?
that's good for my work but if the emotion of even murder is subsumed to analysis and rationality then emotionally and psychologically, murder becomes "normal"; it is one's job, it is part of one's routine and i wonder if that has effected my own morality and what i view as acceptable. tell me what a man does and i will tell you what he is.
we are the philosophical children of descartes and kant and the whole rationalist tradition. our criminal justice system is certainly built on that foundation. "feelings of bias, sympathy and prejudice must not influence your verdict in any way," is what every criminal jury is told. the pictures of the broken and wrecked human bodies, the anguish of the family, the terror of the witnesses, the jury is to detach themselves from all that.
and because they must at the end stage of the process, those at the earlier stages--the detectives, the prosecutors, the defense attoneys, the judges--must also detach themselves from it.
jurors can get back to their morally normal lives after a week or two. but we must go on to the next case. there is no return from the dark side.
maybe the long term effects of this work are not all bad. it has made me see shades of gray where previously i had only seen black or white, but maybe too it is a moral and emotional carcinogen like the newsprint chemicals that killed my dad.
i seldom have hatred toward the murderers. almost always, when it's all over, i shake their hands, sometimes we embrace. for my colleagues that is odd behavior but it is not that i condone what they've done. unless they're truly evil, i view the whole case as sad.
in my experience--in my opinion--the murderers who are truly evil are rare. if there were no drugs and alcohol, if there was no jealousy, if men's testerone level wasn't so high, if they didn't get into fights, if THEY could seperate the emotional from the rational and not react violently, if all those things could be changed then a lot of murders wouldn't happen and i don't think those who kill for those reasons are necessarily evil.
"not evil" does not mean "not immoral, or "not criminal" certainly, and i gladly seek to have them punished severely for what they do but i do seperate them morally from reggie who liked to beat old white women to death with his bare hands. i honestly don't think that is moral relativism but if you combine that view with the change in my emotions to corpses, i wonder if it hasn't had an effect.
a colleague told me one time that over the last few years he had begun questioning housewives in jury selection about their daytime tv viewing habits because he was concerned that those who watch those shows get exposed to so much aberrant behavior that murder wouldn't seem so bad or a defendant's bizarre story might be accepted as normal and he didn't want people like that on his juries.
i thought it was a brilliant point but if we have concerns about viewers of those shows, what about us? we don't just watch it on tv. aberrant behavior is our job. our minds force us to think a certain way. the body isn't just a horror but a piece of evidence. a witness's terror is not a primal human reaction but something that needs to be conveyed convincingly in court.
i remember thinking about my job one time and recalling president reagan and the iran-contra scandal. he traded arms for hostages but somehow, in his mind, a mind that his hand-chosen biographer found "unfathomable," he truly believed he hadn't. "who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes."
reagan was an actor. his career before politics was playing a role, "lying." as an actor that is what one does. you pretend to be someone you're not. you convincingly display emotions that are not really there. if one does that in one's job then it must become easier to do it in other area's of one's life. lying becomes normal. tell me what a man does and i'll tell you what he is.
it's obviously the same thing for people like undercover cops and intelligence agents. there too your job is to lie. your life may depend on how well you do it. when you can so successfully erase one of the first morality lessons we are taught, "thou shalt not tell a lie," it becomes easier to do it in all other areas of life.
in my own case i make compromizing my opponent an uncommonly large part of my work and i am successful at it. it's been enormously helpful and it's easy for me. i use friendship and collegiality to loosen lips and learn secrets. i plant disinformation. i flatter, ingratiate, and feign laziness to lull my opponents. i draw them into apparent confidences so that i can use the faux intimacy to my advantage. i enjoy it. but to do all of that successfully you have to compartmentalize your emotions. you have to be cold, even ruthless. you have to be a good liar.
but if those compartments are so tightly shut, if the emotions are so successfully subsumed to strategy then maybe there is a blunting of emotions in other areas of life and again, the prohibition against lying, a bedrock of my own morality growing up, no longer has anywhere near its old effect.
all of this has resulted in my creation of a new dictum, "the two most overrated things in the world are the truth and 'i'm sorry'." the latter is useless in my view, doing more good for the speaker than for the listener. the former is not black and white for me anymore. sometimes the truth is used as a sword to wound others. we'd never say "my, you're ugly," to another person and then justify it because it was the truth. there are countless examples like that. and just as many where there are morally gray areas between the truth and the lie.
i think all of this is true. i believe all of the examples and arguments are reasonable but i wonder about the cumulative effect of my job, of whether the circuit breaker on my outrage meter has been readjusted too high, of whether the necessary blunting of emotions in dealing with murder has effected my emotional ability in other areas, of whether my acceptance of lying and nuanced views of murderers have not taken a toll on other aspects of my life.
* from the bhagavad gita
-benjamin harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
"I AM BECOME DEATH" *
an englishman once said, "tell me what a man does and i will tell you what he is."
i grew up in a household influenced by that protestant work ethic. my town once flooded and one of the coal trains coming through was stranded on the tracks. my dad walked on the top of the boxcars to get to work . he was around newsprint all his life. he died of a rare cancer that only struck people in certain occupations, one of them being newspaper printing. tell me what a man does and i'll tell you what he is.
for nineteen years all i've done is murder cases. i know murder well and i know little else. i am still fascinated by every case i get. i never get tired of them . i can be obsessive-compulsive and murder is a good subject for my personality.
of course there is pathos in every murder, some more than others. but in evey case there is horror, violence, the end. you become very aware of the finality of death. survivors often parrot one of the religous sayings like "he/she's in a better place," or "we'll be together in the next life." i can't help feeling jaded when i hear that time and again when my work belies the sentiment and only reinforces the opposite, the finality.
you do your job for nineteen years, you immerse yourself in every case. you meet the next of kin. to do it for that long you have to develop some distance.
it's a little jarring looking at death scene photos the first time. but that quickly goes away. they're just pictures. for a very long time, i've been able just to look at them for their evidentiary worth, not for the broken human bodies that are the reason i have this job in the first place. i can eat lunch and study the photos without being bothered.
scene visits were once a different thing for me. seeing a "live" dead body made me squeamish. if i could avoid it i wouldn't view the body, but that is not possible at most scenes. but even this changed after one homicide call.
one sunday afternoon i had my baby boy alone at home and was just starting to watch a football game. i was relaxed and enjoying life when the beeper went off. i cursed. i was exasperated. i had to call around to friends to get someone to babysit. as i drove to the scene i got more aggravated at the imposition and by the time i got there i was in full bloom.
i remember it was a domestic murder. that frustrated me even more. i am not a very jealous person so when i hear that a MURDER has been committed out of jealousy i become contemptuous. "if i can't have him/her nobody will." that is the mantra of all "domestics" and i know i should be more understanding but it angers me to hear it. this murder was at the apex of that senselessness.
a mother came home from church with her two children. her estranged husband confronted her at the house. they quarreled. he pulled out a gun and shot her. right in front of the kids.
he then went inside the house and shot himself in the living room. i remember he had fallen awkwardly, his legs bent under him. the gun was large caliber, a .45. the bullet tore a big hole in his shirt. his eyes were open.
the cops had already turned on the tv set before i got there. i sat on the couch--his couch--propped my feet on his coffee table and watched the game on his television with his body right underneath me. i was angry at him for what he did, for the reason he did it, for what he did to his children and for ruining my sunday afternoon. "fuck you," i said to him in my head. "i don't give a shit about you."
i have never been that callous since, but the point is the work had changed me a little. i have not been as squeamish around the destroyed bodies since then. now i was able to contemplate a scene and a body in strategic terms alone. what can i do to make the case better? what problems can i head off?
that's good for my work but if the emotion of even murder is subsumed to analysis and rationality then emotionally and psychologically, murder becomes "normal"; it is one's job, it is part of one's routine and i wonder if that has effected my own morality and what i view as acceptable. tell me what a man does and i will tell you what he is.
we are the philosophical children of descartes and kant and the whole rationalist tradition. our criminal justice system is certainly built on that foundation. "feelings of bias, sympathy and prejudice must not influence your verdict in any way," is what every criminal jury is told. the pictures of the broken and wrecked human bodies, the anguish of the family, the terror of the witnesses, the jury is to detach themselves from all that.
and because they must at the end stage of the process, those at the earlier stages--the detectives, the prosecutors, the defense attoneys, the judges--must also detach themselves from it.
jurors can get back to their morally normal lives after a week or two. but we must go on to the next case. there is no return from the dark side.
maybe the long term effects of this work are not all bad. it has made me see shades of gray where previously i had only seen black or white, but maybe too it is a moral and emotional carcinogen like the newsprint chemicals that killed my dad.
i seldom have hatred toward the murderers. almost always, when it's all over, i shake their hands, sometimes we embrace. for my colleagues that is odd behavior but it is not that i condone what they've done. unless they're truly evil, i view the whole case as sad.
in my experience--in my opinion--the murderers who are truly evil are rare. if there were no drugs and alcohol, if there was no jealousy, if men's testerone level wasn't so high, if they didn't get into fights, if THEY could seperate the emotional from the rational and not react violently, if all those things could be changed then a lot of murders wouldn't happen and i don't think those who kill for those reasons are necessarily evil.
"not evil" does not mean "not immoral, or "not criminal" certainly, and i gladly seek to have them punished severely for what they do but i do seperate them morally from reggie who liked to beat old white women to death with his bare hands. i honestly don't think that is moral relativism but if you combine that view with the change in my emotions to corpses, i wonder if it hasn't had an effect.
a colleague told me one time that over the last few years he had begun questioning housewives in jury selection about their daytime tv viewing habits because he was concerned that those who watch those shows get exposed to so much aberrant behavior that murder wouldn't seem so bad or a defendant's bizarre story might be accepted as normal and he didn't want people like that on his juries.
i thought it was a brilliant point but if we have concerns about viewers of those shows, what about us? we don't just watch it on tv. aberrant behavior is our job. our minds force us to think a certain way. the body isn't just a horror but a piece of evidence. a witness's terror is not a primal human reaction but something that needs to be conveyed convincingly in court.
i remember thinking about my job one time and recalling president reagan and the iran-contra scandal. he traded arms for hostages but somehow, in his mind, a mind that his hand-chosen biographer found "unfathomable," he truly believed he hadn't. "who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes."
reagan was an actor. his career before politics was playing a role, "lying." as an actor that is what one does. you pretend to be someone you're not. you convincingly display emotions that are not really there. if one does that in one's job then it must become easier to do it in other area's of one's life. lying becomes normal. tell me what a man does and i'll tell you what he is.
it's obviously the same thing for people like undercover cops and intelligence agents. there too your job is to lie. your life may depend on how well you do it. when you can so successfully erase one of the first morality lessons we are taught, "thou shalt not tell a lie," it becomes easier to do it in all other areas of life.
in my own case i make compromizing my opponent an uncommonly large part of my work and i am successful at it. it's been enormously helpful and it's easy for me. i use friendship and collegiality to loosen lips and learn secrets. i plant disinformation. i flatter, ingratiate, and feign laziness to lull my opponents. i draw them into apparent confidences so that i can use the faux intimacy to my advantage. i enjoy it. but to do all of that successfully you have to compartmentalize your emotions. you have to be cold, even ruthless. you have to be a good liar.
but if those compartments are so tightly shut, if the emotions are so successfully subsumed to strategy then maybe there is a blunting of emotions in other areas of life and again, the prohibition against lying, a bedrock of my own morality growing up, no longer has anywhere near its old effect.
all of this has resulted in my creation of a new dictum, "the two most overrated things in the world are the truth and 'i'm sorry'." the latter is useless in my view, doing more good for the speaker than for the listener. the former is not black and white for me anymore. sometimes the truth is used as a sword to wound others. we'd never say "my, you're ugly," to another person and then justify it because it was the truth. there are countless examples like that. and just as many where there are morally gray areas between the truth and the lie.
i think all of this is true. i believe all of the examples and arguments are reasonable but i wonder about the cumulative effect of my job, of whether the circuit breaker on my outrage meter has been readjusted too high, of whether the necessary blunting of emotions in dealing with murder has effected my emotional ability in other areas, of whether my acceptance of lying and nuanced views of murderers have not taken a toll on other aspects of my life.
* from the bhagavad gita
-benjamin harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
Sunday, January 02, 2005
The Beginning of Hitler
The socio-economic reasons for the rise of Adolph Hitler--Versailles, the dominance of the military over German society, hyperinflation, etc.--are familiar to even non-historians thanks to William Shirer's book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. For Shirer though the whole thing was just too improbable, too bizarre for those causes to explain everything.
The Fuhrer himself, not even a German but an Austrian, a mere corporal, a failed artist and vagabond; the "weird assortment of misfits" who were Hitler's inner circle; the "crackpot economics" and other "intellectual" bases of national socialism. All of this did not make sense to Shirer for a nation "which had given the world a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Schiller, a Bach, a Beethoven and a Brahms."
Shirer details other events, coincidental happenings, bizarre twists of fate, innocuous, banal events that somehow came together to produce Hitler. They were not causes. They are "but for" events, evidence almost of a diabolus ex machina involved. It was as if all the parts of the toaster were put into the paper bag, shaken vigorously and out came the gas chambers.
Among this category of events, was the fortuity of his Hitler's last name. Hitler's father was born "Alois Schiklgruber," his mother's name because he was born illegitimate. The father lived under that name until age 39 when, bizarrely, the natural father, his own name having evolved from Heidler to Hitler, came forward to acknowledge paternity, whereupon Alois changed his name to Hitler.
"But for" this, Hitler would have been known as "Adolph Schicklgruber." As Shirer says,
"Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous 'Heils.'? 'Heil Schicklgruber!'?...It is a little difficult to imagine."
You can sense Shirer's astonishment at the prominence of these chance events in his language and punctuation: "misfits," "crackpots," "Heil Schicklgrber!?."
And then he quotes from Mein Kamph and Hitler's own account of the beginning of his anti-semitism, which Hitler traced to one particular day, and one specific encounter, with one particular person, while walking in Vienna:
"I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black
sidelocks. Is that a Jew? was my first thought. For to be sure they
had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man furtively and
cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing
feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form:
"is this a German?"...[from that day on] "wherever I went, I began to
see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became
distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity. Later I often
grew sick to the stomach from the smell of these caftan-wearers."
The prominence of these events is psychologically unsettling because of their exemption from rational examination. Rational analysis must fixate on the details of a catastrophe if corrective action is to result. No retrospective analysis could identify and isolate the missteps to be avoided in the future, no seminars could get to the bottom of it, no historian could root it out, and hence the realization that despite our intelligence, despite our capacity for reflection, despite our capability for change--despite, in all, our ability to control our world and hence our fate, events like these show us, to our horror, that we are not in control of our destiny, that no matter what we do, sometimes there will be an event, of pure chance, of the stringing together of banal occurrences that perversely mutate into something monstrous.
There is fixation also on the details of incidents like Hitler's street encounter, not because of their significance in explaining, but just the opposite, because of their insignificance and inability to explain. We examine the details knowing their innocuousness, singly and together, and are incredulous, unable to rationally comprehend the horrific outcome that resulted. Irresistibly the reel is rewound and we see the endless ways the outcome could have been different if one banal detail were exchanged for the other.
What time of day did the encounter occur? Hitler used the word "apparition." Was it then at night so that the man would have seemed more ghostly and menacing? If it had happened in daylight, would the encounter have turned out as it did?
How old was the man? Hitler's age, making the contrast in circumstances more threatening to Hitler? Would that have made a difference in the way Hitler reacted?
Where was the man going?
Where was he coming from?
Did he notice Hitler "staring" at him, "scrutinizing" him? If so, what did he think? We know what Hitler thought.
Where exactly did this occur? On what street? Why did Hitler go THERE that day?
Wherever the man was going, did he take his usual route or did he unexpectedly take a different one at the last minute?
None of these things is causal. That's what's maddening. You can't BLAME them so retrospective analysis can't proscribe against their recurrence, but change any one and astonishingly, maddeningly, the encounter doesn't take place.
Clearly anti-semitism would have come to Hitler, if not on this day then some other. But it did happen on this day, on that street, with that man. Who's to say that on another day the encounter wouldn't have struck Hitler so forcefully?
Who's to say that a delay of even a month or two months in the onset of Hitler's anti-semitism wouldn't have thrown off the timing of his rise to power?
Who's to say that if Hitler were known as Adolph Schicklgruber he wouldn't have become the Nazi leader?
And so, we rewind the film, and we become an observer of this developing catastrophe, to ache at the fall of each snowflake that we know is going to result in the avalanche, and as we're watching, we want to say "no," "don't leave now," "don't go that way," "don't look at him" and we find ourselves powerless to do any of that and to have to just watch as the nightmare unfolds, banal detail by banal detail.
And so I imagine that day. The encounter occurs not in daylight but at dusk. Hitler wanders but, attracted by the architecture of some building, heads in it's direction, toward the Inner City.
The man is in his home, preparing to go to evening services. He is a serious man, his countenance even grave. He heads out onto the street.
It is a winter day and so the days are short. Hitler is cold and, as he always was in Vienna, hungry. The man is well-set. Hitler will unconsciously contrast that with his own gauntness.
The man has a functional coat and a hat. Hitler's coat is worn, thin and ineffective.
As he walks, cold, hungry, tired, Hitler thinks of how Vienna is trying to break him, how he has come to hate the city for it's failure to recognize his talent as an artist, to provide him with the kind of job he feels himself worthy, to feed him, house him and protect him against the cold.
It is not late at night because Hitler, lacking proper shelter, would not have wanted to be out as the city got darker and colder.
The man is thinking of his religion. He is absorbed in thought and walks the same route that he has always walked to the synagogue. He looks at the ground a few paces in front of himself. Hitler just wanders, looking at his surroundings, the buildings and the people.
The man is in middle age, 40's-50's. An elderly man walking with difficulty with a cane might have engendered some sympathy in Hitler, or at least not have seemed as threatening.
Hitler is looking up to keep the building in sight but as he gets closer his view is blocked by the buildings nearer to him and he is unsure now where to turn.
Both men are lost in thought.
Hitler turns down the street. He randomly turns down this street rather than that street and randomly walks on this side of the street rather than on that side and now he and the man are walking toward each other.
The man walks purposefully if mechanically. Hitler walks slowly and aimlessly.
There is a corner in the street. Hitler turns the corner and the man is a few yards in front of him. Lost in thought, Hitler is startled. The man's thought is broken too and he looks up.
Hitler sees a larger man than himself, dressed in black, in clothes foreign to him. The man's hat and full beard make his grave countenance more alien and menacing. The soft gas light of the street lamps obscures the details of his face, making them mysterious.
The two men's eyes meet, Hitler's startled and wide-eyed, the man's sharp and penetrating. In the inadequate light Hitler sees only the eyes and the angular nose that dominates the face.
The two have to alter their strides slightly to pass each other, and they pass so closely they almost brush. As they pass the air carries their smell to the other.
The man continues on, just one of many daily encounters in a big city.
Hitler though is confused by what he has seen. "Is this a Jew?..."Is this a German?" He pauses and then stops. He hears talking, in a foreign tongue.
The man has seen a friend and has stopped to talk. The man and his friend pivot and their positions change, so that now the man is facing down the street he just came, in Hitler's the direction.
After being startled, after being confused, after pausing and hearing men talking, after stopping, Hitler steps around the corner to look further:
"I observed the man furtively and cautiously..."
The man has already forgotten about Hitler and is now absorbed in conversation. Hitler is in his field of vision but only as a dark shadow in the background. The image doesn't consciously register with him.
Hitler continues to look and now "stared at his foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature."
The man ends his conversation with his friend and insouciantly walks away, his back now to Hitler. Hitler continues to stare, oblivious to the man's friend who is now walking toward him. The friend sees Hitler staring down the street, but Hitler does not notice him.
The friend passes Hitler, still staring, and as he gets a few steps past he briefly turns and looks back at this strange little man staring down the street after his friend. He turns back around and continues walking.
Hitler's stare is still fixed on the man going to temple who gets farther and farther away and smaller and smaller in the distance. Hitler continues to stare. In the soft gas light and the deepening gloom of evening the man becomes just a black form on the streetscape. Hitler continues to stare. And the darkness gathers.
-Benjamin Harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
The Fuhrer himself, not even a German but an Austrian, a mere corporal, a failed artist and vagabond; the "weird assortment of misfits" who were Hitler's inner circle; the "crackpot economics" and other "intellectual" bases of national socialism. All of this did not make sense to Shirer for a nation "which had given the world a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Schiller, a Bach, a Beethoven and a Brahms."
Shirer details other events, coincidental happenings, bizarre twists of fate, innocuous, banal events that somehow came together to produce Hitler. They were not causes. They are "but for" events, evidence almost of a diabolus ex machina involved. It was as if all the parts of the toaster were put into the paper bag, shaken vigorously and out came the gas chambers.
Among this category of events, was the fortuity of his Hitler's last name. Hitler's father was born "Alois Schiklgruber," his mother's name because he was born illegitimate. The father lived under that name until age 39 when, bizarrely, the natural father, his own name having evolved from Heidler to Hitler, came forward to acknowledge paternity, whereupon Alois changed his name to Hitler.
"But for" this, Hitler would have been known as "Adolph Schicklgruber." As Shirer says,
"Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous 'Heils.'? 'Heil Schicklgruber!'?...It is a little difficult to imagine."
You can sense Shirer's astonishment at the prominence of these chance events in his language and punctuation: "misfits," "crackpots," "Heil Schicklgrber!?."
And then he quotes from Mein Kamph and Hitler's own account of the beginning of his anti-semitism, which Hitler traced to one particular day, and one specific encounter, with one particular person, while walking in Vienna:
"I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black
sidelocks. Is that a Jew? was my first thought. For to be sure they
had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man furtively and
cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing
feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form:
"is this a German?"...[from that day on] "wherever I went, I began to
see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became
distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity. Later I often
grew sick to the stomach from the smell of these caftan-wearers."
The prominence of these events is psychologically unsettling because of their exemption from rational examination. Rational analysis must fixate on the details of a catastrophe if corrective action is to result. No retrospective analysis could identify and isolate the missteps to be avoided in the future, no seminars could get to the bottom of it, no historian could root it out, and hence the realization that despite our intelligence, despite our capacity for reflection, despite our capability for change--despite, in all, our ability to control our world and hence our fate, events like these show us, to our horror, that we are not in control of our destiny, that no matter what we do, sometimes there will be an event, of pure chance, of the stringing together of banal occurrences that perversely mutate into something monstrous.
There is fixation also on the details of incidents like Hitler's street encounter, not because of their significance in explaining, but just the opposite, because of their insignificance and inability to explain. We examine the details knowing their innocuousness, singly and together, and are incredulous, unable to rationally comprehend the horrific outcome that resulted. Irresistibly the reel is rewound and we see the endless ways the outcome could have been different if one banal detail were exchanged for the other.
What time of day did the encounter occur? Hitler used the word "apparition." Was it then at night so that the man would have seemed more ghostly and menacing? If it had happened in daylight, would the encounter have turned out as it did?
How old was the man? Hitler's age, making the contrast in circumstances more threatening to Hitler? Would that have made a difference in the way Hitler reacted?
Where was the man going?
Where was he coming from?
Did he notice Hitler "staring" at him, "scrutinizing" him? If so, what did he think? We know what Hitler thought.
Where exactly did this occur? On what street? Why did Hitler go THERE that day?
Wherever the man was going, did he take his usual route or did he unexpectedly take a different one at the last minute?
None of these things is causal. That's what's maddening. You can't BLAME them so retrospective analysis can't proscribe against their recurrence, but change any one and astonishingly, maddeningly, the encounter doesn't take place.
Clearly anti-semitism would have come to Hitler, if not on this day then some other. But it did happen on this day, on that street, with that man. Who's to say that on another day the encounter wouldn't have struck Hitler so forcefully?
Who's to say that a delay of even a month or two months in the onset of Hitler's anti-semitism wouldn't have thrown off the timing of his rise to power?
Who's to say that if Hitler were known as Adolph Schicklgruber he wouldn't have become the Nazi leader?
And so, we rewind the film, and we become an observer of this developing catastrophe, to ache at the fall of each snowflake that we know is going to result in the avalanche, and as we're watching, we want to say "no," "don't leave now," "don't go that way," "don't look at him" and we find ourselves powerless to do any of that and to have to just watch as the nightmare unfolds, banal detail by banal detail.
And so I imagine that day. The encounter occurs not in daylight but at dusk. Hitler wanders but, attracted by the architecture of some building, heads in it's direction, toward the Inner City.
The man is in his home, preparing to go to evening services. He is a serious man, his countenance even grave. He heads out onto the street.
It is a winter day and so the days are short. Hitler is cold and, as he always was in Vienna, hungry. The man is well-set. Hitler will unconsciously contrast that with his own gauntness.
The man has a functional coat and a hat. Hitler's coat is worn, thin and ineffective.
As he walks, cold, hungry, tired, Hitler thinks of how Vienna is trying to break him, how he has come to hate the city for it's failure to recognize his talent as an artist, to provide him with the kind of job he feels himself worthy, to feed him, house him and protect him against the cold.
It is not late at night because Hitler, lacking proper shelter, would not have wanted to be out as the city got darker and colder.
The man is thinking of his religion. He is absorbed in thought and walks the same route that he has always walked to the synagogue. He looks at the ground a few paces in front of himself. Hitler just wanders, looking at his surroundings, the buildings and the people.
The man is in middle age, 40's-50's. An elderly man walking with difficulty with a cane might have engendered some sympathy in Hitler, or at least not have seemed as threatening.
Hitler is looking up to keep the building in sight but as he gets closer his view is blocked by the buildings nearer to him and he is unsure now where to turn.
Both men are lost in thought.
Hitler turns down the street. He randomly turns down this street rather than that street and randomly walks on this side of the street rather than on that side and now he and the man are walking toward each other.
The man walks purposefully if mechanically. Hitler walks slowly and aimlessly.
There is a corner in the street. Hitler turns the corner and the man is a few yards in front of him. Lost in thought, Hitler is startled. The man's thought is broken too and he looks up.
Hitler sees a larger man than himself, dressed in black, in clothes foreign to him. The man's hat and full beard make his grave countenance more alien and menacing. The soft gas light of the street lamps obscures the details of his face, making them mysterious.
The two men's eyes meet, Hitler's startled and wide-eyed, the man's sharp and penetrating. In the inadequate light Hitler sees only the eyes and the angular nose that dominates the face.
The two have to alter their strides slightly to pass each other, and they pass so closely they almost brush. As they pass the air carries their smell to the other.
The man continues on, just one of many daily encounters in a big city.
Hitler though is confused by what he has seen. "Is this a Jew?..."Is this a German?" He pauses and then stops. He hears talking, in a foreign tongue.
The man has seen a friend and has stopped to talk. The man and his friend pivot and their positions change, so that now the man is facing down the street he just came, in Hitler's the direction.
After being startled, after being confused, after pausing and hearing men talking, after stopping, Hitler steps around the corner to look further:
"I observed the man furtively and cautiously..."
The man has already forgotten about Hitler and is now absorbed in conversation. Hitler is in his field of vision but only as a dark shadow in the background. The image doesn't consciously register with him.
Hitler continues to look and now "stared at his foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature."
The man ends his conversation with his friend and insouciantly walks away, his back now to Hitler. Hitler continues to stare, oblivious to the man's friend who is now walking toward him. The friend sees Hitler staring down the street, but Hitler does not notice him.
The friend passes Hitler, still staring, and as he gets a few steps past he briefly turns and looks back at this strange little man staring down the street after his friend. He turns back around and continues walking.
Hitler's stare is still fixed on the man going to temple who gets farther and farther away and smaller and smaller in the distance. Hitler continues to stare. In the soft gas light and the deepening gloom of evening the man becomes just a black form on the streetscape. Hitler continues to stare. And the darkness gathers.
-Benjamin Harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
On Gaddis, Dobbins & Luttwak
ON GADDIS, DOBBINS AND LUTTWAK
this is what passes for analysis in foreign policy these days.
edward n. luttwak, in the current edition of foreign affairs magazine, states that ..."the best strategy for the united states [in iraq] is disengagement."
continuing in the introductory paragraph of an article illogically entitled iraq: the logic of disengagement he asseverates that, "in a reversal of the usual sequence, the u.s. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal..."
but he says lubriciously, if his arguments on the succeeding eleven pages fail to persuade on that point, "nevertheless...the withdrawal should still proceed..."
this is logic, if anafractuous logic, of the highest order. we are witnessing a deep and nuanced mind at work.
luttwak's principia is preceeded by james dobbins' exegisis under the clear-headed title of iraq: winning the unwinnable war. such an engagingly contradictory title, so indicative of "insight" into the problem, such evident complexity in the analysis.
the united states is at war in iraq. it is clear that dobbins believes that. his apercu occurs on the first page, "the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in iraq is not one that the united states can win."
ok, a clear statement of position. BUT, and to paraphrase ross perot, here comes the intellectual part, "the war can still be won..." ??? i thought the war could NOT be won.
the endpoint of wisdom is that "the war can still be won--but only by MODERATE IRAQIS..."
ignorant and sloppy readers may have missed the insight, so let's go over it again.
the u.s. is at war in iraq, a war which it cannot win;
but the war can still be won,
by moderate iraqis.
those who ask if therefore it follows that at some point the u.s. was/is/will be NOT at war outward indicia--such as having troops and material on the ground and shooting and getting shot at--to the contrary, are obviously mistaking appearances for reality.
similarly those who ask if moderate iraqis CURRENTLY are involved in the war are being quarrelsome.
those who ask what exactly it was when the regime of saddam hussein fell if not victory in a war, are being deliberately obtuse.
dobbins, like luttwak, sees a u.s. damned if it does withdraw and damned if it doesn't:
"yet if keeping u.s. troops in iraq provokes further resistance,
withdrawing them prematurely could provoke much worse: a
civil war and a regional crisis of unpredictable dimensions."
what to do?
dobbins complies: "a middle course is the best option." THE MIDDLE COURSE, OF COURSE! WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY THINK OF THAT BEFORE?
what is this middle course?
"wielding [ed note: action verb, languid point] the promise of withdrawal...could give washington valuable leverge..." uh-huh. this is sounding positively luttwak-ian.
how so?
by "compelling [ed note: see above] iraqis, iraq's neighbors, and much of the international community to look beyond their desire to see the united states chastened and toward their shared interest in iraq's long-term stability."
ooh, isn't that a little disappointing even to dobbins fans? first of all, "compel" seems inappropriate. is this really going to "compel" anyone to do anything? to "force" anybody to do anything?
but then that mushiness: "iraq's neighbors and, much of the international community..."
how much?, which much?--will be "compelled" "to look beyond their desire to see the u.s. chastened...?"
two of iraq's neighbors are iran and syria. mr. dobbins is seriously arguing that "wielding the promise of withdrawal" will "compel" iran and syria to work toward a long-term stable iraq.
let's also pause on this statement, "to look beyond their desire to see the u.s. chastened."
isn't that suggestive that the opposition to the u.s. presence in iraq is motivated by petulance and self-interest by states such as france, germany and russia? that is, isn't it suggestive that our international standing, as a consequence of the iraqi war, has nothing to do with fears of the u.s. as a "clear and present danger" (to use john gaddis' words below), of the u.s. acting as an international "policeman," and so on?
professor gaddis says many complementary things about whatever it is that president bush is doing. bush has achieved, he says,
"...far more...than any previous american administration
has achieved in the middle east."
...
"the military campaign [against iraq] proceeded as anticipated..."
...
"...on october 9, 2004, millions of afghans lined up to vote
in an election that had no precedent in their nation's long
history. had anyone predicted this three years ago, the
response would have been incredulity--if not doubts about
sanity."
...
"the narrowest gap between bush's intentions and his
accomplishments has to do with preventing another
major attack on the united states."
but professor gaddis takes the bushies to task for "conflating" the doctrines of "pre-emption" and "prevention." the former is good because "international law and practice had long allowed such actions to forestall clear and immediately present dangers."
prevention-"reserv[ing] the right to pre-empt perceived dangers by starting a preventive war"-is fraught with dangers because...
BECAUSE, "the united states itself will appear to much of the world as a clear and present danger,"
BECAUSE "for the world's most powerful state suddenly to announce that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states whenever it chooses cannot help but make all other states nervous,"
BECAUSE, "as the political scientist g. john ikenberry has pointed out, washington's policy of pre-emption has created the image of a global policeman who reports to no higher authority and no longer allows locks on citizens' doors."
BECAUSE, "americans within a year and a half [of 9/11] found their country widely regarded as an international pariah."
let all of that sink in.
the united states is "WIDELY REGARDED" as an "INTERNATIONAL PARIAH."
the united states, in pursuing a course of prevention, will appear, to "MUCH OF THE WORLD" as a "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER."
wow. "widely regarded," "much of the world;" not as bad as "universally regarded" or "most of the world", but still a lot obviously. question though: is gaddis' "much of the world" the same as dobbins "much of the international community." it seems that the same analytical precision informs both.
who exactly?
france? does it think that "whenever it chooses" america may decide to "violate its sovereignty?"
china? do the chinese really think we are a "clear and present danger" to them?
germany, russia, india, brazil, canada, are they "nervous" that the u.s. may attack them?
how about if we take it by continents.
europe, anybody here for the u.s. as a "clear and present danger?" do i see one hand? poland, i can't see you back there? luxembourg, where are you hiding?
professor gaddis, which country(ies) in europe feel that the united states is a "clear and present danger?" is there one?
how about asia? japan, the u.s., pariah or no? cambodia? tibet? richard gere, what say ye?
is there one? professor gaddis, who am i missing?
australia?
sub-saharan africa? south africa, is it true you're building underground bomb shelters and instructing your school children in the art of "duck and cover" because the u.s. may a-bomb johannesburg? you're not?
south america. you brazilians, chileans, argentines, anybody battening down the hatches down there?
who in south america, professor gaddis?
professor gaddis is a practiced user of bogeyman overstatement masquerading as scholarship.
and of the straw man argument. for example he states that, "the president and his advisers seem to have concluded" that the international "status quo everywhere needed shaking up. once that had happened, the pieces would realign themselves in patterns favorable to u.s. interests."
yes, one sees in one's mind's eye paul wolfowitz, dick cheney and donald rumsfeld sitting in the basement of the pentagon saying to each other, "i think if we just shock & awe the world a little and really shake things up the pieces will just naturally realign themselves in our favor."
and what, in the paragraph above, was just a "seeming" mode of thought on the part of the bushies, becomes in gaddis next paragraph, on page 15, a fact:
"the assumption that things would fall neatly into place
after the shock was administered was the single greatest
misjudgment of the first bush administration."
how did we get from here to there?
for all three of our worthies, the solution to all of these problems is international involvement in all of its forms.
for gaddis, bush's "strategy of pre-emption by consent did not get consent, and this was a major failure."
for dobbins it is not only that cohort of moderate iraqis who must win the war--that they may or may not have been, or be, in--but that the war can only be won if those iraqi swing voters "concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, [and] securing the support of the broader international community."
this is the dobbins plan: the bush administration should name a special iraq envoy" to "launch"[ed note: see above] "several simultaneous sets of consultations on the issue":
"one...should center on major u.s. allies, in particular the united kingdom, france, and germany...
"another...should involve all of iraq's neighbors and other regional states." so we shall see disinterested democratic neighbors such as iran and syria at the bargaining table.
also, "expanded roles for the un, nato, the arab league, and the organization of the islamic conference...should also emerge from these consultations."
how one man, our special envoy, is to "simultaneously" be in all these places is the least problem here. or perhaps there is to be one big, BIG table for all the participants.
substantively, this is just mansuetude nonsense, career civil service, academic, think tank, wonk talk. nothing is going to be compelled of these nations by our promise of withdrawal and nothing, other than divvying up iraq's spoils, and counterbalancing u.s. power, motivates states such as russia, germany and france.
regional groups like the arab league and the organization of the islamic conference were impotent to prevent or ameliorate any number of regional catastrophes like the iran-iraq war, iraq's invasion of kuwait, the takeover of afghanistan by the taliban, the continuation of the israeli-palestinian conflict; they were unable to prevent saddam hussein from gassing his own people or to persuade him to submit to un weapons inspections.
if they had had power they would have wielded it. they didn't, and they dont.
the u.s., the only nation that does, should not invite those who can do and who have done nothing to the table to decide what is to be done.
luttwak's argument must get extended treatment here. he, of the the-u.s.-hand-will-be-strengthened-by-withdrawal-but-even-if-it-is-not-it-should-still-withdraw position, gets himself so tangled up in complexity and nuance that, to borrow from gaddis, he "seems" to be sitting in a corner of a room playing with a ball of string and suddenly finds himself all tied up.
now follow along. we must withdraw because:
(1) to "the vast majority of iraqis...[a]s opinion polls and countless incidents demonstrate, americans and their allies are widely [ed. note: "widely," see gaddis above] hated as the worst of invaders, out to rob muslim iraqis not only of their territory and oil, but also of their religion and family honor." (p. 28)
(2) "the plain fact is that there are not enough aspiring democrats in iraq to sustain democratic institutions." (p. 30)
(3) "an already difficult task has been made altogether impossible by the refusal of iraqi teachers, journalists, and publicists-let alone preachers-to be instructed and to instruct others in democratic ways" (p. 29)
that's a pretty compelling litany for withdrawal it must be allowed. but we MUSN'T don't you see.
you don't?
luttwak explains: "yet iraq cannot be evacuated..." because "civil war of one kind or another would almost certainly follow."(p. 30). in the next paragraph luttwak continues, "the probable consequences of abandoning iraq are so bleak, in fact, that few are willing to contemplate them. that is a mistake."
luttwak allows as how he is one of the few, the proud, the contemplators. in the optimistically titled section "how to avoid a rout," luttwak says,
"it is precisely because unpredictable mayhem is
so predictable that the united states might be able
to disengage from iraq at little cost, or perhaps even
advantageously." the brain whirls.
luttwak calls for a "well-calculated retreat," and shows clearly how the u.s. hand could be so strengthened in the eyes of helpful peace partners like iran and syria.
on iran: "iran, for its part has much to fear from anarchy in iraq, which would present it with more dangers than opportunities." further, along the same train of thought, "anarchy in iraq would threaten not merely iran's stability, but also its territorial integrity."
to avoid this holocaust (which luttwak admits the present iranian government is doing much to foster (false consciousness, perhaps)), iran need only take baby steps. as dave barry would say, i am not making this up. this is actually what luttwak says:
"washington would not need to demand much from
the iranians: only the end of subversion, arms trafficking,
hostile propaganda, and hezbollah infiltration in iraq."
not "much," "only" those things. oh yeah, well we'll just send a copy of foreign affairs over to the ayatollah and that'll do the trick.
TWO pages later, on page 35, in turning his attention to how a well-calculated u.s. retreat would also benefit the saudis, luttwak gets his hands all tied up,
"an anarchical iraq would endanger the saudi regime...
not least by...offering iran a tempting playground for
expansion."
so an anarchical iraq both threatens iran and presents them with a "tempting playground for expansion." heads you win, tails we lose!
as with iran, so with syria. the light is so clear for opthamologist asad to see,
"for all its anti-american bluster, the syrian regime is
unlikely to risk confrontation [in upsetting the u.s. well-
calculated retreat] especially when so little is asked of it:
a closure of the syria-iraq border to extremists and the
end of hezbollah activities in iraq (funded by iran but
authorized by syria)."
see, bashir?
both gaddis and luttwak use history to inform their positions and both invoke the example of world war ii.
luttwak concedes that,
"if iraq could indeed be transformed into a successful
democracy by a more prolonged occupation, as germany
and japan were after 1945, then of course any disengagement
would be a great mistake. in both of those countries, however,
by the time u.s. occupation forces arrived the local populations
were already throughly disenthralled from violent ideologies,
and so they eagerly collaborated with their occupiers to construct
democratic institutions." (p. 27)
this is how gaddis uses world war ii:
"it is easy to say that this [international support] does not matter--
that a nation as strong as the united states need not worry about
what others think of it. but that simply is not true. to see why,
compare the american and soviet spheres of influence in europe
during the cold war. the first operated with the consent of those
within it. the second did not, and that made an enormous difference
quite unrelated to the military strength each side could bring to
bear in the region. the lesson her is clear: influence, to be sustained,
requires not just power but also the absence of resistance..." (p. 6)
what both scholars elide here is the persuasive effect that actions such as the atomic bomb and the firebombing of dresden had on "disenthralling" our wwii enemies of their "violent ideologies." those were the empyrean of "shock & awe," a phrase gaddis uses. the "absence of resistance" can be efficiently accomplished by killing those who resist. but to follow through on the wwii parallels that they themselves introduce, to define for themselves and their readers what they mean by "war" and why a nation's full military arsenal should not be available to it in "war, to think these thoughts, is infradig. better to assert that the war is "unwinnable" and urge a "well-calculated retreat."
the united states did not need its allies consent to declare war after december 7. the united states did not need it after september 11, nor does it now.
gaddis, dobbins and luttwak are all esteemed members of the foreign policy intellegentsia in america, as is foreign affairs itself, and they are part of the problem.
we are in a doctrinal vacuum; gaddis is right when he says that it "seems" that the bushies are doing foreign policy by the seat of their pants, but he, and luttwak and dobbins contribute nothing, they muddy the waters to make them look deep.
we are in a doctrinal vacuum but they fail to articulate the most fundamental premises of such a discussion and fail to present anything like the superstructure that america needs to confront the post-9/11 world, a superstructure that george kennan provided in his famous "mr. x" article in the same pages of foreign affairs a half century ago.
where have you gone, mr. x, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
-benjamin harris
this is what passes for analysis in foreign policy these days.
edward n. luttwak, in the current edition of foreign affairs magazine, states that ..."the best strategy for the united states [in iraq] is disengagement."
continuing in the introductory paragraph of an article illogically entitled iraq: the logic of disengagement he asseverates that, "in a reversal of the usual sequence, the u.s. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal..."
but he says lubriciously, if his arguments on the succeeding eleven pages fail to persuade on that point, "nevertheless...the withdrawal should still proceed..."
this is logic, if anafractuous logic, of the highest order. we are witnessing a deep and nuanced mind at work.
luttwak's principia is preceeded by james dobbins' exegisis under the clear-headed title of iraq: winning the unwinnable war. such an engagingly contradictory title, so indicative of "insight" into the problem, such evident complexity in the analysis.
the united states is at war in iraq. it is clear that dobbins believes that. his apercu occurs on the first page, "the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in iraq is not one that the united states can win."
ok, a clear statement of position. BUT, and to paraphrase ross perot, here comes the intellectual part, "the war can still be won..." ??? i thought the war could NOT be won.
the endpoint of wisdom is that "the war can still be won--but only by MODERATE IRAQIS..."
ignorant and sloppy readers may have missed the insight, so let's go over it again.
the u.s. is at war in iraq, a war which it cannot win;
but the war can still be won,
by moderate iraqis.
those who ask if therefore it follows that at some point the u.s. was/is/will be NOT at war outward indicia--such as having troops and material on the ground and shooting and getting shot at--to the contrary, are obviously mistaking appearances for reality.
similarly those who ask if moderate iraqis CURRENTLY are involved in the war are being quarrelsome.
those who ask what exactly it was when the regime of saddam hussein fell if not victory in a war, are being deliberately obtuse.
dobbins, like luttwak, sees a u.s. damned if it does withdraw and damned if it doesn't:
"yet if keeping u.s. troops in iraq provokes further resistance,
withdrawing them prematurely could provoke much worse: a
civil war and a regional crisis of unpredictable dimensions."
what to do?
dobbins complies: "a middle course is the best option." THE MIDDLE COURSE, OF COURSE! WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY THINK OF THAT BEFORE?
what is this middle course?
"wielding [ed note: action verb, languid point] the promise of withdrawal...could give washington valuable leverge..." uh-huh. this is sounding positively luttwak-ian.
how so?
by "compelling [ed note: see above] iraqis, iraq's neighbors, and much of the international community to look beyond their desire to see the united states chastened and toward their shared interest in iraq's long-term stability."
ooh, isn't that a little disappointing even to dobbins fans? first of all, "compel" seems inappropriate. is this really going to "compel" anyone to do anything? to "force" anybody to do anything?
but then that mushiness: "iraq's neighbors and, much of the international community..."
how much?, which much?--will be "compelled" "to look beyond their desire to see the u.s. chastened...?"
two of iraq's neighbors are iran and syria. mr. dobbins is seriously arguing that "wielding the promise of withdrawal" will "compel" iran and syria to work toward a long-term stable iraq.
let's also pause on this statement, "to look beyond their desire to see the u.s. chastened."
isn't that suggestive that the opposition to the u.s. presence in iraq is motivated by petulance and self-interest by states such as france, germany and russia? that is, isn't it suggestive that our international standing, as a consequence of the iraqi war, has nothing to do with fears of the u.s. as a "clear and present danger" (to use john gaddis' words below), of the u.s. acting as an international "policeman," and so on?
professor gaddis says many complementary things about whatever it is that president bush is doing. bush has achieved, he says,
"...far more...than any previous american administration
has achieved in the middle east."
...
"the military campaign [against iraq] proceeded as anticipated..."
...
"...on october 9, 2004, millions of afghans lined up to vote
in an election that had no precedent in their nation's long
history. had anyone predicted this three years ago, the
response would have been incredulity--if not doubts about
sanity."
...
"the narrowest gap between bush's intentions and his
accomplishments has to do with preventing another
major attack on the united states."
but professor gaddis takes the bushies to task for "conflating" the doctrines of "pre-emption" and "prevention." the former is good because "international law and practice had long allowed such actions to forestall clear and immediately present dangers."
prevention-"reserv[ing] the right to pre-empt perceived dangers by starting a preventive war"-is fraught with dangers because...
BECAUSE, "the united states itself will appear to much of the world as a clear and present danger,"
BECAUSE "for the world's most powerful state suddenly to announce that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states whenever it chooses cannot help but make all other states nervous,"
BECAUSE, "as the political scientist g. john ikenberry has pointed out, washington's policy of pre-emption has created the image of a global policeman who reports to no higher authority and no longer allows locks on citizens' doors."
BECAUSE, "americans within a year and a half [of 9/11] found their country widely regarded as an international pariah."
let all of that sink in.
the united states is "WIDELY REGARDED" as an "INTERNATIONAL PARIAH."
the united states, in pursuing a course of prevention, will appear, to "MUCH OF THE WORLD" as a "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER."
wow. "widely regarded," "much of the world;" not as bad as "universally regarded" or "most of the world", but still a lot obviously. question though: is gaddis' "much of the world" the same as dobbins "much of the international community." it seems that the same analytical precision informs both.
who exactly?
france? does it think that "whenever it chooses" america may decide to "violate its sovereignty?"
china? do the chinese really think we are a "clear and present danger" to them?
germany, russia, india, brazil, canada, are they "nervous" that the u.s. may attack them?
how about if we take it by continents.
europe, anybody here for the u.s. as a "clear and present danger?" do i see one hand? poland, i can't see you back there? luxembourg, where are you hiding?
professor gaddis, which country(ies) in europe feel that the united states is a "clear and present danger?" is there one?
how about asia? japan, the u.s., pariah or no? cambodia? tibet? richard gere, what say ye?
is there one? professor gaddis, who am i missing?
australia?
sub-saharan africa? south africa, is it true you're building underground bomb shelters and instructing your school children in the art of "duck and cover" because the u.s. may a-bomb johannesburg? you're not?
south america. you brazilians, chileans, argentines, anybody battening down the hatches down there?
who in south america, professor gaddis?
professor gaddis is a practiced user of bogeyman overstatement masquerading as scholarship.
and of the straw man argument. for example he states that, "the president and his advisers seem to have concluded" that the international "status quo everywhere needed shaking up. once that had happened, the pieces would realign themselves in patterns favorable to u.s. interests."
yes, one sees in one's mind's eye paul wolfowitz, dick cheney and donald rumsfeld sitting in the basement of the pentagon saying to each other, "i think if we just shock & awe the world a little and really shake things up the pieces will just naturally realign themselves in our favor."
and what, in the paragraph above, was just a "seeming" mode of thought on the part of the bushies, becomes in gaddis next paragraph, on page 15, a fact:
"the assumption that things would fall neatly into place
after the shock was administered was the single greatest
misjudgment of the first bush administration."
how did we get from here to there?
for all three of our worthies, the solution to all of these problems is international involvement in all of its forms.
for gaddis, bush's "strategy of pre-emption by consent did not get consent, and this was a major failure."
for dobbins it is not only that cohort of moderate iraqis who must win the war--that they may or may not have been, or be, in--but that the war can only be won if those iraqi swing voters "concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, [and] securing the support of the broader international community."
this is the dobbins plan: the bush administration should name a special iraq envoy" to "launch"[ed note: see above] "several simultaneous sets of consultations on the issue":
"one...should center on major u.s. allies, in particular the united kingdom, france, and germany...
"another...should involve all of iraq's neighbors and other regional states." so we shall see disinterested democratic neighbors such as iran and syria at the bargaining table.
also, "expanded roles for the un, nato, the arab league, and the organization of the islamic conference...should also emerge from these consultations."
how one man, our special envoy, is to "simultaneously" be in all these places is the least problem here. or perhaps there is to be one big, BIG table for all the participants.
substantively, this is just mansuetude nonsense, career civil service, academic, think tank, wonk talk. nothing is going to be compelled of these nations by our promise of withdrawal and nothing, other than divvying up iraq's spoils, and counterbalancing u.s. power, motivates states such as russia, germany and france.
regional groups like the arab league and the organization of the islamic conference were impotent to prevent or ameliorate any number of regional catastrophes like the iran-iraq war, iraq's invasion of kuwait, the takeover of afghanistan by the taliban, the continuation of the israeli-palestinian conflict; they were unable to prevent saddam hussein from gassing his own people or to persuade him to submit to un weapons inspections.
if they had had power they would have wielded it. they didn't, and they dont.
the u.s., the only nation that does, should not invite those who can do and who have done nothing to the table to decide what is to be done.
luttwak's argument must get extended treatment here. he, of the the-u.s.-hand-will-be-strengthened-by-withdrawal-but-even-if-it-is-not-it-should-still-withdraw position, gets himself so tangled up in complexity and nuance that, to borrow from gaddis, he "seems" to be sitting in a corner of a room playing with a ball of string and suddenly finds himself all tied up.
now follow along. we must withdraw because:
(1) to "the vast majority of iraqis...[a]s opinion polls and countless incidents demonstrate, americans and their allies are widely [ed. note: "widely," see gaddis above] hated as the worst of invaders, out to rob muslim iraqis not only of their territory and oil, but also of their religion and family honor." (p. 28)
(2) "the plain fact is that there are not enough aspiring democrats in iraq to sustain democratic institutions." (p. 30)
(3) "an already difficult task has been made altogether impossible by the refusal of iraqi teachers, journalists, and publicists-let alone preachers-to be instructed and to instruct others in democratic ways" (p. 29)
that's a pretty compelling litany for withdrawal it must be allowed. but we MUSN'T don't you see.
you don't?
luttwak explains: "yet iraq cannot be evacuated..." because "civil war of one kind or another would almost certainly follow."(p. 30). in the next paragraph luttwak continues, "the probable consequences of abandoning iraq are so bleak, in fact, that few are willing to contemplate them. that is a mistake."
luttwak allows as how he is one of the few, the proud, the contemplators. in the optimistically titled section "how to avoid a rout," luttwak says,
"it is precisely because unpredictable mayhem is
so predictable that the united states might be able
to disengage from iraq at little cost, or perhaps even
advantageously." the brain whirls.
luttwak calls for a "well-calculated retreat," and shows clearly how the u.s. hand could be so strengthened in the eyes of helpful peace partners like iran and syria.
on iran: "iran, for its part has much to fear from anarchy in iraq, which would present it with more dangers than opportunities." further, along the same train of thought, "anarchy in iraq would threaten not merely iran's stability, but also its territorial integrity."
to avoid this holocaust (which luttwak admits the present iranian government is doing much to foster (false consciousness, perhaps)), iran need only take baby steps. as dave barry would say, i am not making this up. this is actually what luttwak says:
"washington would not need to demand much from
the iranians: only the end of subversion, arms trafficking,
hostile propaganda, and hezbollah infiltration in iraq."
not "much," "only" those things. oh yeah, well we'll just send a copy of foreign affairs over to the ayatollah and that'll do the trick.
TWO pages later, on page 35, in turning his attention to how a well-calculated u.s. retreat would also benefit the saudis, luttwak gets his hands all tied up,
"an anarchical iraq would endanger the saudi regime...
not least by...offering iran a tempting playground for
expansion."
so an anarchical iraq both threatens iran and presents them with a "tempting playground for expansion." heads you win, tails we lose!
as with iran, so with syria. the light is so clear for opthamologist asad to see,
"for all its anti-american bluster, the syrian regime is
unlikely to risk confrontation [in upsetting the u.s. well-
calculated retreat] especially when so little is asked of it:
a closure of the syria-iraq border to extremists and the
end of hezbollah activities in iraq (funded by iran but
authorized by syria)."
see, bashir?
both gaddis and luttwak use history to inform their positions and both invoke the example of world war ii.
luttwak concedes that,
"if iraq could indeed be transformed into a successful
democracy by a more prolonged occupation, as germany
and japan were after 1945, then of course any disengagement
would be a great mistake. in both of those countries, however,
by the time u.s. occupation forces arrived the local populations
were already throughly disenthralled from violent ideologies,
and so they eagerly collaborated with their occupiers to construct
democratic institutions." (p. 27)
this is how gaddis uses world war ii:
"it is easy to say that this [international support] does not matter--
that a nation as strong as the united states need not worry about
what others think of it. but that simply is not true. to see why,
compare the american and soviet spheres of influence in europe
during the cold war. the first operated with the consent of those
within it. the second did not, and that made an enormous difference
quite unrelated to the military strength each side could bring to
bear in the region. the lesson her is clear: influence, to be sustained,
requires not just power but also the absence of resistance..." (p. 6)
what both scholars elide here is the persuasive effect that actions such as the atomic bomb and the firebombing of dresden had on "disenthralling" our wwii enemies of their "violent ideologies." those were the empyrean of "shock & awe," a phrase gaddis uses. the "absence of resistance" can be efficiently accomplished by killing those who resist. but to follow through on the wwii parallels that they themselves introduce, to define for themselves and their readers what they mean by "war" and why a nation's full military arsenal should not be available to it in "war, to think these thoughts, is infradig. better to assert that the war is "unwinnable" and urge a "well-calculated retreat."
the united states did not need its allies consent to declare war after december 7. the united states did not need it after september 11, nor does it now.
gaddis, dobbins and luttwak are all esteemed members of the foreign policy intellegentsia in america, as is foreign affairs itself, and they are part of the problem.
we are in a doctrinal vacuum; gaddis is right when he says that it "seems" that the bushies are doing foreign policy by the seat of their pants, but he, and luttwak and dobbins contribute nothing, they muddy the waters to make them look deep.
we are in a doctrinal vacuum but they fail to articulate the most fundamental premises of such a discussion and fail to present anything like the superstructure that america needs to confront the post-9/11 world, a superstructure that george kennan provided in his famous "mr. x" article in the same pages of foreign affairs a half century ago.
where have you gone, mr. x, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
-benjamin harris
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
ugh, richard wagner. what do you do about him? i put him on tonight and got the pick me up i needed. so stirring, emotional, MASCULINE. but he was a proto-nazi.
first time i heard him was last year at carnegie hall with michelle. got tickets 'cause i had never been to carnegie hall. didn't care what the program was. when we sat down i pointed it out to michelle and told her if she wanted to go it was fine with me. we stayed. daniel baranbohm conducting. didn't know him or the significance either.
first "cole ne vay"(ph), the familiar jewish piece. michelle was moved to tears. then something else. then wagner. wagner is dramatic to WATCH. one part of the orchestra begins, the others silent. then another comes in, tentatively then more strongly, then another part of the orchestra is involved.
wagner pits one section against the other. the spirit of the music just builds. baranbohm conducted masculinely. he has a little stern look anyway and his concentration was intense. he looked angry. he ORDERED the different sections of the orchestra with his baton. he thrust with his other hand to another section. his hair flopped. it was like he was a general in battle.
the music swept through the stage and out into the audience like a sunami. i was immersed as i watched and listened, elbows on knees and was PHYSICALLY moved, actually knocked back a few inches as the music built and built and then crescendoed into the hall.
intermission was welcome. michelle and i looked at each other like, "what had we just seen?"
but what do you do about his politics. and here, he deliberately merged politics and music. his music was SUPPOSED to have the effect it had, unsuspectingly, on michelle and me. hitler's favorite composer. baranbohm, jewish, conducting. and conducting it in israel, to loud protests. isn't that almost deliberately provocative? isn't that a too over-the-top demonstration of...what, "tolerance" for diversity, keeping art "pure", what?
and what of us who paid to hear him?
-benjamin harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
first time i heard him was last year at carnegie hall with michelle. got tickets 'cause i had never been to carnegie hall. didn't care what the program was. when we sat down i pointed it out to michelle and told her if she wanted to go it was fine with me. we stayed. daniel baranbohm conducting. didn't know him or the significance either.
first "cole ne vay"(ph), the familiar jewish piece. michelle was moved to tears. then something else. then wagner. wagner is dramatic to WATCH. one part of the orchestra begins, the others silent. then another comes in, tentatively then more strongly, then another part of the orchestra is involved.
wagner pits one section against the other. the spirit of the music just builds. baranbohm conducted masculinely. he has a little stern look anyway and his concentration was intense. he looked angry. he ORDERED the different sections of the orchestra with his baton. he thrust with his other hand to another section. his hair flopped. it was like he was a general in battle.
the music swept through the stage and out into the audience like a sunami. i was immersed as i watched and listened, elbows on knees and was PHYSICALLY moved, actually knocked back a few inches as the music built and built and then crescendoed into the hall.
intermission was welcome. michelle and i looked at each other like, "what had we just seen?"
but what do you do about his politics. and here, he deliberately merged politics and music. his music was SUPPOSED to have the effect it had, unsuspectingly, on michelle and me. hitler's favorite composer. baranbohm, jewish, conducting. and conducting it in israel, to loud protests. isn't that almost deliberately provocative? isn't that a too over-the-top demonstration of...what, "tolerance" for diversity, keeping art "pure", what?
and what of us who paid to hear him?
-benjamin harris
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
Monday, December 06, 2004
On Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
On Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. *
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. *
the case of oliver wendel holmes, jr. just went from ambivalence to poignancy with me.
when i was in grad school i had read mark dewolfe howe's "shaping years" bio of holmes. at the time i thought the book was a little hagiographic but the reality of holmes needed no embellishment. he was brilliant, accomplished, famous, urbane, tall, handsome and a war hero, one who makes you want to just throw up your hands in disgust because he had it all and excelled at everything.
when he enlisted in the civil war he was on a moral crusade. he had been a body guard for one of the most fiery abolitionist orators of the day. after ft. sumter he abruptly dropped out of harvard and when he found out his regiment wasn't slated to head south and fight he joined one that was.
the civil war changed holmes, i knew that. he had been seriously wounded on three different occasions and saw his share of the slaughter that that war is infamous for. he had come out of it steeled, even more rationally inclined than before and he had lost much of his pre-war empathy for people. he never disavowed his abolitionist sentiments but he became cynical about any cause and contemptous of those, like his earlier self, who espoused them.
he was born a boston brahmin and after the war lived the part as intellectual, jurist, well-deserved elite. i remember the later pictures of him in howe's book. he was a very intimidating man even to look at and read about.
i don't know if i knew then about his infamous opinion in the sourth carolina sterilization case ("three generations of idiots are enough") but i remember feeling a coldness and heartlessness in holmes that kept me from placing him in my own personal pantheon of heroes. he and his wife were childless and i wondered about that. howe did not address it. a lack of intimacy with his wife? she was HOT but that didn't necessarily mean anything. maybe he disliked children, which would go along with his coldness.
thus my ambivalence. he was a titan in every way but i don't like elitists even elitists with cause, i don't like mean people, and i don't like people who don't like kids.
now i read louis menand's account of him (1).
menand's book is about the men, holmes being one of them, who instantiate pragmatism, a philosophy that is uniquely and distinctively american and which is criticized as being without a moral center, where "eternal values" are instead seen as historically contingent and where there are many, or no, truths. it is a philosophy that could be created by a brilliant man who had just seen his own values and truths, and so many lives, shattered by war. what i did not know was that the war shattered holmes too.
"he told me, a friend said, "that after the civil war the world never seemed quite right again."
why did he not have children? because "this is not the kind of world i want to bring anyone else into."
sixty-seven years after the war, when he was 93 years old "holmes tried to read aloud to marion frankfurter, felix frankfurter's wife, a poem he liked about the civil war, but he broke down in tears before he could finish it."
holmes never got over the civil war. as he once wrote to his father, "i am not the same man.' the truth is that man was dead now, and the corporeal holmes, the "remains," mourned him every day for the rest of his life. as menand says, the tears he shed before marion frankfurter "were tears for what the war had destroyed." he had to remain aloof. his coldness was his way of coping. "he doesn't show emotion, not because he doesn't feel, but because he feels so deeply."
in the late winter of 1934, holmes began quietly getting his affairs in order. he thought much of the war, of henry abbott, of ball's bluff and antietam, of his wounding and his terror and his resolve never to let it show. he sat in his library thinking of these things and he scratched out something on a small piece of paper. he then rose unsteadily and walked over to the small closet in the library where they were kept and pinned the piece of paper to them:
"these uniforms were worn by me in the civil war and the stains upon them are my blood."
*dickens, a tale of two cities.
-benjamin harris
(1) the metaphysical club
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
when i was in grad school i had read mark dewolfe howe's "shaping years" bio of holmes. at the time i thought the book was a little hagiographic but the reality of holmes needed no embellishment. he was brilliant, accomplished, famous, urbane, tall, handsome and a war hero, one who makes you want to just throw up your hands in disgust because he had it all and excelled at everything.
when he enlisted in the civil war he was on a moral crusade. he had been a body guard for one of the most fiery abolitionist orators of the day. after ft. sumter he abruptly dropped out of harvard and when he found out his regiment wasn't slated to head south and fight he joined one that was.
the civil war changed holmes, i knew that. he had been seriously wounded on three different occasions and saw his share of the slaughter that that war is infamous for. he had come out of it steeled, even more rationally inclined than before and he had lost much of his pre-war empathy for people. he never disavowed his abolitionist sentiments but he became cynical about any cause and contemptous of those, like his earlier self, who espoused them.
he was born a boston brahmin and after the war lived the part as intellectual, jurist, well-deserved elite. i remember the later pictures of him in howe's book. he was a very intimidating man even to look at and read about.
i don't know if i knew then about his infamous opinion in the sourth carolina sterilization case ("three generations of idiots are enough") but i remember feeling a coldness and heartlessness in holmes that kept me from placing him in my own personal pantheon of heroes. he and his wife were childless and i wondered about that. howe did not address it. a lack of intimacy with his wife? she was HOT but that didn't necessarily mean anything. maybe he disliked children, which would go along with his coldness.
thus my ambivalence. he was a titan in every way but i don't like elitists even elitists with cause, i don't like mean people, and i don't like people who don't like kids.
now i read louis menand's account of him (1).
menand's book is about the men, holmes being one of them, who instantiate pragmatism, a philosophy that is uniquely and distinctively american and which is criticized as being without a moral center, where "eternal values" are instead seen as historically contingent and where there are many, or no, truths. it is a philosophy that could be created by a brilliant man who had just seen his own values and truths, and so many lives, shattered by war. what i did not know was that the war shattered holmes too.
"he told me, a friend said, "that after the civil war the world never seemed quite right again."
why did he not have children? because "this is not the kind of world i want to bring anyone else into."
sixty-seven years after the war, when he was 93 years old "holmes tried to read aloud to marion frankfurter, felix frankfurter's wife, a poem he liked about the civil war, but he broke down in tears before he could finish it."
holmes never got over the civil war. as he once wrote to his father, "i am not the same man.' the truth is that man was dead now, and the corporeal holmes, the "remains," mourned him every day for the rest of his life. as menand says, the tears he shed before marion frankfurter "were tears for what the war had destroyed." he had to remain aloof. his coldness was his way of coping. "he doesn't show emotion, not because he doesn't feel, but because he feels so deeply."
in the late winter of 1934, holmes began quietly getting his affairs in order. he thought much of the war, of henry abbott, of ball's bluff and antietam, of his wounding and his terror and his resolve never to let it show. he sat in his library thinking of these things and he scratched out something on a small piece of paper. he then rose unsteadily and walked over to the small closet in the library where they were kept and pinned the piece of paper to them:
"these uniforms were worn by me in the civil war and the stains upon them are my blood."
*dickens, a tale of two cities.
-benjamin harris
(1) the metaphysical club
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
Friday, December 03, 2004
FISH STORY
we used to vacation every summer at a lake in upstate new york. there is much merit to vacationing in the same place all the time. it's a home-away-from-home but it's more than that because at home dad had to go to work and we had to go to school. a vacation home has none of that responsibility and none of the daily humdrum, yet you're with your family and in a house you have come to think of as a home.
so you have this idyllic care-free time that you experience over and over again in the same place. and all of the sensations in your memory are good ones and bring back the experience of the whole. even now i can still smell the way our cottage smelled, i can still hear the sound the water made as it lapped at the shore, i can still hear the sound our footsteps made on the wooden outside steps and on the porch.
we always stayed in the same place, rew's cottage. mr. rew had yellow buck teeth and had his own house next door. the cottage was just that, exposed beam ceiling, spartan. we didn't stay there because it was "charming" or "quaint" but because that's what mum and dad could afford. dad was the sole breadwinner of course and there were four children.
lake chatauqua was renowned for a couple of things, neither of which were the reason we went there. one was the world-famous chatauqua institute, a medium-brow intellectual and cultural center with its own potemkin village of truly charming pastel-painted gingerbread cottages. the institute sponsered concerts and lectures--woodrow wilson spoke there once if memory serves--and the concept became quite popular in fin de siecle america. "chatauquas" sprang up all over the country.
the other draw of lake chatauqua was the fishing, specifically its muskelunge fishing. the muskelunge, or "muskie", is a deep, cold-water lake fish, a cousin of the pike, and is prized for its fighting ability. the muskies grew huge in lake chatauqua and pictures of fishermen holding them, 4'-5' in length with the distended bellies of the prize catch were in all the fishing cottages along the lake.
my dad didn't fish so we never went muskie fishing out on the lake but when i was eight or nine years old my oldest brother introduced me to fishing. we fished streams where the catch was trout. after that i fished off the dock at lake chatauqua whenever we were there.
our white dock extended out 30'-40' into the lake and to a point where the lake was then about 6' deep and unpleasantly cold at the bottom, even in june.
one summer there when i was ten or eleven and had been fishing for 2-3 years i noticed a female rock bass that had made its nest under a portion of the dock at a depth of maybe 4'. the water was clear and you could easily see the fish. it was decent size, maybe 8"-12", larger than normal for a fish that close to shore and i concentrated my fishing "skill" on catching her.
i don't know if the species has the reputation for wiles but this one did. because it was under the dock, i couldn't cast to it in a way that brought the bait by it in a convincingly natural way and the bass would not stray from the shelter of the dock to come out for the bait. dozens of times from every conceivable angle and at all times of day i cast, hoping to lure the rock bass out. i tried leaning over the dock and throwing the bait under to get it to settle by the fish. she would have nothing to do with me. fish can't smirk but this one almost did at my efforts. she would look up at me with those fish eyes and then turn her tail to me dismissively. she was like a pretty girl at a party who you make a clumsy pass at and who is more uninterested by the clumsiness of your attempt. i had as much chance of getting that fish on its back on the dock as i did getting marilyn monroe on her back on the dock.
as you grow up you learn the value of certain qualities. you learn for example that persistence can overcome clumsiness and hone technique, and that summer i learned the value of persistence. one day at dusk, while the rest of the family was in the cottage i went down to the dock to make another pass. cast-rejection, cast-rejection. i then had a "eureka" moment which led to another realization, that ingenuity and creativity can make a female make a BIG MISTAKE. i decided to drop the bait down between the slats in the dock, the way ice-fishermen drop their line through a hole in the ice. the salmon egg dropped into the water and drifted down. it drifted right in front of the rock bass' mouth and i can still see it open its mouth wide and swallow the bait.
she fought gamely, a trait of the bass species, but she was hooked good. i had her, or thought i did. my ingenuity had come hard up against one of my inherited limitations of which i am constantly being reminded: low intelligence. after all, i come from a stock of people who, like many others, left the old world for the new and its streets paved with gold. my people were coal miners in cold, harsh, mountainous northeast england and so decided the place for them was the cold, harsh, mountainous northeastern united states where they became, coal miners.
i began reeling the fish in but realized that my eureka moment had not accounted for the dock being between me and the fish and that there was no way for me to get her topside.
in my excitement i repeatedly yanked at the line, which produced nothing more than a rock bass with a bloody nose as it bumped against the underside of the dock. i screamed for mum and dad and tom, my younger brother. they came bolting through the screen door and raced to the dock to see me frantic with a punch-drunk fish on the end of my line.
ingenuity gave way to persistent clumsy attempts again. i grabbed the line and tried to flip the fish onto the dock. she proved too strong at first but weakened and in that way i finally got her up on the dock. the tables then turned again. when she hit the top of the dock she began thrashing about in the usual manner and dislodged the hook. i pounced on her but she squirted through my arms, off the dock and back into the water. i jumped in after her.
now she was back in her medium and i was out of mine. while back in the safety of the water however she was stunned from all the fighting and didn't swim away right away. i grabbed her and held her against my t-shirt and brought her back onto the dock.
i cleaned and filleted her and that night we ate her and recounted the evening's action, the story of the one that didn't get away.
-benjamin harris.
PUBLICOCCURRENCES
we used to vacation every summer at a lake in upstate new york. there is much merit to vacationing in the same place all the time. it's a home-away-from-home but it's more than that because at home dad had to go to work and we had to go to school. a vacation home has none of that responsibility and none of the daily humdrum, yet you're with your family and in a house you have come to think of as a home.
so you have this idyllic care-free time that you experience over and over again in the same place. and all of the sensations in your memory are good ones and bring back the experience of the whole. even now i can still smell the way our cottage smelled, i can still hear the sound the water made as it lapped at the shore, i can still hear the sound our footsteps made on the wooden outside steps and on the porch.
we always stayed in the same place, rew's cottage. mr. rew had yellow buck teeth and had his own house next door. the cottage was just that, exposed beam ceiling, spartan. we didn't stay there because it was "charming" or "quaint" but because that's what mum and dad could afford. dad was the sole breadwinner of course and there were four children.
lake chatauqua was renowned for a couple of things, neither of which were the reason we went there. one was the world-famous chatauqua institute, a medium-brow intellectual and cultural center with its own potemkin village of truly charming pastel-painted gingerbread cottages. the institute sponsered concerts and lectures--woodrow wilson spoke there once if memory serves--and the concept became quite popular in fin de siecle america. "chatauquas" sprang up all over the country.
the other draw of lake chatauqua was the fishing, specifically its muskelunge fishing. the muskelunge, or "muskie", is a deep, cold-water lake fish, a cousin of the pike, and is prized for its fighting ability. the muskies grew huge in lake chatauqua and pictures of fishermen holding them, 4'-5' in length with the distended bellies of the prize catch were in all the fishing cottages along the lake.
my dad didn't fish so we never went muskie fishing out on the lake but when i was eight or nine years old my oldest brother introduced me to fishing. we fished streams where the catch was trout. after that i fished off the dock at lake chatauqua whenever we were there.
our white dock extended out 30'-40' into the lake and to a point where the lake was then about 6' deep and unpleasantly cold at the bottom, even in june.
one summer there when i was ten or eleven and had been fishing for 2-3 years i noticed a female rock bass that had made its nest under a portion of the dock at a depth of maybe 4'. the water was clear and you could easily see the fish. it was decent size, maybe 8"-12", larger than normal for a fish that close to shore and i concentrated my fishing "skill" on catching her.
i don't know if the species has the reputation for wiles but this one did. because it was under the dock, i couldn't cast to it in a way that brought the bait by it in a convincingly natural way and the bass would not stray from the shelter of the dock to come out for the bait. dozens of times from every conceivable angle and at all times of day i cast, hoping to lure the rock bass out. i tried leaning over the dock and throwing the bait under to get it to settle by the fish. she would have nothing to do with me. fish can't smirk but this one almost did at my efforts. she would look up at me with those fish eyes and then turn her tail to me dismissively. she was like a pretty girl at a party who you make a clumsy pass at and who is more uninterested by the clumsiness of your attempt. i had as much chance of getting that fish on its back on the dock as i did getting marilyn monroe on her back on the dock.
as you grow up you learn the value of certain qualities. you learn for example that persistence can overcome clumsiness and hone technique, and that summer i learned the value of persistence. one day at dusk, while the rest of the family was in the cottage i went down to the dock to make another pass. cast-rejection, cast-rejection. i then had a "eureka" moment which led to another realization, that ingenuity and creativity can make a female make a BIG MISTAKE. i decided to drop the bait down between the slats in the dock, the way ice-fishermen drop their line through a hole in the ice. the salmon egg dropped into the water and drifted down. it drifted right in front of the rock bass' mouth and i can still see it open its mouth wide and swallow the bait.
she fought gamely, a trait of the bass species, but she was hooked good. i had her, or thought i did. my ingenuity had come hard up against one of my inherited limitations of which i am constantly being reminded: low intelligence. after all, i come from a stock of people who, like many others, left the old world for the new and its streets paved with gold. my people were coal miners in cold, harsh, mountainous northeast england and so decided the place for them was the cold, harsh, mountainous northeastern united states where they became, coal miners.
i began reeling the fish in but realized that my eureka moment had not accounted for the dock being between me and the fish and that there was no way for me to get her topside.
in my excitement i repeatedly yanked at the line, which produced nothing more than a rock bass with a bloody nose as it bumped against the underside of the dock. i screamed for mum and dad and tom, my younger brother. they came bolting through the screen door and raced to the dock to see me frantic with a punch-drunk fish on the end of my line.
ingenuity gave way to persistent clumsy attempts again. i grabbed the line and tried to flip the fish onto the dock. she proved too strong at first but weakened and in that way i finally got her up on the dock. the tables then turned again. when she hit the top of the dock she began thrashing about in the usual manner and dislodged the hook. i pounced on her but she squirted through my arms, off the dock and back into the water. i jumped in after her.
now she was back in her medium and i was out of mine. while back in the safety of the water however she was stunned from all the fighting and didn't swim away right away. i grabbed her and held her against my t-shirt and brought her back onto the dock.
i cleaned and filleted her and that night we ate her and recounted the evening's action, the story of the one that didn't get away.
-benjamin harris.
PUBLICOCCURRENCES
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