King Lear by William ShakespeareMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Sunday, June 30, 2024
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Tuesday, June 25, 2024
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Thursday, June 20, 2024
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Review: The Book of the Courtier
The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar CastiglioneMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
...signor Gaspar Pallavicino said: "So that our game may have the form prescribed and that we may not appear to esteem little that privilege of opposing which has been allowed us, I say that to me this nobility of birth does not seem so essential. And if I thought I was uttering anything not already known to us all, I would adduce many instances of persons born of the noblest blood who have been ridden by vices; and, on the contrary, many persons of humble birth who, through their virtue, have made their posterity illustrious. And if what you said just now is true, that there is in all things that hidden force of the first seed, then we should all be of the same condition through having the same source, nor would one man be more noble than another. But I believe that there are many other causes of the differences and the various degrees of elevation and lowliness among us. Among which causes I judge Fortune to be foremost...
lots about proper use of humor and a need for respectful politeness.
18 modesty
20,22 physically fit, athletic, and "worthy in arms"
29 eloquent good writing
30-33 Good conversationalist, eloquent, and social
36 Make a good first impression
51 Humorous without being cruel
[35] Here signor Gaspar Pallavicino replied, laughing: "As reasons to support your opinion, you cite me the doings of women, who for the most part are quite beyond the pale of reason. And if you would tell the whole truth, this man who was favored by so many women must have been a simpleton and practically worthless. For it is the way of women always to favor the worst, and like sheep to do what they see the first one do, be that for good or ill. More- over, they are so jealous among themselves that this man could have been a monster and they would still have tried to steal him away from one another."
Here many began to speak, and nearly everyone wanted to contradict signor Gasparo; but the Duchess imposed si- lence on all, and then said, laughing: "If the evil you speak of women were not so far from the truth that the uttering of it casts blame and shame on him who speaks it rather than on them, I should allow you to be answered. But I do not wish you to be cured of this bad habit by the many reasons that could be adduced to refute you, so that you may incur the direst punishment for your sin, which pun- ishment shall be the bad opinion in which all will hold you who hear you argue so."
Then messer Federico replied: "Signor Gasparo, do not say that women are so beyond the pale of reason, even if sometimes they are more moved to love by others' judg- ment than by their own; for gentlemen and many wise men often do the same. And if I may be allowed to speak the truth, you yourself, and all the rest of us here, do often and even now rely more on the opinion of others than on our own. And in proof of this, it is not long ago that certain verses were presented here as being Sannazaro's
The Magnifico laughed and said: "Signor Gasparo, you cannot help showing your ill will toward women. But, truly, I thought I had said quite enough and especially to such an audience as this; for I think there is none here who does not recognize that, as for bodily exercises, it is not seemly for a woman to handle weapons, ride, play tennis, wrestle, and do many other things that are suited to men."
Then the Unico Aretino said: "With the ancients it was the custom for women to wrestle naked with men, but we have lost that good practice, along with many others." Messer Cesare Gonzaga added: "And, in my time, I have seen women play tennis, handle weapons, ride, hunt, and engage in nearly all the exercises that a cavalier can."
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Sunday, June 16, 2024
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Review: Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest by Beck WeathersMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was excited to read after Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
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Friday, June 14, 2024
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Review: Sodomy Punish'd: Being a True and Exact Relation of What Befel to One Leondert Hussenlosch, a Dutch Man, Who by Command of the Dutch Fleet, Was Put on Shore on the Desolate Island of Ascention.
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Review: Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election
Thursday, May 30, 2024
Review: Timothy Leary: A Biography
Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert GreenfieldMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I never realized how reckless and unhinged Leary was, but this is still a fascinating tale of rebel-pioneer asea in a changing world. His insights into the psychology of the incarcerated seem perceptive.
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Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Review: Democracy and Dictatorship: Their Psychology and Patters of Life
Democracy and Dictatorship: Their Psychology and Patters of Life by Zevedei BarbuMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
There is another aspect of the impact of money upon modern life brilliantly analysed by George Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes). This can be stated briefly as the supremacy of the category of quantity in modern civilization. The tendency characteristic of modern science to look at the quantitative aspect of phenomena is at least partly a result of this trend. The idea of steady progress by adding new small quantities to the old stock is another aspect of the same phenomenon. Most suggestive is Simmel's opinion that democracy, with its central concept of majority, is a financial conception of life. It is number that counts. In this way the author attempts to link democracy with a specific economic system. This perspective is, in our own view, far too narrow.
Niebuhr, in the work mentioned above, points to another problem regarding the connection between tolerance and lack of inner tension. Commenting on the rise of religious tolerance in England he writes: 'It must be admitted that toleration in religion could not possibly have been achieved in any modern democratic society had there not been a considerable decay of traditional religious loyal- ties. Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe anything, said Gilbert Chesterton, quite truly.'* Thus Niebuhr associates tolerance with the weakening of religious faith, and with the weakening of certain emotional factors in human behaviour. Historically this is the result of the process of secularization which took place in the post-Renaissance European societies
...
Eugene L. and Ruth Hartley, using a test of social distance which they complemented with clinical observation, found that the tolerant individuals are interested in imaginary activities, in theories and ideas; that they work with singleness of purpose towards distant goals, that they are serious about moral questions, etc. Obviously, integration at theoretical level and work in the function of distant goals shows, first of all, the presence of leisure, and the lack of that kind of tension which produces direct- ness and rigidity in behaviour by its urgent character. The intolerant individuals, on the other hand, display a mechanical outlook, unwillingness to accept responsibility, dominance of emotional factors, and compulsive reaction by which they tend to escape inner tensions. All this constitutes sources of rigidity in their reactions, and, therefore, intolerance in their character.*
*Hartley, E. L. and R.: Tolerance and Personality Traits. In Readings in Soc. Psychol., N.Y., 1947
Conservatives and Hitler | Jordan B Peterson
People who are right leaning/conservative are more disgust sensitive. When that tilts a little too far, people like Hitler can emerge. From the Joe Rogan Experience #1006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQwUC...
PATTERNS OF INDIVIDUATION UNDER CONDITIONS OF INSECURITY
The main trends of the process of individuation in a psycho- social field of insecurity can be described as follows: 1. The individual grows excessively self-centred. The basic formula I love myself'.
of this personality type is: 'Nobody loves me... The manifestations of this basic formula of individuation are varied. The individual is highly preoccupied with himself, and at the same time has a strong tendency to relate himself to others. His need to be accepted and loved forms a central point in the development of his personality. Social abilities are developed to the maximum in this type of personality. Exactly what these abilities are depends to a great extent on the dominant values of the group. Verbal abilities seem however to rank among the top social abilities in nearly every group. In this sense the individual will show keenness about using the cultural symbols of his own group. But his urgent need for acceptance directs him towards those ideas and that kind of style, written or spoken, which have the highest circulation. The public platform and journalistic writing are among the most adequate means for his ends. He is likely to manifest a marked aversion from heavy and highly elaborated ideologies.
This type of personality possesses a certain degree of psychological insight, but this is limited by the difficulty of making others like and accept him. For, though in contact with others, he is incapable of dialogue. The striving for acceptance by others is seen in a series of other traits of this personality such as amiability, manners, and inclination towards showmanship.
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Saturday, May 25, 2024
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Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Monday, May 13, 2024
Review: The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan PoeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I find with this collection, my opinion on Poe is evolving; becoming more refined. First, this may be better named The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and Other Tales as Poe’s only full-length novel closing out this compendium is the lion's share of the pages. Also, purported as a response to a Poe hoax is completes the bookends with the initial newspaper piece "Balloon-Hoax".
In this realm of writing, I find there is science fiction - tales tethered to scientific facts - and science fantasy - fiction with more magical, mystical premises. Popularly, Poe may be thought more in the fantasy with this "macabre" musings, but really he is more like Jules Verne in that he is tightly bound to a scientific reality, if even he relies on unproven assumptions. Much of that here is of a nautical flavor: "Ms. Found in a bottle" and "Descent into the maelstrom", etc. I find Poe loses effectiveness when he tries to bring in byzantine details and the ornate imaginings crowd out of the exposition anything that would allow a reader to solve the case or even put it together from any missed clues on a re-read as in "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined letter" where the delight in details becomes a breathless exercise in ratiocination thus being some of world's first detective stories but with deux ex machina revelations. More to the fantasy side we have "Black cat" (I recoil at the animal cruelty) and maybe even the eponymous "Fall of the house of Usher". Some of his famous stories here for me are exemplars of how he should just keep it simple. "Pit and the pendulum" gives to us the relentless, nearing death but does anyone really reflect back with joy on the multiple awakenings, pit-within-a-pit, compacting walls, and Lord of the Flies ending? Similarly, in "Masque of the red death" like in The Village (2004 film) (even with the 'bad color') we have the seeds of destruction brought into the man-made Eden, but do we really need the various monochromatic rooms and intricacies of spreading light? I feel Poe is best at simple, direct tale of base and basic human motivations with little adornment, as in "Cask of Amontillado" and "Tell-tale heart", which Stephen King called “the best tale of inside evil ever written”.
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Saturday, May 11, 2024
Review: From Both Sides: A Memoir
From Both Sides: A Memoir by Ellen WeisbergMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A woman researcher in leukemia treatment comes down with breast cancer and shares openly the process. This is the full arc from initial self-detection to back-and-forth suppositions and diagnoses. She recounts the procedures and personalities along the journey from discovery to resolution. This is a generous gift of a memoir for anyone curious about what the experience would be like, perhaps their own.
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Thursday, May 9, 2024
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Monday, April 29, 2024
Review: The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy
The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter TeminMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
After the war, women got the vote, and the franchise opened up somewhat. African Americans, however, still were denied the ability to vote until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. With that stimulus, the United States came close to being a democracy for half a century until the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013. Inequality increased between those dates, and the Investment Theory of Politics teaches us that the effectiveness of the ordinary voters decreased as rich people and large businesses began to influence elections. It may not be misleading to say that the effectiveness of democracy has been decreasing over time since the initiation of the American dual economy in 1971, and democracy has now given way to a new oligarchy or, to be more specific, a plutocracy.
...the very rich who have been allowed to dominate government policies by a succession of legislative and court decisions. The democracy that aspired to guarantee the right to vote for every person has been undermined in the last generation by a political structure where income matters more than demography. Income matters in varied ways, and campaign spending affects both votes and who can vote.
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Sunday, April 28, 2024
Review: The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton Legacy Library) by Lee Benson
The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton Legacy Library) by Lee Benson by Lee BensonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
WHAT a political party claims to stand for and what it actually represents are closely related but significantly different. Aside from the principles and policies it adopts and advocates, a party radiates an aura that influences the way the electorate appraises and responds to its principles and policies. A useful distinction can be made, therefore, between a party's program and its aura, or character. The program is concrete and refers to known actions or proposals; the character is intangible and connotes general qualities. Though the program of a party is more easily and reliably determined than is its character, historians can- not concentrate on the former and ignore the latter; the combined impact of program and character form the image which is projected to the electorate.
But political parties do not confine themselves to projecting their own images; they also try to influence the electorate by projecting an image of their opponents. Thus parties create both an official self-image and an official image of opponents. Many different means are used to project official images, but, at least for the period
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Aside from its intrinsic interest, the political conflict between Masons and Antimasons illustrates how "reference group theory" might help us to understand the process of party crystallization in the late 1820's and early 1830's; this theory might also advance our understanding of American history in general. The concept of the negative reference group, as defined by Robert Merton, "is a general concept designed to earmark that pattern of hostile relations between groups or collectivities in which the actions, attitudes and values of one are dependent upon the actions, attitudes and values of the other to which it stands in opposition."
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Movements that the American Republican Party typifies are usually described and dismissed as temporary outbreaks of "nativist" and "anti-Catholic" bigotry. Those epithets are accurate. Unfortunately, they tend to obscure the significance of the phenomena they stigmatize. Stripped of their peculiar characteristics, nativist and anti-Catholic movements illuminate the cultural conflicts and tensions inherent in a heterogeneous country such as the United States, In New York, for example, essentially the same kind of phenomena might have been observed from the time the English and Dutch first came into contact and collision in the seventeenth century." Between 1834 and 1844, however, the conflicts between "natives" of Protestant background and Catholic immigrants (and certain other "foreigners") developed much greater intensity than those that simultaneously existed among Yankees, Dutch, Palatine Germans, and Scots in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Though many factors influenced the result, their greater intensity owed much to the belief that the cultures of the new immigrants threatened the success of the American experiment in republican government.
Ethnocentrism, bigotry, ignorance, misunderstanding, political calculation, desire for "clean government," economic competition, status considerations-all substantially contributed to the movement for political action oriented around nativist, anti-Catholic appeals, "Are we to derive no advantage on account of the 'accident' of being the children and heirs of revolutionary fathers? And is it of no account to be an 'American born'?" ...
According to the American Republicans' reading of history, the country had begun to develop a truly national spirit and sense of purpose prior to the rapid increase in the number of immigrants, That spirit and purpose had arisen out of the Revolution and rep- resented a healthy reaction against slavish copying of Old World institutions, customs, and habits. But "nationality in feeling" and a distinctive American culture were threatened by the hundreds of thousands of foreigners particularly the Catholic Irish and Germans now pouring in annually.
Instead of the "melting pot" image, which depicts immigrant cultures as contributing valuable ingredients to the national stock, the American Republicans projected the nightmare image of a witches brew-a "great seething cauldron of society" which produced an increasingly debased people. Thus the American Republican viewed with alarm the influx of 230,000 foreigners in 1843: "At least two hundred thousand of these are Catholics-reared in the belief, daily and hourly inculcated that their priest is infallible, and can not only pardon all their offenses theft, drunkenness, fornication, robbery and murder in this world, but can pray them out of purgatory hereafter and that the Pope, next to the Virgin Mary, is the most powerful and omnipotent being in the Universe that to read the Bible is perdition, and to confess to the priest the only moral obligation that cannot be violated with impunity. Is it wonderful that with such impurities as those cast annually in such immense quantities into the great seething cauldron of society in America, public morals have become degenerated, pauperism and crime unendurably abundant, and religion and morality little better than idle words? But worse than all-that political virtue is rapidly becoming extinct beneath the hands of these vile, ignorant and superstitious hordes...
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Friday, April 26, 2024
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Review: John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster
John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster by Sam L. AmiranteMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When all was said and done, there were almost as many opinions on that issue as there were psychologists and psychiatrists who were studying it.
One fact unearthed during all of the interviews and interrogations by the various renowned shrinks that hit home for me and which always anchored my belief that my client was insane on a level sufficient to have him found not guilty by reason of insanity was this: When John Wayne Gacy was five or six years old, he developed a fetish for his mother’s silk undergarments. He said he liked the feel of them. He would fondle his mother’s lacy panties and rub them on his little body. When he was done doing what he did with these items—and this made the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight when I heard it—he would bury them under the house. When John’s mother began looking for several pairs of underwear that she thought she had lost, she found a small bag filled with panties partially buried under the porch of the Gacy home.
John was punished by his parents, and his mother’s panties stopped disappearing. However, by the time John was a teenager and reaching puberty, he had graduated to stealing these coveted items from neighborhood clotheslines. He now was old enough to use these items during masturbation, which he regularly did; and when he was finished, he would revert to his original behavior and bury those items, often under the house.
This simple revelation, especially when taken in conjunction with everything else I knew about this sad, sad excuse for a human being, which appeared in report after report from doctor after doctor who had interviewed him, basically cinched it for me: John Gacy, my client, was on a psychological choo-choo train that went off the tracks many years before. The destination of that train had been predetermined. The normal synapse that happens in your brain and my brain and the brains of everyone else we know just did not happen in the brain of Mr. Gacy. He had, in fact, been miswired at the factory. He had a broken brain, and that brain had been broken long ago.
That was my opinion then, and it still is, and I sleep very well at night while holding it.
The theory that allows me to comfortably hold this opinion is surprisingly simple and has been stated in many ways throughout time. Here is one.
If a person who has reached the age of majority becomes angry with another person and says, “I’m going to kill you,” then that person methodically walks into another room with plenty of time to think about his actions, grabs a loaded shotgun from the closet, walks back into the first room where the other person is standing, and proceeds to blow this person’s brains all over the wall behind him, we call that murder.
However, if the same set of circumstances occurs and the perpetrator is a minor—let’s say he or she is seven years old—it becomes a terrible, tragic accident, like lightning striking or a collision in traffic. Why? Because we don’t blame small children for their actions no matter how sad and terrible, no matter how horrific the results may be. We know that seven-year-old children are not responsible for their actions. This is not a hard concept to grasp. Their little brains have not matured enough. They cannot understand the consequences of their actions. Hell, the Catholic Church takes the position that they cannot even commit a sin.
Everybody understands this.
Where the waters become muddy, where understanding becomes fleeting is when the “child” is six feet tall, weighs two hundred pounds, and has a five o’clock shadow or has long blonde hair and big perky breasts and chain-smokes. That is when the problems arise.
However, the brain of an adult can be so broken, so dysfunctional, that it is of no more use to that adult than the brain of a seven-year-old child. It just does not work properly—it’s broken, and it causes the adult to act in ways that are unacceptable without the willing consent of its owner.
As Donita Gannon walked back down the aisle and out through those huge swinging oak doors, she seemed to have lost a bit of the swing in her step. Once again, every eye in the courtroom was glued on her, but I am not so sure it felt as good as it did during her grand entrance. If she was embarrassed, I’m sorry. But like I said before, this was hardball. That woman had stood there at the outset of her testimony with her hand on a Bible and sworn to God that she would tell the truth, when, in fact, she was living a lie. Although it was not her fault—it was probably just a cruel trick of nature, like hurricanes, tornados, pestilence, or the like—her life was one confusing, tragic, incomprehensible lie, just like my client.
I hoped someone on the jury got that.
However, somewhere toward the end of this heartrending parade of life and death witnesses, the State wheeled in a wheelchair-bound accident victim straight from the hospital. Her name was Mary Jo Paulus. I always thought that they had gone a little too far with her. She was in agonizing pain, both physically and mentally. She cried on cue during her testimony; but on cross, Motta got her to admit that the State had purposely withheld pain medication with some excuse about how she should not be under the influence of drugs on the stand. Bob also pried information out of her that some other person named Weedle was the last to see the deceased victim, William Kindred. So what was she doing there in the first place? Why did she have to be there at all, considering her condition? Where was Mr. Weedle? Wasn’t Mr. Weedle pathetic enough as a witness? I don’t think that played well with the jury.
Like I said, this was hardball. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.
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Friday, April 19, 2024
Review: The Cult of the Constitution
The Cult of the Constitution by Mary Anne FranksMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was moved to write this book because I believe that good faith can conquer bad. I believe that good faith in the Constitution, in particular, is both possible and necessary. I wrote this book to make the case against fundamentalism and for the principle of reciprocity expressed in Christianity's Golden Rule, Kant's categorical imperative, and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. I wrote this book to advocate for the position that the only rights any of us should have are the rights that all of us should have. If only some of us are saved, all of us are lost.
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Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Review: Cleese Encounters
Cleese Encounters by Jonathan MargolisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Monty Python: 'When you do a show like that, the kids are getting a message that there are other people out there who are a bit older and who have seen a bit more of the world who also think it's pretty damn silly, and that's why they embrace those comedy shows with that enthusiasm. It's not just the comedy, it's the world view.' John was also a fan of Bilko, George Burns, the Marx Brothers and two blacked-up American impressionists on radio and later television, Amos 'n' Andy. Today, with the exception of a few more contemporary comedians, such as Woody Allen and Steve Martin, Cleese still cites those Fifties stars as his comedy heroes.
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Review: Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up
Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up by Selma BlairMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Actress Selma Blair alleges here that a former Cranbrook dean touched her inappropriately.
A few months into school, the Dean’s embraces started to linger. He remarked I was pretty. Maybe inappropriate, but of course he was also married. To a woman I respected and found lovely. In fact, he and his wife once took me and my three best friends, Sue, Kelly, and Frances—we called ourselves the Fab Four—away for the weekend to their beach home in Tawas, Michigan.
There may have been more than one "Dean", but this is a specific time and place and tied to a fairly specific property. I am surprised "the Dean" has not been outed. I wonder if he is dead, dissembling, or brought down by similar crimes... There is worse sexual trauma recalled here: multiple rapes. Selma shares this and in narrating her own audiobook allowing her voice to break she delivers an impactful, moving life story. Along with alcoholism the specter of MS haunts her life unacknowledged until she learns of it and confronts it. With stem cell therapy and other help, she really turns things around moving away from self-destructive behavior and toward being a responsible mother and advocate for those that suffer from MS. It is fascinating to me that she has in her life relied so much on tea readers and other psychics, one of which predicted her future role as some kind of advocate. Still, sharing this perhaps questionable behavior is part of her candor in this affecting, moving biography of a life growing up in Michigan and building a career in film.
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Friday, April 5, 2024
Review: Brook Farm: Its Members, Scholars and Visitors
Brook Farm: Its Members, Scholars and Visitors by Lindsay SwiftMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
"In a letter to Emerson, George Ripley outlined his original vision for the community. He wrote:
Our objects, as you know, are to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker...to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents...to do away the necessity of menial services, by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institution."
https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adult....
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Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Review: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man
Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man by Garry WillsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was drawn to read this examination of Nixon's campaign and first term. I can't help but wonder if there is a connection between the GOP base now and then which lurched into having a criminal head.
In exploiting fear and differences, this was the birth of the "Southern Strategy". Is the "solid South" crumbling, now? It certainly feels purplish in parts at least to me, now. The exploration here of the birth of that approach in racial and class differences also got the attention of Brad DeLong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century interested.
Only the South added Republican strength in 1964 when Goldwater ran at the top of the ticket; and convention votes are apportioned to the states according to their performance in the last national election. Moreover, each state that gave its electors to Goldwater—and only Southern states did—got a bonus of six extra votes. This meant that the Southern states had a whopping 316 votes to cast in Miami. “. Add Arizona and Texas, and the total came to 388 “votes. If Nixon could add a border state like Maryland (by adopting its governor), he would be bargaining for a package of 414 votes (with only 667 needed to nominate him).
Nor was it only a question of Miami. The South was just as important in November...
...What is at stake, if one accepts the Southern strategy as the basis for Republican growth, is a reversal of the Democrats’ reign as the majority party—a reversal that is likely to last for decades. Political scentists like Harry Jaffa and Samuel Lubell point out that the American party system has not been a matter of fairly equal see-sawing. The normal situation is to have one solidly established party, to which a minority party can make only partial challenges, until an electoral revolution effects a change in their relationship, giving the minority party a new dominance.
According to Jaffa, there have been only four such “electoral revolutions”—those marked by the rise of Jefferson (1800), Jackson (1823), Lincoln (1860), and Roosevelt (1932). The significance of Rusher’s article—and of the Nixon campaign which, far more than Goldwater’s, was based on its insights—is that Nixon’s election may go down in history as such a turning point. That is clearly what the Nixon organization had in mind. There was much talk among them, all through 1968, of “new coalitions,” of “the passing of the New Deal”—the meeting of their man with a great historic hinge and moment “of reversal.
...Always animated by one ambition—to know who hates who. “That is the secret,” he says with a disarming boyish grin, one that snags a bit on his front tooth, like an unmalevolent Richard Widmark’s. “In New York City, for instance, you make plans from certain rules of exclusion—you can’t get the Jews and the Catholics. The Liberal Party was founded here for Jews opposing Catholics, and the Conservative Party for Catholics fighting Jews. The same kind of basic decision has to be made in national politics. The Civil War is over now; the parties don’t have to compete for that little corner of the nation we live in. Who needs Manhattan when we can get the electoral votes of eleven Southern states? Put those together with the Farm Belt and the Rocky Mountains, and we don’t need the big cities. We don’t even want them.
...Jaffa claims that each revolution was in the direction of greater equality, and therefore “from the Left” in American politics. How could that apply to the Republican Party in 1968? “The clamor in the past has been from the urban or rural proletariat. But now ‘populism’ is of the middle class, which feels exploited by the Establishment. Almost everyone in the productive segment of society considers himself middle-class now, and resents the exploitation of society’s producers. This is not a movement in favor of laissez-faire or any ideology; it is opposed to welfare and the Establishment…
...I asked Phillips if the growth of Negro registration would not recompense Southern Democrats for their losses to the Republican Party. “No, white Democrats will desert their party in droves the minute it becomes a black party. When white Southerners move, they move fast. Wallace is helping, too—in the long run. People will ease their way into the Republican Party by way of the “American Independents”—just as Thurmond eased himself over by way of his Dixiecrat candidacy in 1948 and his independent write-in race in 1956. “We’ll get two thirds to three fourths of the Wallace vote in nineteen seventy-two.”
The demographic shifts in America have been away from the old centers of population. The big cities are declining in population, and declining even more drastically in voting population. The large cities now make up only 30 percent of the national population, against 35 percent suburban, and 35 percent rural and small-town dwellers. This diffusion means that economic climbers do not try to adopt Brahmin standards from old social leaders. The suburbs of the new rich are, like the Sunbelt, unashamed of their gains, unburdened by liberal conscience.
I still feel today it is a lot more about urban versus rural differences, than it is about state borders, especially when current and historical gerrymandering is considered. Also, I resent how I feel from the Republican side it is about stoking prejudices.
Ultimately, this was a vision
...animated by one ambition to know who hates who. ... "In New York City, for instance, you make plans from certain rules of exclusion you can't get the Jews and the Catholics. The Liberal Party was founded here for Jews opposing Catholics, and the Conservative Party for Catholics fighting Jews. The same kind of basic decision has to be made in national politics. The Civil War is over now; the parties don't have to compete for that little corner of the nation we live in. Who needs Manhattan when we can get the electoral votes of eleven Southern states? Put those together with the Farm Belt and the Rocky Mountains, and we don't need the big cities. We don't even want them. Sure, Hubert will carry Riverside Drive in November. La-de-dah. What will he do in Oklahoma?"
The vision of a rabid base feels current:
…They are not, as Nixon knows, the kind who march or riot. They just lock their doors. And they vote. They do not, most of them, go to Wallace rallies; but those who do go speak for them in growing measure. This is the vague unlocalized resentment that had such effect in the 1968 campaign, tainting all the air around talk of law and order. America itself, like her major cities, has blight at the core, not in limbs and extremities. As I stood, bewildered like most reporters, in the insane din of that Wallace rally, saw a crowd of eight thousand tormented by a mere few hundred, I realized at last what had not sunk in at Miami's riot, or Chicago's. I realized this is a nation that might do anything. Even elect Nixon.
In a chapter with the epigram from Shakespeare
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear
…The maker of international mischief was no longer the UN, but the CIA. The chemical that poisoned the world was no longer fluoridated water but Dow Chemical napalm. Instead of Roosevelt's treachery at Pearl Harbor, we had the CIA's plot to kill Kennedys. The point of McCarthyism, old or new, is that whatever has gone wrong was planned to go wrong. It was treason, conspired at. The uncovering of this labyrinthine plot or plots is almost hopeless, so encased in protective secrecy is The System, so deeply has it brainwashed the public; but virtuous citizens must make the effort. This conspiratorial view exactly reflects what Richard Hofstadter, analyzing McCarthyism, called the paranoid style in politics: "When it argues that we are governed largely by means of near-hypnotic manipulation (brainwashing), wholesale corruption, and betrayal, it is indulging in something more significant than the fantasies of indignant patriots: it is questioning the legitimacy of the political order itself."
At the end of World War II, a strong sentiment for what was called internationalism, a tendency to blame the world's past troubles on "nationalism," led to the expectation that there would be greater cohesion in the world, an amalgamation of groups (e.g., a United States of Europe), experiments in federalism leading eventually to World Government. But the very steps taken to promote this movement seem to have had an opposite effect. Not only were many new nations born, but "double nations" arose (Germany, China, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Nigeria). Liberals, forced to explain these unintended effects, tried to distinguish Bad Nationalism (attacked in propaganda for the UN) from Good Nationalism (nurtured by the UN). Professor Schlesinger was ready to oblige: "The nationalism that arose after the Second World War was, in the main, not the aggressive and hysterical nationalism that had led nations before the war to try to dominate other nations. [That is: It was not Bad Nationalism.] It was, rather, the nationalism generated by the desire to create or restore a sense of nationhood. [That is: It was Good Nationalism.]" Yet this Good Nationalism had all the marks of the Bad jealousy of one's own sovereignty, prickliness toward neighbors, militarism. Most of the nationalist lead-
It interests me how in this book an examination of the context of the first Nixon presidency considers the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson and an evolution of Liberalism which includes Liberal elements of the Nixon worldview.
Schlesinger's nondistinction was based on the assumption that nationalism is an anomaly in the framework of liberal internationalism. But it is not; it was implicit in liberal theory from the outset a point recently stressed by Professor Seliger of the University of Jerusalem (in John Locke, Problems and Perspectives, edited by John W. Yolton): "To the extent that liberalism provides foundations of modern democracy, it does so also with regard to modern nationalism," since "collective is derived from individual self-determination."
Now we see why it was so urgent for Wilson to demand open elections everywhere in the world as a necessary condition for peace anywhere in the world. We need some uniform mechanism to discover what the people want, who the people are, who shall represent each people in the Covenant. Where the ballot does not exist, we must introduce it; where voting is restricted or rigged, we must supervise the elections; and then, having created the conditions for free choice, we must abide by the results. Which means there must be results. Clear results some policies and leaders chosen, others rejected. If there is no popular will expressed through this machinery, there is certifiably existing no people. If two wills are expressed, there are two peoples. If more than that, then more peoples. If an ambiguous will is expressed, then there is no moral agent for the nation, no body to house the ghostly rights of nationhood. That is why we must have faith in the power of elections to "settle matters." We must believe, even, that where no clear popular will existed previously, election can create one (not just reflect it) can, in that sense, create nationhood, call a people into being. So Nixon summons a new nation to arise in South Vietnam, the result of an election internationally supervised. Though the power of elections is in many…
[…]
A false analogy underlies this whole complex of beliefs. The analogy runs: as the individual is to the nation-state, so the nation-state is to the international organization. We have already seen Wilson's expression of this equation: he said nations must be "governed in their conduct toward each other by the same principles of honor and respect for the common law of civilized society that govern the individual citizens of all modern nations in their relations with one another." The analogy suggests that each country has a unitary national will, expressed in the result of its elections. This leads to difficulties already mentioned in the case of inchoate or crumbling or questionably existent nations. But it leads to even more pervasive (and less suspected) misunderstanding in the established nations, those which have apparently successful electoral systems. America, for instance, is presumed to have a machinery capable of expressing the national will, at least on matters of great importance to the nation. That is why Nixon refers to "what America wants in Vietnam." Yet it is clear, from an analysis of the 1968 election, that the American people had no way of indicating what they wanted in Vietnam that no one can know for sure what they want there, or know whether they know what they want. And if America, with an electoral system as open and flexible as any in the world, cannot say with confidence what its national will is on such a crucial issue, how can countries without settled constitutional processes arrive at knowledge of the popular will?
Yet the concept of a unitary popular will cannot be shed by liberal thinkers. That is why, despite his antiauthoritarian philosophy, the liberal so often yearns for a strong executive - the Super-President of Richard Neustadt, of all those liberals who canonize maximum leaders like Wilson, FDR, and John Kennedy. The clash of blocs and interests in Congress is a constant reminder that there is no such thing as a single will in the nation.
To my ears today, “the Super-President of Richard Neustadt” hardly Unitary executive theory sounds “liberal”, but more like the Unitary executive theory which I associate with Reagan, Bush, etc. in its strong version.
A good summary of some inherent Americanism hypocrisy.
…when we are willing to "send the gunboats" to "protect the flag" when one American citizen is threatened abroad, by foreigners, but are unwilling to think of the national prestige as engaged in the protection of American children from rats in this country's slums. The competitive ethic makes us think of any American as "on our team" when we are competing abroad, with other countries, but reduces that same American to a rival, a potential enemy, in our domestic competition, our struggles against each other in the marketplace; so that patriotism is degraded from love of countrymen to mere hatred of foes, mere xenophobia, and men consider it "patriotic" to prefer the muddled abstractions of "confrontation with Communism" in Vietnam to the lives of our young men.
The growth of American business has little to do with the free market. The reality behind that growth was governmental favoring of manufacture over agriculture (e.g., in the great preferential tariff fights that led up to the Civil War), governmental expansion at the proddings of commerce (e.g., in the political deals for rail rights and land grants that determined the westward expansion), governmental protection of capital risks abroad by "gunboat diplomacy," governmental shelter for big combines in turn-of-the-century Supreme Court decisions. Big business and big government grew in the past by feeding each other - and they still do. That is why Republican fundamentalists, who took the strictures against big government seriously, were regularly defeated by the party's Eastern Establishment. Senator Taft, defeated in 1952, huffed that "Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank." And now, as money shifts westward following population trends, Richard Nixon combines old-fashioned attacks on "Big Government" with the promise of big government contracts to the military industries of the Sunbelt.
Here is an interesting observation:
"Participatory politics" is not the way to make men happy, whole, humane. We should have learned that long ago, simply by observing the effect of politics on its most intimate participants the pros, the politicians themselves. If anything, politics is a drain upon the humanity of its practitioners, not a heart-pump to restore it. The most fully "politicized" man in the world may well be Richard Nixon.
There are many books referenced here. Two that sounded interesting are:
* The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-party Politics in America
* Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan
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Review: Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery
Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery by Catherine GildinerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a professional memoir of a Freudian psychoanalyst recounting cases where she feels her patients proved especially heroic. These had to overcome such issues as significant sexual abuse, crippling anxiety, intimacy issues, and the cruelty of the American Indian schools' assimilation. She explains the progress of each lengthy case and steps forward and back, including her own mistakes along the way.
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