Burdensome Reality

James Howard Kunstler is in a perpetual bad mood. His frustrations resonate at a time when most people seem mad about just about everything anyway — just under the clammy sweet shell of popular culture there's a lot of diffuse anger dressed up as conviction of a religious or ideological sort. Kunstler is a writer though, so he can say what he feels effectively.

About Iraq:

…the issue of WMD looks much more straightforward, even if you grant that the Bush adminstration had made up its mind to invade earlier than 2003 — to wit, the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found does not mean that we didn't have to look. Not finding any was always one of the possible outcomes, especially when Mr. Hussein had months to move things elsewhere. The public's refusal to understand this equation is an impressive case of obdurate stupidity, but not as dumb as our kindergarten ideas about spreading “freedom” to places where it means the right to kick our stupid American asses.

It's not a kindergarten idea to spread democracy., but his parsing of the WMD slogans makes hard sense to me and it is worth repeating: “the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found does not mean that we didn't have to look. Not finding any was always one of the possible outcomes, especially when Mr. Hussein had months to move things elsewhere. The public's refusal to understand this equation is an impressive case of obdurate stupidity…”.

A July 5th post by Kunstler:

The everyday world of America is a ceaseless assault on human neurology…from a din of numberless motors: air conditioners, lawn mowers, weed-whackers, ventilation blowers, fry-o-later hoods, airplanes, as well as the constant background roar of car traffic.

Our entertainments are saturated with violence. Hollywood has completely forgotten how to make stories based on the predicaments of human character and emotion. The only emotions they understand are bluster, threat, and murderous aggression with overtones of sexual excitement (because this is the way show business professionals act among themselves, and it is the only behavior they understand).

Sometimes being angry and in despair seems the most realistic of positions — sour acknowledgment as tough honesty. Other times anger looks more like simple metaphysical frustration — blowing off steam in a world that offers only “least harm done” options. Like all cynics, Kunstler is a frustrated idealist.

Kunstler is right on target however when he discusses our unwillingness, our inability, to prepare for potential disaster:

Meanwhile, we are doing nothing at home to prepare for this future, for instance a crash program to restore the American railroad system, or to restore true fiscal discipline to the mortgage industry in order to stem the insane spread of even more car-dependent suburban sprawl (a.k.a. the housing bubble). Where is the Democratic party (my party) on this? Lost in the raptures of sexual and racial pandering.

Courageous Affectation

ABC Nightline aired an interview with a terrorist last night — a mass murderer. The Russian embassy was outraged.

Koppel's ponderous justification was a free speech cut-and-paste. The most deplorable aspect of this patronizing speech was Koppel's implication that the airing of the interview was a brave journalistic act. Koppel savored the anger the interview had provoked from Russia — it made Koppel feel a brave soul, while risking nothing. It wasn't even his interview — it was brought to him.

TV talk shows at one time specialized in titillate and deplore: a full length show providing sexual or sensational material as titillation, combined with a final short segment where the host deplored what they had just exploited for ratings — a Jerry Springer like self-parody of “responsibility”. Oprah Winfrey in her pre-New Age Consumer days, Phil Donahue, most of the talk shows played out the formula. Now Koppel has mined new territory, merging terror-titillation with sickly self-congratulation.

The question ABC has to answer: what did we really learn? Other than grabbing some rating points for a major corporation, a terrorist getting free publicity — and the credibility that accrues to interview subjects — what has the public gained?

Shuttle Fuddle

Originally the shuttle was supposed to be an airplane that had the capability to go into space. It was supposed to take off like an airplane. Funding was cut and the design we presently see failing over and over is the jerry-built make-do — it just looks wrong. The shuttle has the appearance of an airplane tethered to a giant fire cracker. Which is what it is.

Heat tiles on a vehicle that vibrates madly, gets very hot and is explosively propelled from stand still to a speed that will enable it to release adhering gravity — the current shuttle's design just never made sense.

You Are There

A fascinating site with first person accounts of historical events. From the site this personal account of Lincoln, having entered Richmond, waiting for Jefferson Davis in his home:

At the Davis house, he was shown into the reception-room, with the remark that the housekeeper had said that the room was President Davis's office. As he seated himself he remarked, 'This must have been President Davis's chair,” and, crossing his legs, he looked far off with a serious, dreamy expression. At length he asked me if the housekeeper was in the house. Upon learning that she had left he jumped up and said, with a boyish manner, 'Come, let's look at the house!' We went pretty much over it; I retailed all that the housekeeper had told me, and he seemed interested in everything…

Kerouac's Philosophy

From an old NYT Book Review by Ann Douglas recounting Kerouac's thoughts about writing:

…he insisted on “spontaneous prose”…he refused to revise…he believed that, like the jazz musicians and athletes he idolized, a writer must stake everything on the moment of performance…each performance was a rehearsal for the next…

And further on she writes:

…His “true story novels” are direct transcriptions of his experience…Kerouac's goal, as he wrote to Allen Ginsberg, was to “unleash the inner life in an art-method.”…

She concludes:

…Existence… a “lifelong struggle to avoid disaster”…[Kerouac's] genius [was] the innovative use of language, for what he called “wild form,” for “telepathic shock and meaning-excitement.”…

Seinfeld Moment

A laugh out loud moment in a recently aired Seinfeld — the one where Elaine and Jerry take a flight and Elaine finds herself stuck in steerage while Jerry obnoxiously yucks it up with a model in first class. At one point Elaine is told she has missed the meal service, but she could have a kosher meal if she wants. Elaine says “I don't even know what kosher is”. To which her seat-mate says, “It has to do with how they kill the pig.”

Three Wars

John Burns, the fine NYT reporter, wrote a piece Sunday that was filled with despair for the prospects in Iraq. Optimism and idealism is morphing into fears of a civil war — the outcome most feared by those who felt this was a worthy action, an outcome mentioned amid a welter of unfocused dissent about the Iraq war. Now it seems the commanders on the ground are themselves seeing cracks in the dam.

We are potentially on the cusp of three civil wars: Abu Mazen's regime in the Palestinian territories set against the fanatical Palestinian groups he never disarmed; Sharon and the settlers who are streaming into Gaza to make a proactive stand against the possibility of a West Bank pullout; now this, the collapse of possibility in Iraq from ethnic strife.

In each case the essential and seemingly impossible requirement is that a containing cease fire hold fast against the beast of chaos. If all three or even only one of these potential civil wars comes to a dark flowering it would be a disaster internally for the populations involved, and internationally.

Seemingly all so far away, but in reality, these events color our mental universe, the quotidian sea running red.

Five Books

Years ago I read Jack Miles' Pulitzer Prize winning God: A Biography with admiration. The melding of scholarship and literary analysis seemed clever — Miles gave a fresh reading to an ancient text. Miles treated God as a literary character — examining the “character development” — the seemingly different presentations provided by the Hebrew Bible.

I've just been reading Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary . Alter's book, although clearly different in intent and not strictly comparable, did put Miles' book in context for me. Alter's brilliant commentary and translation made Miles' book seem brittle and gimmicky.

To have an impressive scholar like Alter by your your side as you ride the ancient rhythms, to have a sure and discreet understanding provide you with background for the often confounding narrative, to have the difficulties of translation explained - the sensitivity and wisdom of choice required of great translators approaching great texts — is to feel as a reader that you can fully relax with a reliable companion and absorb the resonant, mysterious text.

Life On The Planet

The necessary preconditions for a planet to develop life:

…the home star has to be far enough from the galactic center to be away from lethal black hole pyrotechnics…but not so far into the galactic sticks that stellar evolution has not yet produced enough of the heavier elements like oxygen and iron needed for planets and life… its planet has to have liquid water, a magnetic field to keep away cosmic rays, plate tectonics to keep things stirred, a giant outer planet to keep away comets and asteroids and perhaps a big moon to stabilize its rotation axis.

Hitch

NPR aired an interview with Christopher Hitchens:

• Hitchens' dislike of Clinton was inaugurated when he heard that Clinton admired some things about Nixon.

• About why he changed — shifting toward neo-conservative ideas: Hitchens said that he noted that when Rushdie was condemned in a religious edict issued by an Iranian cleric in 1989 many on the left, instead of condemning the act, justified it with “understanding” — it was an offense against their religion, they said. This was a first warning. Hitchens came to feel that the left was a proxy, justifying the actions of bin Laden — as though he were a freedom fighter, like Che Guevara — rather than a fascist who wants, as he has stated, to establish a new Caliphate with all but Muslims enslaved; Hitchens said he had no patience with those who would try to coexist with Islamo-fascists, acting as apologists for aggressive theocrats.

• He felt that Hussein was a secular fascist who should have been removed; that Hussein — despite protestations from the left about Hussein being a false enemy — was a sponsor of jihadist terror; that Hussein presented the evidence of his true leanings early on in his financial support for suicide attacks against Israel — that Hussein was a patron of atrocities, giving money to families of those who killed themselves attacking civilians in Israel.

• Hitchens deplored NPR and press outlets he perceives as left leaning (NYT, e.g.) — he felt that they, as an example, never mention the wonder of an elected president of Iraq. “You'll never hear it referred to that way on NPR” he said.

• Hitchens felt that the “flattened prose” of the NYT equivocates in its coverage about the Iraq war — presenting it as a battle between left and right. Hitchens says it is really a battle between hard right and neocons. He identifies the hard right in this country as anti-Semitic isolationists like Buchanan, the oil lobby, and “power worshippers” like Kissinger.

• Hitchens said the real hate of the US in Europe comes from the far right — who see America as “mongrelized” — not from the rank and file European.

Hitchens' anger is fully engaged — his powerful language and clarity, his unwillingness to ingratiate himself with any group (of ideologues), his value based judgments, emotionally charged but presented with precision — it makes him a stunningly effective advocate.

T-Shirt Heaven

A NYT article about unique T-shirts:

“With a T-shirt, it is much easier to show your work than trying to find a gallery,” said Mr. Okazaki, referring to the production of T-shirts in limited editions made by artists looking less for a killing than a populist way to present their art. “Four years ago, nobody really did this,” he said.

“Four years ago, nobody really did this…”???

Ahem. This recent fad has a long past. I demur.

The Beat Goes On

The total amount of energy in a closed system is constant. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. That's the first law of thermodynamics.

I was reading about the amazing, brilliant Lord Kelvin. It struck me that this great physicist had a dislike of evolutionary theory analagous to that of Einstein's dislike of quantum physics — in both cases, the chance element in these respective theories disturbed a sense of overwhelming order that these great scientists required.

Kelvin tried to argue from the first law of thermodynamics that there would not have been time for life to exist considering the length of time required for evolutionary theory to be true.

Kelvin simply calculated the sum of the known sources of energy — the sun etc, — and arrived at a theory that irked Darwin. (Kelvin did note an “unless” — unless there were some unknown source of energy.) Darwin called Kelvin an “odious specter” — Kelvin was so esteemed (Kelvin was buried near Newton) —that his ideas were taken very seriously. Kelvin was a hindrance to the acceptance of evolutionary theory.

Luckily for the world, Rutherford discovered radioactivity in 1904, thus a new energy source was open to the mind and imagination, expanding the known “closed system” — allowing for the full acceptance of evolution. Until the 21st century that is…

Strange to say, but Creationists have turned now to the second law of thermodynamics to disprove evolution. They say that if the universe is constantly devolving into disorder, how could the organized systems of life have arisen in the midst of this entropy? The answer is that local order can still be achieved, that is, life could form on miniscule earth, even as the larger system is devolving.

Anti-evolutionists just won't quit.

Inside the Inside

I once titled a painting Inside the Inside. These photos of mammatus clouds reminds me of that title. The cloud structures make you feel as though you are inside an organism, looking up, at the creature's stomach wall. The sky usually uplifts the spirit, but these cloud formations have an oppressive, disturbing quality.

Logic That Isn't (Updated)

The violence visited upon England is being used by some to justify their ideology — a cynical distortion of the circumstance.

This logic posits that if we did what the sociopaths wanted then they would like us — that the overt logic of terrorists is to be taken seriously — rather than being seen as an excuse used by the disturbed individuals in a community to express their pathology.

This is a variant of “what did we do to deserve this?” This is the logic of the recent appeasement offered by the Spanish government to murderers — the proximate cause of the current attack on Britain. That ill wrought logic is ineluctable for the confused — you can hear it coming — the doleful clanking of challenged reason: If we didn't support the democratic state of Israel, if we didn't proactively attempt to change things for the better by engaging dangerous and despicable regimes, then things would be okay — we would be safe — all we have to do is reason with them — we just need to be understanding.

Today's (7/11/05) NYT has an article by the always interesting Edward Rothstein about War of the Worlds — the book and the movie. Rothstein sees references to 9/11 and the Arab/Israeli conflict. Rothstein's comment about one character in Wells' book is relevant to my above comments:

…The novel's greatest scorn is for the curate who keeps seeking root causes: “What do these things mean?” The attacks, he concludes, may be deserved. “What sins have we done?” At the same time, he is so consumed by self-scorn and fear, he is unable to fight or plan.

Sopranos

We are now watching season 4 of the Sopranos, viewing a clump of DVD episodes spaced — as a break from the bleak world of the Sopranos — with regular theatrical releases via our Netflix queue.

I've also been reading the commentary provided at Slate by psychoanalysts — judging Melfi's performance and their enthusiasm for the show. Absolutely fascinating discussion.

The series seems to be wandering at this point. It appears to me that Chase, who had originally conceived a shorter run, was farming out scripts to others which were of only moderate interest.

There are a lot of metaphors you can draw from this show — it invites commentary. One possible reading, given the highly polarized political climate, is that Tony's world is really American capitalism as seen through the eyes of Noam Chomsky. A greedy, cynical view of [American] power as it corrupts and is itself corrupted — sabotaging its own future. The upper middle class' hollow consumerism and status seeking veneer in vile contrast to the true underpinnings of ruthlessly applied power.

What turns it into more than a postmodernist cautionary tale is the inclusion of therapy. The therapy provided by Melfi seems muffled and ineffectual. One psychiatrist at Slate said: what can you expect as a positive outcome in such a therapy — a high functioning psychopath? When Melfi implored Tony to return to therapy her credibility as an interior moderator was lost — she was simply a dramatic device, losing all respect — “respeck” — as a character. The therapy itself is deeply suspect — not only in its goals, as I stated — but also in its moral relativism. “Why do you always blame yourself?” Right, why would Tony do that?

Jobs

In this article we learn that Steve Jobs' brush with pancreatic cancer has deepened him — from a geek who sells cool products to a man with empathy. Jobs called the father of a 15 year old boy who was killed when being robbed of his iPod. The boy's father said of Jobs' call:

“Some people talk to you like they're something remote,” Mr. Rose said. “He was so familiar. After every word, he paused, as if each word he said came from his heart.”

O'Connor

Everyone was watching Rehnquist and O'Connor throws a surprise. The Times had a brilliant graphic showing just how crucial to swinging the court one way or the other she had been. I had a negative impression about O'Connor from the Florida presidential election fracas where she sounded like Aunt Biddy, seemingly insulated and obtuse about faulty voting machines in poorer districts: “can't they just read the instructions for Heaven's sake?” Couldn't she have tried one of the machines herself before making such a dismissive judgment? But reading more about her has changed my mind…

Although people say positive things at retirement time, those who praise O'Connor seem genuine in their admiration for her character. Commentators seem to indicate she was a pragmatic justice — one issue at a time; less prone to bright line definition than a situational thinker — causing a frequent revisiting of issues perhaps, but allowing a flexibility not evident in Scalia's cocksure pronouncements. She was an individual — a character, with character.

Right 'N Wrong

Something's wrong: On our run today we passed a couple standing next to a bicycle built for two. The woman was saying: “Could you just slow the pace down?”

Something's right: There is a genius to the efficiency of capitalism. You order something and it gets to you after a few clicks — you download or it is shipped. If something goes wrong, you write, it's [often] quickly taken care of without hassle. As in this example: After the aforementioned disarray of our apartment being electrically rewired, we were painting and patching — as things aren't left pristine. To get to some areas of the ceiling, I purchased an extendable aluminum pole that can attach to a paint roller. One use and it locked up — the pressure collar was poorly designed. I emailed the company — next day they had sent a replacement (the pressure collar had been redesigned). No sales receipts, no problems. The company was ettore.com.