Dark Fantasy (1) ? Four Horsemen of Calumny

            The U.S. presidential campaign has become a journey into the surreal. It colors other stories vying for attention on the political landscape.

            One such involves a relatively minor character on the political scene, an ally of the GOP candidate, in the state of Maine. I've always been proud of Maine politics: remarkably clean, tainted only occasionally by corruption scandals, blessed by usually competent and sometimes even outstanding political figures.

            For instance, Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), the first woman to serve in both houses of the U.S. Congress. She served in Washington from 1940 to 1973.  She was still in the early days of her first Senate term (1949-1973) when she challenged the hysteria then rampant in the United States that thrived on fear of Communism. Sen. Joe McCarthy was whipping up a witch hunt based on innuendo and intimidation; Sen. Smith had the courage to stand against him.

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME)

             "[I] don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny -- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear," she said, and went on to express her doubt that her party could win on such a basis, "simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest." 

            The Senator represents Maine's political reality... or so thought I. 

            But in present day Maine, a Republican governor named Paul LePage heads our state government. "Fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear" are Gov. LePage's hallmarks. True, he has never won the governorship with a majority of all voters; his victories have come in races where the vote was split, letting him take office with less than half the votes cast. But his total vote increased by 75,000 plus votes for his second term, despite an often apparent intolerance of others' opinions, beliefs, or cultures.

The Donald and Gov. Paul Lepage (R-ME)

            Mr. LePage characterizes President Obama as a dictator but describes the GOP presidential candidate as "a very powerful personality" and "a very authoritative persona." He continues, “When [the GOP candidate] is in a room, people notice. He does not have to go behind closed doors with community activists to get things done and hurt American people." (If this seems disjointed and incomprehensible, you've read it correctly; the statement is a head-scratcher.) Originally, Mr. LePage had used the word "authoritarian" to describe the GOP candidate, but corrected himself in a later press conference--even as he complained that the press should have known what he meant instead of quoting his actual words.

            Those words were: “Sometimes, I wonder that our Constitution is not only broken, but we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law because we’ve had eight years of a president, he’s an autocrat ..., and every single day we’re slipping into anarchy.”

            The dissonance is that, so far as I know, the U.S. Constitution is fine and the rule of law still prevails in the real world. Though it's true there is also, in the real world, a dysfunctional federal Congress and a Supreme Court that's short one justice because of that dysfunction. Nevertheless, thus far, the rule of law still governs.

            I am worried, though, about the strength of the barrier between my reality and that of Governor LePage and the Donald... .

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The Fox and the Grapes (Ressentiment in Politics)

 Guest Post by Alejandro Martín Navarro [translation S.V. Lowery]

            There's an old fable attributed to Aesop that tells of the strenuous attempts by a fox to reach a bunch of grapes that was too high up. After repeatedly failing, the fox moves off and cries, disdainfully: "They're still green!"

            I use this story in class to illustrate the concept of "ressentiment" [roughly equivalent to "resentment" or "bitterness" in English] in Nietzsche: the hatred that we express toward that which we secretly want but which we aren't capable of reaching, hatred born of impotence that changes the value of things.  Another example I sometimes use is of a person who falls in love but is not loved in return, and so ends up saying: "I don't know how I could have fallen for someone so ugly and stupid!" Daily life is full of examples of this perverse value change that lets us overcome frustration but is only a simplistic psychological mechanism for emotional survival. "From their impotence," says Nietzsche, "hatred grows in them until it becomes something immense and sinister, in the most spiritual and poisonous sense."

            However, it happens that this reversal of values (disdain the good that isn't within our reach, esteem the mediocre that is) affects not only external things (mature grapes, pretty girls, hard assignments, deserved fame) but also the internal: thus, the fool tends to disdain intelligence; the ignorant, culture; the weak, strength; the crook, honesty. Max Scheler, another of the great theorists, says that resentment is psychic self-intoxication: in the depths of our dark psychological cave, we avenge ourselves on a reality that insists we are not up to the mark.

            Resentment in this sense is a disguised hatred of life: a life that doesn't give us what we want, that fails to unfold according to our will. Thus, resentment necessarily leads to a psychological scenario where no one is better then me, where nothing valuable exists unless it pertains to me, where the mature grapes are never too high. Hierarchy, difference, is offensive to one who is resentful. As G. K. Chesterton suggests, it may be that a good definition of mediocrity is to stand next to greatness and fail to notice it.[1]

            Apart from embracing resentment, one has two options with regard to greatness: one can strive to reach it by effort and perseverance, or one can simply admire it, recognizing that it's far beyond oneself and enjoy the fact that at least others can reach it: one can aspire to intelligence, to wisdom, to virtue, or one can at least admire them in others. Both options respect the hierarchical nature of values: they are where they should be. "A sensitive soul," says Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human, "feels annoyance in learning that it must be given thanks; a vulgar soul, in learning that thanks must be given."

            Nietzsche was the first to see how resentment was capable of framing value systems throughout history and also the first to notice that this mechanism permeates, alarmingly, the whole spiritual life of modern Europe. His intuition was developed, along different lines, by Scheler and by Ortega. Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen [English translation: Ressentiment] by Scheler appeared in 1912, and La rebelión de las masas  [English translation: The Revolt of the Masses] by Ortega y Gasset, in 1929. Both were published when the social and political symptoms of an illness diagnosed by Nietzsche twenty years before the end of the 19th century were already clear in Europe, an illness that has now reached its full development in our own time. “Ye higher men," cried Zarathrustra, "Learn this from me: In the market-place no one believeth in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very well! The populace, however, blinketh, answering: 'We are all equal'."

            The dominant morality denies differences, excellence, merit, along with moral and intellectual nobility. What Ortega calls the "mass man"--the individual undifferentiated from any other due to any special quality--becomes the prototype for existence. "What is characteristic of the time is that the common soul, knowing it is common, has the boldness to assert the right of ordinariness and imposes it wherever." This is confirmed whenever one takes the trouble to note what human type, what paradigm of existence, is modeled in television programs, social media, political party rolls, sports idols.  Everywhere, occupying the primary spaces of ordinary life, there are vulgar persons convinced that their vulgarity is the measure of all worth. As he says in España invertebrada [English title: Invertebrate Spain], "the romantic revolt of the masses, the hatred of the best [of men], the scarcity of these--here I have the true cause of the fall of Spain. " And this phenomenon reaches all European public life: "The European who begins to dominate, in relation to the complex civilization into which he was born, would be a primitive man, a barbarian emerging through a trap door, a 'vertical invader.'" This vertical invader is also the person who, in contemporary political terms, appears in the pervasive dogma of direct democracy: everyone is as good as everyone else, policy needn't be entrusted to any representative because representation is in itself a hierarchy, and thus the last remnant of inequality.

            Another of the characteristics of political resentment is historical amnesia. There has never been, in the history of mankind, such a long period of peace, prosperity and freedom in the world as the present liberal democracies enjoy, among all the numerous religious, moral, political and social organizational systems that have existed. But the embittered are unable to accept something that would imply acknowledgement of their own conditional nature: that the simple fact of existing puts us in a position of inferiority and dependence in relation to the past. We are always an effect before being a cause. "Those who belong to the rabble," says Nietzsche, "have memory reaching only to the grandparent, time ends in the grandparent."

            This leads to what Ortega calls "the radical ingratitude toward how much has made possible the facility of their existence." There is a childish belief that historical achievements, the rights acquired, are innate in existence itself, rather than that they are something won, and consequently, subject to a constant risk of loss. Civilization as nature, not as endeavor. It would seem that, in his general intuition this is the terrain on which the moral and the political condition of our time is in play: between negation of the past, at

US News & World Report: Charlie Leight/Getty Images

times clothed in false progressivism, mediocrity elevated to a collective virtue, and refusal to acknowledge the value of the best among us, the true aristocracy of merit and of condition--not that of blood or social class--which has always guided the great historic endeavors of humanity.

              

            

[Alejandro Martín Navarro is an award-winning poet who teaches philosophy and ethics at the secondary level in Andalusia, Spain, often using finger puppets to depict the great characters in philosophy. Please see my comment below for further information on this post.]

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[1] Unable to find the source of a Chesterton quote to this effect, I've restated it because retranslation almost never works, and I didn't want to misquote Chesterton.

Drumpf's gop

           

             

                Political conventions are meant to create a narrative. In other words, they're organized to tell the story of the political party's vision, as embodied by its hero.  A convention should be first rate myth-making, each speech (or chapter) building up to the overarching climax of the hero's emergence. Or, in some cases, it's the hero's vision, imposed on the party.

Elephants, Republican icon

           I confess that I was  unable to watch the GOP Convention. (For folks outside the U.S., the GOP acronym stands for "Grand Old Party," another name for the Republican party. True, there's little "grand" about the Republicans' current incarnation, so the acronym becomes just a vaguely Teutonic sounding one syllable word, "gop," reminiscent of "glop," defined rather fittingly as a "sticky and amorphous substance, typically something unpleasant." But I digress....) It's been said that the GOP is dead and has been replaced by Trumpism. Whether that's true or not, it's pretty clear that the candidate is running on his own platform, and dragging the party along with him.

            I did dip my toe in, so to speak, by looking at a veritable sea of clips and listening to commentary and discussion. But the thought of listening to a Ben Carson or Chris Christie speech in full caused anticipatory earaches. The recitation of anger and sadness on the first night, the general nastiness on other nights, the pure ignorance of some attendees (including the candidate), were just too depressing.

            I did force myself to listen to the nominee's acceptance speech. He seems to believe he's the only person who can solve all of the problems we face, at home and abroad. He doesn't seem willing to tell us how, but he does ask that we believe him.

            Seriously?

            Evidently we should do that because we can't believe his opponent. The over-riding theme throughout the days leading up to the coronation of the Donald was the insistence on the alleged dishonesty of Hillary Clinton.

            Does Hillary over-simplify or distort facts to frame issues in a way that leads to the point she's trying to make? She does; it's an advocacy trick well-known to litigators, politicians, and debate teams.  I think it's a mistake in this election cycle, but it's a well-worn technique in a country generally unwilling to examine the complexities of cause and effect.

            But the allegations of her "crookedness" are over the top. There isn't a lot she can hide after some 25 years of scrutiny and public service. There's just nothing of substance to find--some bad judgment, maybe, and some arguable carelessness, but no malicious intent or criminal action.

From pixabay.com

            What's hard for me to fathom is how the Donald (with the help of the demagogic manipulation of Chris Christie) managed to convince his people to cry out for her to be jailed; he excoriates her for lying, but he himself has little  apparent relationship with truth-telling  and in fact has engaged in practices that come so close to fraudulent that it's surprising he's not yet been charged.

             The difference seems to be that Hillary knows (or should have known) what she's doing, according to her critics. While the Donald believes he's telling the truth, or is able to convince himself that his fantasies are real.

            So that's the story that I heard come out of the gop convention. The vision  revealed the hero, who turns out to be a self-deluding narcissistic bully.

            This is a tale best tossed in the trash, but it looks like it could be a best seller...

          

Media Stories

            News stories.

            These are the stories from real life... or are they?

            On social media and at social gatherings, you hear a lot of complaints about "the media."

            For example, I recently heard someone cheering the U.K. for "taking their country back" by leaving the European Union.  This particular framing of the issue was challenged by discussion of some of the concessions the U.K. had wrested from the E.U. in  its initial negotiations for entry way back when.

            In the wake of these points, someone observed: "The Media don't tell us these things! We don't know the realities."

Media's birth: Gutenberg printing

            It is true that the media in the U.S. tends to focus on the U.S., some outlets more than others. People who spend a lot of time with Fox News jabbering away in the background may not be getting the best information. Still, at least as the Brexit vote was approaching, CNN had fairly good coverage of both the campaign and concerns (if the archive listings can be believed), as did NBC news. The Public Broadcasting Service offered several discussions about it, though apparently not a lot before the vote.

            That's the passive side of it, what turns up if you just turn on the radio or T.V.

            But we live in a world where you can actually learn about something if you're curious about it. In the case of Brexit, if one were truly interested, there were ample discussions available from videos of debates on line, and from British newspapers. I was in the UK not long before the vote, and recall some exhaustive pro and con articles in British newspapers.  I suspect these articles were on line at the time, as well. The New Yorker did some first rate reporting on the issue, and so did (not surprisingly) The Economist.

            I'd have to say that the media did do its job.

"Gift Horse," Trafalgar Square, London, U.K.

            Did the voters do their job? There's some question about that in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.  Not a few voters reported their vote was meant as a protest; they didn't really think Britain would leave the E.U. In fact, they weren't sure that's what they wanted, really.

            Surprise!

            Here in the U.S., the current presidential campaign has several story lines running through it, but from what I've seen, the echo chamber is working overtime. That is, people seem to be listening only to those who agree with their preconceptions.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of thinking going on about substance.

            Some of the statements being made by candidates or surrogates don't sound quite right if you do think about it. I've started trying to find out what they might mean. Turns out there are web sites that let me do that! With a little typing, I can go to PolitiFact.com or FactCheck.org and look at what researchers have determined to be the truth or lack thereof. These are non-partisan sites; they've no ax they're grinding. (For a line-up of fact checkers, go to http://www.technorms.com/454/get-your-facts-right-6-fact-checking-websites-that-help-you-know-the-truth)

            If we want the media to do its job, we need to do ours: we need to support the fact checkers and the news organizations that do the hard work of reporting and telling the true stories, even if this reporting contradicts our preferred view of what is happening.  We need to listen to other voices. We need to listen with a critical ear.  We need to see memes as reflections, NOT as fact or news.

            We need, in short, to write our  own political story. Whether it's a farce or a tragedy is in our hands. There's no do-over.

A Pause in Seville

            I'm feeling a little guilty about leaving my main character in the lurch.

            He's been stuck near a plaza in Seville for three or four weeks. He's approaching a house: "Gonzalo hesitantly approached the house from the narrow street, admiring its facade." It belongs to a former school mate of his and the well-off merchant she's married.

            The street, I've decided, is Borceguinería (now called Mateos Gago, after a fierce 19th century   priest and professor at University of Seville who was--it sounds like--fanatically opposed to Darwin's theories... but that's another story).

            The street was named Borceguinería until 1893, though precisely why is a mystery. Since the name goes back to the middle ages, perhaps it refers to a street of sandal-makers? That's how the Royal Spanish Academy dictionary defines the word borceguinería: a workshop where sandals are made or a neighborhood where sandals are sold. At least, I think a borcegui is a sandal; one source says "shoelaces," but the same Royal Academy dictionary describes it as footwear reaching to the ankle, open in the front that's adjusted with cords or laces. Which sounds to me like a sandal, right?

Entrance to Royal Palace

            The street's proximity to the cathedral and the royal palace make it a likely location for successful merchants of the time, I would think. It wouldn't have been as  fancy as one of the broad avenues where the nobility had their palaces. In fact, for centuries it was so narrow and twisty that there were complaints about it. Then in the 1920s, when Seville was preparing for the extravagant Iberoamerican Exposition that was to take place in 1929,  major work was done on the street to turn it into a more user-friendly thoroughfare--though today it's one-way and hardly suitable for drag racing.

Cathedral wall, by plaza

            Despite its age-old twists, it did end on a plaza beside the cathedral where new money at the turn of the 15th century might well have met with folks who had names, the hidalgos, the children of somebody (as opposed to nobody).

            This is how my story goes, and why it's the never-ending novel. My characters roll along, moving through their lives according to their wishes (mostly), and then the main character gets stuck.

            Or do I? Niggling questions crop up, like: what's the name of the street? Where exactly is this house? While digging into possibilities of street and location, in the background are questions about what the characters have to do to accomplish the actions they're considering. Gonzalo hesitates on the street because he's not sure what will happen when he enters the house. That's because I'm not sure how the young adults about to confront each other will react.

            I do know that shortly, my character is pretty well decided he'll head out to the newly discovered lands, on an expedition leaving in February 1502 (he's stuck at the edge of the plaza in January of that same year). The story bridge between the plaza and the voyage is a reunion of childhood companions, some of whom may, or may not, go with him on the expedition headed by Nicolás de Ovando--who was a real and not very appealing person.

Cathedral: Orange Tree Plaza

            Stories have their own logic. I'm not entirely sure why Gonzalo is hesitating before going into the house; it may be that this whole sequence should be torn up and thrown away. The characters are being a little coy with me. Maybe they want a summer vacation? They've been doing their jobs pretty steadily since January, despite a number of short interruptions surrounding changed location as I've moved about.

            Or maybe, they just don't want to leave Seville.

            I can sympathize with that.

           

           

Political Thriller? Dystopian SciFi? Standing on the cliff edge and looking over.... (Part II)

And then we have the news coming out of the U.S. to further spice the pot of politics in the western world. I confess that if I'd been writing a political novel, I would never have had the imagination to come up with a Drumpf-like candidate getting a major party's nomination in the United States of America.  The Democratic Party's current conflicts are more conceivable: we've often seen it before.  But a couple of views from Europe might be of interest with respect to our situation.

The Drumpf with his favorite politician

First, an op-ed piece in Spain's El Pais by political scientist and author José Ignacio Torreblanco on 2 June takes issue with the "nonsense" (in Spanish, he's coined the word "trumperías" as a synonym for the word "tonterías" which means nonsense or foolishness) Trump is spouting, by pointing out that U.S. greatness isn't in question anywhere other than in the Trump camp if one looks at objective fact. He also disputes any reduction in respect for the U.S., despite what he characterizes as "colossal foreign policy mistakes," and cites the numerous alliances and security agreements to which the U.S. is party. The Mexican wall he treats as the absurdity it should be. (See http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/05/31/opinion/1464688131_104386.html for the story; this is the Spanish. I can't find a version in the English publication of El Pais.)

Second, an article in Britain's International Business Times by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a journalist, columnist, broadcaster and author, described by the Telegraph as one of the most powerful Asians in the UK, came out on 9 June that is worth a good deal of thought. She points out that the realities of office often hijack the best intentions. "These incumbents," she writes, speaking about the new Muslim mayor of London and new mixed-race mayor of Bristol, "who broke through barriers soon learn that established systems and structures hold out against fundamental change or reform. Promises and possibilities seem to vaporize after they get into office. A new realism sets in."  (See http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/hillary-clinton-has-made-history-shell-have-no-choice-let-us-down-1564642)

One popular strategy for supporting one's candidate is to demonize opponents. As loudly as possible, with as much "evidence" as is available. Now there's a (perhaps tired) plot for a tale: 

an innocent outsider, who's managed to get through life as pure as the driven snow, is confronted by an evil witch who, although once dedicated to the light, was turned to the dark side by ceaseless nips from blood-sucking demons or the like... If you believe social media, that one doesn't even have to be imagined because it's playing out on the U.S. political stage as I write.

Sanders and Clinton in debate

Following another line of thought, it can be persuasively argued that neither President Obama nor Sen. Elizabeth Warren should have endorsed a candidate until after the convention. No doubt there are a half dozen conspiracy theories that explain their "rush" to do so. (Conspiracy theories might make for good fiction, but I suspect there was a more prosaic political calculation here: in the interest of consolidating resources against Drumpf, they hoped their own popularity would help give Hillary greater credibility with some segments of Bernie's supporters.)

One compelling idea for a political thriller: imagine a shadowy propaganda machine intent on weakening the U.S. by seizing on our idealism. Idealism doesn't come in one color or slogan, remember. (There are powerful segments of each campaign, even Drumpf's, that believe!) True believers can be easily manipulated, because they're already prepared to reject any view challenging their preconceived notion. In this story, such manipulation could be used to destabilize the election process, procuring the election of someone wholly unsuitable to lead the U.S. Then there might be an overreach by that person and the first ever military coup in U.S. history.

So many juicy plot lines can be imagined when you look over that cliff into the story possibilities....

Except... the 2016 U.S. presidential election isn't fiction, hard as the narrative currently unfurling may be to believe. It's easy to feel like you got caught somehow in a novel... except these events are playing out in real life, with real consequences. I hope voters will push past irrational fears, currently being massaged into a kind of hysteria by Drumpf's supporters. I hope they will listen to the grown-ups in the room, and choose discipline, reason and common sense.

It would be fun to write this story... but not so much to live it!

Political Thriller? Dystopian SciFi? Standing on the cliff edge and looking over.... (Part I)

It's warm in Seville, Spain with fresh mornings and heat-laden afternoons. The sky is a bright blue, and the sunlight has a luminous quality that intensifies colors and deepens shadows. Stories flash out of the cool mists that bathe the cafe/bars and filter up out of the tiled surface of the Alameda de Hercules park, too tempting not to saunter into a drenching on a hot afternoon, weaving though the droplets and cavorting (no other word for it) students.

The stories that come to mind try to reflect the brilliance of light and color, but the shadows seems to insist on a tinge of menace. Snatches of conversation heard around the dozens of cafe tables echo with concern, sometimes passion and often anger: there's an election on 26 June to elect the full parliament of Spain. It's the second general election in less than 7 months and is necessary because none of the several political parties won a clear majority.  Various attempts by the major parties to form a coalition government failed, in part due to inability to reconcile policy differences and come up with compromise positions. Some of the coalition attempts disgusted once optimistic voters. "How could Party X try to join with Party Y? I can't vote for Party X again after that," a friend told me. "I don't know who to vote for now."

The PP campaigns in Seville (2016)

Corruption scandals and economic difficulties are causing further pressures on the still developing democracy in Spain. The country's deficit--claimed to have been exacerbated by a tax cut in an election year meant to draw voters to the then-ruling party, the Partido Popular (PP)--prompted the IMF to call for increased austerity which caused budgets to be slashed at all levels; unemployment stands at around 21%.

There are fewer comments about the 23 June vote in Britain on whether to stay in the European Union (tagged "Bremain") or leave (tagged, "Brexit"). For many in Europe, it's unthinkable that Britain would really withdraw. For Brits, not so much. According to the British newspaper The Independent of 11 June, among probable voters in the UK, 55% support Brexit, while 45% favor staying in the Union. The worry in Europe about Britain's withdrawal is that if Britain leaves, others unhappy with their place in the Union will follow. Some voices add that Britain's departure would spur additional splintering (in Spain, the worry is that Catalonia will increase its pressures for independence).

The imagination boggles: so many plots and counterplots are suggested by these events. Vigilante groups seem to be growing in some European countries, ostensibly to protect against immigrant incursion... except there are few immigrants of any stripe in the areas where they're forming (See "Vigilantes Patrol Parts of Europe Where Few Migrants Set Foot," by  Miroslava Germanova, Boryana Dzhambazova and Helene Bienvenujun, NYT, 10 June 2016). The extreme right in France has been gaining strength. In the aftermath of recent floods and the series of strikes that preceded the floods, further destabilization--such as what could follow a successful Brexit vote--could threaten French liberalism.

The Austrian electorate barely avoided electing a President from the  right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) who ran on a platform voicing strong opposition to “forced multiculturalism, globalization and mass immigration," essentially, "Austria First!" The election was close enough that the FPO has challenged the results in Austria's Constitutional Court. (See https://www.rt.com/news/345856-freedom-party-austria-election/)

And then there's Putin, not above using old dog's tricks on new platforms, like news agencies that are just legitimate enough to give some credence when a misinformation story is slipped in to their mix.

Gotta say: for anyone considering writing a political thriller or  one of those dystopian visions of the future, the stories available to be "ripped from the headlines" just abound!