Shattering Our Trust in the World

Much analysis has been written about the U.S. presidential election: those who were unwilling to look at the portents have expressed their shock; fingers have pointed; victors have quickly gone from slightly astonished to smugly confident and obnoxiously righteous, even vindictive.

You may have noticed I haven't done any analysis, or, indeed, said much of anything beyond an poetic almost-dirge published not long after. 

by cjneasbi at "Deviant Art"

The results weren't unthinkable. They were completely thinkable. I take no comfort in knowing that. Not long ago, I recalled Senator Margaret Chase Smith's horsemen of calumny. Alas, her faith in the American people has been shattered, and the horsemen now are abroad, but it must be said: their horrific grandeur is somehow diminished to shabby pettiness by galloping to the regimented beat of 140 characters max!  

Hannah Arendt wrote in Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil (1963) of the concept of evil as manifest in the banal. Her portrayal of Eichmann didn't reveal a malicious or particularly anti-semitic character, but rather a person intent on advancing his career by performing the orders he was given as effectively as possible; he did his job, without questioning whether the job should be done. Arendt's analysis wasn't without controversy, but it raised a disturbing spectre that hovers in the background during this period of transition to a new presidential administration.

Colin Marshall, writing in 2013 in The New Yorker on a biopic about Arendt, refers to a later article by Rollo Romig. He looked at the nature of evil in the wake of the Aurora CO shootings. Rollo wrote: "The danger of a word like ‘evil’ is that it is absolute.... ‘Evil’ has become the word we apply to perpetrators who we’re both unable and unwilling to do anything to repair, and for whom all of our mechanisms of justice seem unequal: it describes the limits of what malevolence we’re able to bear. In the end, it’s a word that says more about the helplessness of the accuser than it does the transgressor.”

In the current political realm, it seems to me that these two views don't differ; rather, they combine. I don't think our new president-elect is a grand villain; I think he's entirely amoral. We are told by clusters of tweets that "winning" (as defined by the president-elect) is all that matters; he's made clear that he speaks in hyperbole, that factual truth is of no importance to him in public discourse. From this, I draw the conclusion that expediency trumps legality and morality in the interest of the "win." (No pun intended--but doesn't his name and its usage strike you as part of the surreal nature of this entire situation?)

Trump differs from Eichmann in that the orders are his to give, but the narrowness of his imagination and limits of his vision of success translate into a consummate banality. Our government is being stage-managed as an unscripted entertainment show (commonly called reality TV, but there's so little reality to it that the use of the term is straight out of Orwell's 1984). Yet  his very lack of awareness, his brazen ignorance, his complete indifference to anything beyond himself, take us to the place where we're unable, and half the country isn't even interested in, calling him out and holding him accountable.

This is what breaks my heart: not that half the country was fearful and angry and handed this man the key to the most powerful office in the world (though we must grieve at the magnitude of this failure), but that those same people seem willing to let him do as he likes, contrary to his promises, contrary to the general public interest, and contrary to the rule of law. The dignity of the office, its power to seek the common good, seem of no account to half our people, nor do the principles of dissent, or the value of diversity and open exchange of ideas. We stand in the rubble of the shining city, wondering at the cracks that threaten its very foundations.

Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton University Press: 2002) is also referenced in Romig's piece. She writes that calling something evil "is a way of marking the fact that it shatters our trust in the world." Romig expands on this, observing "Evil is both harmful and inexplicable, but not just that; what defines an evil act is that it is permanently disorienting for all those touched by it." If evil is, in the modern world, essentially identified by its effect, then this election has indeed unleashed evil upon us, 140 characters at a time....

U.S. Presidential, 2016 (a poem)

[I've waited and listened and thought and tried to process the events of the last week and a half.  In the wake of the flap over  the "Hamilton" cast petition to Mike Pence, I'm allowing myself now to spend a moment just feeling, and this is what it feels like. I hope I'm over-reacting, because as I read through this, it sounds way too much like a dirge. ]

I.  8 November 2016

Just-past-dawn-light, bright shine on a bluer than blue Sound;

beyond, the orange-tinted islands, Atlantic bluer still,

deep water blue, stretching all the way to the Bay of Biscay...

Election Day, 2016: on the road to the tall white steepled church

where voters will name themselves,  deposit decisions.

The cinnamon, amber, carrot, pumpkin, ginger trees

shout their last vibrant burst into the crisp morning.

I recall a man tossing rainbow bubbles on the Eastern Prom

two days ago, one after another; he manipulated wands

to release them into the air, fragile, light, multi-colored,

suspended, sliding on barely sensed currents,

falling slowly, slowly, slowly to burst and shatter,

suddenly innumerable, unrecoverable shards of light.

Their breaking was breath-taking, like water droplets

momentarily revealed before forever disappearing,

like words printed on a burning page,

dissolving into ash.

                                   

 II.  9 November 2016

                                                             

The Sound's surface ripples under a gray wind

that sweeps the last of the leaves away; skeletal black branches

shudder as it passes, carrying truths on its stream,

their broken dregs draining, dispersing, on erratic air,

pages out of a forgotten book too long unread,

while flickering screens chatter unintelligible noises

to we, the People, fragmented bright butterflies of souls,

who drift on unseen currents so confidently,

so righteous, whilst unknowing we fall, slowly, slowly, slowly

until the People bursts apart

into silenced silence, into splintered atoms,

the more perfect union desecrated

as its covenant crumbles.

S.V. Lowery

19 Nov 2016

Election Eve, 2016

It's the night before the United States' presidential election.

Homeland Security

We stand on the razor's edge, balanced on a blade

That, should we slip, will slice us sharply apart

Though how the pieces may separate cannot be known

Without defining the exact trajectory of the fall,

Where the cut will split the body apart.

 A shade stalks the homeland,

Dims the mid-day light (no longer morning;

Morning was lost to wars, its innocence drowned

By bloodied bullets in rice paddies and motorcades,

Airplanes repurposed as torpedoes).

This land is neither father nor mother; it stands

As both, as home, a geography held safe for growth,

Rolling green and golden, rising, rivered and riven,

Shaping our gods and our prayers, never seamlessly,

But ever with hope and dream and faith. As was.

Today we stand on the razor's edge, surrounded by mud:

We can in lost balance fall into the mire, lose ourselves,

Overcome... or we can reach down--steady, steady--

And grasp it, find the rich clay within and mold it,

Bring artful form from oozing muck.

Balanced on the edge of a sword,

inside a moment of choice:

To cringe inside the shadow of winter night?

To stride out into summer's early afternoon light?

To fear? Or to persevere?

S.V. Lowery

7 November 2016

Dark Fantasy (4): more e-mails? seriously?

      Just when I thought polishing and posting were all I had left to do to finish my dark fantasy, to finally escape the weight of this presidential campaign season, James Comey of the FBI revives the e-mail question.

       The surreal becomes even more so: the media, even responsible outlets, fall over each other to get the story out first and in the jumble somehow there's a whole new investigation of the Clinton e-mails.  The truffle-scandal hogs are snuffling around for more delicious fungi growing on the donkey trail.

        No one has ever explained--to my satisfaction, anyway--any actual harm allegedly posed by the Secretary's use of her e-mail server. In the case that emerged yesterday (28 October 2016), I don't quite understand how Secretary Clinton's mishandling of anything is involved when the handling was apparently done by her aide, Huma Abadin.

        By all accounts, Comey is a highly regarded official with a reputation for integrity. But in the light of the status of the campaign and past practice, and given that the FBI apparently doesn't even know what these emails are (only that they exist), Comey's report to Congress smacks of at best, sorely faulty judgement, and at worst, sabotage of Clinton's campaign.

       For those who are so disturbed at Secretary Clinton's alleged corruption--none of which is proven, remember!--why are you not equally concerned about the Donald's corruption, which is well documented? The Secretary doesn't seem to be defending lawsuits alleging fraud, as in the case of Trump University,  nor is there a documented history of racial discrimination applicable to Mrs. Clinton, while the same cannot be said of Trump and his properties.

        If one is troubled by a nexus with corporate America, the Donald's financial disclosure documents filed for his presidential run (though clearly his tax returns would be more helpful) should raise all kinds of red flags. Reading through the form (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2838696-Trump-2016-Financial-Disclosure.html), it's pretty clear that election of the Donald would be equivalent to letting a fox loose in a hen house. His varied investment interests, with an emphasis on real estate, suggest that the Bundy acquittals in Oregon would stand as the harbinger for a full-scale invasion of public lands managed by the federal government, if such lands weren't turned over to the private sector entirely.

         I hear much moaning about Secretary Clinton's ties to big banks and multinationals. Again, I don't quite understand how these connections compare to the Donald's involvement in corporate America. The Secretary gave speeches for which she was handsomely paid, true. She  apparently suggests that big business--banks or whatever--contribute to the national dialogue, that they be part of solutions rather than the problem.  She then paid tax on the handsome fees.

         The Donald uses every tax loophole available without, so far as I know, lobbying at any time to close them. Even though he now says "close the loopholes." In other words, I see no indication that he's ever engaged in public interest lobbying or public service. But now, in his new guise as possible president, he'll fix the system because he knows it so well. One looks in vain through his fifty years in business for evidence to support this sudden desire to fix a system that's been so beneficial to his interests.

          Does he get a free pass because he eschews "political correctness" and "tells it like it is"? "Like it is" is often not "like it should be" if we wish to be a  civilized society. Does anyone remember the foundation of political correctness? Civility? An effort to adjust attitudes to a respect for difference and diversity?  Should we not aspire? Must we wallow in our own short-comings?

          Awhile back, I posted a blog entry written by Spanish poet-philosopher Alejandro Martín ("The Fox and the Grapes" on 3 September 2016) which raised Nietzsche's spectre of a "hatred born of impotence that changes the value of things." As I understand his position, the animosity that can grow out of a sense of powerlessness often translates into an insistence that everyone is the same and, effectively, into a projection of our own secret failings on others to explain how they rose above us, whether their rise be social, financial or political. The Donald instinctively knows this; it's why he speaks to the worst in us rather than trying to excite our aspirations. Secretary Clinton appeals, instead, to our better selves, ignoring (apparently to her peril) the anger and resentment of those who have not fulfilled the hopes raised with the promise of transformation by Obama's election.

            Secretary Clinton is exceptionally well prepared and knowledgeable. She has worked hard to achieve her position. I might have preferred another candidate, but I have no doubt that she truly believes we all do better when we work together, and that we all have an obligation to contribute what we can to the national community. Her greatest failing may be that she seems tone deaf to the clambering cacophony from a populace that wants comforting--I applaud her for trying to recruit the nation, but the Donald's promise to protect everyone and fix everything is a siren song for many. How much better we feel if someone as flawed as we are beats someone from the elite! (How the Donald has managed to pull this off escapes me: maybe it's the exceedingly bad taste of his gold-embellished decorating? Gold is expensive so it must be good and more must be better?)

Three Fates (Mantheniel Photography)

               So as we look at the current landscape, I cannot see how the handling of emails has caused harm, either those already examined or those recently found but not yet examined.  These latter may have caused harm, but since we don't know what they are, how do we know their effect?

                I can see how Wikileaks and Julian Assange have injected shipworms into the hull of the ship of state by their handling of stolen emails. There's already been a Trump voter found who tried to vote twice because she feared her first vote was being changed to a vote for Hillary. Ah, the irony.

          Who could have imagined this election? It's enough to imagine there really are three fates with  very warped senses of humor manipulating these strings. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Dark Fantasy (3) ? Black Snake Poison

            There are no clown sightings on Atlas Obscura's map in the North Dakota Plains near the  Missouri River, where an indigenous encampment has been growing since April 2016.

            The camp exists to protect the waters of the Missouri River from a pipeline being built to transport crude oil from the Bakken oil fields. The campers claim the mantle of water protectors and call the pipeline the Black Snake.

Standing Rock Sioux Camp, ND

            The immediate reason for this direct action, begun by the Standing Rock Sioux, a Native American Tribe, was a change in the route of the pipeline. The pipe has to cross the Missouri River; the original route was a little north of Bismark, ND, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected that route. "One reason mentioned in the agency’s environmental assessment is the proximity to wellhead source water protection areas that are avoided to protect municipal water supply wells," according to Amy Dairymple writing in the Bismark Tribune on 14 August 2016.  The changed route brings the river crossing close to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and threatens the reservation's sole water supply, which is apparently not a concern (unlike the case of the Bismark water supply). The new route also disturbs land held sacred by the tribe though it doesn't have legal title to this land.

            Media coverage is mostly focused on the gathering of native nations in North Dakota. In addition to environmental concerns, a multitude of complex issues relating to indigenous rights, as well as constitutional guaranties, are being highlighted as the effort to stop the pipeline continues. (http://time.com/4548566/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux/  has a summary of the pipeline story as of 28 October 2016.)

            I've seen little attention given to the source and effect of the fuel to be transported. But there are troubling and broad-reaching issues involved in the Bakken oil and gas fields, if scientific reports can be believed.    

            It seems that beginning around 1984, and continuing until 2009, global ethane levels were dropping. The main source of ethane is extraction of oil and gas; venting and flaring in the production fields release it, and when it reacts with sunlight, surface-level ozone results. Ozone, needed in the upper atmosphere to protect us against ultraviolet sunlight, at surface levels acts as a toxic substance and as a greenhouse gas.

            A mountaintop sensor in Europe detected a reversal of the downward trend in ethane levels in 2010.  The increase continued, so a study was launched to locate the reason. After taking air samples over Bakken for 12 days in May 2014, "airborne measurements from directly over and downwind of oil production areas show that the [Bakken] field's ethane emissions of 0.23 teragrams per year, or roughly 250,000 U.S. tons, effectively cancel out half of the global decline rate," [emphasis added] according a report by University of Michigan in its Michigan News. Video posted on You Tube by Michigan Engineering shows the changes in surface ozone  from the Bakken Field emissions.

https://youtu.be/D-Dvm0MTpNo

            The report continues: "'These findings not only solve an atmospheric mystery—where that extra ethane was coming from—they also help us understand how regional activities sometimes have global impacts,' said co-author Colm Sweeney, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, and NOAA. 'We did not expect a single oil field to affect global levels of this gas.'"[1]

           

            You may ask, how does this all fit into some dark fantasy story of the presidential campaign?

            In the middle of the northern plains, an ever-increasing number of indigenous peoples and their allies gather in prayer to defend the natural world against what they interpret as a Black Snake foreseen in prophesy.  State police agencies are pushing back where the confrontation has escalated. The creator of the Black Snake is a single fossil fuel extraction operation that supplies roughly 2 percent of ethane emissions in the world.

            Meanwhile, the Donald (who has a fairly substantial investment in Energy Transfer Partners  LLC, the pipeline's developer) in increasingly strident tones denies the influence of human activity on climate change. Aside from personal financial interest, this position gives him a solid edge in the oil and gas producing states. (Native Americans make up only about 2% of the US population; it's a negligible voting block.) Energy Transfer has not surprisingly supported his campaign with significant contributions.
         
            But the climate change problem he rejects has global reach and requires international cooperation--and a willingness to face down fossil fuel interests and honor our international commitments. While Secretary Clinton has not directly addressed the DAPL, she at least accepts the science of climate change and the threat it presents.

            The GOP candidate's polemic strives to harness the apocalyptic foursome: fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear. But this exploitation in no way serves the national interest. 

            Sightings of red-maned clowns sprout where he campaigns.

            Even in Maine.

           

           

             

                       

           

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[1] The study is titled "Fugitive emissions from the Bakken shale illustrate role of shale production in global ethane shift." Also contributing were researchers from NOAA, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, Stanford University and Harvard University. The research was funded primarily by NOAA and NASA.

Dark Fantasy (2)? Clowns

 

            Then there are the clowns.

           

            All over the United States there are reports of sinister clown sightings. Clown sightings seem to come in waves:  one rolled through in the 1980s, another in the 1990s.

            Shira Chess, a folklorist at the University of Georgia, writing in the New York Times (14 October 2016) argues that the current crop of clowns originally emerged from the internet. She believes they started out as stories that, cut and pasted until their authors no longer recognize them, take on a life of their own. "These stories are written, shared, reshared and rewritten to express the things that all horror (online or offline) is meant to express: fear of the uncanny, and universal existential anxieties."

            As near as I can tell, the first offline clown sighting in this wave in the U.S. was in Greenville, South Carolina during the dog days of August. According to a report written by Matthew Teague in The Guardian (U.S. edition), a little boy saw the clowns near a low income apartment complex where he lived.  The child described "two clowns in the woods, both brightly dressed and made up. One with a red fright wig and the other with a black star painted on his face." His mother reported they were trying to lure him away.

            No clowns were found in the environs, but the mother remained convinced that clowns had threatened her child, even attacked the door to her home.

            The clowns rapidly multiplied. From Greenville, reports of sightings spread out to other parts of South Carolina, then to other states. By October 6, Atlas Obscura could publish a map of reported sightings that showed activity from Orono, Maine to Los Angeles, California. Yet rarely were actual clowns found.

            Canada experienced clown sightings, as did the UK. Indeed, across the pond, according to the Mirror, concern about the clowns was expressed by the Russian embassy in London. Britain's foreign minister, Boris Johnson, in a stare-down with Russia over the situation in Syria, had called for Brits to protest outside the Russian embassy, in itself somewhat surreal.  The Russian embassy then issued a warning to Russia's citizens in the UK to beware the "antics" of "killer clowns," which were intended to cause "fear and bewilderment."

            University of Georgia's Chess sets aside the reality of the clowns. She writes, "The question, 'Are the clowns real?' is beside the point. The question we should be asking ourselves is, 'What are we really afraid of?'"

            A campaign advertisement in support of the GOP presidential candidate  doesn't mention clowns. It does offer dire predictions of the future before asserting: "Donald Trump will protect you. He is the only one who can."

           Still, I can't help but note that many of  the clowns described seem to sport a mop of red hair... .

                       

           

           

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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