Muhlberger's World History

A remarkable story from the Ukrainian front-- from the Guardian

2026-06-01T15:41:31.824-04:00

‘You’re not one of us, are you?’: How a Ukrainian soldier survived two weeks in a Russian dugout | Ukraine | The Guardian

I don't think there's any point in me summarizing this story, Its interest is in hearing the voice of a soldier who knows more about the crucial war of our time than the rest of us ever will.

Skyshow in the Czech Republic -- and some thoughts on space-junk

2026-06-01T13:31:57.712-04:00

Two skywatchers were lucky enough to catch a comet crossing an asteroid. Apparently there's a certain ppopular mystique surrounding "Xs in the sky" (look it up!) but this seems to be a normal (and wonderful) sample of the workings of the universe.

A thought I hadwhilewriting this: we are lucky that our region of space is rather clean and calm. Big meteor strikes are rare, no rogue planets since the formation of the moon and we seem to be in no imminent danger from a nearby supernova.

The Star Trek universe is built around human beings searching for "life." You have to wonder sometimes why they bother, given that so much of the "life" they find is nasty or hopelessly eccentric. There are lots of military dictatorships and repressive religious establishments.

It would make more sense if Star Fleet's primary mission was making sure that the solar system was not in danger of being destroyed by some manifestation of "non-life."

But then its easy to make the case that Star Trek (the franchise) is part of our own hopeless eccentricity.

A stimulating morning --Jethro Tull and James M. McPherson

2026-05-27T16:31:57.323-04:00

This morning I have been listening to a 1984 concert by Jethro Tull on YouTube while reading the last chapter and the epilog of James M. McPherson's extraordinary Battle Cry of Freedom: the American Civil War. It was quite an experience.

I have been following Jethro Tull since ~1970 and have seen them three times in concert. Ian Anderson, the leader of the band, started out playing an eccentric style of flute music, writing ambitious songs, and creating interesting lyrics. The video of this concert is truly excellent and made me think of how remarkable the human ability to create music is.

McPherson's book is a masterpiece of American history. It uses numerical data to capture the complex economic situation (very important!), the individal personalities (largely taken from the diaries and memoirs that so many soldiers, politicians and journalists produced during and after the war. The historiography of this crucial era is treated very briefly but brilliantly.

The Battle Cry of Freedom is a remarkable achievement. I know something about history -- I have written a fair number of books, but they are pretty short by comparison. I am astonished by McPherson and I can't really imagine how he did it.

One aspect of BCF is worth mentioning, The last chapter, "We Are All Americans;" is one of the most dramatic pieces of historical writing I have ever seen. That's largely because it describes the reactions of various witnesses to the high drama of the end of the war.

Have a look:

Lincoln's visit to Richmond produced the most unforgettable scenes of this unforgettable war. With an escort of only ten sailors, the president walked the streets while Porter peered nervously at every window for would-be assassins. But the Emancipator was soon surrounded by an impenetrable cordon of black people shouting"Glory to God! Glory! Glory! Glory!" "Bless the Lord!" "The great Messiah!" "I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He's been in my heart four long years. Come to free his children from bondage. Glory, Hallelujah!" Several freed slaves touched Lincoln to make sure he was real. "I know I am free, shouted an old woman, for I have seen Father Abraham and felt him." Overwhelmed by rare emotions, Lincoln said to one black man who fell on his knees in front of him, "Don't kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter."

Are you a fan of micro-states?

2026-05-17T18:37:07.988-04:00

A fan of microstates named Vlad Geo Top is letting us know that the Bektashi Order -- a branch of Islam -- might establish itself as an independent state in suburban Tirana, the capital of Albania. Next to no people live there and I'm not even sure they are Berktashis or consider themselves as such.

Thanks, Vlad!

IMAGE: The flag.

Interstellar images turned into music

2026-04-02T10:07:00.007-04:00

This is marvellous.

A super-cargo ship of the 15th century

2026-03-19T19:57:00.002-04:00

livescience.com has a fascinating article on the discovery of a huge cog -- a late medieval cargo ship -- off the coast of Denmark.

The researchers discovered the vessel off Copenhagen in Øresund, or "the Sound" in English — the strait between Denmark and Sweden. They described it as a "super ship" that could transport hundreds of tons of cargo at low cost during a period of burgeoning trade in the 14th and 15th centuries. "The find is a milestone for maritime archaeology," excavation leader Otto Uldum said in a statement. "It is the largest cog we know of, and it gives us a unique opportunity to understand both the construction and life on board the biggest trading ships of the Middle Ages."
The discovery was made accidentally as part of seabed investigations for a new artificial island that Denmark plans to create off Copenhagen. Researchers removed what they described as "centuries of sand and silt" to reveal the outline of the ship, which they named Svælget 2 after the channel in which it was found. Svælget 2 was well preserved on the seabed, located 43 feet (13 m) below the surface. Sand protected its starboard side, which retained traces of delicate rigging — unheard of in previous cog wrecks. The researchers also identified a brick galley, the first in a medieval ship in Danish waters, which allowed the crew to cook hot meals on an open fire. Artifacts on the ship included cooking materials, such as pots and bowls, and the crew's personal objects, such as hair combs and rosary beads for prayer, according to the statement. The researchers have yet to find Svælget 2's cargo. Uldum noted that the hold wasn't covered, so cargo barrels would have floated away from the ship as it sank. However, with no signs of military use, Svælget 2 is likely to have been a merchant ship, the researchers said.
And here's a pic of a modern reconstruction of another medieval cog, the Kamper Kogge, sailing down IJsse river in the Netherlands. A historic replica of a medieval cog, the Kamper Kogge, sailing down IJsse river in the Netherlands. (Image credit: Sjo via Getty Images) Svælget 2 was constructed in 1410, a fact the researchers deduced by tree-ring dating annual growth patterns on the ship's wood. The team also compared the patterns to previously published tree-ring data and determined that the ship's planks were from Poland, while the frame of the ship came from the Netherlands. Furthermore, construction patterns suggested that the planks were imported while the frame was cut at the ship's building site, indicating that the construction relied on a complex timber trade network across Northern Europe, according to the statement.
The giant ship was designed for a perilous journey from the Low Countries (including what is now the Netherlands) to the trading towns of the Baltic. A cog of this size would have allowed for the transportation of bulky everyday goods such as salt, timber, bricks and basic food items over long distances, which the researchers said would have previously only been done for luxury goods.
"The cog revolutionised trade in Northern Europe," Uldum said. "It made it possible to transport goods on a scale never seen before."
The researchers discovered the vessel off Copenhagen in Øresund, or "the Sound" in English — the strait between Denmark and Sweden. They described it as a "super ship" that could transport hundreds of tons of cargo at low cost during a period of burgeoning trade in the 14th and 15th centuries.
"The find is a milestone for maritime archaeology," excavation leader Otto Uldum said in a statement. "It is the largest cog we know of, and it gives us a unique opportunity to understand both the construction and life on board the biggest trading ships of the Middle Ages."
The discovery was made accidentally as part of seabed investigations for a new artificial island that Denmark plans to create off Copenhagen. Researchers removed what they described as "centuries of sand and silt" to reveal the outline of the ship, which they named Svælget 2 after the channel in which it was found.
Svælget 2 was well preserved on the seabed, located 43 feet (13 m) below the surface. Sand protected its starboard side, which retained traces of delicate rigging — unheard of in previous cog wrecks. The researchers also identified a brick galley, the first in a medieval ship in Danish waters, which allowed the crew to cook hot meals on an open fire. Artifacts on the ship included cooking materials, such as pots and bowls, and the crew's personal objects, such as hair combs and rosary beads for prayer, according to the statement. The researchers have yet to find Svælget 2's cargo. Uldum noted that the hold wasn't covered, so cargo barrels would have floated away from the ship as it sank. However, with no signs of military use, Svælget 2 is likely to have been a merchant ship, the researchers said. Svælget 2 was constructed in 1410, a fact the researchers deduced by tree-ring dating annual growth patterns on the ship's wood. The team also compared the patterns to previously published tree-ring data and determined that the ship's planks were from Poland, while the frame of the ship came from the Netherlands. Furthermore, construction patterns suggested that the planks were imported while the frame was cut at the ship's building site, indicating that the construction relied on a complex timber trade network across Northern Europe, according to the statement. The giant ship was designed for a perilous journey from the Low Countries (including what is now the Netherlands) to the trading towns of the Baltic. A cog of this size would have allowed for the transportation of bulky everyday goods such as salt, timber, bricks and basic food items over long distances, which the researchers said would have previously only been done for luxury goods. "The cog revolutionised trade in Northern Europe," Uldum said. "It made it possible to transport goods on a scale never seen before." A historic replica of a medieval cog, the Kamper Kogge, sailing down IJsse river in the Netherlands. (Image credit: Sjo via Getty Image)

A small piece of the "real" Jack Vance

2026-03-17T19:34:00.003-04:00

Here's what I meant t0 include:

From Jack Vance's sf novel The Book of Dreams. ...Gersen sauntered along Corrib Place, looking into shops, which here affected a special eclat and offered only goods of eclat and distinction and elegance...Gersen paused ten minutes to watch a pair of puppets at a game of chess. Thhe puppets were Maholibus and Cascadine, characters from the Comic Masque. Each had captured several pieces; each in turn, after deliberation, made his move. When one captured a piece the other made gestures of rage and agitation. Maholibus made a move and spoke in a creaking voice:"Checkmate!" Cascadine cried out in anguish.He struck himself on the forehead and toppled backward off his chair. A moment later he picked himself up; the two arranged the pieces and started a new game....

The New Justinian

2026-02-17T19:13:01.074-05:00

I have been writing a history of the Middle Ages, meant for people who are interested, bright but not necessarily well-informed. It's going to have many pictures and maps, selected quotations by famous or interesting medieval people.

But not footnotes. I'm not going to use all the academic structure. I'm lazy, in poor health, and my intended readers wouldn't care.

Just today it occcured tp me that there are more than a few resemblances between the Roman (Byzantine) emperor and Justinian I (527-565 CE) and Donald Trump. Justinian is basically known for his conquest of important provinces that the empire had lost in the previous century and some spectacular official and religious art. Let's have a look at some of these accomplishments, and make some rough comparisons.

Gotta hand up by Dear Old Dad. Actually his predecessor was his UNCLE Justin who has to be accounted a self-made man. It would be ludicrous to attach the same adjective to the older man.

Persecution of heretics and Jews -- admittewly pretty standard activity of Christian and evew some pagan emperors; indulged in by the Persians, too. I'd rate "compiling an enemies list," reasonably comparable to persecution I'll state right at the beginning that I'm not inclined to give monarchs the benefit of the doubt, especially if they have reputations as great comquerors. especially when the ministers of the crown have no evidence and act on malice, to please the monarch.

Reconquest of Italy, Sicily, North Africa (Tunisia and part of Algeria). Justinian had very talented generals, Belisarius and Narses, but when war broke out with Persia resources ran short and Italy was wrecked. Comparison --too many wars?

The Art -- especially the basilica of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) and the mosaics at Ravenna Justinian claimed credit for the basilica in grandiose terms by asserting his superiority to Solomon, who built the Temple of God at Jerusalem. That statement makes sense, since monuments of this sort are often credited to the people who finance them. Justinian however comes out on top in on taste. We can't be sure about Old Justinian's personal taste or influence on design (but do you really think he didn't have the final word on every aspect of the project?). The new emperor's taste seems to involve breaking old stuff he disapproves of and slapping more gold on things he thinks need it.

Showed contempt for the institutions and precedents of the Roman legal tradition. Sure, it's called the Code of Justinian, but he didn't write it. The lawyers who created it produced a lasting and influential compilation. Justinian's personal contribution to lawmaking included changing the laws of marriage to enable him, a respectable senator (appointed by Justin!), to marry a notorius actress/courtesan (Theodora). During his own reign he abolished the office of consul, the oldest and formerly the highest position in the state ever since the abolition of the kingship.

A contemporary speaks. Procopius, a courtier, wrote three works on the m Justinian regime, a massive book on the wars, a shorter the bbuildings and a third on the Secret History, which told the readers the TRUTH: the emperor was a demon.
Now Procopius in his public works comes across as very educated in the Greek classical tradition; his "secret" (real?) opinions make him look malicious or hysterical. I don't know if any writer or commentator who is part of the current regime, puts a good face on it, but will be revealed as hysterical when his true opinions are revealed in the post-Trump era. There will be a famous work on the current regime, but can it be written by a talented insider? Is there such a person? Hardly seems possible.

LOTS MORE COULD BE SAID.

Charlie Angus quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

2026-01-15T12:25:00.004-05:00

Has the next world war already begun?

2026-01-08T15:51:00.001-05:00

Since I started seriously reading social media and blogs I have learned some important things from Umair Haque at The Issue. I haven't been reading him as much in recent months, but he still has the ability to make a realLy good point when he comes across one. I can't dismiss his conclusions just because they are uncomfortable or more colorful than I would have put them.

You have a look.

Canada is heaven (2)

2025-11-22T15:21:00.000-05:00

I believe I wrote a post a year or so ago with the title "Canada is Heaven" My point was not that Canada is perfect -- far from it -- but relatively speaking most of us Canadians have it awfully good compared to the other 8 billion human beings on this earth.

Here's a story that struck me much the same way. a bus hijacking (?) in Hamilton, Ontario, that went right (?).

The incident raises a number of questions and reflections.

Is hijack the right word ?

Is the cop's use of term "mental illness" at the press conference approriate?

Finally, it seems awfully clear that it is preferable to be at a bus stop in Hamilton than to be a school girl in the state of Niger, Nigeria, where you and your teachers might be kidnapped by gunmen with unclear motivations.

But if you use the Hamilton transit system at the wrong time, you might find yourself hard to make clear judgments.

An excellent review by Ken Mondschein of Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry: A Casebook.

2025-11-20T11:54:00.001-05:00

If you have a general interest in the Middle Ages, you might want to subscribe to the Medieval Review. It is free and includes reviews on all sorts of scholarly subjcts. There are limitations. It is likely that most of the reviews you get will be of limited interest to you (I am not very interested in monographs on theologians and philosophers). The most important reviews of high profile books seem to appear in long-established journals -- but they are not free. The Medieval Review, however, will often provide you with information you didn't know you were interested in.

I am including an excellent review by Ken Mondschein of a book that I and some of my regular readers wll be interested in. I point out that it is reasonably priced! Hooray for the Liverpool University Press

In fact if you look around you'll find an open access version of the book!

The Mondchein review:

Brown-Grant, Rosalind, and Mario Damen, eds. Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry: A Casebook

Reviewed by Ken Mondschein Massachusetts Historical Swordsmanship ken@kenmondschein.com

Recent writings by Steven Muhlberger and others, as well as public history such as the Met’s 2019 exhibit about Maximillian I, have shown the late medieval tournament is a fertile field for studying elite alliances, politicking, and self-fashioning. Within the tournament, we can find worlds, much as one day historians will no doubt pick apart our own day’s professional sports. The difference is that in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, the ruling class was also the athletic class, making their sports and games of key interest. As the title makes clear, this is a casebook, but it is also the first work, save for a chapter in Barber and Barker’s oft-cited 1989 Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry, and Pageants in the Late Middle Ages, specifically on this form of tournament. As such, it is a valuable addition to the literature.

The present volume is a study of pas d’armes, a form of late-medieval tournament that originated in Spain in the early fifteenth century. The pas featured a “home team” defending a locale, such as a pillar or stone (a perron), against all comers. Despite its theatrical trappings and rich symbolism, this was still a dangerous affair, and fatalities were not unknown, particularly in the earlier and less-regulated pas. From its birthplace in Iberia, this tournament form spread to France and, especially, Burgundy, where it both took on elements of state theatre and was made safer by being brought firmly under the control of rulers.

The first part of the book presents primary sources detailing fifteen pas spanning approximately 80 years, from 1428 to 1507, as well as one literary antecedent, the Romance of Ponthus and Sidoine. Interestingly for one interested in the study of medievalism, the literary exemplar shows more parallels with modern medieval combat-sport aesthetics--mighty men bashing each other with weighty swords to the point of exhaustion, yet forbidding the thrust--whereas the real-world accounts are both more vaguely described and also more contained--for instance, the pollaxe fight between Jacques de Lalaing and Pierre de Chandio in 1449 is limited to seventeen blows--and do use thrusts.

The primary sources regarding the fifteen pas d’armes, ranging from poetry to financial accounts, similarly have much to offer the reenactor, as well as the historian. Clothing, armor, and horse trappings are meticulously described. The particular forms, rules, and conditions to govern the emprise--in other words, the social structures meant to regulate and contain violence--are also specified, as are the richly symbolic and meaningful theatric trappings and heraldry.

The second part of the book contains some very interesting interpretive essays. Thalia Brero, Mario Damen, and Klaus Oschema detail how the pas d’armes changed over time from its fifteenth-century origins into the nascent state system of the sixteenth century. Anne D. Hedeman and Justin Strugeon look at heraldry and symbolism in the Pas de Samur. Mario Damen and Michelle Szkilnik examine the political and Arthurian literary environment of the 1463 Pas du Perron Fée in held in Bruges. Mariana Viallon discusses the later legacy of the roleplaying from the 1493 Pas des armes de Sandricourt. Alan V. Murray considers the spread of the pas d’armes to early sixteenth century Scotland with the Wild Knight of the Black Lady (as well as the possible racial overtones of the “Black Lady’s” identity). In the sixth and last essay, Rosalind Brown-Grant continues Ruth Mazo Karras’s work in From Boys to Men to extend the notion of the performance of elite masculinity from mere domination to display and conspicuous consumption. Finally, arms and armor expert Ralph Moffat contributes an excellent glossary.

Overall, this is an excellent book, and a much-needed and much-welcomed study of a previously neglected subject.

Kirth Gersen goes shopping

2025-11-10T16:54:00.004-05:00

From Jack Vance's sf novel The Book of Dreams.

...Gersen sauntered along Corrib Place, looking into shops, which here affected a special eclat and offered only goods of eclat and distinction and elegance...Gersen paused ten minutes to watch a pair of puppets at a game of chess. Thhe puppets were Maholibus and Cascadine, characters from the Comic Masque. Each had captured several pieces; each in turn, after deliberation, made his move. When one captured a piece the other made gestures of rage and agitation. Maholibus made a move and spoke in a creaking voice:"Checkmate!" Cascadine cried out in anguish.He struck himself on the forehead and toppled backward off his chair. A moment later he picked himself up; the two arranged the pieces and started a new game....

Mexico: The advantages of having a woman as president

2025-11-09T16:47:00.000-05:00

Politico covers https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mexico-president-sheinbaum-presses-charges-after-street-groping-incident/ar-AA1PTFmC?ocid=BingNewsSerphe reaction to the groping of Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum in the street.

IMAGE: President Sheinbaum at a press conference. She doesn't look like someone you'd want to cross.https://th.bing.com/th?q=Mexico.+Claudia+Sheinbaum&w=120&h=120&c=1&rs=1&qlt=70&o=7&cb=1&pid=InlineBlock&rm=3&mkt=en-CA&cc=CA&setlang=en&adlt=moderate&t=1&mw=247

Some wise words from Umair Haque

2025-11-06T11:26:00.001-05:00

Months, nay years ago now, I used to post material from Umair Haque pretty regularly on this blog. He struck me as one of the few commentators who understood how bad the political situation was in the US and had a coherent analysis of the way fascicm worked and was working in America. His insistance on using the word "fascism" probably made him seem a nut. But I found him convincing, as prediction after prediction came true.

I stopped posting his material because I figured that those of my readers who cared what I thought about the issues he covered had got the messaage: read Umair Haque, he'll give you a dose of reality.

The November elections in the US seem to have changed the political landscape. Or have they? Maybe it's time for another dose of reality from Umair. Especially if you haven't read him before.

The organization of Early Medieval (Carolingian and Ottonian) armies

2025-11-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

Medievalists.net has published an article by a distinguished historian, David Bachrach. He has written extensively on how Charlemagne and his German successors won their many campaigns by organizing logistics and mastering siege warfare. Nicely illustrated by images from the famous Utrecht Psalter.

AI generates a podcast reviewing my article " Heroic Kings and Unruly Generals: The "Copenhagen" Continuation of Prosper Reconsidered. Florilegium, 6 (1984) , 50–70.

2025-11-01T10:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday an unexpected item showed up in my mailbox: a podcast, based on my 1984 article analyzing an Italian chronicle which preserves unique material from the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries. (The chromicle's connection to Denmark is only the fact that the Danes own it.)

I don't quite know what to think of this. The first notification I got told me that "Our AI generated a professional podcast of your paper."I'm not sure what that means. Certainly a human being working for Academia.edu was involved -- his discussion was quite good. Today I got a comic interpretation of the material and a slide show. These seem to me less useful.

On one hand it's a compliment that a rather old paper of mine should be picked for this treatment, though it is a very useful paper in my not so humble opinion. But Academia.edu seems to expect me to pay and sign up. For what exactly?

Comments welcome.

The 20th Century is a long time ago

2025-10-26T11:28:00.010-04:00

This morning I was reading a lecture by Alan Lupack The 2016 Loomis Lecture: Moral Chivalry and the Arthurian Revival. It started out rather slow, describing material I was quite familiar with, but became increasingly fascunating to me as it got into later times, especially late 19th century and early 20th century Arthurian revivals. (The title of the lecture is deceptive; Lupack himself shows that there is always an Arthurian revival, often more than one at the same time.

It struck me reading the section on 20th century material, seeing the 20th century as referring to a time when my grandmothers were young, that the 20th century was a long time ago!

Jack (the real) Vance -- as I see him

2025-10-20T16:37:00.006-04:00

Jack Vance -- the sf and fantasy writer, not the guy who is US VP-- was a wonderful writer. He hhad a unique talent. His vast vocabulary, the place names, some of his proper placenanes which were wonderful,made his prose unmistakeable. Most of his characters, too.

One of his more obvious traits was the use of detail: One is seldom in any doubt what a character is wearing, especially what the colors of their costume. Consider this brief passage from The Star King. The action takes place at Smade's Tavern on Smade's Planet, which is entirely inhabited by Smade and his family.

"Will you drink?"
Without waiting for assent he signaled one of Smade's daughters, a girl of nine or ten, wearing a modest white bouse and a long black skirt. "I'll use whiskey, lass, and serve this gentleman whatever he decides for himself".

[two pages later]

Gersen signaled, and young Araminta Smade brought whiskey on a white jade tray, upon which she herself had painted a red and blue floral border.

And that's all we hear about young Araminta Smade! Nothing happens to her, good or bad. She's just part of the background --though I don't think of her as just... She is part of Vance's effort to make his universe real

You should see what he does with landscapes! More on Vance. Yes, Araminta is a real if rare name.

Tambora and the Year without Summer

2025-09-20T11:47:00.012-04:00

Link to Substack pictures to come. Here's some striking paintings of the Year Without Summer . Thanks to xtracurriculars for this link.<

Cobalt, Ontario 1931 by Yvonne McKague Housser

2025-09-18T14:51:00.000-04:00

Deir el-Medina and The Golden City -- looking at artisan life in Egypt

2025-09-07T14:47:00.001-04:00

Material now at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge gives us a look at daily life comparable to Pompeii according to experts. This post from ArtNet gives an amazing discussion and some great pics.

Timothy Burke summarizes one aspect of Graeber and Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"

2025-09-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

Timothy Burke writes an extensive thought piece on Substack on how Trumpism is possible (Thanks to Brad DeLong for alerting me to this). Burke covers a lot of territory with reference to Graeber and Wendrow's The Dawn of Everything. I'm quoting what Burke has to say about this provocative book in hopes some of my readers will be inspired top read it (or Ibn Khaldun for that matter).

I think we’ve gone beyond reductionist paradigms that saw all such interactions as conquest, imitation, or appropriation, or that were alwaylot s defined by the unequal relationship between cores and peripheries. I like the synthesis proposed recently by David Graeber and David Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything where they argue that societies within some kind of contact zone sometimes reshape themselves as an answer to another society they’ve encountered, that they amplify or rework their systems and practices as a kind of commentary upon and contrast to a neighbor. For example, in the book, they argue that indigenous societies in Eastern North America intensified their own ideas about economic behavior, political freedom, and social cohesion as a response to their encounter with Western Europeans and their dislike of some aspects of Western European institutions and behavior.
It’s an approach that has some problems. It seems to put us back in the space of a “Tylorian” idea of relatively fixed and separable cultures that are a single coherent text that can be read for a few core ideas that shape everything else (or the Geertzian revision of that concept in looking for ‘thick descriptions’ that read into those opaque underlying cores), rather than think of cultures as having fuzzy boundaries, internal pluralism and contradiction, and considerable dynamism over time. But Graeber and Wengrow do point out that as societies reshape themselves as commentaries upon contrasting neighbors, they push some of their members who don’t care for the redefinition into those fuzzy boundaries and provoke forms of internal pluralism and dissent against such reshaping. There’s also the challenge of how to “read” the text of past societies, especially ones we know so little about: I love the idea of seeing practices, movements, material signs as embodied, experienced forms of political and social philosophy that are as sophisticated or complex as the written texts we normally fall back on, but there’s an inescapable hubris involved in doing that reading from the perspective of our present moment and the ways we read towards a kind of simplistic universalism.
What worries me in the context of thinking about Trump through Graeber and Wengrow’s perspective, however, is that they have a strong tendency to read away from domination, tyranny, violence and empire. That is, they want to restore contingency and variety to premodern human history, and to unshackle it from any form of teleology whatsoever. I’m with them on that goal: centralized states, agriculture, empires and a whole host of other political, economic and social forms have not been one-way inventions that automatically remake societies forever once they first appear. There’s a tremendous amount of evidence that societies switch in and out of sedentary agriculture, foraging, and pastoralism, between urbanism that is not controlled by a central state, centralized administrative states that are not empires or kingdoms, highly hierarchical societies that have no single head or ruler, and so on—that these are not fixed or linear sorts of choices. They also point out that none of these systems are necessarily applicable to whole “societies”—that there are communities where one part of the population lives within one kind of system and the other lives a different way, that are distinct while still living right alongside one another. But Graeber and Wengrow consequently take little interest in past societies which have developed highly regimented agriculture, brutal forms of labor servility, economies and social systems predicated on raiding and conquest, or are ruled by kings and emperors. They are so driven to show that none of this is inevitable or as common as many established perceptions might have it that they don’t really say much about the cases where it absolutely does happen. centralized monarchy next door or disdain the harsh servility of people forced to grow crops, there might also be societies (or at least some portion of societies) that dislike what they take to be the disorder, openness or pluralism of their neighbors and shape themselves to communicate that antipathy.
And here’s where I find myself on the edge of a thought that is a bit outside the comfort zone of a lot of contemporary history and anthropology. It’s pretty common in premodern world history to find that people living in one region who see themselves as the enemies—and victims—of some neighboring society tend to develop exaggeratedly negative caricatures of their antagonists, to see them as the opposite of everything that is good and right. The difference between that and modern forms of alterity is about power and totalization—the people If there are societies that decide that they really don’t like the who have been made into Europe’s “others” have been forced in various ways to live with that remaking. Whereas in a premodern context, it didn’t matter very much to the Scythians if the Greeks imagined them to be barbarians: the Greeks had no power to force that on the Scythians in their home territories and neither group let it get in the way of the practical business they wanted to conduct in the northern Black Sea.
So far, so good. The thought that is outside the comfort zone is that if we follow Graeber and Wengrow into thinking that some societies embed a critique of their neighbors within their own embodied institutions and practices, in an almost-dialectical kind of relationship, then perhaps sometimes some societies embrace and incorporate the negative “othering” of their neighbors to become more fearful enemies.
Contemporary historians are usually dedicated to rescuing past societies that have been depicted in negative ways by sedentary, literate neighbors from the stereotypes contained in the texts that the 19th Century imperial scholars of Western universities read as they learned more languages and developed a more universal perspective on global history. So historians look again at Scandinavian societies in the era of “Viking” raids, at waves of pastoralists moving out of central and east-central Asia up to and beyond the Mongols, at histories characterized as episodes of conquest and imperialism like the formation of the Zulu state under Shaka, and they’ve tried to shake them loose from a lot of preconceptions, to detail the complexity and heterogeneity of those societies and to offer more nuanced explanations of their raids, their conquests, their movements.
But I do wonder whether in some of those histories, there are also episodes of groups—not whole societies, sometimes just military units or raiding bands—who acquired a fairly sophisticated understanding of what their targets and enemies thought about them and decided to play it up to the hilt, to become the goblins and ghouls of a neighboring imaginary. And this maybe goes in more ways than the Western histories of the 19th Century often wrote it—say, various Crusades sacking Jerusalem, Constantinople, Zadar, Ma’aara and Nicaea with grotesque brutality, or more potently, in the savagery of European imperial conquest at precisely that moment. (Clifton Crais’ forthcoming The Killing Age I think will put that front and center of its account.)
So not so much “negative dialectics” in any sense but “negative emulation”, a decision to become the monsters that others believe you to be, to get the better of them.
I’m sure you see where I’m going with this thought when I loop back to Trump. If it’s correct to imagine that at times, some groups or societies in conflict with others elect to embody the worst ways they are imagined, the question is whether that’s a short-term or limited performance or whether it gets incorporated into the deepest reservoirs of personhood and consciousness, whether it suffuses everything. That is often what we see as the violence of alterity, that the people who are forcibly made “other” find they can never get away from what the dominant group or people think of them. But if my outside-the-conventional thought has anything to it, and it’s true that sometimes groups and societies agentively “otherize” themselves, choose to inhabit some aspect of their enemies’ negative vision, what happens if that choice becomes so fully inhabited that it is no longer remembered as a positional gambit or situational performance?
I think there are two basic answers. One I’d take from the Muslim scholar and philosopher ibn Khaldun, who described a historical cycle in which pastoralists raid strong sedentary societies and as those societies fall pray to indolence, corruption and internal conflicts, the raiders overwhelm them and become their new ruling elite. At which point they begin to transform towards the institutional and cultural world that they defeated and the cycle starts over. It doesn’t do to take the most simplistic version of this vision at face value but there’s certainly a number of examples in premodern world history that have some resemblance to this dynamic. And in some of those cases, you could also say that the new rulers imported some of their own ideas and culture into the societies they now ruled—but the important thing is that inasmuch as they had internalized ideas of themselves as the fearsome enemy prowling in the wilderness, those ideas melted away once they came in from the cold.
The other answer is that negative emulation, if it exists at all as I’ve described it here, is a disfiguring trap, that it chains the aspiring monsters to a cycle of outrages and violations that don’t even come from them in the first place, that it makes the emulator into nothing more than that imaginative space that’s been reserved for them by enemies, hopelessly inauthentic and perpetually reactive. The monsters might even exterminate their enemies but they’ll be forced to resurrect them over and over again because they’re nothing except the nightmare of another culture, another society, another group now. I think a little about what the journalist George Anastasia has written about the decline of Italian organized crime, the “Mafia”, in part because as the oldest generation of mobsters went to jail, the younger Mafia members found themselves increasingly imitating the characters they saw up on screen in The Godfather, Goodfellas and The Sopranos. Many younger mobsters weren’t anything any more but “The Mafia” and as such, they had no autonomy or authenticity, no direction but to live into that representation, and were for that reason increasingly easy for law enforcement to deal with.
If Trump and Trumpism are negative emulators in this sense, people who’ve elected to become the terrors of people they have hated, I suspect their future is going to be more consistent with the latter of these two scenarios. Which means, unfortunately, we will be stuck in here with our monsters, who no longer have any sense of who they were or what they wanted before they chose to be what we most feared, until they exhaust themselves in some fashion. I hope if so that that the air can just go out of their bubble rather than the monsters chasing the full horror of their persona to its most nightmarish ends.

Words of Wisdom from Frank Zappa and Steve Vai

2025-08-20T12:40:00.000-04:00

I was idly paging through YouTube shorts when I ran across this piece of an interview with the musician Steve Vai (who I don't know from Adam). Vai reports on something he learned from Frank Zappa.

It ends with a very hard-hitting observation.

See for yourself!

2025-08-13T13:27:00.004-04:00

I recently spent two weeks in Patrick County, Virginia.

The county is at the heart of Appalachia and part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Appalachia means to me a very poor region, one of the areas LBJ wanted to fix with his Great Society policy. There has been progress since. The roads are in good shape and most people have internet connectivity. But most people, I hear, are still are poor.

Patrick County has interesting features. There are very few straight roads; most of the roads snake around between cliffs that rise up on one side and fall away on the other. Not too many fields, and few domesticated animals living in them.

Not too many houses!

The county, besides being isolated by topography, looks like a social island. There is perhaps one and only one fast-food outlet. Not that you will go hungry.There are what you might call mom and pop restaurants, But no McDonald’s, no Tim Horton's, no Wendy’s. There is good food in some of them. And some of the venues host music time and again.

What made the greatest impression on me was the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the way back to the North I was fascinated by the mountains to the point that I dreamed about them all night long.

IMAGE: one view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.