tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-316713742024-03-13T00:09:24.205-07:00UnderbellyAnd you wouldn't dare insult me, sir, <br>
If Jack were only here.Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.comBlogger6491125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-67178430110115346302022-08-12T15:09:00.001-07:002022-08-12T15:09:48.717-07:00TestJack Ayer
<br>Professor Emeritus-Law
<br>UC DavisBucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-77974706525747822652017-06-16T13:16:00.002-07:002017-06-23T14:31:18.592-07:00Shakespeare's Plays: a ranking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Revived from the dead so I can cross post this with my Facebook page:<br />
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Tyler Cowen offers his ranking of Shakespeare plays. I take the bait. Not quite a ranking; there are a number of plays that I think are really interesting but not exactly "good."<br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b> The canon</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>King Lear</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Your majesty, there is no second.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Vastly underrated, perhaps because it has no redeeming social value. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But I never saw a good production.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The <i>Henriad</i> as a set.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Cowen got that one right. Whole greater than the sum of its parts. I learned that from Peter Saccio.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Hamlet </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Not a great play exactly, but a loose collection of a dozen or more heart-stopping scenes. He tells us all he learned in the first half of his career. Not his fault that other people made some of it into cliches.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Macbeth</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Probably not as good as its reputation, but only because its reputation is so strong. With which contrast:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Richard III</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Early attempt at the same material.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Matched Set: One underrated, one over.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Tempest </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The best single speech in the canon but uneven as a whole.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Winter’s Tale </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Drop dead wonderful poetry, in some ways better than The Tempest</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Two that are weak only by comparison</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Julius Caesar</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Newcomers assume it’s about Caesar. But no; it’s about Brutus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Coriolanus</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Can be wonderful in performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Charming</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The most unreservedly charming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>As You Like It</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Second most unreservedly charming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Much Ado About Nothing</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Charming in its own way. A personal favorite. Can be wonderful in performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Comedy of Errors</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thin, but can be excellent in performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Seductive Power of Overblown Poetry</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Richard II</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Loves Labour’s Lost</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Shakespeare the playwright criticizes Shakespeare of the Sonnets</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><b>Interesting</b></span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to think about, especially in the context of other Shakespeare plays</b><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Measure for Measure</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The fashionable play of the moment Interesting, but flawed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Twelfth Night</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He’s trying to find his way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Troilus and Cressida</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Plenty to chew on here, but off-putting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Pericles</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Cymbeline</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Watch Shakespeare experiment with the “romance” form (he’ll get it right elsewhere)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>His material gets out of his control: </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Taming of the Shrew</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Merchant of Venice</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He needs cardboard stock characters, can’t bring himself to do it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Timon of Athens</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps better understood as a co-authorship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Misunderstood</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Treat it as poetry, it’s Meh. Treat it as farce, it’s just fine.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Kind of Meh</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">King John</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But I saw a pretty good performance once.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">All’s Well That Ends Well</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ditto.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Two Gentleman of Verona</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He’s a beginner, feeling his way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Titus Andronicus</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ditto.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Henry VIII</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He’s getting tired.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Did I overlook anything?</span></div>
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<b>Update: </b>yes, I overlooked <i>Othello</i> (HT Taxmom). Perhaps because I can't figure out quite what to do with it. I used to love it, kind of lost interest in it lately. Maybe because I later discovered the Verdi opera version, which is even better.<br />
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-4393699382890324372016-11-12T07:16:00.001-08:002016-11-12T07:16:54.153-08:00Guest Contributor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">Change but a few words and one has a very contemporary document, setting</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">and cycle:</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">"Thirteen years ago we National Socialists were mocked and derided—today</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">our opponents’ laughter has turned to tears! A faithful community of people</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">has arisen which will gradually overcome the prejudices of class madness</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">and the arrogance of rank. A faithful community of people which is resolved</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">to take up the fight for the preservation of our race, not because it is</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">made up of Bavarians or Prussians or men from Württemberg or Saxony; not</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">because they are Catholics or Protestants, workers or civil servants,</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">bourgeois or salaried workers, etc., but because all of them are Germans.</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">"Within this feeling of inseparable solidarity, mutual respect has grown,</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">and from this respect has come an understanding, and from this</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">understanding the tremendous power which moves us all. We National</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">Socialists thus march into every election with the single commitment that</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">we will, the following day, once more take up our work for the inner</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">reorganization of our body politic. For we are not fighting merely for the</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">mandates or the ministerial posts, but rather for the German individual,</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">whom we wish to and shall join together once more to inseparably share a</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">single common destiny.</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">"The Almighty, Who has allowed us in the past to rise from seven men to</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">thirteen million in thirteen years, will further allow these thirteen</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">million to once become a German Volk. It is in this Volk that we believe,</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">for this Volk we fight; and if necessary, it is to this Volk that we are</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">willing, as the thousands of comrades before us, to commit ourselves body</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">and soul.</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">"If the nation does its duty, then the day will come which restores to us:</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">one </span><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">Reich in honor and freedom—work and bread!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">A.H. 15.vii.1932</span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;"></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">On 12 November 2016 at 01:32, Steven Schussed <<a dir="ltr" href="mailto:realityschuster@comcast.net" x-apple-data-detectors-result="3" x-apple-data-detectors-type="link" x-apple-data-detectors="true">realityschuster@comcast.net</a>></span><br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 16px;">wrote:</span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-51766333586162863932016-11-12T05:27:00.002-08:002016-11-12T05:27:20.008-08:00Test again.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-47418124326119036922016-11-12T05:20:00.003-08:002016-11-12T05:20:29.429-08:00Test<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
xxx</div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-25128291292717370012016-08-25T01:35:00.001-07:002016-08-25T01:35:19.036-07:00The New Republican Party<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">From FB: Bruce Bartlett and others are forecasting the demise of the Republican Party. In the sense intended, I think they are right but they might want to expand their imaginative universe. I think we might well emerge with a new Republican Party and its de facto leader will be Hillary Clinton.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">To clarify--I can't blame her for taking on board all the Republican castaways in the current storm. But the more she does so, the more you can see that this is her comfort zone. I'm not sure she understands this sea change herself. But after four years, she and we may both have forgotten that this was not always what her leadership was all about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is the inconvenient question of what to do with "the base"--the army of ordinary Democrats still trying to persuade themselves that they have a chance of accomplishing some kind of progressive program. But isn't that always the problem with major parties? The toffs make the rules and set the agenda. The residual issue is how much they have to give away to keep the rabble on board.</span></div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-23489213568466112312016-08-21T14:13:00.002-07:002016-08-21T14:14:16.800-07:00Head-Banging Through the Weeds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's head-banging time. I have at hand a book that makes me crazy because it is so full of promise and comes so close and--okay, let me explain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The title is <a href="http://kleinbard.usc.edu/book/"><i>We Are Better Than This</i></a>, subtitled "How the Government <i>Should</i> be Spending Our Money." The author is Edward D. Kleinbard and so far as I can tell, it would be hard to find anyone better qualified for the job he tackles. He is now a professor (USC) but he spent his prime as chief of staff for the US Congress'' joint committee on taxation, which has long enjoyed (and I think still enjoys) a rep as "the nonpartisan tax resource to Congress." And he certainly gets off on the right foot with me. "This book argues," he writes, "that the strand of contemporary American political thought that defines itself through the hatred of taxation is narcissistic, self-pleading, wrapped in a flimsy sheaf of economic lingo." He makes a subordinate point that is equally enticing: "instead of focusing on what government might usefully do ... we obsess over the taxing side of things and igloo;e the purposes to which those tax revenues are applied." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Oh, preach it, brother, even if you are preaching to the choir. I can't wait to turn the page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But but but. But I wouldn't suggest for a moment that he goes nowhere with his promise. In fact he goes quite away with some stuff you might expect him to be good at: in-the-weeds marshaling of data about US government spending. More: he collects instructive comparisons with other "similar" countries. I suppose a critic could say "you can Google all that stuff," and maybe you can, but there are still some codgers who enjoy seeing it pulled together and presented in a book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But then--well; then the book tends to sprawl all over the map into a number of only loosely related topics, some of which he handles well, some not so. He has a very good account of government-as-social-insurer, for example--a topic which which he seems to feel comfortable. He's got some useful things to say about government as investor--the idea that (contra the popular conception) government dollars can produce more than private dollars. But here, coverage is more patchy: okay on conventional infrastructure, so-so on the productive capacity of education spending. Beyond that, surprisingly little: next to no attention to DARPA and the NIH and other government programs whose task seems to be to expend pubic dollars so others can reap private benefits. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">And branching out--further into a book that seemed intent on talking about spending, he offers long chapters on topics that come suspiciously close to tax policy-is government too big? Are taxes too high (perhaps you can guess the answer to those)? There is even a chapter headed "A Field Guide to False Fiscal Crises"--interesting enough in itself, but pretty far afield from what seemed to be his central topic. And to top it off, he offers (tentatively and haltingly) an effort to present a big-picture justification for who might call left social-democratic pubic spending in general.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe you can see what the trouble is. I think he tried to do too much. The dedicatory inscription goes "to my father, who delayed my entry into academia by 30 years--just long enough for me to have something useful to say." Wryly clever and undoubtedly sincere, but it gives the game away. At last liberated from the cares of his day job, Kleinbard upended his briefcase (downloaded his cloud drive?) full of insights, fragments, talking points and undertook to weave them all together into a big-picture overview of the whole world of tax-and-spend. It's a noble intention and as I say, the hell of it is, he is part way there. I'm now recalling the old canard about how"I'm writing you a long letter because I didn't have time to write a shorter." He would have done better for himself and us if he had written just half a book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fn.: And while we are at it, where was his "editor"--I use the term loosely at the distinguished university-sounding press that published it? Isn't it (or wasn't it?) precisely the job of editor to be the dutch uncle and to tell the author to cut it down to size?</span><br />
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-60428492604444754562016-08-20T10:18:00.000-07:002016-08-20T10:18:14.004-07:00Our Generosity and the Second Louis Conn Fight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We gave a few bucks to a favorite nonprofit a while back; I filed the receipt with every intention to forget about it until tax time. But a couple of days ago, among the usual welter of unsolicited catalogs, the mail brought an envelope with the donee logo. I figured it was another solicitation but no; it turned out to be a thank you note for our princely munificence in the recent past--and just to show their sincerity, a small gift. And sure enough, a shake and a tumb<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">le and out came--</span></span></div>
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Hey wait, what is this, a coaster? A <i>coaster</i> a sphere of cork with the donee logo? <i>This</i> is a thank-you?</div>
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I mean don't misunderstand: I certainly wasn't expecting a Porsch 911, Really, I wasn't expecting any gift at all but--well, put it this way. I'm not particularly good at the ordinary cues and clues of social intercourse but isn't there a point at which the "gift" is so trifling that it moves the index over to "insult?" Am I to be grateful for a token that probably cost about one fortieth of the price of a first-class stamp? Would't a greater show of gratitude have been no gift at all?</div>
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Small memory, in 1946, my dad sold some advertising linked to the second Louis-Conn fight. I've just about totally forgotten the fight itself. But somebody in my dad's operation must have been giving gifts also because I have vivid memories from my childhood of Louis-Conn coasters. Same size and shape, even the same material. Except not just one. We had dozens of them, and they hung around for years--I assume he got to carry home the leftovers, I hope not in lieu of a commission. Come to think of it, if I scratched around in the storage shed, I might find a Louis-Conn coaster out there still. Good: I could match it with the new acquisition and the Missus and I could share the enjoyment of a delicious beverage, basking in self-congratulation at our well-rewarded generosity.</div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-54659295392833506222016-08-20T09:46:00.002-07:002016-08-20T10:19:18.727-07:00Mad Men and the Donut Hole<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Clive James, in his continuing self-proclaimed farewell tour to life and art, says <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/the-way-we-werent-clive-james-mad-men-play-all">farewell to Mad Men</a>. And as it happened, so, just this week, did we. I'll let Clive speak for himself (some kind of confusing paywall but persist) For me: yeh, well, the last few episodes seemed to run out of steam, as almost always happens with this sort of thing. They repeated themselves; they picked up possible plot lines you knew they were going to have to abandon. And then, the <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">finale, everybody (not just Clive James) has to have a finale.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I won't get tedious with a lot of stuff that others have probably said before and better, but here is a glaring difficulty that I don't think has received much attention so far. Don Draper, the center of the action. Pleasant, affable, cold eyed dissembler, thief of the life of another, one who inflicts casual collateral damage on almost any within range.</span></div>
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But we forgive him because he's Michelangelo, he's Balzac, Svengali, he's a cool quiet 'Enry 'Iggins, the one who can be depended upon to make lemonade out of moldy old peach pits.</div>
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The whole show hangs on this premise and you have to believe if you want it to make any sense at all and sure, I pretty much signed on. But I kept recalling that nothing--nothing--in the script actually <i>showed </i>me that Don was a genius, advertising or otherwise. I just had to count on the fact that everyone kept telling me so--that, and his capacity for casual mayhem. In the end, he's to the Svengali, he's the hole in the donut. But rest assured Give him 20 minutes of silence around a boardroom table while everyone else is tearing their hair out, he'll come up with a way to market donut holes, too. Now go read Clive, he never lets us down.</div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-52410945745942015772016-08-19T11:37:00.000-07:002016-08-19T11:37:00.535-07:00The Real Hillary Scandal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">From FB, on which see infra.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You want accountability? Okay, I'll give you accountability. It's been twenty years--/twenty years/, give or take, that the dragon lady, aka next President of the United States, has been under the telescope, periscope, microscope of her predators for, oh, I'm not sure I can remember--Whitewater, troopergate, something about commodities trading, up through emailgate and Benghazibenghazibenghazi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And what have they come up with? The answer is nothing. Nada. Zero. Bubka<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">s. Zilch. Zilch unless you count the see of afflatus about "countless crimes," or unless you consider the guy under the Trump hat back on my home turf who denies that he said she should be assassinated when what he really said was that she should be courttmartialed and executed.</span></span></div>
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People, really! Is this the best you can do? There are people eligible to vote who weren't even alive when the first little anti-Hill magpie popped out of his shell.Has anybody totted up how much money has been poured down this particular rathole? Honestly, they just don't make witch hunts like the used to. </div>
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[I said "twenty years." I have no idea what went on in Arkansas back before they came onto the national scene. And for all I know, she pinched her roommate's Mars bar back at Wellesley. No statute of limitations on that one, is there?]</div>
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Irony watch: I speak as one who was never that enthusiastic about Hillary in the first place.</div>
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Fn.: one of my Facebook commentators apparently missed the irony here--thought I was really mad that she wasn't in prison. That's not my point at all. I do think the charges are mostly bogus. I also think she is a mediocre politician and part of the mediocrity is that she has never learned how to defang her critics. I'm told it is because she is a women and the knuckedraggers are unfair to her. Both those statements are true but irrelevant. The real successes are the ones that are good at defanging critics. Which includes (a) ones you like where the charges are bogus (Roosevelt); (b) the ones you dislike where the charges are bogus (Nixon--the slush fund was a phony and he defanged it magnificently); the ones you dislike where the charges are true or mostly true (Reagan and Thatcher).</div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-18180689397794356842016-08-18T10:43:00.002-07:002016-08-18T10:57:48.579-07:00The FBI Caves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/16/us/politics/ap-us-campaign-2016-clinton-emails.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share">So the FBI caves</a>. I think this is a big deal with implications far beyond the immediate kerfuffle. Back in the Pleistocene when I went to law school, I was taught that the one non reviewable decision was the decision not to prosecute. It's a rule that his never been completely immune to criticism: we can all think of cases where a prosecutor seems to have buried a contentious case without any obligation to explain himself to the world or anybody. But mostly I'd say it has worked pretty well. The thinking seems to be that prosecutors must have some freedom of motion, and that in general, a mistake in deciding not to prosecute is just nowhere near as harmful or invasive than a mistake in deciding to go forward.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Lately I think we've heard more criticism of the no-prosecute rule, particularly in the realm of "sex cases"--rape or abuse</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. I suspect that most prosecutors think that cases of this sort are just rough to prosecute, too easy to lose--and that losses may defeat the whole purpose of the enterprise. And I haven't any doubt that there are some prosecutors who think these cases just aren't that-all important anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Whatever. What's sure is that we are hearing a progressively louder chorus of complaint from victims and their advocates that their concerns just aren't being taken seriously enough--and that one path to reform would be to compel the prosecutor to explain or justify his no-prosecute decision.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I were a lawyer likely to get embroiled in this kind of controversy, I'd be opening a new file on the FBI decision to turn over. Either yea or nay, I'll be needing to bone up on all the arguments so I will be ready as the issue evolves.</span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-70385016973112733302016-08-18T10:43:00.000-07:002016-08-18T10:43:24.630-07:00Only Hurts when I Laugh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">On the street leading over to the gym I pass (from memory): renal care, dialysis, prompt care, convalescent hospital, veterans' mental health and outpatient services, children's health, pain therapy, clinical lab, allergist, internist, cancer care. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think I may have missed some. Lester Thurow the economist used to say we can't get rich taking out each others' appendix. His attitude strikes me as a failure of imagination.</span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-5772302142517749552016-08-10T15:45:00.003-07:002016-08-10T15:45:31.406-07:00The Chancellor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Okay, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article94627837.html">so that's over</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm in the peanut gallery, so no more than a malign observer, but here's s lightly edited version of an email I sent to a friend back east.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Oh, it's been a running sore for a couple of years, ever since <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/occupy-uc-davis-pepper-spraying-cops-suspended/story?id=14992787">that pepper spray business.</a> Of course the chancellor didn't personally pull the lever on the canister but she never seemed to get on top of the story, never came across as understanding that it was real (my stars, was it really <i>five</i> years ago?). At long last, it has turned into a war of the press releases. The University President says:</span><br />
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">... numerous instances where Chancellor Katehi was not candid, either with me, the press, or the public, that she exercised poor judgment, and violated multiple University policies...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And the Chancellor (or, her highly skilled lawyer) gets to say: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: normal;"> </span>CLEARED OF ALLEGATIONS OF NEPOTISM, CONFLICTS, FINANCIAL </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">MISMANAGEMENT OR PERSONAL GAIN IN UC INVESTIGATION, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You could say it is a Hillary problem. The chancellor apparently not guilty of any felony but she has a colossally tin ear and she's greedy. I mean, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/article63917982.html">board of directors of a text book company</a>? Why <i>wasn't</i> that prohibited? And <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/14/uc-davis-scrubbed-negative-online-presence-after-2011-pepper-spraying-scandal/"><i>paying</i></a> to scrub Google? How rookie is that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">OTOH, at least some of the opposition to her came from people who just thought it would be fun to destroy a chancellor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think she is unmarketable outside Davis now so Davis is stuck with her (i.e., as a faculty member . Also her husband and her son and her DiL--four nice paycheck with bennies).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">FWIW I think the president winds up with a bit of mud on her shirtwaist too. I believe she had/has been hoping to join the Clinton administration . She is probably not completely out of the running, but good managers don't let this kind of problem happen in the first place. </span></div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-64479435738507595182016-08-09T19:51:00.001-07:002016-08-09T19:51:33.156-07:00Ex Cons, Nutso Right Wingers, Partakers of Crystal Meth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">[<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Repurposed from FB.]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I note the existence of a literary or cultural genre. Probably been around for a while, I'm just late getting to the party. The subject is the bleak and disordered life of those in the vast interior heartland. High desert is probably best, Vegas best of all. Cast of characters heavy on ex cons, nutso right wingers, partakers of crystal meth. I'm thinking of movies like '<a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/melvin_and_howard/">Melvin and Howard</a>,' TV shows like '<a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/fargo/">Fargo</a>,' or '<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370194/">Reno 911!</a>' (now that one was funny). The topic lends itself to lo-o-ong form journalism, where dreary shapelessness is almost a virtue--<a href="https://longform.org/posts/the-vegas-plot">this one</a> is a particularly noteworth</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">y </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">exemplar, effective precisely because it isn't very good (Hanna Rosin's '<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/advertisement-for-murder/309435/">Murder by Craigslist</a>,' by contrast, was top notch). I read (or watch) this stuff. I'm not certain what the appeal is but I suppose it is a kind of porn for aging academics who live in their head (guilty, your honor). I do, however, believe I can identify the inaugural artifact--patient A on the blasted-waste circuit. That would be 'T<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Executioners-Song-Norman-Mailer/dp/044658438X">he Executioner's Song</a>,' Norman Mailer's nonfiction novel about the Utah murderer Gary Gilmore, i never actually finished 'Executioner's Song,' but that's okay: I suspect maybe it never does end but just wanders on and on and on... Life's like that. </span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-66560125849395752152016-08-08T16:06:00.003-07:002016-08-11T08:58:22.857-07:00Can There be a "Nation" without a "Constitution?"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Caution, I pretty much blew this one off without critical scrutiny or even rereading. Hope it makes some sense. I will, at a minimum, certify that I was t least stone sober, except for caffiene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I suppose the kewl kids would sneer at my innocence but hey, the kewl kids don't read me anyway. So, for all the non-kewl out there somewhere, a qu</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">estion: can there be a nation without a constitution? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allow me to explain. I was reading something the other night that mentioned a nation that "did not have a constitution." In context, I think I understood what the author meant. He was writing about 19C Century European revolutionaries who carried round pieces of paper with the words "human rights" in bold letters. The kind of thing a public spirited citizen might wave at a Trump rally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But is this definition sufficient, or even necessary? We all know (of) nations whose "piece of paper" are a form of light entertainment (if in bad taste), having little or nothing to do with how the nation is governed. Perhaps more tellingly, we Americans have grown up making uneasy jokes about Britain as a nation where they don't write their constitution down--a nation <i>without</i> a piece of paper, but still with a constitution. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We have never felt clear about just exactly this can mean, but for purposes of comparison, consider this example: must a language have a grammar? On first thought, we can all remember grammar <i>books, </i>just as we might remember Miss Gooch (Sister Gooch?) with her ruler in the seventh grade, beating the rules into our impervious little skulls. So, yes. Language, grammar book, grammar. Think a little harder, though, and we notice something important. Languages have grammar long before there are language books. AS grammar is a set of conventions that define the language. The language is what the grammar is. The <i>written</i> grammar--ah, that most often comes later. Or perhaps, not at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, a grammar tells us how the language is constituted, written or otherwise. And can't we now apply the same point to the nation? The nation must be constituted <i>somehow</i>--else it wouldn't be a nation. Am I right, or am I right? And aren't there plenty of "constituted" nations that (like the Brits) do not have a "written constitution," but who are still nations (in the sense that they are "constituted") anyway? Isn't it true that they <i>have</i> to have some sort of "constitution" (written or not)--else they wouldn't be nations at all?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can think of at least one reason why it is so easy to miss this point. That is: we tend to think of both "language" and "constitution" as imposed from the top, by some authority. Think the French Academy. Or, sure, think the Supreme Court. But both languages and "constitutions" can bubble up from below. Matter of fact, as a half-relevant aside, I think this helps explain why Noam Chomsky the student of linguistics is also a professed anarchist. He certainly understands that languages can bubble up from below. And he seems to think something the same about the larger social framework.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can think of another objection, perhaps more important, though I don't quite know how to deal with it. That is: when those 19C hotheads talked about "constitution" and "rights," they meant, specifically, some sort of framework that would impose imitations on "the government"--that would allow a kind of "private" space where the king's writ did not run. And their belief was you weren't going to get this kind of protection without a piece of paper If that is the point, then I guess it is at least coherent, even attractive. But you are still left with the question of how you define the "nation" aside which those protections operate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Quick final note: I blur the distinction between "nation" and "state." Maybe I'll deal that one later.</span></div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-65926034220605687512016-08-07T16:43:00.002-07:002016-08-11T08:59:09.952-07:00Might-have-beens: A Self-Assessment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I seem to be sifting the detritus of an only moderately well spent career. I'm remembering my first big break, when Norm Isaacs gave me a job in the City Room at the old <i>Louisville Times</i> in the spring of 1960. In retrospect, I am surprised he took a chance on me but he didn't have a big budget and the skill threshold was not that-all high. I don't remember what I said in the interview but here is what I would say if I had a chance for a do-over.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I want this job because you are a great platform. You've got the resources to support good work and it looks like you have the disposition to put them behind stuff that you think is good. I'd like to use that kind of opportunity to make things better for us both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is a lot I need to learn about the reporting trade and I hope to develop and improve as I go forward. For the moment, my goal concerns the public use of money: budgets, taxation, public spending. I want to be a policy wonk.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm young and green and not well trained but I am a quick and motivated learner. I'd love to have a chance to put these talent into play. I hope you'll give me the scope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">--</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I did get the job, of course, and loved it, and learned a lot, although nothing like the sophisticated program I set for myself in retrospect. They did offer a great platform and they did give me some scope and I am eternally in their debt. But when I left journalism at the age of 28, I figured I had plateaued out, would never have a chance to learn or do anything more sophisticated than what i had done already. This was perhaps a common attitude for the time but in retrospect, it was an utter failure of imagination. I don't regret the careerI did undertake thereafter--not at all-but I marvel at the opportunities I so blithely set aside in doing so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, all this is absurdly hypothetical. Norm is dead, the <i>Times </i>is dead; most of the people I worked with (and they were an amazingly talented bunch) are long gone. And I am feeling a bit woozy myself. But in retrospect, it chills me to recall--when he asked me "why do you want this job?" I probably answered with something along the lines of "duh."</span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-77780089732275246602016-08-04T17:03:00.002-07:002016-08-04T17:04:32.792-07:00Reconsidering Ike: A Thought Experiment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">I came of political age (I will not say "maturity) during the Eisenhower administration. Instructed by Herblock, I thought of him as an amiable doofus with a pretty good golf handicap. Time and the great scholarship of Fred Greenstein have taught me different. The doofus part was largely an act, a cover. Meanwhile, I wonder how anybody could have thought the the man who commanded the winning armies in one of the most successful wars in human history should be dismissed so liability. I've come round to the point of saying (with a glint of wry irony) the Ike was really the best president of my adulthood. He was, after all, a champion of stability and good order at home. And the man who sent the troops into Little Rock. And the one who warned us against the military-industrial complex.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">And yet, and yet. He tolerated McCarthy for far too long. He tolerated John Foster Dulles until the day (Dulles) died. He gave us George Humphries, "Engine Charlie" Wilson and Ezra Taft Benson. Is that really the best we can do?</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Well, he certainly wasn't perfect. But on the "tolerate" thing. I think it is fair to say that one essential quality in a great general is that he knows how to pick his fights: he wants to battle on his chosen turf, and on his own terms. Isn't it fair to say that with McCarthy, at least--yes, he did not move early, and he seemed at times almost not to notice the mischief the great ruffian was causing. But what if he had injected himself earlier? Would he have, in fact, succeeded--or could it be that he would have damaged himself, while leaving McCarthy even stronger than he had been before. With Dulles, I suppose the case is harder. Ike seemed to acquiesce in a good deal of the foreign interventionism--Iran, Guatemala--that looks so misguided today. At the same time, one always had the sense that Dulles' most unsettling excesses were Dulles freelancing, with little or no support from the less excitable chief executive down he street. Civil rights--complicated again, I think. When he sent in the troops, I think the general view was the he was far more offended by the affront to federal authority than he was by the plight of black students. Yet I don't think it is fair to call Ike racist in any modern sense. His flaw was more that he simply didn't get it: he had known (seemingly) happy Pullman porters, officer's club waiters and such like, and he didn't understand why their fellows weren't willing to settle for their place. A failure of imagination, surely--and a failure of imagination can be a failure. But it is not the same as active racial hostility.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">And yet, and yet. I'm very far from totally convinced of my own case. I do think there is a lot to respect in his domestic record (and admire in his war record). I wish he had done more, or done it better. I suppose in the end I fall back on the first principle of modern politics: the job of every Republican president is to make the last guy look good. By that standard, I think he looks pretty good indeed.</span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-58311835211426503472016-08-04T15:13:00.002-07:002016-08-04T16:57:50.629-07:00How Cervantes Became Cervantes (Hint: It Took Most of a Lifetime)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A quick shoutout for .s delightful for William <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-man-who-invented-fiction-9781620401767/">Egginton's new book about Cervantes</a>. It's a sort of a biography but it's better described as an account of how Cervantes became Cervantes (hint: it took most of a lifetime) and, more precisely, what is so distinctive about him, why we think of him as the man who invented fiction. The takeaway is that Cervantes shows us characters from the inside and the outside so we can share their inner life while observing it. Egginton credits the insight in part to the aufhor's work in the theatre and I am thinking (though Cervantes almost certainly did not know of) William Shakespeare's more or less simultaneous career. Example, Rosalind in <i>As You Like it</i>--a girl dressed up as a boy telling a hearer what she would think if she were a girl (closely similar stunt in <i>Twelfth Night</i>, only doubled).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A particularly elegant instance is has handling of Cervantes tradition of the great narrative epics--in particular the work of Tasso and Ariosto. Egginton recalls the scene where Don Quixote sees a cloud and thinks it is an advancing hostile army. There are two clouds, remarks his realist companion Sancho. Oh, goody, says the knight, we are surrounded. Whereupon the knight describes the armies in lapidary detail--what they wear, what they carry. Egginton's points out how the descriptions are almost an exact copy of his great narrative predecessors--with a difference. That is: Tasso and Ariosto are telling us what the armies looked like. Cervantes is showing us what this half-mad observer thinks they look like. Appearance and reality, objectivity and subjective consciousness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I love it, with one minor qualification. Specifically, Ariosto is the eternal ironist. He tells you the story as if true but all the time he is nudging you in the ribs as if to say "you don't really believe this, do you?" But no matter. Cervantes figures out how to take that unreality and make it part of the story.</span></div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-9524187540405018192016-07-30T12:06:00.001-07:002016-07-30T12:06:18.521-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">[Repurposed from FB].</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Walking the streets of Shakespeareville [sc. Ashland, Oregon] I'm thinking: there is a lot of money sloshing around this town. No, silly, not aggravated-felony Wall Street money but nice comfy 100-500k UMC money for people who do not have to budget for their lattes. My guess is that many of these folks will vote for Hillary although they have not ripped the Bernie sticker off the Prius. They are earnestly, sincerely concerned about the plight of the dispossessed and they really think we should <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">Do Something About it. But the fact is, when they go to dinner (with a nice glass of wine) they can pretty much set their concerns aside. </span></span></div>
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Hot baths. Simone Weil says that almost all of human life takes place far from hot baths. These people are mostly close to hot baths.</div>
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--"Presque toute la vie humaine s'est toujours passée loin des bains chauds."</div>
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-Weil, L'Iliade ou le poème de la force.</div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-2612302154563720172016-07-30T12:03:00.000-07:002016-07-30T12:03:00.771-07:00Thought Experiment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">[Repurposed form FB].</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Though early, it is tempting to speculate on what the structure of the Republican party will look like in the aftermath of the election. Here's a scenario:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1--Trump loses badly, but not catastrophically (yes, I know--everyone has been wrong on this one before).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2--The insulted and the injured will overflow with rage in their conviction that they have been cheated (cf. "stab in the back," Weimar Germany, post-1918).</span></div>
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3--They will coalesce into a new party uniting racists, exclusionists, evangelicals and--oh yes, those who see their lives as in calamitous decline. It is not at all clear that Donald Trump will be their leader, or even want to be. Maybe Ted Cruz.</div>
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4--Distinct from the insulted and the injured will be a much smaller rump of the great and the good--those who have built their career on dangling shiny baubles before the eyes of the lesser mortals to distract them while the danglers scooped up tax cuts and related goodies. Also known as "which way are my people going so I can run out and front and lead them?" It is even less obvious who the leader is here. The Bushes are too old and boring. Romney is too boring. Paul Ryan is, well, boring. But it may not matter much; at the moment, there simply won't be very many of them. </div>
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5--And the Democrats, don't they have the same problem? To an extent, yes, but for the moment they will be too busy choosing garments for the inauguration ball and (if they are smart) trying to stifle their gloating.</div>
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Could be worse; could be the other guy wins.</div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-36616943032123082352016-07-19T12:30:00.003-07:002016-07-19T12:30:37.428-07:00Social Trusts and the Shadow of Kershaw's History<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The topic for the moment is social trust, with a side order of ethnic animosity. I'm inspired by Roger Scruton's <a href="https://eppc.org/publications/who-are-we/">admirable essay in <i>Prospect</i> </a> where he defines social trust:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">[S]ocial trust—the sense that we are bound to each other by a shared loyalty, and that we will stand by each other in emergencies. Social trust comes from shared language, shared customs, instinctive law-abidingness, procedures for resolving disputes and grievances, public spirit and the ability of the people to change their own government by a process that is transparent to them all.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm a huge fan of social trust, perhaps due to the fact I grew up in a place where nobody has bars on the windows and if you dropped your wallet in the parking lot, you could be pretty sure somebody would return it to you be evening. We had one cop. He was part time and if you got into mischief, I think he would have just called your mother. It's the kind of thing you get (or we think you get) in Scandinavia, maybe Switzerland and New Zealand, possibly parts of Canada.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But my attitude was not always so benign, In truth I found the home place boring and was desperate to cut myself loose. I dreamt of getting to Damon Runyon's New York (I never got there, perhaps because it did not exist). In adulthood' I've had the good luck to sojourn in a lot of places but I've often said that my vacation of choice would be Izmir in 1912 before the expulsion of the Greeks and the murder of the Armenians. Which is to say, I like social trust but I also like "diversity"--a word whose modern meaning did not, in my youth, so much as exist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But thar's the problem, isn't it? "[S]hared language, shared customs." Really? Do we <i>need </i>shared language, shared customs? Put othe other way round, can we build social trust without them? I must say, I certainly hope so. I want a woworld where we can have it both ways. And this is where Ian Kershaw comes in, via <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537843/to-hell-and-back-by-ian-kershaw/9780670024582">his splendid history</a> of <i>inter alia, </i>the restructuring of Europe in the aftermath of World War I. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can see where this is going. Retrieve your old history notes from your mental storage-bank and you'll recall how the post-War period experienced (a) an efflorescence of creative nationalism; plus (b) a wave of venomous hostility to anything perceived as outside the particular nationalist model.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The famous Wilsonian program of self-determination turned into a cruel hoax. Italians grabbed Germans. Germans inflicted themselves Czechs. Romanians got Hungarians and Hungary got Slovaks. Russians, no thanks to President Wilson, gained and kept just about everybody in sight. And nobody understood the Balkans (as usual). Indeed, the places that accomplished most by way of establishing ethnic homogeneity were those in which it was done by brute strength--think Greece and Turkey. Some of these restructuring stood the test of time better than others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some of these new orderings proved durable--Italy still has its Germans today. Others lasted a long time. But remember what happened in the Balkans in the 90s. No, don't remember it, the whole fiasco is just too unpleasant. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don't </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mean<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> this to be the end of the story. I certainly don't want it to be. But it does seem that establishing social trust across cultural boundaries is a challenge enough to daunt the best of us. I'll try to think about it some more, but meanwhile, will somebody turn off the damn TV? (Bleak joke. We don't have TV, which means we are safe from the GOP convention).</span></span></span></div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-15073381848699709482016-07-16T15:38:00.001-07:002016-07-16T15:54:13.424-07:00Still Getting in the Swing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Wrote about 4/5 of a lovely post just now on "social trust," but it seems to have disappeared. If you got it, know that it is incomplete . Technical problems. My desktop is down and I am trying to compose on my IPad mini which is about like trying to skate on one foot, I think I'll just leave it until Mon when, I hope, I get my computer and thereby my life back.</span> </div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-44452585579286233632016-07-15T20:32:00.001-07:002016-07-15T20:34:49.978-07:00Kershaw Takes the Long View<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I read Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler some years ago with pleasure and profit. Now at the urging of the Missus I am rooting around in <i>To Hell and Back, </i> his big-picture history of the 20th Century, particularly the early chapters on the runup to and the aftermath of World War I. It's a somewhat mind-bending experience in that I studied this stuff with some avidity in college 55 years ago (I was a late starter). I loved it then and I'm surprised that I remember specific bits and pieces that seem to have stuck with me down through the years (also the entertaining showmanship of Jim Sutton at the U of Louisville as he flourished his deck of 5x7 note cards in a dauntless effort to keep his night students awake).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what gives me a bit of the yim yams is how different it looks from the vantage of great age. Or rather, I suppose "yim yams" is too strong. There is no radical discontinuity. I'm still the same person. I didn't bring much to the table back then (did someone mutter "callow?"). I've got a lifetime to measure it against now. In a way, I suppose you might say the same is true of Kershaw. He's a bit younger than I but still, he's got a lifetime of experience to draw on. At least as to Germany (which is pretty much the center of his story so far) he has pretty much earned the right what he damn pleases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One perhaps trivial point on which I'm specially appreciative: he gives lots of casualty figures, both for wars and for battles, More satisfying still, he breaks down the general category into the specifics of dead and wounded. Numbers are important here: it's good to get a sense of just how awful (in the strict sense) all this was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Related point: to the best of my recollection, in my youth we passes pretty lightly over the Russian Civil War. I don't think I ever grasped that it was actually more costly in human terms (for the Russians) than the great war itself. And the Kronstadt Rebellion, where the revolution turned on, as it were, its own. Trotsky said he would have them "shot like partridges" and proved as good as his words.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another, perhaps larger, point: the radical reorganization of society as a whole with a dozen or so new nations, all of the, "democracies" of a sort. And actually not such a bad sort. Maybe only Czechoslovskia got its sea legs but for so many, it was an inspiring new departure. In any event--I've got other things I want to get to, but I think I'll have to stick with Kershaw--I'm dying to know how it works out. </span></div>
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Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-30051246900298661952016-07-15T19:52:00.003-07:002016-07-15T19:52:42.495-07:00Another Test<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Xxx</div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-19044558148222369782016-07-15T13:45:00.003-07:002016-07-15T13:48:22.269-07:00Testing an IFTTT Link<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Testing an ITTT Link.</div>
Bucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.com0