Category: Politics (explicit)

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Response and responsibilities

For a month or two, Slate has been running excerpts from Clive James’ new book, Cultural Amnesia, which it describes as a “re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th century.” The excerpts are presented as A-Z profiles, and some are compelling enough that I put the book on my Amazon Wish List. (However, since I know I won’t get around to reading it for quite a while, I’m figuring I’ll end up buying the paperback in 2008 or ’09. Or I’ll find a remainder/surplus copy at the Strand, as is my wont.)

I thought the Terry Gilliam one went off the rails a bit, pursuing a discussion of torture that probably could have been written without including Gilliam’s masterpiece, but it’s still an engaging essay. With a number of the other essays, James appears to be pursuing the question of artists’ responsibilities in the world, vis a vis the political tumult of the 20th century. (It’s not only about artists, but they seem well represented in the 110 profiles the book contains.)

Thus, the discussion of Borges has to get at his relationship with Argentina’s junta, while the take-no-prisoners profile of Sartre posted today questions the nature of JP’s resistance during the war as well as his avoidance of the truth about the Soviet Union. (It also touches on the subject of the necessity of bad writing, a favorite topic of mine.)

The excerpt that I enjoyed the most — I haven’t read them all — is the one discussing Rilke and Brecht, even though I haven’t read much of Rilke beyond his poetry and know nothing of Brecht’s work. The essay contrasts Rilke’s art-for-art’s-sake with Brecht’s art-as-politics, and finds Brecht wanting. (Okay, it finds Brecht a noxious scumbag.) But James goes on to make an interesting and subtle point about the relation between the artist — particularly the ‘word artist’ — and his beliefs, and perhaps between the artist and the audience.

Give it a read (and go check out some of the others) and let me know what you think.

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Parking as a bloodsport

George Will on anger exhibitionism:

The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

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Monday Morning Montaigne

I was pretty excited when I saw that the next essay in my Montaigne collection was Of Friendship. I saved it till Saturday morning, figuring I’d be able to spend the day ruminating on his ideas of the subject and how they jibed — or failed to jibe — with my own. Unfortunately, I found this essay pretty unenlightening and, well, boring.

Of Friendship is intended to introduce poems by Montaigne’s dead friend, political philosopher Etienne de La Boetie, but what it focuses on is the character of their “once in three centuries” friendship. In the process of describing the intense, four-year relationship the men shared, Montaigne proceeds to dismiss the possibility of true friendship between a man and

  • his dad (too much respect)
  • his brother (too much sibling rivalry)
  • a girl (too much lust; a 16th century version of When Harry Met Sally)
  • a fag (see above, and note “[T]hat other, licentious Greek love is justly abhorred by our morality.”)
  • more than one guy (too much sharing)

So I was let down, especially because my brother and my wife are two of my closest friends, there are a number of other friends I’d (essentially) go to the end of the earth for, and I once contemplated having two guys killed to avenge a brutal assault on a queer friend of mine (not that we shared that other, licentious Greek love or anything).

Anyway, rather than pass on any excerpts from that stuff, I thought I’d share with you the opening to the essay. It mirrors my own tendency to start off strong and end up all over the darned place:

As I was considering the way a painter I employ went about his work, I had a mind to imitate him. He chooses the best spot, the middle of each wall, to put a picture labored over with all his skill, and the empty space around it he fills with grotesques, which are fantastic paintings whose only charm lies in their variety and strangeness. And what are these essays of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without definite shape, having no order, sequence or proportion other than accidental?

“A lovely woman tapers off into a fish.” [Horace]

I do indeed go along with my painter in this second point, but I fall short in the first and better part; for my ability does not go far enough for me to dare to undertake a rich, polished picture, formed according to art.

Fortunately, the next few essays are Of Moderation, Of Cannibals, and Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes, so I figure there should be some more entertaining posts in the weeks ahead.

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Rush ‘n’ Attack

I’ve been thinking a lot about Russian policy (domestic and foreign) lately. For my magazine this month, I tried to discuss the untenability of running a secret police state in a world where health issues don’t respect borders. I don’t think I was all too successful, but I wrote most of it at 4am before hitting the road for Seattle.

I want to write a longer piece about Russian politics, the KGB-defined worldview, petroeconomics, the meanings of Chechnya, and the question of “deep chrono” as it relates to secrets revealed during the years between the USSR’s collapse and the ascendence of Putin. That is, I could spend the rest of my days writing something that would be out of date the moment I publish it.

The engine for this whole project was my realization that, while we’re engaged in another cold war with Russia and China, this one isn’t driven by the ideological opposition of Capitalism vs. Communism. Rather, it seems to me that the policies of both of those countries are designed to assure the security of their ruling parties.

Now, you could argue that that was the “true” motivation of the cold war itself, but it strikes me as fundamentally different, seeing as how this opposition is stripped down to the concept of retaining power for its own sake. The aspects of socialism that remain in both regimes are geared to sustain autocracy.

I’ll continue ruminating on the subject and offering up occasional impressions. Meanwhile, here’s a piece (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan) from a (sorta) pro-Putin journalist who is freaked out by the number of murdered journalists in Russia.

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Wish your cancer away!

Good thing the British National Health Service has been trying to reduce its reimbursement for Herceptin, a very focusedly effective breast cancer treatment*. That way, they can spend money on dowsers, flower therapists, and crystal healers! Yay!

(thanks to Cato-at-Liberty for pointing this one out)

* By which I mean, Herceptin works really well against around 25% of breast cancers, but is not effective against the other types. That said, it’s a major advance in treatment. Pity that, since it doesn’t work for every case, the NHS tried to keep it off the reimbursement list.

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Talk about scorched earth

Brendan O’Neill attacks genocide vogue. I think he’s had some previous articles where he’s examined the guerrilla warfare and insurgencies that lead to the conditions that the west labels as genocide, and how that fighting gets ignored in favor of a clear-cut recasting of murderers and victims.

In international relations genocide has become a political weapon, an all-purpose rallying cry used by various actors to gain moral authority and boost their own standing. Anyone with a cursory understanding of history should know that the bloody wars of the past 10 to 15 years — in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur — are not unprecedented or exceptional. Certainly none of them can be compared to the Nazi genocide against the Jews, which involved the industrialised slaughter, often in factories built for the purpose, of six million men, women and children. Rather, the labelling of today’s brutal civil wars as ‘genocides’ by Western observers, courts and commentators is a desperate search for a new moral crusade, and it has given rise to a new moral divide between the West and the rest, between the civilised and enlightened governments of America and Europe and those dark parts of the world where genocides occur.

I have a big problem with laws that make “holocaust denial” illegal, because I think those play right into the hands of the denying set, showing how they’re oppressed by the government, which doesn’t want their viewpoint getting out. It’s a free speech issue, so I wouldn’t expect Europe to be out in front on that.

This article also made me think of the “Everyone has AIDS!” musical number from Team America.