Month: August 2017

Afghanistan “Win”: Surely You Jest, Mr. President

Is the Joke on Us, or on Our Glorious Leader?

Some days ago, the brat who poses as our nation’s president declared we would commence a winning strategy in Afghanistan.  I believe he said “win” at least five times, eliciting a lighthearted “ha ha ha” among the more jaded listeners.

That this flies in the face of logic—given the seventeen-year history of our military adventure in Afghanistan—is no impediment to Mr. Trump, whose logical faculties (such as they are) are overwhelmed by his egotism, vainglory, and desperate cravings for winning at any cost.

Containment of the Taliban, not defeating them, is the name of the game in Afghanistan, which the generals whom Trump maintains he consulted at length know very well.  (He also said he had looked at the Afghanistan situation “from every angle.” That was not the only time that I laughed out loud at this speech, but it was probably the loudest.) My guess is that the only way they could sell their strategy to him was to tell him it was a “winning” strategy, because the language of zero-sum games is the only language he understands. I’d wager they had a good laugh among themselves once the ruse succeeded.

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What’s in a Name? from Romeo and Juliet to the NIH

The Power of Names, Like It or Not

In the August 24 Washington Post, we hear that ESPN yanked an unfortunate Asian-American from broadcasting a University of Virginia football game, the sportscaster’s trespass being that he bore the name: Robert Lee.  Elsewhere in the same issue, Dana Milbank skewered ESPN (and ludicrously overdone Political Correctness in general), with a satire that suggested we should ban from the public eye Bruce Lee, Tommy Lee, Harper Lee, Spike Lee, Bobby Lee, Lee Majors, Lee Jeans, etc.

We are all familiar with the epigram, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” spoken by Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Really?  What if the flower were named Kerblunkanoo? Ratstikittel? Skrutabucket? Wine critic: “This chardonnay has a complex aroma, a fusion of pears and peaches with a delicate hint of skrutabucket.”  OK—it could become catchy. But that doesn’t change the fact that names shade perceptions. People named Hitler can attest to that. Racial, ethnic, gender, and religious slurs attest to the demeaning power of names. Actors and actresses acquire stage names to spin their personae, perhaps the most famous being the name Marilyn Monroe to replace the decidedly unglamorous Norma Jeanne Mortenson.

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Robert E. Lee Cooling the Fires – All for Naught

Robert E. Lee Echoing Lincoln

In the August 25 Washington Post op-ed page, Eugene Robinson revealed a side of Robert E. Lee that runs against the grain of many who wish to celebrate his memory with public statues: after the Civil War, the general warned against erecting Civil War monuments in Gettysburg (one may infer that he referred to both Union and Confederate monuments): “I think it wiser,” said Lee, “not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”

Echoes of Lincoln, right down to the metaphor of wounds to the body politic, ring uncannily.  In his second inaugural address—made less than a month before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox—Lincoln urged, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . .”

This softens the picture of Lee, who was, by any definition of treason, a traitor to his country. A traitor, moreover, who chose to defend a government founded on the monstrosity of slavery.

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O Magnum Mysterium – Prayer without Boundaries

I thought of spilling a lot of superlatives (ooh did I ever!) about this song but didn’t want to contaminate it. Judge for yourself. Just be in a quiet space for 8 minutes. Even if you’ve heard it before. . . well, you know. Don’t worry about the religious part – it’s for anyone whose heart is not made of stone.

O Magnum Mysterium, Kings College

There’s a synthetic version by John Serrie that I sort of like just as much, but it’s less organic. So listen to Kings College first.

 

Ungovernable? The Curse of a Ruling Faction

Factional Fury

In the July 29 Guardian, Michael Goldfarb laments the debacle of the Trump presidency to date: Goldfarb on Ungovernability

However, the recitation of one Trumpian travesty after another is not the core of Goldfarb’s message.  It’s just to get your attention and whip up a little outrage.  What he’s really getting at is deeper and more troubling. It’s the danger of factionalism, in particular that “the Republicans are no longer a political party but a faction, a much more dangerous thing.”

He goes on to quote James Madison’s definition of “faction” and summarizes Madison’s concerns as expressed in the Federalist Number 10

Madison’s paper itself makes for fascinating if laborious reading—the man had a knack for prolixity in the service of exhausting every possible angle of a subject (research topic: how did the other Constitutional Conventioneers restrain Madison from making the Constitution as long as the Sunday edition of The New York Times?). Nonetheless, if you read the whole thing you get the sense Madison was more concerned about a ruling majority faction rather than the minority faction (in terms of numbers of voters) that the current Republican Party has turned out to be. Nevertheless, Goldfarb’s argument applies, since the Continue reading “Ungovernable? The Curse of a Ruling Faction”