Steve Harris - Condemned to Repeat It

Change you can believe in

9/29/2023

There was a time when I carried coinage—loose change—around in my pants pocket every day (Hell, there was a time when I was wide-eyed over a “shiny new quarter”). I used to load up my pocket every morning on the way out the door and unloaded it every evening. I don’t anymore. I stopped a few years ago and now have gotten to the point when I dread paying cash for something small and getting a few coins back, which I then have to carry around for the rest of the day. I then put it in a bowl at home and, when I get around to it, I put it in a bag I keep in the car for parking meters (I hate paying for meters with credit cards which have a hidden and outrageous “convenience fee” usually exceeding 10%).

Pennies are the worst. I stopped carrying those around about twenty years ago. I put them in an old (empty) half-gallon scotch bottle. I still have one or two sitting around (they make great door stops). The US Mint has finally stopped producing them earlier this year; after all, they cost over two cents each to produce, so it was a bit ridiculous. With the latest revival of inflation, the days of nickels and dimes will likely be over pretty soon. The efforts to promote dollar coins won’t ever come to fruition; coins will soon be a thing of the past; swept away by inflation, weight, and the seemingly inexorable tide of electronic money. So much for the old Westerns in which a grizzled cowboy would bite a coin to see if it was legit.

My favorite historical tidbit about coins has to do, of course, with Sir Isaac Newton. After the small matters of discovering gravity, clarifying optics, and (co-) inventing calculus, Newton went on to something really crucial. In the 1690s he was made Master of the Mint, in charge of English coinage. There he developed the idea of the ridges on the rim of the coin (most noticeable to us now on the US quarter) in order to complicate counterfeiting and make evident any snipping off of a little bit of the outer edge of a coin (flakes of silver could really add up).

People took coins seriously back then and had for hundreds of years. They were a convenient means of carrying easily useable and reasonably reliable value. Coins were first used in China about 3000 years ago and used in many Greek and SW Asian cultures for well over 2000 years. Coinage was a central part of what newly-constructed European states did in the early modern period. Even after paper money was developed (China in the 11C, Europe in the 13C), coins remained far more important until the 19C.

As evidenced by the continuing market for gold, what people decide is “valuable” is entirely a social/cultural phenomenon. Millennia of use have given coins a lot of weight (sorry) in this regard. The gradual shift to paper currency was attended by lots of arguments over whether a piece of paper with some words printed on it could be ever be worth anything. In theory, at least until the 19C (and later 20C in some cases), the theory was that the piece of paper was just a convenience since it represented an actual chunk of gold or silver sitting in Ft. Knox (or its equivalent location). Current currency foregoes that illusion. Money is now just our shared belief in the continued existence of our government (i.e., our society). Money is worth something merely because we all agree that it is worth something and the government has told us so. The money says: “In God We Trust;” but actually it’s more like “In Biden/Trump/Obama/Bush… We Trust.”

We used to rely on something tangible (bite-able?), then something nicely printed. Now we don’t even see money at all. Credit/debit cards and automatic billing/payment/deposit have made it so that we don’t really pay attention to money on a day-to-day basis. We check our bank balance as frequently as our economic situation requires. Now, electronic payments have made things even faster/easier/ more invisible: swipe/dip/tap and you’re done; no need for a paper receipt. Automatic payment plans cover much of our regular expenses. I get an email notification and make sure there’s enough in the bank account and I’m done. I might write about one check a month; and grumble when I do so. All the payment processors are rolling out facial recognition payments so you can merely look at the cashier and pay for your groceries. Except for the fraud and the fees, it’s all seamless. If (when?) the internet goes out, however, we will have to revert to scrip and a lot of ordinary commerce will grind to a halt.

As a boy, I collected coins. I have stashed away somewhere, a pretty solid collection of pennies and quarters up through the 1970s. My brother collected nickels and dimes (my parent’s way of keeping us in friendly—if indirect—competition). My collection isn’t worth all that much, its retention is more a matter of storage inertia and a fear of finding out that all that youthful excitement didn’t produce any miraculous discoveries of value. I should probably bite the bullet (or the quarter) and take it to a coin store and get my few hundred bucks. Still, there is some (illusory?) remnant of value and solidity that keeps me attached to my collection.

Karl Marx, in describing modernity in the mid 19C, said “All that is solid, melts into air.” It’s nowhere more true than in the case of money. Gold and silver coins haven’t exactly melted, but have all but vanished. Even the copper-plated zinc slug that has passed for a penny for the past few decades is leaving us. Soon money will just be a wink at a waiter and electrons will do the rest.

Days of Future Past

9/22/2023

The title of this week’s essay: “Days of Future Past” is in honor of the outstanding album from the Moody Blues (1967) with which I was much enamored at the time (not the X-Men superhero movie ((2014) which I didn’t see)). The subject, however, has little to do with popular culture of whatever genre.

I wrote recently about a research project which I had begun to look at how the soon-to-be-former British colonies became independent actors on the world stage in the broader process of decolonization of the mid-20C. I’ve since bagged it. I learned a bunch of stuff along the way, but, after ~200 hours over the past year, it just wasn’t working for me. I kept finding myself trying to figure out why I was spending my time this way and I couldn’t find the ‘juice’ necessary to undertake a major research project. Ah, well….

After clearing the decks, my mind kept returning to a topic which I had started a while back and then put on deep hold: A History of the Future. My historical question (which I always push my students to articulate clearly) is how have the ways in which people have conceived of the future changed over the decades/centuries/millennia. My hypothesis is that this is a function of modernity: the shift from traditional/religious societies with shamans and the Book of Revelations to data-based projections utilizing scientific and technological tools (e.g., from almanacs to weather forecasting), rationalized and structured models (e.g. corporate scenario planning), both accompanied by a degree of confidence that the future could be estimated and perhaps managed.

I will come back to the substance as my project unfolds over the next few years. Today, I want to talk about what I found in looking at my old files.

First, a time frame: I undertook my first round of this project twenty-five years ago, i.e. 1998. Those days—1998—were filled with the future and yet they are well “past” (whatever “past” and “future” mean).

So, just looking at the notes I took and ideas I framed back then has been sobering as a reference point for how I and my approach to the issues and processes have changed during that time. I had just left PacBell and was looking for a new gig. In the meantime, I was encouraged to recharge my mental energy with something meaty and non-business-oriented and this is what I picked. I probably looked a hundred books and articles, taking detailed notes and sketching ideas and outlines; so it was “not nothing.” I found a lot of good stuff and hope to make use of this material.

As I look back on my files, the first thing that struck me was that I was untrained (or at least pretty rusty) in academic research. The bibliography I compiled is pretty meandering, embracing my own version of a comprehensive treatment of the topic, including psychology, philosophy, linguistics, history of ideas, epistemology, literature, etc. I’m sure five volumes would have been needed to contain my rambunctious (not to say undisciplined) thoughts. Of course all this took place before I had any of my more recent training in history and organizing large-scale research projects. I was working only on the fringes of academic research libraries. Indeed, it would be another seven years (and another two stops on the career path) before I would take the plunge into academic history.

The researcher/writer who produced this set of rough materials was clearly curious (if uncertain/naïve). He generated a bunch of interesting ideas, but had little context, theory, or disciplinary knowledge even to know what he was talking about. Certainly, as I was to learn in my MA and PhD programs, he didn’t know much about the history of the various events, developments, and thinkers of the past, or even the scope of the literature he was nosing into. I think I now read with a much more critical eye.

At the same time, looking at his work, I can see that some of the same themes and approaches have continued to this day. I still don’t have much respect for disciplinary boundaries. I’m drawn to synthetic thinking, pulling ideas and references from seemingly disparate sources. My core interest in the nature of human thinking or “mentalités” remains strong. I am as much interested in what ordinary folks thought and did as I am in the ideas of famous authors (from Francis Bacon to Jules Verne to Alvin Toffler). So, the same spark is still there.

My files include not a few ‘xerox’ copies of articles which I will now scan into my computer to sit alongside the pdfs. There are also dozens of “Word” documents in a format (basically Word ’97) so old that my current version (16.76) can’t even read without a file-by-file conversion. Each is a reminder of the technological history through which we have lived. So, I have a bunch of basic steps to get through before I can really re-start the project. I have to get the files in order, rebuild and refine the bibliography, then do some extensive searching for the literature on this topics that has been written in the 21C, organize the dozens of half-baked ideas on scraps of paper, and then come up with a much more detailed, thoughtful, and coherent outline.

I’ve started collecting books and articles published since I first looked at these issues. There are some new angles and anecdotes, references to sources, etc. but nothing clearly preemptive (always a concern when starting a new research project; whew!). Both in what I looked at before and now, there is a lot of pop culture and “gee, whiz” stuff. However, I haven’t found much that really tries to grapple with the change in the very conceptualization of the future; as I hope to do.

Wish me luck….

Journal of a Blog Year.3

9/15/2023

Another school year has begun. Can the Blog Anniversary be far behind? My principal themes have not much changed, nor the principal topics. Fortunately, these are sufficiently broad to admit of continued exploration, supplemented by the spur of current events. I will have to leave to my literary biographers any assessment of changes in my attitudes and interpretations. In the meantime, I thank you for your time, attention, and comments.

Looking back I can see some phrases and angles that continue to resonate and others that will be ephemeral. I hope you will find some favorites (you can even jump back though the list on the right to find things you missed).

Looking forward, I will work to avoid too much of the election churn, but the trials of HWSNBN will likely prove too tempting. Nominations are also welcome.

Date      Title               Topic
092322   Beyond Left and Right        The language (and realities) of politics
093022   Centric                                     Can we stand (epistemologically) on our own?
100722   Flush                                       The joys of modern plumbing
101422   Its Broke                History as a discipline needs to change
102122   Das Kapital              Clarifying capitalism
102822   Heartland                                The middle of EurAsia is the center of things
110422   Inertia                    A key principle of physics applies to societies too
111122   Tragedy of the 21C Commons   Overpopulation is at the root of many problems
111822   Passions and Interests       The mentality of capitalism
112522   Feelings                                 Can we say what we really mean?
120222   Sauce for the Gander            American (Un)exceptionalism
120922   Renaissance               Are we better off after the past 500 years?
121622   Counting                   How do we measure our time on Earth?
122322   Grand Turing Test           The coming AI arms race
123022   To Boldly Go…                     The spirit of exploration

010623   Is Genocide Important?       A new course asks difficult questions
011323   Uprising                              What is a “revolution” anyway?
012023   Casablanca              Teaching with cultural references
012723   Congressbot           When AI runs the government
020323   Laissez Faire              Are we all interventionists now?
021023   Generations                       How the torch is passed
021723   What is a Constitution?   Defining a document
022423   Red Lines                          Definitiveness in foreign policy is often a mistake
030323   Time Warp                        The illusion of instantaneity
031023   Sunset Boulevard           Term limits for legislation
031723   Britannia Rules the Waves       (Very) Little England
032423   Law as History                  Lawyers are just (peculiar) historians
033123   March Madness               The corruption of college sports
040723   Knowledge and Liberty   Can we know too much?
041423   The Fallacy of Instant History   The limits of journalism
042123   Let’s Talk Turkey              A country in the middle of things
042823   The Arc of the Universe   Seeking justice without faith
050523   Half a Baby in the Hand   The wisdom of compromise
051223   Growing Up              Enlightenment and species maturity
051923   Human                             Who are we, now?
052623   Empire and Democracy   A current research project
060223   Bemji Calling                   Report from Bhutan
060923   Backwards              Labels are usually fictions
061623   Of Interest              The cost of money
062323   Democracy in Bhutan   How to build a nation
063023   Realclimatik.1                 Facing reality (or not)
070723   This Old House              Repairs and maintenance
071423   How To Live                   Lessons from Montaigne
072123   Realclimatik.2              What is to be done?
072823   Speaking the Truth       The uses of honesty in foreign affairs
080423   Petard                            The dilemmas of a former President
081123   The History of Me       Insights from a new course
081823   War and Ideology           It’s all about power
082523   To Ear is Human           Failing senses
090123   Casting Stones              Time to look in the mirror
090823   Entitlements                   Why titles matter
091523   Journal of a Blog Year.3       Recap

See you in Year 4!

Entitlements

9/8/2023

As one who reads a lot of student essays, one source of frustration (though far from the worst) is the generally limp selection of titles that they put at the top of their papers. “Non-Discriminatory Representation in the House,” “Lincoln and Slavery,” “The Reign of Napoleon III,” and other mealy-mouthed efforts. And all this after I emphasize the importance of a catchy title to draw the reader in to the meat of the paper.

It's the flip side of what happens in the media where, “BREAKING NEWS,” flashes seemingly every hour in your news channel de jour, or even the NYT, whose headline writer creates hooks only nominally connected to the substance of the articles. To my mind, such “clickbait” is most often an invitation to intellectual disappointment.

I remind students that while I have to read their papers (regardless of title), the same will not be true for their written work for the rest of their lives (assuming they write anything longer than a 40-word text message), and that they should start now and get in the habit of thinking about how they want to convey the gist of their argument in the first (and perhaps only) words their potential readers might ever see. I tell them that their title should contain the gist of their thesis, so that the reader can see, at a glance, the subject matter and the direction of their argument. So, rewriting the student titles above, I might go for “Off its Foundations: The House of Representatives Doesn’t Represent the People,” or “A Man Divided: Lincoln’s Conflicting Views on Abolition,” or “Like Uncle, Like Nephew: How Napoleon III’s Dreams of Grandeur and His Ruin Echoed His Familial Role Model.” Puns, allusions, and twists on adages are but three of the techniques I suggest. At the least, I want them to think about their essay project and about their audience and see how they can connect them together.

Most academic writers at least make an effort in this direction, using the now standard format of [catchy words/phrase] : [more pedantic and substantive subtitle]. Admittedly, the bar is pretty low (excitement-wise) deep in the history stacks; but at least we’re trying….

The Economist, which I read regularly, is pretty aware of the challenges. Their articles have a lengthy history of puns (recently, e.g., a piece on the harmful effects of El Nino weather pattern is called: “Little Boy Blues,” and an analysis of the Chinese Communist Party’s clamp down on entrepreneurial spirit is offered under the title of “Firm Control.”) Now, as a long-standing punster (pundit), I am the first to acknowledge that this is not everyone’s taste, but at least they are making an effort to signal to the reader that they are a little “arch,” self-aware, and not taking themselves too smugly as the report on the doings of the world. They even have recently started a new weekly feature in which they explain how they picked the art for the cover of the weekly print edition. They’re thinking seriously about how they engage their readers; which can’t be a bad thing.

In my own academic writing, I’ve stuck with the standard structure, noted above; with scholarly titles too dry to repeat (and too obscure to explain) here. As I look around my history bookcases, I see that most titles are making some effort at engaging the reader. Books, of course, have spines and most publishers have PR departments, so there are some pressures to pick something pithy that fits; usually no more than three substantive words. Thankfully, we have left behind that titling conventions of an earlier era, where sometimes things got out of hand. Dickens great novel, which we know as “David Copperfield,” is actually titled: The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery [Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account]. Academic article titles tend to be lengthy, a combination of an effort to explain their curious corner of discovery along with a desire, perhaps, to pad the length of that part of the author’s resume that lists their publications.

Here in blogland, I can be a bit more relaxed. Just drawing from this year, we see some puns (“Let’s talk Turkey,” “Of interest,” Sunset Boulevard”) some cultural allusions (“Time Warp,” “March Madness,” “This Old House”), and some mixed metaphors (“Half a Baby in the Hand”) alongside a slew of more mundane titles. But, I am writing to a group of older, pretty sophisticated folks for whom such semantic connections might resonate. (Some friends tell me that I’m already way too far down the road of obscurity for anyone to keep up. In any event, I’m pretty sure that they would go over the heads of my students.) And then I twist the allusion so that the actual topic nominally fits, but not as the first synaptic connection. “Time Warp” isn’t about “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” (early election results reporting in the media), nor is “Sunset Boulevard” about an aging Hollywood star (making laws expire reasonably soon). In any event, you can be pretty sure that when you read the title of one of my blog posts, it’s unlikely to be about the first thing that comes to mind. I certainly enjoy the process of coming up with these ideas and, if they bring a wry smile to your face, and a sigh/groan…well, that’s not bad either (and more than I’m entitled to).

Casting Stones

9/1/2023

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone….” – John 8:7 (King James)

I was talking with a colleague the other day about the difficulty modern American culture has with facing history. More particularly, we all too easily dismiss consideration of past actions of our culture that were, by our present standards, wrong. We don’t even want to talk about the facts, much less the characterization/judgment of those actions.

In this we are not alone. Recently, I alluded to the widely varying responses to genocides undertaken by a wide range of cultures over the centuries. Few have been willing to acknowledge the actions taken by their historical cultures. The Turks vehemently protest against classifying their mass murder of Armenians in 1915 as a “genocide.” The Japanese refuse to recognize that they committed brutalities against most of their neighbors during their mid-20C imperial expansion. Don’t expect acts of atonement from the Russians for their starvation of Ukrainians under Stalin or from the Chinese for the frenzies of death and harm during the “Cultural Revolution” in the 1960s.

The US list starts with the treatment of native Americans, continues with slavery and racism vis-à-vis Black Africans, and includes a lengthy list of oppression, discrimination, and other harms to women and a wide range of ethnic groups. European empires, while proudly proclaiming their devotion to Christian ethics and civilization have much to answer for on every continent. Indeed, as far as I can tell, virtually every culture which amassed power over the past 5,000 years has used that power to harm others, both domestically and internationally.

I could go on…. If you’re into blame, invective, moralizing and table-pounding, history is a target-rich environment.

There are multiple references in the Bible (Deuteronomy, Exodus, Numbers) in which the LORD says HE can punish children for their parents’ sins; but more modern individualistic thinking rejects blood taints. And besides the necessary humility incumbent on recognizing that “we are all sinners,” Ernst Renan pointed out in 1882 that, given the history of conquests and destruction almost universal in the amalgamation of peoples over the centuries, forgetting the past is the only way for a people to go forward together.

It’s usually much easier to blame the other folks than to acknowledge one’s (my) own failings which contributed to the current crisis du jour. As long as I rant about the others’ ethical defects, I don’t have to worry about the future. They have to defend themselves and riposte by attacking me. It feels good at a certain level, but it doesn’t get us anywhere.

In South Africa, in the aftermath of apartheid, a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was established to lay out the past as the basis for clearing the decks and allowing the future to move forward; other countries have undertaken similar projects. It may seem strange for a historian to want to put the history on the shelf. After all, discovering and utilizing the past is what we’re about. However, as Renan pointed out, hurts from the past—and recriminations—are best left on the shelf; we have to agree to move beyond the past (as best we can).

This usually takes some time. But, by 1952, parts of Europe had already started to come together in what would become the European Union. The past was being left in the past.

In my current research project about the decolonization of the British Empire in the mid-20C (See my posting on “Empire and Democracy” 052623), it was plain that the local political leaders in the colonies were “in tune with the times” in terms of demanding independence and human rights. They rejected the ideas and concerns of the morally bankrupt representatives of European “civilization.” It didn’t matter that the British were generally right, however, that most of these groupings were not ready to be stand-alone, full-fledged independent countries; lacking social cohesion, plausible economics, and governmental infrastructure. Rejection was more important that building a strong foundation for the future; and few of these colonies can be said to have been successful in the ~60 years since.

This demonstrates another problem with being stuck in the blame game: it’s a distraction. Time spent urging someone who (or whose parents or great-great-grandparents) did something bad to admit the sin (and, similarly, time spent in self-defense) is time not spent on today’s issues. The bad blood engendered in such debates further complicates the ability to come to useful solutions. In particular, the poisoned atmosphere usually leads to discarding whatever valid perceptions or good ideas might be advanced by the (descendants of) the miscreants.

Stone-throwing is a normal part of revolution and revolutionaries’ violence weakens their moral standing. Incumbents’ abuse of power undermines their claims to attention and respect. Yet, in the aftermath, the norm is to fight about the past rather than build the future. We can look at most of the international and “Civil” disputes around the world—Northern Ireland, the Middle East, most colonial changeovers of the 20C, Myanmar, India-Pakistan, a slew of post-colonial coups—and it’s hard to find those “without sin,” but pretty easy to find cast stones.

To Ear is Human

8/25/2023

I’ve recently been diagnosed with mild-to-moderate hearing loss in the upper registers; a wholly unsurprising assessment for those of a certain age. It’s minor and treatable, so this is not an exercise in hand-wringing or mordant consideration of the frailties of my “mortal coil.” Rather, it is a reflection on my senses, their social context, and how I relate to them.

Ordinary social commentary holds that the loss of hearing, while hardly unusual, carries a lot of “aging” baggage. Men, in particular, are commonly held to be in denial over this particular component of physical degeneration. Their spouses are often the first to report/allege communications problems. Of course, the degree to which this differential diagnosis is due to a) not being able to hear and b) not being interested in listening or c) issues with the creation of a clear message, is not always clear. This is certainly reflected in my own case.

Minor hearing impairment, at least in my case, presents the curious sensation of being an invisible ailment; i.e., I don’t really have a sense of my shortcoming. In other words, I don’t know what I’m missing: which comes down to a little clarity around words extracted from a buzzing conversation (all too readily filled-in by my brain overlaying history and social and linguistic context). My audiologist tells me that once fully equipped with remedial technology (of which more below), I will appreciate what I apparently can’t hear now.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the diagnosis was the way I reacted: a lack of surprise, a grudging acceptance of the state of my body, a residuum of denial; but, even more, an awareness of how differently I reacted as compared with a comparable diagnosis of my sight. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was seven. With the exception of a few years in my 40s when I shifted to contact lenses (only to return to glasses when bifocals became necessary); they have been a basic part of my self-image for as long as I can remember.

In terms of impairment, myopia and presbycusis (Okay, I had to look that word up!) seem pretty similar. In my case, my sight has been limited for decades. It’s a given, no big deal. Why would I treat my ears differently than my eyes? Indeed, as an avid reader, my eyes have always seemed more important to me than my ears and I have little doubt what I would choose if forced to give one up. So, following the hearing test, my wanting to react more strongly, to protest and deny, was quickly undercut by the realization of my pretense.

My affected rejection comes from a combination of 1) memories of old men and old technologies (i.e., not wanting to look like my grandfather, 2) not wanting to signal my (apparent) age/decline by having visible technical aids (one step better than a walker), and 3) an aversion to having anything in my ears. All of which I ignore in the case of glasses.

I also remember when my dad got hearing aids. My mom had to nudge him for a while, but eventually, they became part of his routine. He used to grumble about them—the fit, the cost, the batteries, the limited effectiveness. I’m pretty sure I was on my mom’s side on this issue, telling him to get over it. (Now, if I would only look in the mirror and say the same thing…)

At the Kaiser Medical Center, there is (naturally) a comprehensive protocol for this diagnosis. I’ve had the test and the preliminary discussion with the audiologist. Next, if (when) I choose, I can get a consultation with a “Hearing Instrument Specialist” who will explain the various devices, including cost (anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per ear), effectiveness, size/weight, tech interfaces, etc. I can then order the devices and come back for a preliminary fitting and a follow-up. Or, I can get a device over-the-counter. A little googling shows that here as in many other areas, the tech has gotten a lot better in the last ten years. I guess with all the Dr Dre’s and iBuds out there, it’s not too surprising. Many hearing aids can Bluetooth connect with my iPhone. And, of course, there are many models that are much smaller than they used to be (If only I can get over my aversion to things in my ear!). I imagine that within a few years, there will be easily implantable aids that will also connect via Bluetooth to a microphone in my phone so I can subvocalize questions and carry on a pretty seamless and invisible conversation. Neural shunts (direct implants connecting to the brain) can’t be that far off; pretty soon we will be somewhere between the Six-Million-Dollar Man (1973) and the Borg on Star Trek (1989).

So much for the tech part of the story.

Bottom line: I don’t think I’m ready to take this step yet. I don’t have the sense that I’m actually missing all that much in the way of comprehensible sound waves. The technology is continuing to come down the cost/effectiveness curve. And, perhaps, I need a little more time to come to terms with all this. But, eventually, I will take this step. As the Borg says: “Resistance is futile.”

War and Ideology

8/18/2023

War and ideology

War is about power. It may be dressed up in a variety of clothing, but at the end of the day, men (it’s almost always men) argue about “Qui es muy macho?,” push comes to shove, and people die.

As the shape of power has shifted over the centuries, the rationalizations and recruitment theories (you always need to get a bunch of guys to fight with you) have shifted as well. Charisma can be important (see the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V), sometimes money is the motivator, sometimes revenge (usually just deterrence to promote longer-term security…i.e. power). In feudal structures (applicable globally) hierarchical power and personal connections were activated to preserve social order (which usually meant keeping the elites in charge).

In the modern era (which arrived at different times for different countries), democracy (i.e., “power to the people”) and nationalism have been the critical and interlinked rationales.

The 20C was nominally marked by a nominal focus on fairly coherent ideology/belief systems. Some have argued that the set of three wars (WWI, WWII, Cold War) which dominated that era were really just three acts in a single tripartite drama between Communism, Fascism, and Liberal Democracy. (btw, we won). This ideological focus which characterized the epistemology of the 20C and therefore colored how we (Greatest Generation, Boomers, Gen X) think is emblematic of modernity and the conceit that we are motivated by rational ideals. It all made sense at the time, but from a larger perspective, ideological frameworks for war were superficial and an anomaly.

At the end of the Cold War, President Bush (41) proclaimed a “new world order.” Francis Fukuyama announced the “end of history.” It seemed that the triumph of the West was virtually complete. But we have been trapped in old ways of thinking. I’ve been doing research about the end of the British Empire in the mid-20C and their blindness to the changes in the world is quite remarkable. Sixty to eighty years later, the Brits still haven’t figured it out. Now that it’s our turn, it doesn’t look like we’re any more mentally deft.

We missed two key things: First, there were lots of folks who didn’t like Western liberal modernity and wanted to go backwards, and second, there were lots of folks who didn’t like Western liberal modernity and wanted to go in different directions. In the first group, radical Islam generated what we call terrorism to try to stop the process and many warlords/dictators were more interested in pre-modern luxury than in individual rights and democratic/economic development. In the second group, China got sufficiently modern to be competitive (i.e., to amass enough power to get everyone to pay attention to them) and has announced that they have a different vision of the future. We will see if India can muster either the strength or the vision to do something similar.

However, there’s an interesting argument, backed up by some “on-the-ground” research, that most terrorists (e.g. the IRA, or the German Baader-Meinhof Gang in 20C Europe, nor most flavors of radical Islamic terrorist groups (e.g. ISIS or al-Queda) are actually not about ideology. Instead, they may be more driven by the camaraderie of shared effort, as well as notoriety. Their aims are nominal. Even if there was a substantive kernel of an idea, its lost on most of the members of such organizations. In other words, they’re hard to defeat and prevent, and certainly not “convincible.” Their mode of warfare, being asymmetric as well, doesn’t fit into the normal modes of military assessment.

Nor should we confuse a Chinese future with an ideology. There’s no real indication that they believe in anything other than preserving order (i.e. keeping the current “Communist” oligarchy in power). Nor is there any intellectual coherence behind Putin. And India (and Brazil and Indonesia) will certainly dress-up their geopolitical aspirations in ideological clothing, but there’s not likely much there either). [One could argue, of course, that much the same could be said of Western liberal capitalistic democracy (some of which I have touched on in previous postings). The dominance of markets and the devotion to the form of legal, individual rights can be seen as merely a device to preserve the power of our own elites. So, we shouldn’t get too smug ourselves.]

Much of this analytic framework is old hat for aficionados of the international relations theory called “realism” (or its variants). In this view, ideology is a tool for the preservation/expansion of power; it’s not a goal in itself. Henry Kissinger (who just turned 100) is the current exemplar of this tradition, which also claims, Bismarck and Louis XIV as adherents. Some (many) find this approach distasteful and cruel.

Still, it’s good to at least consider an understanding of the world in which “they” are not out to get “us” because of what we think, but because everyone want the others to be like them and sign up for the system in which they dominate the world. A “new world order” which is stable and settled is also one in which those currently without power stay without power. Putin couldn’t stand it; so he started a war. China can’t stand that Taiwan is trying to escape Beijing’s control by hiding under the skirts of the West. Kim Jong Il threatens war not for any ideology, but because he knows the minute size of the pond in which he is the biggest fish. Iran cozies up to Russia because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” casually disregarding Russia’s Communist/atheistic past. Until WWII, the US didn’t like the way the world worked, consigning us to the fringes. Over time, our growth (and growing power) forced a change. Since then (the last 75 years), we picked up the torch from the European “Great Powers” and the world has been “our oyster.”

Ideology is just window-dressing on the cycles of geopolitics; and this cycle may be over.

The History of Me

8/11/2023

From time to time, I’ve talked about the classes I’m teaching and what I’m trying to accomplish in each. One of the costs/benefits of being a lecturer at the bottom of a (shrinking) pecking order in the History Department at SF State is that I am sort of a “utility infielder,” getting assigned to teach a wide variety of classes, regardless of my areas of interest/expertise. It does keep me on my toes!

Last term, I taught “Genocide and the Holocaust,” covering a class (listed in both Jewish Studies and History) for whom the regular professor was on leave. This term I am handling “International Relations through Cinema” for the IR department. While I get to learn new things, the fact that I’m “pinch-hitting” (sorry for the multiple baseball metaphors) means that I don’t have any expectation of getting to repeat the experience and refine my thinking/approach.

In addition, this fall I am also teaching a History Department course called “The History of Me.” It’s a freshman-oriented course, which we have offered for the past several years as part of a set of courses intended for students who need to meet general education requirements, so we can’t lean too heavily on the “history” part.

I’m fortunate to be able to build on (steal from) several of my colleagues who have designed and taught this class. The have emphasized using the skills of oral history so each student can compile a family history. There is a unit on SF State, focused on the strike in 1968 which made a lot of news in that confrontational (but now seemingly ancient) year; featuring Governor Reagan and University President Sam Hayakawa. This unit provides practice in using primary sources and connecting with the history of the place which is a significant part of our student’s lives. Other professors have stressed issues of identity, drawing on recent autobiographies of activists and diverse backgrounds.

Since I have a more philosophical bent, I was tempted to have them read Augustine and Rousseau as early exemplars of autobiographical writing. But I decided that these guys are pretty heavy lifting for university newbies. I am going to use a few small selections from Montaigne, as I discussed a few weeks ago (“How to Live, 071423), and excerpts from the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass, which are more accessible. We will also be reading a bunch of contemporary (20/21C) authors, several with a decidedly practical, “how-to” angle; overall a combination of examples and methodology.

Still, as I say in the syllabus: “This is not a hard class in terms of quantity of reading or writing. It is a hard class in terms of the mental work and emotional courage required to gain significant insights into yourself and your history.” Indeed, I’ve put a picture of a mirror on the top of the syllabus. I will push students to look hard at themselves and their context. I will ask them to consider and write about their lives so far (i.e. 18-20 years), their family context, their cultural milieu, their generational cohort (Gen Z), and how they fit into the historical events of their era.

One of the perspectives I want them to gain is to realize that they live in history; not in a vacuum or even an overly solipsistic universe. As Marx said: “[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” [Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)]. In other words, you can’t understand your self without understanding your history.

After the Thanksgiving break, I will ask them (perhaps unfairly) to look into their future. I will ask them to write their own eulogy as of 2083 (their current life expectancy). I have always remembered the scene in the movie version of Huckleberry Finn where the boys are presumed drowned on the river and a funeral is held. They sneak in the back and watch the impact of their (brief) lives on their family and community. It will be a sobering assignment; actually, doubly so. I plan to ask them to write, first, the eulogy for the life they fear that they might have. Then, as a second assignment, I will ask them to write the eulogy for the life to which they aspire…should be interesting.

In order to be grounded in my review of their work, I will be doing my own version of these assignments. (Sauce for the goose and all that.) This way, I will get something out of the class for myself, in addition to whatever I can give them.

I have to confess some trepidation about this course in general. It’s some distance from the kind of History I thought/hoped I would be able to do when I was in grad school. My orientation is macro, philosophical, and political; and this is micro and personal. The “great events” and “great men,” and great trends are all the periphery of these individual stories written by individuals whose lives are but a fraction of what they are likely to be. It’s a bit like looking through the wide end of the telescope towards the eyepiece. In that way, it will help me remember that the grand narratives are also (only?) the aggregates of so many personal tales and experiences. As with the students, for me this course is not a “heavy lift” in terms of the substance of history, but it could be engaging…and fun.

It should be—on several levels—an interesting experiment. Look for a report next year.

Petard

8/4/2023

What, actually, is a petard? And how is one to be “hoist” on it?

The famous phrase comes from Hamlet (III:4) in which the young prince devises a plan to turn Claudius’ (his nemesis/uncle) scheme against him. A petard was a name (from the French) for an early modern bomb or mine. The word “hoist” is adapted (as is much of Shakespeare’s diction), and means, in context, to be lifted up; in other words, that Claudius would be “lifted up” (blown up) by his own explosive plan.

It's a great phrase, along with “just desserts” (which, too, we have to translate a bit from its original context); meaning that someone gets what the justly deserve (nothing to do with cherry pie (alas) or the Sahara).

Either one will do for the situation now facing our late President (aka “He Who Shall Not Be Named”) in which there are four criminal proceedings pending or imminent for a variety of evil deeds. I’m sure librarians across the country are clearing shelf space on multiple bookcases for the ongoing flood of books on these events.

Barring some new surprise, he will run and, if the present state of the Republican field is any indication, he will get the nomination at the Convention a year from now. But our judicial process moves quite slowly, so even if convicted, he will appeal and is unlikely to be sent to Sing Sing or the federal pen (would he need to go to the Supermax (most secure) facility in Colorado so that he doesn’t get a shiv from some other inmate…?) before the election. And, in any case, we have the precedent of Eugene V. Debs, who was imprisoned by the Wilson Administration for sedition and still ran for President (as a Socialist) in 1920.

With all due caveats about an election more than a year away, and despite the generally favorable facts on the ground for the incumbent, the mood of the country remains sour and febrile. Joe’s no great shakes (except comparatively) and he might well lose.

However, before you start checking immigration visa sites for Canada or Costa Rica, we still have an ace in the hole. It’s obscure and speculative, to be sure; but that’s hardly a criticism in the current political environment (just ask the supporters of RFK Jr. or Doug Burgum).

After FDR was elected for the fourth time, we added the 22d Amendment to the Constitution to prevent further long-term office holders. It provides: “No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice….”

Now, according to most folks, "HWSNBN" was elected once, in 2016. But, he claims he was elected in 2020 as well (and even for most of his supporters, 1 + 1 = 2). So, if he stands by his claim that he won in 2020, then the 22d Amendment would seem to bar him from being elected a third time and taking office again. In the (inevitable) law suit that would arise upon his reelection, in order to avoid this problem, he would have to argue that, in fact, he lost in 2020. Hmmm….

Note that the plain language of the Amendment speaks of election, not getting sworn in or taking office, so the fact that he chose to skedaddle down to Mar-a-Lago doesn’t avoid the Amendment’s prohibition.

Now, just for discussion’s sake, let’s assume that he says that he knew he wasn’t elected and willingly left the White House on January 20, 2021.

The clinching twist comes from the recent federal conspiracy charges that he sought to defraud the United States (and all of us!) by falsely claiming to have won the election, a claim which he knew to be false. Part of his defense will likely be that he did, in fact, believe that he won.

So, which is it, does he think he won, in which case the 22d Amendment presents a high hurdle to moving back to DC, or does he acknowledge that he didn’t win, contradicting hundreds of statements over the past 2+ years and undermining his defense in the conspiracy to defraud case?

It's quite a petard. BOOM!

Speaking the Truth

7/28/2023

One of the most effective techniques adopted by the Biden administration in the course of dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been to speak the truth. Now, I’m not going off on some ridiculous idea that there should be no national security secrets or that diplomacy should be conducted in the open (One of Woodrow Wilson’s more naïve ideas in his famous “Fourteen Points” was “open covenants, openly arrived at.”). Rather, I’m speaking specifically of the recent practice of announcing what “they” already know and “we” already know, but is not publicly acknowledged. Calling out the Russians in advance for their planned invasion and subsequent moves, based on our intelligence capabilities, has boosted confidence in the US and exposed Putin’s falsehoods.

We’ve come some way since the Cold War in this regard, when legitimate national security concerns verged into paranoia. As a former resident of the DC area, I was always amused to drive by the highway exit for the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It wasn’t marked (as if the Russians didn’t know where it was!) so the only folks who didn’t know what was going on were us tax-paying citizens. Indeed, I suspect that amid all the recent hoop-de-do over mis- and over-classified information being negligently carried into Biden’s garage and the store rooms of Mar-a-Lago, little will be said about “overclassification of information and nothing will be said about the fact that a noticeable chunk of this stuff is already known to those “foreign adversaries” whose mitts we are apparently trying to keep of the merchandise.

Whatever else might well be said about Edward Snowden’s exposure of secret US spying programs and information (and there’s little doubt that he went overboard), it’s also important to keep (public) tabs on what the national security state is up to, since they have built-in tendencies to abuse their power.

On the domestic front, it is perhaps too much to ask of politicians (of whatever stripe) to speak the truth about their motivations and goals. Political candor would generate a lot of (self-referential) media frenzy and widespread popular disorientation. But, I can imagine political figures starting to utilize the nominally admirable words and phrases of their opponents and reseize semantic control.

What if politicians (again, of all stripes) were to start using the phrases and buzz words of their opponents since—most of the time—they actually agree with the literal statements made. What’s wrong with wanting to make America great again? Don’t we all agree that election integrity is vital to our democracy? Shouldn’t we all put “America first”? What if MAGA-ites started acknowledging that “Black Lives Matter” or talking about promoting and protecting the middle class?

By stripping politicians of their rhetorical monopolies, the harping on familiar themes would become less newsworthy and the phrases themselves would be more neutralized and a bit less like “dog-whistles.” Indeed, we might nudge our public debates towards a bit more specificity in what the buzz words/pabulum/sound-bites actually meant. What a delight it would be to confound the media’s insatiable hunger for “sound bites.” They would stumble a bit and have to come up with a new approach to their ordinary dichotomous/adversarial framing of every issue. A few might even try to articulate what was really at stake rather than the apparent intractability of “free speech on campus” versus “hate speech,” or “balanced budget” versus “social justice.”
In terms of domestic policy and governmental activities, the biggest fault lies with Congress (and comparable state and local bodies) who is supposed to provide oversight of the Executive Branch (and not just chase after Hunter Biden to score political points). Our budgets and spending are a mess, but in the pork-barrel/earmark-hungry halls of Congress, its more important to land a grant to build something nameable in the home district than ensuring that things built have adequate maintenance/amortization support to ensure services are actually delivered over an extended period. It’s too politically valuable to promise fat pensions to public employee unions who financial burden will land on those in office (and paying taxes) twenty-to-forty years hence (just ask the folks in Illinois and numerous other local/state jurisdictions who are facing mountainous deficits for decisions made thirty-fifty years ago). The Congressional Budget Office was supposed to do this, as well as the GAO (Government Accountability Office); but both are overseen by politicians whose interest in solid financial management is suspect to be sure. The non-profits who venture into this territory are tiny and weak-voiced. “Highly speculative” revenue projections and deferred maintenance expenses mean that government budgets at all levels are dubious. If these operating entities were in the private sector the capital markets would enforce some sense of reality and government regulation would require much more realistic accounting standards.

You know, I’m all for democracy and political control over important public activities, but the same principle that values an independent judiciary could well be extended to various aspects of government information and assumptions and given some insulation from the directly elected officials whose exposure to the hurly-burly of politics makes them dubious guardians of the public purse and other aspects of governmental integrity. A bit more public “fact-checking” and “reality-checking” would go a long way. A good “airing out” of the truths and facts that are known to insiders has helped in international affairs and could help restore some credibility in our domestic politics, too.

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Archives

September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020