In early September, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court, to replace the elderly Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was retiring. Justice Kennedy positioned himself as an independent, deciding on each case by his own legal compass, even siding occasionally with the liberal justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, Bader-Ginsburg, and Breyer. [...]
Monty Python, the English comedy team provided viewers during the 1960s and '70s with some of the best TV skits money could buy. [...]
The human tidal wave that reached Europe from Africa and the Middle East in 2015 matches the human tidal wave that has reached the US from Mexico and other Central American countries in recent years. They present Europe and America with a moral quandary and monumental logistical headaches that trump political or ideological differences. [...]
The Iranian exile Navid Kermani published an editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on April 4, 2015, titled "Why Europe Needs the Migrants". (In German, "Warum Europa uns jetzt braucht.") Kermani should title the article, "Why Europe Needs More Immigrants," because Europe has already absorbed millions of them—many, if not most, from Muslim nations. [...]
On 19 March, 1970, West German Prime Minister Willy Brandt visited Erfurt in Soviet East Germany. Like any politician anywhere, he was surrounded by photographers and other politicians, both Western and Eastern, both local and national. [...]
During my first visit to Erfurt in the former East Germany, I struck up a conversation with a waitress in a restaurant. When she learned I was an American, she said, "I don't know the English language. The only sentence I know is 'Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down zeess vall!' [...]
In the Autumn of 1989, East Germans heard rumors that they could get visas to West Germany through the German embassy in Prague--at that time called "Czechoslovakia," the Soviet-era name for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Hundreds of East Germans crowded the grounds of the German Embassy in Prague, then thousands. They wanted so desperately to get out of East Germany, they waited in the cold and the mud for the West German government to make up its mind to take them. This video is one of the most moving things I've ever seen. [...]
On Christmas Night, 1989, Leonard Bernstein led the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, celebrating the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a restoration of unity to the Divided Germanies, as well as a sense of reconciliation between former enemies. [...]
I was amazed to see this video. In late 1989 and early 1990, East Germany was still a separate nation. Even the government of West Germany urged the East Germans to remain in the East. The Easterners however replied that, if West Germany did not bring the Deutsch Mark currency to them, they would go to the West and get Deutsch Marks themselves. This impressed me deeply. [...]
I notice that fewer cars wear bumper-stickers now, and I conclude that no one wants to offend other drivers and cause a road-rage incident. Most road-rage incidents, I am guessing, actually start with passive-aggressive behavior designed to taunt rather than confront. That road-rage has increased in recent years suggests greater sensitivity and resentment concerning racial issues, gender issues, and political issues. Since all those issues have seen greater polarization in recent years, one has to ask what risks they represent for our nation, going forward. [...]
This issue is actually a no-brainer. The philosophy of the Left and the Right no longer have enough inclusivity and congruity to give America a secure future. We are coasting on the achievements of earlier generations. Everyone has to admit we can't go on much longer like this. We need a plan for the future that resolves the disunity, replacing it with renewed unity in separate nations. Take these thoughts into the silence and isolation of your bathroom and ask yourself if you want the nation to continue its present course. [...]
Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar and fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, presents a view of America that has a lot in common with Chris Hedges, even though Hedges stands to the left of even the Democratic Party. Both writers tell anyone who will listen that America is taking its last hurrah and will collapse soon. [...]
Maybe I should explain why I use "imaginary" as a noun. Actually, I will let social scientists from the University of Nottingham in the U.K. do the explaining: The word "imaginary" used as a noun is a jargon term that has been gaining currency in a number of social sciences. . . . "The imaginary or social imaginary is the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols, common to a particular social group and the corresponding society through which people imagine their social whole." [...]
I graduated from college in 1976, and if my reader graduated a few years on either side of 1976, I would like to ask them a basic question: WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN YOUR LIFETIME? [...]
At Christmas-time, 1989, corporate life in Berlin was still in a euphoric state, even if the logistical problems of Reunification had already reared their ugly heads. Reconstruction engineers from the West had taken a look at conditions in the East and determined that much of the infrastructure was hardly better than scrap. West Germany would have to completely rehabilitate the East. It cost the Westerners a fortune, perhaps three trillion dollars. [...]
Starting on 26 August, I had my first visit to Germany in two years. I had kept my fingers crossed until I actually boarded the plane. It took off from the airport, and I was on my way. With America's Covid cases skyrocketing again, I had wondered whether I would get to go, at all. I also had doubts about the wisdom of such a trip, but it went off without a hitch. I did everything the airline and the German government wanted me to do, as regards the Covid epidemic—vaccinations, a molecular Covid test, and enough masks to last me a year. [...]
Few things motivate me like German newspapers. They are factually informative, cleverly written, and reflect an educated perspective. Each morning in Germany, I wake up as early as I can, in order to get a copy of choice newspapers before they sell out. I cannot think of a better way to spend the morning than to drink tea and read Germany newspapers. Unlike the US, where newspapers dumb down their copy in order to not intimidate or offend low-brow readers, German newspapers rejoice in haute culture and impress me with their knowledge of events and trends in the US, as well as in Germany. They also have a reflective spirit about German history. Over the years, I have collected articles to add to my periodical library—just a crate full of manila envelopes with press clippings. Nothing fancy about it. [...]
During the Summer of 2015, I spent an evening eating supper in my hotel room in Erfurt, Germany, so that I could watch the Tour de France, and see the Briton Chris Froome successfully defend his Tour de France title. He makes a curious figure on a bike, pale, skinny arms and legs, and his head moving like a bobble-headed doll. Froome has said that, during a race, he does not notice it. [...]
Dr. Antje Bauer, director of the Stadtarchiv (City Archive) in Erfurt, Germany, looks over the pile of projects that she oversees. The challenge of sorting them out does not seem to faze her. As director, she wears many hats—event-organizer, publicist, publisher, cultural custodian, historian, librarian, lecturer, and of course as a writer. My reader can detect the variety of challenges in the desk-clutter. In the next photo, she delivers a lecture in a reception room at the Erfurter Rathaus—in English, the City Hall. [...]
In May, 2019, the Bauers invited me to a formal dinner at the old Schauspielhaus, Erfurt's dramatic theatre. Since the construction of a new theatre, the Schauspielhaus has fallen into disuse and faces certain demolition. It has turned into a hangout for vandals, and even served police-SWAT teams as a training-ground, causing some damage to this wonderful old art-nouveau building. [...]
After I finished college in 1975, I returned to my home in Columbus, Georgia, and started working for my father at his livestock feedmill. The first six months or so was pure hell for a guy who had studied literature in college, knew next to nothing about running a business, and I was spindly and out of shape from doing schoolwork continuously for four years. I walked a fairly steep learning curve for so long, I really don't remember when I finally settled into a routine. [...]
Americans don't have an informed sense about dictators—enough to save us from one, should he appear. They expect him to announce his intentions well in advance, which no dictator in his right mind would ever do. They expect him to introduce himself to the public with a mouthful of hate-speech, which is also unlikely. They also expect him to seize power in the tradition of a good-old street-fighting revolutionary; but why do that if he can stand for an election and win it the good-old democratic way? Winning the election gives him constitutional control of law-enforcement and the military services. It also avoids a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. [...]
The American novelist John Grisham has said that he reads John le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl every year or two to revitalize his own writing. I am sure most writers have a favorite older writer they turn to for inspiration. That a successful writer like Grisham reads le Carré should serve notice to the reading public. [...]
On 19 July, I posted an article about Becket, a play by French dramatist Jean Anouilh. It concerns a British King Henry II and his boon-companion Thomas of Becket, who later becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry was a typical despotic monarch with a yen for teenaged girls. Becket was his bosom buddy and went along with the monarch's shenanigans; but once Henry nominated him for Archbishop, he changed his tune and warned Henry that he no longer answered to the King but only to the Church. Becket became Henry's arch-enemy! [...]
In my post from 19 July, I wrote about a despot, the British King Henry II, and his predilection for teenaged girls, who called him "my Lord" even as he made love to them. Thomas of Becket tried to keep church law beyond the reach of the despotic king and to shield church personnel from secular authority. In so doing, he inadvertently helped modern church personnel evade civil law when they revealed their predilection for young boys. Hundreds of priests and lay-personnel went to prison for their crimes against juveniles. [...]
Jean Anouilh published his four-act play Becket In 1960. Just four short years later, his play became an epic feature-film. The director and producers of the movie hardly waited for the ink to dry! Wikipedia portrays Anouilh's play and the 1964 movie as a "deliberately ficticious" work—which I suppose is a partisan attempt to water down the serious issues of the play and to salvage the reputation of monarchs—including presidents and their spouses. Becket plays up on the drama between two protagonists, the English King Henry II and Thomas of Becket, Chancellor and later Archbishop of Canterbury. The lively dialogue and the conflict between the main characters assures the play a measure of credibility. [...]
When the movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest appeared on the TV for the first time, some years after it had finished up in movie theatres, I watched it for perhaps ten minutes, then switched it off. I had already read the novel and knew the whole story by heart. I could picture scenes from it in my mind—like live-action dramas. I could hear, so to speak, the characters' voices. [...]
Years ago, when I was despondent over a failing relationship, I sought help from a licensed therapist. During our session, I couldn't help but notice that she had left a book on her desk, positioned just at the edge of my field of vision. It bore the title: I HATE YOU!—don't leave me. Understanding the Borderline Personality, by two doctor-types: Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus. Curiously, I lacked the nerve, at that time, to ask the therapist about it. Did she want me to see it? [...]
Do you know about the Paris Commune? B. F. Skinner? The Children's Crusade, or Nietzsche? If you hang out with intellectuals in high school, they may expect you to know. You should expect these tests to go on from people who want to know if you are really "one of us." I hung out with intellectuals and had to anticipate the interests of the other guys and inform myself, so that I would know a thing or two about them when they asked me. [...]
Who still believes that the United States is truly "united?" Who really believes that Democrats and Republicans can work together? Who still believes that the Democratic vision of America lines up with the Republican vision? What Republican believes the Democrat vision lines up with that plan of the Founding Fathers? The division in the American electorate has created a real problem going forward that affects the functions of the society, the confidence of the public, and the security of the nation. [...]
The Belgian composer Orlando di Lasso was born Roland de Lassus in Mons, Belgium, in 1532. Like so many gifted Belgian musicians during that time, Lassus could write his own career-ticket. The Habsburg administrators in the Low Countries decided, if young Lassus had musical gifts, he must go to Italy to learn the trade. So Lassus spent much of his youth in Mantua studying music in the court of Ferdinand of Gonzaga, who had himself spent much of his youth in Spain serving as a page to the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Interaction between royals in different empires did happen, but mostly in the realm of art. As a young man, Lassus apprenticed at several churches in Italy. [...]
Western societies have a significant structural Achilles Heel—all of them: the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and so on—inasmuch as we value individual initiative, and nurture points-of-view based on the individual conscience. Occasionally, individuals use their outlier initiative to plot against the nation, to overturn it, and restructure it to suit their own views, Through charm and deception, they persuade others to follow them. A freedom-loving society permits this downside to individualism in order to profit from the upside, namely the ability of outliers to rise to the top of their professions and to improve the functions of the society with their creativity and innovative skill. [...]
I watched The Battle of Britain on YouTube recently. It stars most of Britain's best actors from the 1960s, among them Laurence Olivier, Robert Shaw, and Michael Caine. YouTube offers other free movies alongside its cheapie drama and sci-fi flicks: Terminator, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Mask, with Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz, and Fargo, with Frances McDormand and William H. Macy. [...]
Since the biggest and most destructive dictatorships of the 20th century used the word "Socialist" in their names, we need to understand what socialism really means. The Soviet nation identified itself formally as the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin caused the deaths of millions of Russians—ruthlessly crushing any dissent to his pathological leadership. After Stalin's death in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev continued Soviet repression when he crushed the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 and errected the Berlin Wall in 1961. [...]
Consider the psychological difference between the action-oriented philosophy of someone like Karl Marx, and the typical, bourgeois, static sense-of-self. Like Popeye the Sailor Man, working-people say, "I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam." They can't tell you much more about themselves than that. That lack of a personal philosophy leaves a void in their character and makes them more vulnerable to the huckstering of an angry but focused man like Marx. [...]
My immigrant ancestor from Germany, John Siegling, came to Charleston, South Carolina, in about 1818. Not more than a year after his arrival, he opened a music shop for instruments and supplies. How he—a foreigner—could do that so quickly amazes me. Where did he get his start-up capital? Why not start his career under the tutelage of an established shop-owner first, or find a partner to shoulder the responsibilities? He obviously had an outlier grade of self-confidence to take on all that, and make the business succeed as well as it did. He just had that entrepreneurial energy that immigrants bring to America. [...]
Most of the people who supported Bernie Sanders's election-bid have little sense about the creation and administration of wealth. They have had wealth for so long, they take its existence for granted. But somebody has to create it, an event like a Big Bang. Someone has to cause wealth to happen in a society and maintain its rumbling bigness through the lean times. Most Americans forget that an intentional act caused the Big Bang, or do they doubt it ever happened? As far as they're concerned, maybe greed and racism created the disparity between our nation and other nations. [...]
George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 disturbed me more than any book I encountered during high school. The presentation of a futuristic, dictatorial society was a lot to swallow for an upper-middle class white kid who grew up in the South. Long torture sessions define the second-half of the novel with an immediacy that still gives me the heeby-jeebies when I read it. [...]
Transparency vs. the "In" Doctrines
At a party, years ago, a friendly three-year-old asked me if I had a penis or a vagina. Her mother put her head in her hands, weak from embarrassment. Kids can say the darndest things, with no grasp of adult norms, pretense, or a political agenda—just wide-open wonder. At just three years of age, she had figured out that there are two sorts of people, male and female. [...]
I went with a group of people to see the movie A Room With a View when it came out in 1985, and we were nearly the only ones in the theatre. We went during the afternoon, which is typically a slow time, but I doubt a British movie set in 1905 would draw much of an audience at any showing, even with discounted prices. The movie-title and story-plot come from a novel by the British writer E. M. Forster. [...]
I came across the name of Susan Pinker from an interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel, that ran during the last week of September in 2008. Pinker had gained some notoriety in academic circles for her book Sexual Paradox that she published that year. Der Spiegel published its interview with her under the title "Männer sind extremer" (Men are more extreme). A curious thesis: people are extreme; men just more so. [...]
I took a public-speaking class in high school. For one assignment, each student had to declaim from a published speech. I don't remember how I made my selection. I did a speech from the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. After the assassination of Caesar, Marc Antony eulogizes him before the Roman people, in Act III, Scene ii: "Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. . . ." [...]
The RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel sent me a form and return-envelope to use to pay my Party dues and renew my membership. The form contains pep-rally language used by any democratic nation on the face of the earth to coax defeated believers into action. The "REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE" banner appears at the top of the page, and the image of an eagle beside it, with a beak big enough to bend steel. I hope it works to coax other believers. [...]
In 1984, I went with a group to see Passage to India, starring Alec Guinness, James Fox, and Peggy Ashcroft—based on the novel by the British novelist E. M. Forster, who published it in 1924. Guinness and Ashcroft were already long past their prime when they did Passage to India. Guinness first appeared in the 1946 movie, Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Ashcroft had starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps from 1935. Even James Fox appears too old to play Cyril Fielding. What they lack in youth, at any rate, they more than make up for it, with a relaxed professionalism. [...]
In 1927, an American aviator Charles Lindbergh made history when he flew across the Atlantic Ocean in the “Spirit of St. Louis.” He lifted off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island on May 20 and landed again 33.5 hours later at Le Bourget Aerodrome outside Paris. The flight covered an astounding 3600 miles. [...]
During my college years in the early 1970s, everybody was raving about a new film, directed by someone with a funny foreign name, Peter Bogdanovich, called The Last Picture Show, that starred Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd, two unknown actors at that time. The critics hailed it for its realism, understated drama, and its portrayal of people living in a sad little town, Anarene, in semi-arid northern Texas—a town and people with no future. Northern Texas gets a decent amount of rainfall, but director Bogdanovich makes it look as windy and dusty as a desert. He filmed it in black and white, accenting the region's sterility and the colorless life. [...]
"Alt-right" is a sort of awkward hybrid, as words go. The first part, "alt," abbreviated from "alternate" has a modern technological application in aviation and in computers. "Alt" refers to alternate-flight-mode on some lines of aircraft—that offer two modes of flying: "Normal Law" and "Alternate Law." If the normal coputerized commands fail, the pilot has to switch to "Alt-Law" and manually fly the plane. [...]
I bought the Secret Agent aka Danger Man "Mega-set" from Amazon ten years ago. I did it after reading a line in Stephen King's novel The Shining. The novel concerns a six-year-old boy named Danny Torrance, whose Mom and Dad have taken a job as caretakers of a remote old hotel in the Rocky Mountains. Everyone should know the story by now. The hotel is haunted. Danny plays outside near the hedges, trimmed in the shape of animals, called a "topiary." In the corner of his eye, he can see the hedge animals silently moving toward him. They clutch at him, and it scares the wee-wee out of him, literally. [...]
I do not remember when the word "elite" entered the lexicon of political terms. Journalists and pundits use it often to describe a class of Americans who "run things," who have special privileges and influence, sometimes far apart from public opinion—making things happen behind the scenes. [...]
For the last several days, impressions of William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies have circulated in my head. The novel tells the story of a group of schoolboys during World War II who escape the Japanese invasion by evacuating their school in a plane, but the plane crash-lands on a deserted island in the Pacific. [...]
I watched the Ten Commendments movie last night, starring the late Charlton Heston and directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1956. In one scene, the Lord God gives Moses the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. It ranks as one of the most moving and dramatic scenes in the history of cinema. The Lord God leads Moses up Mount Sinai and carves the Commandments from the stone wall with fiery fingers. DeMille had done his research and knew the fiery fingers would start from the right and write left. Biblical scholars will recognize the Hebrew text from the Gezer Calendar, circa 850 BC, the earliest known example of written Hebrew. The fiery fingers and the dramatic musical score make it a memorable scene, thrilling and triumphant. Then Moses descends from the high place. The few Israelites who have accompanied him up the mountain see him with the two tablets and bow almost involuntarily. The music becomes intimately quiet in tone, with an equally moving effect. [...]
America's warring sides have been at each others' throats for so long, they have become wedded to the conflict, like supporting an athletic rivalry. Instead, they should concern themselves with the political rivalry, the growing division, and its threat to our national preparedness. When the warring sides tire of the rivalry, they may want to acknowledge the threat that it poses and settle the conflict with a division of the country. [...]
Like a lot of other people, I discovered John leCarré in 1980 when PBS broadcast the British mini-series of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, featuring the late Alec Guinness in the lead role as spy-hunter George Smiley. As Guinness's biography relates the story, leCarré himself suggested Guinness and took upon himself the task of persuading him to take the role. The producers at BBC could not have chosen a better time to undertake the project. A labor dispute had closed London's famous West-End theatres, and actors were looking for work; so BBC and the film's director John Irvin signed up the cast, and filming started. [...]
The ability of people in a nation to set high goals for themselves and to reach them depends a lot on leadership. The leadership class has to institute a framework for progress. It has to study a problem, supply a solution, and direct it. People rely on their leaders, both for forward-moving measures, and a justification of those measures. The leaders do not rely soly on their own judgment. They also set up documentary parameters, that political people usually call a "constitution," that will continue to direct the nation after they are gone. The constitution teaches the people how to act like citizens by giving them a value system and a mindset that guides their actions. [...]
Lennon apparently wrote “Baby, You're a Rich Man” about himself. All of his mature music, say the musicologists, is “self-referential.” Lennon asks himself wryly, “How does it feel to be/One of the beautiful people?” By the time he wrote this song, he and his band-mates had topped the charts for several years with their music, had sold millions of records, both in the UK and the US, and become extremely wealthy. [...]
There can be no doubt that the Covid-19 epidemic has been the shock of our lives! With pharmaceuticals, sanitation, and nutrition on our side, how could this happen? We humans thought we were close to invicible. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the deaths of 3,500 Americans also ranks very high in shock value; but the Covid virus killed an average of a thousand Americans every day from mid-March until the middle of the summer. [...]
I inherited an interest in the Alger Hiss Case from my father. He had come home from Hawaii at the end of World War II, married my mother, and started a family. He did well in business, and life was good. Then in 1948, a complete unknown named Whittaker Chambers came out of the woodwork to accuse a former State Department official, Alger Hiss, of secret Communist Party membership. The Communist Party was a legal political organization and fielded candidates for the presidency of the United States, but government officials could not belong to it. [...]
Governing a country is like steering a ship. It requires a constitution and a man who knows how to use it to ply the political and diplomatic waters and promote the interests of the nation.. [...]
This “Suppose they gave a war” quote has served as the title of a movie and an anti-war song from the 1960s. It actually began life in a story told by the poet Carl Sandburg, and I am skeptical of its authenticity. Sandburg said he was talking to a little girl about the Civil War, and that she asked him, “Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?” [...]
Alfredo Zotti, an Australian psychiatrist, published Got Bi-Polar? in January, 2018. Nowadays, everyone knows a little about the symptoms of bi-polar disorder: the sadness and euphoria, the anxiety and exaggerated optimism. [...]
In general, I like writers who create a social fabric with their characters. In a forward-moving society, people rub shoulders, and the ongoing relationships and spontaneous interactions tell a reader a lot about who they are. In a close setting, they confide to significant-others but no one else. A writer may direct the tale with an omniscient point of view, but he lets it unfold through the characters. [...]
Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I spent a lot of vacation time in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Even as a little guy, I could spend an entire afternoon paddling around a lake. White pines and tulip poplars towered over the bank. Lake Summit was such a huge place, it never felt crowded. I was always discovering new places. [...]
I finished Divide the Country! late in 2019, and it became available for purchase in mid-February of this year. I felt some trepidation about publishing it. I thought a division of the United States was too hairy a plan to make it an acceptable objective; and even now I can think of several reasons why not to do it. I do not even have to think very hard. [...]
