In the empty spaces between the words...

Does "make America great again" signal a desire for a recovery of American self confidence and more products made in the United States, or a last clutch at a white supremacist social order? Either, or both, depending on who you ask. 

Does "defund the police" refer to a proposal to shift responsibility for social and mental health issues from the police, jails, and prisons, and redirect the associated funding to health and social service agencies, or does it mean disbanding all police agencies? It depends on who you ask; I have heard both interpretations of the slogan asserted with conviction.

Does the slogan "land back" mean Indigenous nations should have increased jurisdiction over resource development, land use, and environmental decision making within their traditional territories, or does it mean packing "white" people back to their place of origin?

 

Does the chant "from the river to the sea" call for a single, democratic, non-confessional state with room for all believers between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea? Does it mean a single Palestinian Muslim-majority state from which Jewish inhabitants, or most of them, have fled or forced to leave? Does it mean a single Jewish Israeli state from the Mediterranean, as a Likud slogan has advocated, or even beyond the Jordan, as some advocates of "Biblical Israel" claim?

Talk is cheap

Germany has come out strongly in support of Israel's position at the International Court of Justice and against the allegations of genocide brought by South Africa. The statement from Germany mentioned a sense of obligation felt by the current German government as a result of the mass murders of Jewish people committed by Nazi Germany. 

Tomoyuki Yamashita would like a word...

General Tomoyuki Yamashita

 Recently, Jonathan Cook published a substack essay, in which he questioned the evidence for widespread sexual violence associated with the Hamas breakout from Gaza on October 7. In his essay, he makes the following extraordinary statement:

The reason why Israel’s apologists for genocide need to inflate their claim is because, sadly, opportunistic rape would be entirely unremarkable in any violent, militarised situation – and indeed unremarkable in behaviours towards women in western societies in general.

First, it should go without saying: nothing justifies genocide. Those who believe the Israeli government, or apologists for Israel, have alleged sexual violence against Hamas to justify genocide or even ethnic cleansing in Gaza need to respond on principle: nothing justifies crimes against humanity. Nothing Hamas fighters did on October 7 justifies intentionally harming or killing the children of Gaza. 

Second: allegations of war crimes matter. They matter because of what Sr. Helen Prejean called the basic human solidarity against suffering and death. They matter because without investigation and accountability they will happen more often.They matter especially when people we might otherwise sympathize with stand accused, because if our solidarity depends on a political test it means nothing.

Finally: if you let loose armed fighters on a civilian population, you own what they do. The American government hanged the Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita on exactly that basis, and his fate has haunted more than one military commander since, with good reason. Our rules and standards for warfare exist to make resort to violence harder and less appealing, and to offer the maximum protection to uninvolved and unarmed persons caught up in a conflict.

We do not need to accept allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas fighters on October 7 without scrutiny, but neither should we dismiss them. Standards of human rights and human decency must apply to all of us, or they will come to apply to none of us.

Friends like these

 Recently, Barbara Kay published an opinion piece praising the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, calling the organization a "true friend of Israel". 

Israel does have friends, and quite possibly many supporters of the International Christian Embassy have the best possible intentions for Israel, Israeli citizens, and the wider Jewish community. However, by no means do all so-called "Christian" "Zionists" have the best interests of Israel in mind.

Trauma informed

The image carries a meaning in a way very few others do.A squat tower with an ill proportioned and ugly railway gate, it serves as an instantly recognizable shorthand and an indelible stain on the history of our civilization. In the history of past five hundred years, an age of endless empire, of ever more destructive wars and increasingly empowered hatreds, this one image in all its meanings occupies a unique place. This gate opens onto a killing machine capable of  efficiently carrying out a million murders, a large proportion of more than six million murders in the four years between the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the fall of Berlin. Together, the murder and enslavement beyond this gate created the index trauma of our time. We measure other crimes, other catastrophes, and other horrors against this one.

 

...by omission

Last entry I wrote about my frustration at having no outlet during a time of even greater global turmoil than usual: the first major war in Europe during my lifetime, renewed war in Southwest Asia  (aka the "Middle East"), and looming over everything, global climate change. In the current round of crises, and in particularly the outbreak of war in Southwest Asia, so much remains unsaid, so many problems seem to me to have gone without a mention, I just feel a need to speak, if only to say things I think obvious.

Here we go again...

Whether or not it makes sense to pick up this web log again after over two years with no posts, I'm going to.

I have stopped posting on twitter; the present owner has expressed a foul antisemitism and I don't want to do any unpaid work to make him any wealthier. That has left me with no outlet for most of a very frustrating 2023, and since everyone I read promises an even more frustrating and frightening ride for 2024, I expect I will need someplace to write about what I see and feel and think. 

So... Open Hand, Open Eye might just come alive again for anyone interested in reading it.

William of Occam

William of Occam

 The intellectual asceticism of William of Occam is not popular in American conservative circles. The American commentator Rod Dreher has extended his dislike for Occam's antinomianism into a distaste for the rule against multiplying causes known as Occam's Razor. Plenty of conservatives who do not often refer to William of Occam by name refuse, in practice, to apply his insight. 

Occam's Razor provides a central insight in all forms of intellectual endeavour, but nowhere does it matter more than in the formation of policy, because in politics the facts and the logical conclusions from these facts matter most when they come with bad, or at least unwelcome, news. Facts always matter, but when they happen to align with our desires, they have only a marginal influence on policy. After all, we seldom turn from doing something we want to do because the facts and logic affirm our choices. Living by the truth only really counts as a virtue when it includes a willingness to live by truths we find unpleasant.

Occam's Razor plays a vital role in this process, by cutting down the number of conclusions possible from any given set of facts. If I write a computer program and the test runs keep providing the wrong output, I can conclude I have made an error somewhere in my logic, or I can decide the operating system has an arcane defect my program has somehow stumbled into, a system error capable of evading detection for decades, and one invoked by only the tiniest set of circumstances. While such things happen, Occam's Razor tells me to start looking for errors in my own work. 

Virtue

In his essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War, George Orwell wrote the following passage: 

Civic Virtue  in Green-Wood Cemetery
by Rhododendrites

Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about ‘godless’ Russia and the ‘materialism’ of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a ‘change of heart’. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the 'change of heart', much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system. (emphasis added)

Orwell's concession of the "partial truth" of the talk of the need for a "change of heart" proceeds naturally from a comment he made in his essay about the work of Charles Dickens:

The central problem — how to prevent power from being abused — remains unsolved. Dickens... had the vision to see that. ‘If men would behave decently the world would be decent’ is not such a platitude as it sounds.

Orwell identifies a classic paradox  here: how do you make a good society out of human beings with impulses, and in some case a real disposition, to behave badly. The context of these quotes also hints at a solution. In art and literature in religion, in all areas where human beings choose to participate and where we accept our participation may change us, even if we do not necessarily choose to change, we consent to address our inner lives and thoughts, the source from which our behaviour springs. Thus, a writer such as Charles Dickens, or a religious teacher, or a poet, painter or playwright can exhort us to see ourselves and the world in a different way. Religious teachers and artists have the authority to ask us to change the way we think, and in that sense the person we are. Politics, on the other hand, exists to define standards of behaviour we will, if necessary, enforce. Enforcement, in the final analysis, means some form of violence. 

To begin with the principle: the body politic does not have the right to shape its members. Politics stops at my skin. To go on to the practical: as Orwell notes, focus on the individual serves to distract from the real business of politics: putting in place the rules, expectations, and structures we require in order to live together as the people we are, not the people some utopian vision hopes for.

Thinking About the Rule of Law

 When Rudolph Giuliani called for a "trial by combat" on January 6, his hearers probably did not envision the ancient Germanic judicial ritual. Indeed, to judge from the number of supporters of the "Q" conspiracy theory attending the rally where he spoke, his call for "trial by combat" probably evoked, in at least some of his hearers, an imagined reckoning which, had it taken place, would have resembled the baptismal scene in "The Godfather", with Donald Trump reciting the oath of office as his surrogates systematically slaughtered his enemies. This displays a profound detachment from the rule of law; paradoxically, it also illustrates the importance of the rule of law. The Godfather movies chronicle the profound tragedy of a man drawn into a corrupt and violent system despite his intentions, and the baptism scene in that movie vividly illustrates, in its hypocrisy, the corruption behind the violence. To imagine a similar scene as a triumphant vindication, as the believers in "Q" appear to have done, with Donald Trump beginning his second term with a mass hanging following a military coup and unlawful tribunals represents a catastrophic corruption of the American imagination. 

Peter Pan's Crocodile and Donald Trump

Many years ago I heard a theatre legend, one of many such stories, in which a young and cocky actor playing the crocodile in Peter Pan managed to infuriate the stagehands. In crocodile costume, of course, he walked bent over, following tape on the stage, and one night, after a particularly egregious offence against the stage crew, he followed the tape, tick tocking away... straight into the orchestra pit.

The usual message for this story for actors is: don't piss off the stage crew. It also has a message for politicians and pundits: don't blindly follow the tape. In politics, of course, the tape we follow has many names and takes many forms: peer pressure, compromise or the allure of power. More dangerously, the tape we follow takes the shape of a phenomenon visible throughout politics and society: a series of minor propositions, each of which we may not want to agree to, but which at the time seem less painful than a sense of letting the team down, or losing friends, access, and influence. C. S. Lewis described this process in his great essay The Inner Ring.

On celibacy

Toronto Van Attack Memorial
by Quentin9909

At two thirty-seven in the afternoon of April 23, 2018, Alek Minassian drove a rented van down a crowded sidewalk in Toronto, killing ten people and injuring sixteen others. According to social media posts retrieved after the event, he announced his crime in the following words: 

Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!

We still do not know the exact relationship between Alek Minassian and the so-called "incel" movement. In the initial social media statement and subsequent interviews, he has claimed membership in what he, at least, appears to have considered a movement. His own claims to have a connection with the internet users who call themselves "incels" played some role in his criminal defence, but if any members of the "incel" movement have claimed him, the media appears not to have reported it. 

Alek Minassian's lawyers claim his autism has distorted his thinking so severely he could not understand running people  over with a van was wrong. This claim appalls most advocates for people with autism; it paints people already burdened by misunderstanding and hostility as a lethal threat. In a sense, though, the legal case matters less than the question of why Alek Minassian found the online snarls from the fever swamps of the Internet compelling. Whatever the judge in Alek Minassian's murder trial decides in a month's time, he can expect years if not decades in secure custody, the ten people he killed by running them over with a van will still be dead, and the sixteen people he injured will still have to live with varying degrees of trauma. The malignant whispers from the corners of the Internet will persist as well, ready to delude and snare the unwary. This tragedy has taught us the dangers of those whispers. It makes sense to ask if we can answer them.

Living not by lies but ignoring the truth

Reverend Dwight Longenecker has reviewed Rod Dreher's new book "Live Not by Lies", and his review essay is interesting. In fact, I would go so far as to call it fascinating: it brings to my mind an essay by Connor Cruise O'Brien called "What can become of South Africa?", in which he speaks of the potential of ideological rhetoric to "boggle the mind" and completely drive out ordinary, humble respect for everyday reality. Reading Fr. Longenecker's essay, I can't tell whether he actually does not see the contradictions in his writing, or whether he simply wants to know if his readers have paid attention, because he wrote the following paragraph in his glowing review of Mr. Dreher's book:

 No matter what you believe about the legality of Joe Biden’s election, the fact remains that half the country believe Donald Trump and his Trump army were planning a coup. The other half of the country believe Joe Biden accomplished a coup through a rigged election. Again, no matter what the facts are–the result is that the Joe Biden presidency appears to be propped up by military might. Calling up 25,000 troops to Washington this week was not just for “security”. It was clearly a show of strength by the winning side. It was a display of military might to remind the other half of America who won and who is in charge. 

 In case anyone has forgotten, one of the books praised in this review essay bears the title "Live Not by Lies". That context makes the above quote from the article quite remarkable. 

A welcome departure...

Jeff Sessions testifying
by Office of Robert Aderholt

 I begin to write this in the last few minutes of January 20, 2021. I will probably publish it in the first hours of January 21, which, among some other distinctions, marks the first full day of the Biden-Harris administration. TV news has shown President Biden swearing in new officials of his administration, with an admonition similar to Churchill's famous "blood toil tears and sweat", and a single, uncompromising requirement: he required all his appointees to always show respect for their colleagues and the American people. 

At the same time, the officials, strategists, functionaries and hangers on of the previous administration have departed Washington, one or two clutching freshly printed presidential pardons, others just leaving. As Americans celebrate a hard-won transfer of power, in the last minutes of this day I want to celebrate the departure of a man who left Washington over two years ago, and now lives in well earned obscurity, his attempt at a political comeback denied by Donald Trump for precisely the wrong reasons. That man, Jefferson Sessions, implemented the most egregiously cruel of all the policies of the Trump administration, the policy of family separation at the American border with Mexico. 

January 20

As I write this, Joe Biden prepares to take the oath of office as president of the United States. He now has an opportunity: to move American politics in a new and humane direction. He also has a series of challenges: a republic fractured, with at least some bitter end fans of the previous chief executive who will not accept him as their president, and who have made no secret of their propensity for violence. He has to lead his country through the worst months of a pandemic, made far worse by the blundering, posturing, and dishonesty of his predecessor. He has to deal with a historic deficit and a government burdened by over seven trillion dollars more debt than it carried when he left at the end of his terms as vice president. He, his government, and the American people also face the task of weaning the American economy off the twin narcotics of easy money and fossil fuels.

I wish him well. 

Laying down a marker

Trump Rally
by Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA

Imagine a miracle. Someone with the power to do so takes every Trump supporter through the voting systems of American democracy. They examine every contested state, every urban precinct, every ballot, voting machine, line of code, signature and mailer envelope. All the millions who came to his rallies, sent in their money, or voted for the man and his enablers, get to see in detail how the voters recorded their choices, how the poll workers counted them, and how the tallies and the counts and recounts worked. 

Let us assume this examination would reveal exactly what the  Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council has said of the election as a whole. Let us assume it confirms what Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has told the world about the Georgia election and its associated recounts, and what the Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona government officials had to say. Assume our imaginary audit shows each Trump supporter why American state and federal courts have rejected thirty-eight lawsuits by the Trump campaign and layers aligned with him.

How many of the Trump supporters who have refused to accept the election results would change their minds? How many of the protestors chanting "stop the steal" would, if presented with irrefutable proof no corruption or tampering sufficient to tip the election results had taken place, change their minds, still their protests, and accept Joe Biden as their president?

A trophy of ashes

At a pivotal moment in the film "The Bounty",  when the mutineers under Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) are about to put Captain William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) and the crew loyal to him into the ship's boat and set them adrift in the Pacific, Bligh asks his former second in command if he thinks he can command the mutineers, "this rabble". Bligh reminds Christian he failed, and Bligh had the law behind him. 

Dr. Biden, I presume...

Ralph Alswang, White House 
photographer

Now eighty million American voters, well over fifty United States judges, and the electoral college have awarded the title of president elect to Joe Biden, mainstream conservative publications have a problem. Refusing to call Mr. Biden the president elect looks increasingly desperate, increasingly unrealistic, and with increasing clarity, it reveals a lack of respect for American democracy. At the same time, it seems evident a great many people with influence among conservatives don't believe in conceding with any grace. Perhaps they have internalized Winston Churchill's quote:

Nations which go down fighting rise again, and those that surrender tamely are finished.

 Most of us can discern the difference between the Wehrmacht and the Democratic Party, but American politics has grown more extreme lately. Some conservative opinion journalists in search of a hill to defend have found one: they may have to call Mr. Biden the president, but to call the incoming first lady by her academic title of Dr. Biden: never.

It started with an essay in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal decrying Dr. Biden's use of her title, then spread to National Review, where one article gives the laxity of American libel standards a serious workout by suggesting, with no apparent basis save the writer's own opinion, the University of Delaware had chucked its standards to award a degree to the spouse of a senator.

Voting, voters, and entropy

Tucker Carlson
by Gage Skidmore

A popular metaphor for entropy, attributed to Schopenhauer, goes like this: if you take a barrel of sewage and pour in a glass of fine French wine, you have a barrel of sewage. If you take a barrel of fine French wine and (shudder) pour in a glass of sewage, you have a barrel of sewage.

In one of his nightly opinion pieces, Tucker Carlson sarcastically lauded the triumph of voters who cast ballots from the grave. He later had to retract one of his examples after learning one of the ballots he cited had come from a very much alive widow, who had identified herself as Mrs. (husband's name). Carlson's sarcasm had an interesting effect: it produced an emotional reaction sufficient to briefly cloud my analysis, and I had to take a (virtual) step back to analyze what he had to say. Once I broke his arguments down and considered them, I found a couple of interesting layers, ones hinting at American Conservative strategy going forward. 

The Problem of Traditionalism

 The American Conservative published a somewhat predictable jeremiad against modern thinking, lamenting the inability of the modern, rationalist outlook to comprehend the phenomenon of Donald Trump's popularity. The author wrote:

 As the AP European History concept outline in my textbook uncritically puts it: “They [Enlightenment thinkers] sought to bring the light of reason to bear on the darkness of prejudice, outmoded traditions, and ignorance, challenging traditional values.”

He later writes: 

One can almost imagine the line I just quoted grafted onto the present: They [Democrats] sought to bring the light of reason to bear on the darkness of prejudice, outmoded traditions, and ignorance, challenging the traditional values of Trump voters in flyover country.

Well, everyone has the right to imagine, or if you insist, "almost imagine" anything, although I cannot quite see why anyone would go to the trouble of "almost imagining" anything. But equating the traditional values of mediaeval and pre-enlightenment Europe with whatever motivated Americans to pull the lever for Donald Trump ignores almost all of the specific principles at issue. The Declaration of Independence, and even more the Constitution of the United States are, after all, manifestos of 18th century enlightenment principles. The analogy falls apart the moment you apply hard specifics: voting, the idea of the people collectively selecting the head of their state, specifically repudiates the idea of the divine right of monarchs, a cardinal value of European politics from the fall of the Roman Republic up until the Long Parliament and the Glorious Revolution. The voters who went to pull the lever for Donald Trump acted out a basic ritual of the enlightenment.

The article did mention a peasant revolt against the extreme rationalism of the French Revolution, but instead of addressing the critical divide between principled conservatism and traditionalism, the author descended into a lament for the students these days.

And thus we have another article exemplifying traditionalism: a bare-knuckle defence of the outrageous innovations of a decade or a century (or two) ago.