#304 / Dreams; Nightmares; A Critique Of Hope

 

I believe that Hannah Arendt (pictured above) would likely agree with me that the "Holocaust," the systematic murder of some six million Jews between 1941 and 1945, is a demonstration, a "proof," if you will, that "anything is possible" in that "Human World" that we ourselves create.

If "anything is possible" (as I am fond of claiming in my postings to this blog) then it follows that we can "make our dreams come true." That was my father's claim, made to me frequently as I was growing up. Eventually, I came to agree that my father was right. 

My whole understanding of "reality," associated with my father's continuing assertion that "anything is possible," is that we live, most immediately, in a "Human World," or a "Political World," as I call it, in which we decide, through our individual and collective choices and actions, what will happen, what we will create. 

Ultimately, of course, we don't live in that "Human World," but in the "World of Nature," or the "World That God Created." We did not create the "World of Nature," and it is to that "World" that we are ultimately accountable. That is exactly what a popular saying is trying to get at, when it tells us that "Nature Bats Last." We must accommodate our actions in the "Human World" to conform to the requirements of the "Natural World." Any long continuing failure to do so will lead to our extinction.

If this statement brings global warming to mind, or makes you think about the destruction of the natural environment, practically everywhere, you can give yourself an "A" on this test of your understanding of my claims about the nature of "reality." 

Well, so much for a quick recapitulation of my "Two Worlds Hypothesis." I continue to argue that we must understand the important difference between these "Two Worlds," both of which we inhabit, simultaneously. One important difference between them is the fact that there are two different kinds of "Law" within the two different worlds - and this is true despite the use of the same word for these two very distinct kinds of "law." The laws that govern the world that we create, the "Human World," are derived from the "equation," as I call it, that follows: 

Politics > Law > Government

Our political choices (and "politics" is, above all, based in the realm of "freedom") generate those "Laws" that direct and govern our activity in the "Human World." Such human "Laws" are nothing other than the statements we provide for ourselves, outlining what we want to do and what we think we should do; they are a set of instructions, which we can either follow, or not. The "Laws" that apply in the "World of Nature," on the other hand, are like the "Law of Gravity." These "Laws of Nature" tell us what must and will happen, in any particular circumstance. Those "Laws of Nature," in other words, define a world of "necessity," not a realm of "freedom." 

Let's return to my father's claim that "anything is possible," and get back to Hannah Arendt, too. This claim that "anything is possible" is made about the "Human World," not the "World of Nature." But just think about the implications!

Because "anything" does, literally, mean any thing, we must always be aware that we can make "nightmares" come alive, too, not just our "dreams." 

I think it is probably true that it was only the Holocaust that made this fact so clear that we could no longer avoid facing it. The scale of the evil evident in the Holocaust (followed, rather promptly, by the United States' use of the new "atomic bomb" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) provides us with a clear vision of what it really means to say that we can do "anything." We can do horrible things, as well as wonderful things. "Dreams" can be made to come true. "Nightmares," likewise. 

What has launched me off on this recapitulation of what I think is an important way to understand our human situation is an article published rather recently by Aeon. The article is titled, "When hope is a hindrance," and I don't think it's blockaded by any protective paywall. Thus, let me suggest that you click the link and read it. 

The point of the article, which references Hannah Arendt, and her thoughts about "Hope," is that "Hope" is an activity that, implicitly, has us thinking about what "might be," thus comforting ourselves that maybe something "good," not "bad" will come out of the confused terrain of whatever current reality we confront. 

In fact, the author of the article, Samantha Rose Hill, suggests that Arendt prized "action," not "hope." 

Why is "action" so important?

Action is important because we create the "Human World" in which we most immediately reside. We do so both individuallty and collectively, but above all "collectively," and we do so as we take "action" that changes whatever exists now into something else - something that we bring into being by the action we take. 

Let's not sit around "hoping" that things will "work out." We can do "anything," but it is what we do, the actions we take, not the thoughts we have, that determines the shape of the world in which we will live. 

And what is that activity that, "collectively," can reformulate reality in the "Human World?"

Let's call it "Politics," shall we? You know, like .... We Live In A Political World!

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Image Credit:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-right-to-have-rights-and-the-plight-of-the-stateless

#303 / Houston, Texas Meets Ugo Betti

 

Because our major newspapers tend to protect their websites from perusal by non-subscribers, I am often compelled to tell anyone who is reading one of my blog posts that there is a potential "Paywall Permitting" problem with respect to one or more of the links I might have included in one of my comments. Today, for instance, I would like to suggest that you click the following link to read an article from the Tuesday, July 11, 2023, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article I have linked is titled, "Houston's 'Be Someone' Mystery." That's the hard-copy version of the headline. 

Depending on what The Wall Street Journal lets you see, clicking on that link might let you experience a changing collage of various views of the railroad bridge shown above - even if The Journal doesn't let you read the actual story, which describes the mystery of who has painted (and keeps repainting) that "Be Someone" advisory on the railroad bridge which you can see above. It's a pretty interesting story! Here are the first few lines: 

 

HOUSTON—

Tens of thousands of drivers pass under a Union Pacific rail bridge tagged with a big, blocky exhortation as they travel southbound on Interstate 45 every day.

“Be Someone,” it says.

It first appeared more than a decade ago. It’s been painted over with other graffiti multiple times, but “Be Someone” has always reappeared. The message resonates in Houston, a freewheeling city with no zoning and an entrepreneurial spirit that attracts people from all over the world looking to make their bones. It has inspired photos, tattoos and even a failed Change.org petition to protect it as a city landmark.

Keaton Jones, a 27-year-old rapper who goes by the name Lowkea, drives under the bridge on his way to work at his dad’s industrial-supply company in downtown Houston.

“It says so little, just two words,” Jones said. “It’s very powerful. It tells you to be someone, not just anybody.”

And just who is that someone who first painted the slogan? That’s an enduring mystery that has only gotten juicier in the past few months. 

 

Who wrote the "Be Someone" advisory is less important, I think, than whether or not that's good advice. I do think it is good advice, though some caution should be used in trying to apply that directive in real life. It's pretty easy to understand this "Be Someone" exhortation as an invitation to the kind of extreme individualism that many believe is an important clue to what life is all about. 

 

We should all "Be Someone," I agree, but remember that we are "in this together," and that every one of us is "Someone." We are all important persons. The command to "Be Someone" should not be taken as a suggestion that you should "Be Someone" who is separate from and better than everyone else. 

This caution, I think, is particularly important when we realize that the "Be Someone" mystery sign is found in Texas, which does have a reputation for the kind of "individualism" that suggests that we should each elevate ourselves above all those other people who are different from us, and who (we can let ourselves think) are just not quite as "great," or as "important," or as "worthy" as we have come to think of ourselves. Mix in differences of race, economics, and gender and you begin to see the possible scope of a huge misunderstanding.

When I read the story in The Wall Street Journal, I was reminded of one of my earliest blog postings, published on March 25, 2010. Ugo Betti, an Italian playwright (and a judge, by the way), wrote a play called The Burnt Flower-Bed. It contains these lines: 

That's what's needed, don't you see? That! Nothing else matters half so much. To reassure one another. To answer each other. Perhaps only you can listen to me and not laugh. Everyone has, inside himself ... what shall I call it? A piece of good news! Everyone is ... a very great, very important character! Yes, that's what we have to tell them up there! Every man must be persuaded - even if he is in rags - that he's immensely, immensely important!

     - The Burnt Flower-Bed

 

Betti, I think, conveys the "Be Someone" message as it ought to be understood. And it is such a vitally important message, too!  EVERYONE ... is "Someone." EVERYONE is a "very great, very important character." 

Let's see if we can all internalize that message. You are "Someone." You are important. We are important! We are each "Someone." 

If we actually start to believe that, then we will have to change the world, won't we? Because what's going on, right at the moment, what we are permitting to exist right now, just isn't acceptable, is it? It just isn't worthy of the important "Someones" we are. It just isn't right!

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Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/be-someone-houston-graffiti-artist-b9da7c08

#302 / Everything Goes Boom?

 

Vanity Fair ran an article in its October 2023 edition that was titled, "Artificial Intelligence May Be Humanity’s Most Ingenious Invention—And Its Last?" The article was written by Nick Bilton. As you might guess from that title, Bilton's article is not exactly "upbeat." Here are the last couple of paragraphs:

Numerous government studies published over the past 78 years, since the first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico, have estimated that a full-scale nuclear war would kill hundreds of millions of people, and the subsequent nuclear winter, a theorized period of prolonged cold and darkness caused by the fallout from the blasts, could kill hundreds of millions more. At most, a few billion people might die, but there is no scenario where our entire species would disappear. The same is true for biological weapons and chemical warfare, which could kill thousands of people. Guns, bombs, lasers, disease, and famine.

Artificial intelligence, however, is arguably the first technology that could wipe out everyone on the planet. Do your own math: Do you really think we’re going to make it another 6,000 years? Another 200 generations? As Kedrosky put it, if we continue unmitigated across this razor blade, the odds are simply inevitable: “Given enough time, and enough AI coin flips, eventually everything goes boom.”

The QUESTION CIRCULATING around Silicon Valley isn’t if such a scenario is worth it, even with a 1 PERCENT CHANCE OF ANNIHILATION, but rather, if it is really such a bad thing if we build a machine that CHANGES HUMAN LIFE AS WE KNOW IT.

"Changing human life as we know it," I'd argue, is something a little bit different from "everything goes boom." However, setting aside that rather contradictory ending to Bilton's article, should human beings be designing and deploying a technology that could "supersede" the human race, and make it, essentially, superfluous? One of the claims made in the article is that in creating Artificial Intelligence, “We’re creating God.” 

Good idea? Or a not-so-good idea? It's Sunday, so let me remind you of a Bible story I have already written about before. It involves a Golden Calf. You may or may not have paid much attention to that story, but you probably know about it. In short, the Creator of the universe is not happy when human beings create things themselves, and then worship their own creations. Penalties apply!

To return to my beloved "Two Worlds Hypothesis," World #1 is the "World That God Created," and we live ultimately in that world. Picture Earth from space. As far as we know, that's where we are, and while we can study the stars, and contemplate the idea that there are "many worlds" like ours (completely unproven at this point, of course), whether or not there are many such worlds, and multiple "universes," is rather beside the point, in terms of the practicalities. We exist, inevitably, in any "ultimate" sense, in that "World That God Created." Planet Earth is that world. That is the world upon which we ultimately rely for everything. We are supposed to pay attention to this fact, and when we don't, when we fail to remember that the "World That God Made," the "World of Nature" - what some people might call "the environment" - is all we ultimately have, we experience bad results. 

What that story about the Golden Calf is intended to remind us is that when we start thinking that "our" world, the "Human World," is more important than the "World That God Made," we are going to be punished for our failure to accord primacy to the Creator, and to the Creation. 

Such, it seems to me, is what we are talking about when we talk about "Artificial Intelligence," and the kind of world that it portends.

I'd keep focused, really to understand the implications of Artificial Intelligence, on that word, "Artificial." 

Artificial? Not good! We are picking a loser, there! Like the purveyors of what many people think of as their favorite beverage, our best choice will always be the "Real Thing." 

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Image Credit:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/artificial-intelligence-industry-future

#301 / The One State Solution

Yesterday's New York Times, as it was delivered to my doorstep in hard copy form, carried a column by David Brooks, entitled, "Searching for Humanity in the Middle East." That's Brooks, pictured above. 

To me, at least, Brooks' column made a plea for the kind of politics that I wrote about in this blog yesterday, in a blog posting I called, "Lead Like Lincoln." Quoting Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep, I featured one of the rules that Inskeep contends was key to Abraham Lincoln's political leadership: "Lincoln didn't tell his supporters they were morally superior to the other side."

Brooks' column - which I advise you to read, if you can do it, understanding that The Times may well have fortified itself with a paywall that might make it difficult or impossible for non-subscribers to see what Brooks said - gives us Brooks' thought that "the Israel-Gaza conflict has pushed us closer to nihilism." It seems to me that Brooks' commentary reflects the kind of vision that Lincoln brought to the Civil War, and that Inskeep highlighted in the quotation I have replayed above.

Brooks' column is not, I guess, totally "despairing," but his evaluation of where we are, as we "search for humanity in the Middle East," is not exactly optimistic about where the world is headed. Here are Brooks' final words, in his column from yesterday: 

It feels as if we’re teetering between universalist worldviews that recognize our common humanity and tribal worldviews in which others are just animals to be annihilated. What Israel does next will influence what worldview prevails in the 21st century.

Brooks, in other words, seems to acknowledge that the situation in the Middle East (and around the world, as people "pick sides") reflects the exact opposite of what Abraham Lincoln proclaims is needed. 

Brook's column (again, I advise you to read it in its entirety, if you can) discusses three "paradigms" that he says have collapsed, or have come close to collapsing, this past month, as events in Israel/Gaza have unfolded. Here is the "third conceptual paradigm" that Brooks says has become "shaky":

The third conceptual paradigm under threat is the one I have generally used to organize how I see the Middle East conflict — the two-state paradigm. This paradigm is based on the notion that this conflict will end when there are two states with two peoples living side by side. People like me see events in the Middle East as tactical moves each side is taking to secure the best eventual outcome for themselves.

After this month’s events, several assumptions underlying this worldview seem shaky: that most people on each side will eventually come to accept the legitimacy of the other’s existence; that Palestinian leaders would rather devote their budgets to economic development than perpetual genocidal holy war; that the cause of peace is advanced when Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories; that Hamas can be contained until a negotiated settlement is achieved; that extremists on both sides will eventually be marginalized so that peacemakers can do their work.

Those of us who see the conflict through this two-state framing may be relying on lenses that distort our vision, so we see the sort of Middle East that existed two decades ago, not the one that exists today.

In fact, and this is what Lincoln's admonition recognizes, we are living in "one world," and we must find some way to do that. The idea that we can successfully live in different "states," each state hating the other, is an illusion. 

As Israel was created, after World War II, Hannah Arendt argued for a "One State" solution. Abraham Lincoln would have been on her side, I think. After all, that is what our Civil War was all about. It seems to me that Brooks, as a longtime observer of the politics of the Middle East, has arrived at the same destination as Hannah Arendt. Perhaps we should all get to that understanding (and quickly, too) and start figuring out how to make it work. 

The alternatives to doing so, which include a worldwide nuclear conflagaration, are not attractive. 

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Image Credit:

https://katebowler.com/podcasts/how-to-really-know-someone/

#300 / Lead Like Lincoln

 

Steve Inskeep is co-host of NPR's Morning Edition. He is also the author of a book with a wonderful title, Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded In A Divided America.

Anyone who reads my blog postings with any regularity will undoubtedly know why I say that Inskeep's title is so good. "Differ We Must," I do believe, is a statement that captures the genius of American government. I wrote about my understanding of this not so long ago, on Saturday, October 21st. Unlike those who believe that a nation is held together by what its people have "in common," the United States is held together by its commitment to self-government, to a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," to use Lincoln's own definition. Differences are a "feature," not a "bug," in our way of thinking. 

A major purpose of this blog posting is to suggest that those reading it attempt to track down Inskeep's article in the October 7-8, 2023, edition of The Wall Street Journal. Inskeep's article was titled, "How Politicians Can Really Lead Like Lincoln." There may be a paywall problem, but give it a try. That's my advice. I think Inskeep gives good guidance to all those involved in politics, and particularly those who would like to "lead." 

If you have any idea that you might like to do that (and I can tell you, from my personal experience, that political leadership is a joyful burden), then Inskeep has a number of "pointers." All on the mark. 

Here's the one I want to leave you with (particularly with the thought that it's timely advice, given what is happening in the Middle East, and the status of our debates about the global warming crisis in which we are all enmeshed):

Lincoln didn't tell his supporters they were morally superior to the other side.  

As we engage in the political debates and disputations that are essential to the practice of politics, can we all remember that, please?

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Image Credit:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/abraham-lincoln/

#299 / Pardon My Impatience

 

The picture above is of Terence McKenna. That's his quote, too. 

Until this picture and quotation showed up on my Facebook page, driven there by the unknowable algorithms that determine what and whom we see when we scroll through the Facebook postings sent our way, I had never heard of Terence McKenna. At least, I don't remember having heard of him. 

The Wikipedia write up on McKenna, linked above, is quite lengthy, and indicates that McKenna accomplished a great deal in a relatively brief life. It appears that McKenna died young, from an aggressive brain cancer. In its obituary, The New York Times called McKenna a "Patron of Psychedelic Drugs." These drugs were, it appears, the major focus of his life.

I am writing, today, to react to the sentiment that McKenna has expressed in the Facebook posting I have pictured. And as I say in my title, "pardon my impatience." 

If things are as McKenna says they are (and McKenna is right, and all those possibilities he lists are real), then the right reaction is not to bemoan the fact that other persons have not demonstrated effective leadership, to help us realize the possibilities that we actually have. Not realizing our possibilities is no one's fault but our own. 

I have cited to Michael Jackson before. We should be looking at that person in the mirror, not hoping that someone else is going to be stepping up to provide the kind of leadership we need.

Furthermore, if we believe in "self-government," that means that we have to take responsibility, ourselves, for doing what needs to be done. I have made this point before - and most recently on our last Fourth of July, citing to what President Biden has pointed out. When something needs to be done, to prevent a bad result, or to achieve a good one, we, individually and collectively, are the ones who have to step up. 

As our president said: 

It's Called Responsibility

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Image Credit:

https://www.facebook.com/jasna.pecaric.9 (Posted on September 9, 2023)

#298 / Everything Worth Doing

 

That is NOT Mariame Kaba, pictured above. It's Naomi Klein (I'll put a picture of Kaba at the bottom of this blog posting, and I will tell you who she is in just a minute). I wrote about Klein, recently, and you can click the following link if you'd like to revisit my blog posting from October 19, 2023. 

That week-old blog posting reported on an August New York Times' article about Klein, describing her latest book, Doppelganger. On September 10th, The New Yorker ran an article about Klein, online, which was a discussion between Klein and Jia Tolentino. Klein's book, Doppelganger, was again the focus. The New Yorker article was titled, "Naomi Klein Sees Uncanny Doubles in Our Politics." 

If you can elude whatever paywall protection system might have been erected to defend The New Yorker's proprietary rights - and I hope you can - I do recommend that you read that Tolentino-Klein discussion. In fact, however, as is so often the case, what most directly struck me, as I read what The New Yorker published, was a single phrase. 

The phrase that attracted my attention was attributed to Mariame Kaba, who is, as Wikipedia informs us, "an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police." Again, Kaba's picture is below. Here is a quick excerpt from that New Yorker write up:

As Mariame Kaba says, everything worth doing is done with other people. And that doesn’t mean we’re going to annihilate our egos or not care about ourselves, but the amount of labor we are putting into optimizing our bodies, our image, our kids, is robbing from the work that needs to be done to preserve the habitability of the planet, to preserve our humanity in the face of those spasms, so we don’t double down on the barbarism, on the borders. We have a ton of work to do, and I don’t believe we will do it unless we get over ourselves a little bit (emphasis added).

I am still remembering what one of our local, Santa Cruz County pundits had to say, back in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, on September 9th. Stephen Kessler, who writes regularly for the local paper, suggested a program of self-care that he commemorated with this phrase: "Let's Hear It For Narcissism." 

I'm going with Kaba, not Kessler. She is absolutely right that everything worth doing is "done with other people." This is true because it happens to be a fact that we're "in this together." If you would like some musical accompaniment, as you contemplate this, try clicking through to The Youngbloods, and sing along with "Get Together." 

Or, if you're willing to think that Jesus might have had a worthwhile perspective on the issue of getting engaged with "other people," including people from a completely different "tribe," people who aren't our kind of people at all, you can click this link for one of the best stories Jesus ever told, the story of the "Good Samaritan." 

And don't forget how he ended it: "Go, and do likewise!"

Mariame Kaba

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/naomi-klein-sees-uncanny-doubles-in-our-politics

(2) - https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/march-2016/mariame-kaba-prisonculture/

#297 / We That Are Young

 

Pictured above is Jacob Fishel playing Edgar in a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, as presented by Theater for a New Audience. 

King Lear, in my estimation, is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays. I was pleased to be able to see the play this past summer, performed by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, with Paul Whitworth playing an incomparable Lear.

It is Fishel's photo I feature, though, not Whitworth's, because one line from the play keeps bubbling up from somewhere deep within me, and that line, found in the play's Act 5, Scene 3, belongs to Edgar:

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

As the end of this year is advancing upon us, I am ever more justified in playing my "old guy" card. I have one of those "big birthdays" arriving soon, and more and more, as time advances, Edgar's line "speaks to my condition," to quote a Quaker phrase. 

Not so long ago, I urged any person who might read my blog to listen (and probably not for the first time) to Peter, Paul and Mary, singing a song originally sung by Pete Seeger, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone." If you click that link to the title of the song, you'll be able to hear Pete Seeger sing it. His rendition, perhaps, is even more powerful than the moving presentation I featured earlier. Both versions brought me to tears.

Edgar's words are not an "old guy's" words. As one of the "old guys," though, Shakespeare's words, as stated by Edgar, keep bubbling up into my mind. 

I have lived what has been a long and wonderful life. I am thankful for it, for everything! But is it really true that those who are young "shall never see so much, nor live so long?"

Oh, no! Please let that not be true!

It is my wish, for those who are young, that they will not see (though I am afraid they might) the arrival of that war doom that has been threatening us all, for my whole life. It is my wish that the young will not see the continuing and progressive destruction of this beautiful Earth, a destruction that we are carrying out ourselves, we who ultimately depend upon this Earth that is our home.

Edgar's speech combines, in my mind, with what Pete Seeger sang, and with what Peter, Paul and Mary sang. The song (in that frame) poses a question, at least so it seems to me, and the answer to that question can animate actions that have the ability to transform our current reality, and to change the future. 

We who are old (and we who are young) all know the question. 

And that question is not: "When will we ever learn?" We already know.

The question is: "When will we ever change?"

How about now?

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Image Credit:

https://medium.com/@cit1516c/king-lear-character-analysis-of-edgar-79c58df01dc9

#296 / Climbing That Ladder

That is Herman Khan, pictured. Depending on how old you are, his name may, or may not, be familiar. Kahn is the real person upon whom Stanley Kubrick based his famous character, Dr. Strangelove. Kahn was a foreign policy theorist, who was most actively writing in the 1960's. He has recently been characterized by Phil Tinline, a producer at BBC Radio, as having "mad and dangerous ideas" about nuclear war. 

Tinline's article, which appeared in a recent edition of Prospect, is definitely worth reading. The headline includes that statement about Kahn's "mad and dangerous ideas." In a sub-heading, Tinline raises the question that is necessarily provoked by Kahn's writings: 

During the Cold War, an American strategist theorised that nuclear war need not be catastrophic. Now back in vogue, could the ideas of the ‘real Dr Strangelove’ help avoid annihilation—or usher it in?

I think I'm betting on the "usher it in" possibility as the most likely one - should we ever start thinking about nuclear war the way Kahn did. In the 1980's, Kahn was still wanting us to consider the consequences (and the possibilities) of using nuclear weapons to settle differences between nations. Kahn even wrote a book about this, titled, Thinking About The Unthinkable. Kahn appears to have believed that nuclear weapons should be treated as just one more "arrow" in our foreign policy "quiver." 

Actually, that is really my characterization, not Kahn's. As far as I know, Kahn doesn't actually use the "arrows and quiver" metaphor to discuss the idea that the use of nuclear weapons should always be considered as a possible option, when nations interact. In fact, Kahn uses a different metaphor, what Tinline identifies as a "ladder of escalation." 

In 1962, Kahn published a 16-step escalation ladder, but by 1965 he had developed that into a 44-step escalation ladder. Here it is. See if you can identify what step we are on, right now, as the War in Ukraine proceeds, and as tensions with both Russia China grow, and as war looms in the Middle East:

1. Ostensible Crisis
2. Political, Economic and Diplomatic Gestures
3. Solemn and Formal Declarations
4. Hardening of Positions – Confrontation of Wills
5. Show of Force
6. Significant Mobilization
7. "Legal" Harassment – Retortions
8. Harassing Acts of Violence
9. Dramatic Military Confrontations
10. Provocative Breaking off of Diplomatic Relations
11. Super-Ready Status
12. Large Conventional War (or Actions)
13. Large Compound Escalation
14. Declaration of Limited Conventional War
15. Barely Nuclear War
16. Nuclear "Ultimatums"
17. Limited Evacuations (20%)
18. Spectacular Show or Demonstration of Force
19. "Justifiable" Counterforce Attack
20. "Peaceful" World-Wide Embargo or Blockade
21. Local Nuclear War – Exemplary
22. Declaration of Limited Nuclear War
23. Local Nuclear War – Military
24. Unusual, Provocative and Significant Countermeasures
25. Evacuation (70%)
26. Demonstration Attack on Zone of Interior
27. Exemplary Attack on Military
28. Exemplary Attacks Against Property
29. Exemplary Attacks on Population
30. Complete Evacuation (95%)
31. Reciprocal Reprisals
32. Formal Declaration of "General" War
33. Slow-Motion Counter-"Property" War
34. Slow-Motion Counterforce War
35. Constrained Force-Reduction Salvo
36. Constrained Disarming Attack
37. Counterforce-with-Avoidance Attack
38. Unmodified Counterforce Attack
39. Slow-Motion Countercity war
40. Countervalue Salvo
41. Augmented Disarming Attack
42. Civilian Devastation Attack
43. Controlled General War
44. Spasm/Insensate War

Peggy Noonan, who was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan - and who now writes an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal, commented, in one of her recent columns, on Oppenheimer, an acclaimed film about the development (and use by the United States) of the first atomic weapon. I read Noonan's commentary the same day I read Tinline's. I think both of them are trying to get us to repudiate the idea that there is any circumstance in which we should consider using nuclear weapons. Here is how Noonan puts it: 

I thought “Oppenheimer” would be more of a warning, and I wanted it to be because I think the world needs one. In fairness, the first two hours of the film signal a kind of warning, with a building sense of dread, but it dissipates in the last hour, which gets lost in a dense subplot. I wanted the director, Christopher Nolan, to be an artist picking up unseen vibrations in the air and sensing what most needed to be said.

The world needs to be more afraid of nuclear weapons. We’re too used to safety, to everything working. It’s been almost 80 years of no nuclear use, a triumph, and we just assume it will continue. Those who were healthily apprehensive 50 and 25 years ago aren’t so scared anymore; they think someone’s in charge, it’s OK. My sense is the world has grown less rigorously professional, the military of all countries included, and the leaders of the world aren’t as careful. I guess I wanted a movie that puts anxiety in the forefront of everyone’s mind.

It isn’t entirely fair to say “he didn’t make the movie I hoped would be made,” but yes, he didn’t make the movie I hoped would be made (emphasis added).

Are we, really, going to keep climbing that ladder? 

In fact (and I am with Noonan), it is time to dismantle that ladder, entirely. That's the "real life" movie we need to make.

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Image Credit:

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/policy/defence-news/62117/imagining-armageddon-herman-kahn-nuclear-ladder

#295 / Seeing Is Believing (And The Jury System)

In an August 7, 2023, column in The New York Times, Steven Brill says that "the only issue that Americans on all sides of our vast political divide seem to agree on is that we cannot agree on anything. Even basic facts have become matters of opinion."

This rings true to me. The Times identifies Brill (who is a lawyer, as well as a journalist) as "the founder of Court TV, a co-chief executive of NewsGuard and the author of the forthcoming The Death of Truth.” You can click the following link to read the entire column (paywall policies permitting). Brill's opinion essay is titled, "Americans Will Believe the Trump Verdict Only if They Can See It." Again, that statement rings pretty true to me. Getting the court proceedings televised, however, as Brill outlines, will not be an easy task. In addition, there are some compelling arguments to the contrary, including those presented in a New York Times' Guest Esssy on "Why Televising The Trump Trials Is A Bad Idea," written by former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman. 

What actually struck me most in the Brill column was not his observations on the desirability of televising the Trump trial (or trials). Here are the words that most directly captured my attention, with emphasis added: 

In the work I do looking at the reliability of online news and information, I can see that the erosion of trust in basic facts is largely the result of too many people getting their news from social media platforms. What they see there may be highly opinionated, one-sided, boiled down to a few words or catchy phrases or taken out of context or come from people with undisclosed credentials or agendas or be just plain made up. And it’s all sorted out and presented by algorithms designed to engage people to spend more time on the platform by offering up content that will excite rather than inform and please them rather than challenge them, by reinforcing what they already believe. 

What’s presented to jurors in a courtroom has the opposite qualities. Court is a quiet, somber sanctuary, where rules prevent the disorienting chaos we experience online. Jurors are made aware of the credentials and possible biases of witnesses. Documents and other exhibits are painstakingly authenticated. The admissibility of evidence is carefully vetted by a judge, and after a lawyer on one side is allowed to present it, a lawyer on the other side can then challenge it, with both lawyers strictly limited by rules not allowing them to present hearsay or rumors or offer their opinions. 

In the 1980s, as a journalist reporting on the law, I interviewed jurors after their trials to find out how they had reached their verdicts. After a while, one thing struck me as unusually consistent: Jurors said that after sitting on juries, they were surprised by how much more favorably they thought of our justice system. When they got to see the system up close and at full length — instead of how it was displayed on the 11 o’clock news (this was well before we all went online), with sound-bite spins from lawyers on the courthouse steps or prosecutors at a news conference — they decided that it worked well. That it did a good job sorting out the truth. More than one juror told me that it was something we should all be proud of.

 

One of the most famous trials ever conducted ended with the judge washing his hands and posing this question: "What is Truth?" Pontius Pilate's question really does suggest the idea that "truth," in the end, is really just a matter of "opinion." 

But that is not, actually, correct! We can make mistakes as we attempt to discern and define "truth," but there is such a thing! There is such a thing as "truth," and our justice system should be structured in a way that allows "truth," not "opinion," to determine what is decided, and what verdicts are rendered - at least to the greatest degree possible. 

The jury system is a pretty good system, as Steven Brill reminds us. The upcoming trial (or trials) of our former president - televised or not - will give us an opportunity to recapture our belief that decisions about guilt or innocence should be based on the "truth," not "assertions" and "opinions." 

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/opinion/trump-jan-6-trial-tv.html

(2) - https://medium.com/@stowens/pontius-pilate-on-trial-eeebdb82ecb6

 

#294 / A "Nation," Defined

 

Ayman Odeh, an Arab Palestinian citizen of Israel and a member of Parliament, is pictured above. Writing in the October 20, 2023, edition of The New York Times, Odeh addressed this topic: "What It Takes To Choose Life Over Revenge."

Odeh's commentary, of course, is pertinent to our current situation. Revenge is motivating both Hamas and Israel in the current, and horrific, conflict between them, a conflict that could expand to include the entire world, and bring death and destruction down upon all of us. What Odeh has to say is worth reading. It is worth thinking about. Because there is a just cause for "revenge," so apparent on all sides, thinking about how we can avoid becoming a world that will destroy itself in the search for revenge is timely. If you can access what Odeh has to say, I encourage you to do so.

I am writing, though, on a slightly different topic, though I think a related one. 

The following statement in Odeh's opinion piece is what has stimulated me to publish this blog posting: 

A nation is defined as a group of people with a common language, a common past and common dreams.

In fact, this is not true of the United States of America. The United States of America is not a nation that is defined by its commonalities. Sometimes called a "nation of immigrants," the United States is not a group of people with a common language, common past, and common dreams. It is not what we have in common that makes us a nation.  Those who came here, both before - and particularly after the American Revolution - came from different pasts, and were people of different ethnicities, dfferent religions, different languages, and different cultures. In fact - really think about this - we are defined as a nation more by our differences than by what we have in common.

What binds us together, as a nation, what makes us a nation, is our dedication to a particular idea about government. That idea is often expressed by this phrase: E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.

The force that binds us together in this nation is our joint commitment to a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Self-government is what makes us a nation. We do not search for what we have in common. We search for ways that we - with all our differences - can live together. We search for how best to govern ourselves, and how to live together, and propser, both individually and collectively, despite the fact of our obvious differences, and despite the fact that we may well disagree on what is best, and what we should do. 

We are a nation dedicated to a government - to a "politics" if you will follow me that far - that allows us to debate and discuss what we should do, and then to mobilize our wealth, and resources, and energies to try to achieve it - reserving always, of course, our right to change our minds and choose to do something different. 

If our nation is dedicated to that kind of government (and it is), if that is what "constitutes" us as a nation (and that is what our Constitution proclaims),  then we should recognize and celebrate the fact that it is our commitment to self-government that makes us into a nation. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we must "agree" to some single, "common" purpose. A proper understanding of our government, and of our nation, defined by our commitment to self-government, tells us that we can not only tolerate, but can take great joy in the fact of our differences. It is from within our differences that we work with each other to discover what we think it will be best for us to do. It is from within our differences that we seek to discover how we can live together. 

In a nation so organized, revenge has no easy place to gain a purchase. Let us be sure that we are not swept up into the temptations of revenge, and that we are not carried away by those who believe that differences must eliminated, and that "wrong" must be expunged and "right" made triumphant.

That idea is an idea we see in many places. 

We have a different message for the world.

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Image Credit:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/joint-lists-odeh-rushed-to-hospital-over-kidney-stone/

#293 - A "We Are All In This Together" Blog Post

I am not active on Twitter (now X). I am not active on Tik.Tok. I am not active on Instagram, or Snapchat. I am not active on LinkedIn. In fact, I am not much of a "social media" kind of guy. However, I do have a profile on Facebook, and I regularly post items to my Facebook news feed that I think are relevant. What I ate for lunch or dinner almost never qualifies, and I never post pictures of dogs or cats. 

Usually, my postings to Facebook relate to some sort of political, or environmental, or local government topic. These blog postings of mine, for instance, regularly get posted to Facebook, though I would rather have interested persons subscribe to my blog directly. 

Besides making my own postings to Facebook, as just outlined, I do look at what others post - though not with great regularity. Cute cats, and dogs, and pictures of delicious food flow right by me. I can't remember ever passing along any kind of post like that.

Once in a while, though, I really do see something on Facebook that I think is worthwhile, and I do try to alert my Facebook Friends by "sharing" it. The above picture, accompanied by the text I am reproducing below, appeared on my Facebook news feed on Labor Day, September 4, 2023. Ted Smith, the founder and former Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, and one of my favorite Facebook Friends, is responsible for this posting. He was, I believe, passing along something that he thought was relevant.

I did pass along Ted's posting on Facebook, and I want to provide those who follow this blog a chance to see Ted's posting, too. 

I keep saying that we are "all in this together." It's true, you know! 

Ted's Labor Day Facbook posting makes clear just how human solidarity works. Thank you, Ted Smith, for alterting me to what follows!

LOOK AT THE PICTURE

THEN READ THIS EXPLANATION

A teacher gave a balloon to every student, who had to inflate it, write their name on it and throw it in the hallway. The teacher then mixed all the balloons. The students were then given 5 minutes to find their own balloon. Despite a hectic search, no one found their balloon.

At that point, the teacher told the students to take the first balloon that they found and hand it to the person whose name was written on it. Within 5 minutes, everyone had their own balloon.

The teacher said to the students: "These balloons are like happiness. We will never find it if everyone is looking for their own. But if we care about other people's happiness, we'll find ours too."

May your day be filled with happiness.

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Image Credit:

https://www.facebook.com/ted.smith.54 (September 4, 2023)

 

#292 / Doppelgänger

That question - "Which Twin Has The Toni?" - has stuck with me since my youth. Really, you have to be pretty old to remember this advertising campaign (if you do remember it, that is). Information obtained by clicking the link, above, suggests that the ad campaign for the Toni Home Permanent began in 1948, or shortly thereafter. A personal account (just click this link), says that young women were availing themselves of the Toni Home Permanent in 1950. It was "all the rage."

The "Which Twin Has The Toni?" question came to mind as I read The New York Times Magazine on September 3, 2023. Jennifer Szalai wrote an article titled, "When Your ‘Doppelganger’ Becomes a Conspiracy Theorist." Among other things, Szalai's article provided some pre-publication publicity for Naomi Klein, whose book, Doppelganger, was recently released, on September 12th, a week or so after The Times' article was published. From what I read, the book will be interesting to all those who are concerned about our contemporary politics - and particularly our post-pandemic politics. Hair styling methodologies are not featured in the book - just to make that clear. 

The theme of Szalai's article, and presumably of the book itself, can be seen as a kind of "Which Twin Has The Toni?" exploration, in the field of contemporary political analysis. For instance, which person, below, wrote, Doppelganger?

That's Naomi Klein (the author) in the second photo. Naomi Wolf, pictured in the first photo, is the "doppelganger" that Klein is talking about in her book. As Szalai notes, at the very beginning of her article [as printed in the hardcopy version], "For years, the writer and activist Naomi Klein has been conflated with another famous Naomi - a confusion that has led her, in a new book, to explore the mixed-up politics of the Covid era."

I have noticed, myself (consistemt with what Klein apparently says in her book) that progressive and "left" politics in my own community has been transformed, for many, into a twisted version of what I would call "progressive" concerns, with this new version modifying everything by way of a heavy commitment to conspiracy theories. This new and twisted politics I am talking about ends up making former "progressive" friends sound like a distored version of Donald J. Trump. 

A neighbor, for instance, has told me, in all seriousness, that he now realizes that the only reliable explanation for the events of January 6, 2021, has been made available by Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News, right-wing television star. According to my politically "progressive" neighbor, per Carlson, there really was no significant problem, and no significant violence, at the United States Capitol on January 6th. The way he sees it, the Democratic House of Representatives pushed a false narrative for political purposes, with arch-fiend Adam Schiff manipulating events and the evidence. In addition, in my neighbor's telling, Russia is right to have invaded Ukraine, since Ukraine is nothing less than a "Nazi" state, and Russia was absolutely justified in defending itself against Ukraine's "aggression." My neighbor also appears to believe that our best pick for president is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose conspiratorial explanations for many unwelcome aspects of our current politics seem quite convincing to him. Oh! Let me not forget to add that my neighbor sees Donald J. Trump as the "peace candidate" for president.

I am not sure that I am going to read Naomi Klein's new book, but I do encourage you to read the article, if you can find a way past what will probably be some kind of paywall, seeking to prevent you from doing just that. In case a paywall does prove an obstacle, I am providing a quote, below, highlighting a concern about how we will deal with what Szalai calls the "climate crisis," given all the forces that are seeking to divide us, forces that may make it imposssible to understand that we are, actually, "all in this together." We can't counter global warming if we remain politically divided. We need to get over our divisions - particularly false divisions. We need to "operationalize" the insight that "we are all in this together." There is a lot to lose, if we fail!

In “Doppelganger,” Klein draws links between climate denialism and the conspiracy theories of the mirror world, where panic about “pandemic lockdowns” mutated into panic about “climate lockdowns.” Even before Covid, Wolf was tweeting out warnings that a Green New Deal would amount to a power grab by elites — “a sort of green shock doctrine,” as Klein puts it, which left Klein speechless. Similar to what she hoped at the start of the pandemic — that by showing us how connected we all are, it could lead to “something better, greener and fairer” — she was initially drawn to the subject of global warming because of its redistributive potential. The more complex the crisis, the harder it is to solve through technocratic fixes that allow the system to continue to operate as usual. As she put it in “This Changes Everything,” which was published in 2014, the climate crisis could serve as a “people’s shock” and a “galvanizing force for humanity.”

Yet galvanizing forces can have a way of being surprisingly divisive. In “Doppelganger,” Klein describes how the narrative of climate justice — that this emergency is survivable only if everyone works together — is at risk of being superseded by its mirror opposite: Some of us can get through the end times by hunkering down with our solar panels and canned food while other people, the most vulnerable among us, figure it out for themselves.

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Image Credits:

(1) - http://ptoday.blogspot.com/2011/11/hidden-plainfield-which-twin-has-toni.html

(2) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf

(3) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein