So that's what happened . . . or . . . History as Politics

I have spent the last couple of days struggling to find some pithy and deep-basined way to tie up all the nonsense that was spewed this past month in commemorations, or simply recognitions in print, of the start of WWII marked by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. After Russian President Medvedev signed a decree establishing a "commission to counter attemts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests", it really came as little surprise that while Prime Minister Putin was praising the bravery of the Polish soldiers at a September 1 commemoration in Poland, the Russian government was releasing what it said were previously unreleased confidential documents detailing prewar cooperation between Poland and the Nazis. Frankly, it stands to reason that there are to be odd, even painful, moments as the memory of WWII - as individually constructed in Western Europe, Central Europe, and Russia - is merged into a single whole (even if not seamless) narrative. But anymore on this should wait - it's more domestic issues that have burrowed in and become a bother.

Pat Buchanan has never been one to shy away from idiotic comments but this month, on the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, he simply took the cake as he insisted that "Hitler had never wanted war with Poland"! In fact, in an odd echo of the Russian government, according to Pat, it was essentially Poland's fault that the war started at all. If only the Poles would "negotiate" the hand-over of Danzig/Gdansk a "town the size of Ocean City, Md." -- WAIT! Stop, Gdansk is not the size of a now broken-down and kitschy town in the marshes of the Maryland seaboard (no offense to the citizens of Ocean City), it has long been one of Poland's largest and most important cities and has long played a large role in trade in the Baltic and North Seas - in short, an important part of any economy in that region and one that was central to a Poland caught between an aggressively rearming (and threatening) Germany and an evermore sure-of-itself Soviet Union under Stalin. For now we'll leave aside much of the weak-as-water evidence marshalled to continue the farce that Hitler did not want war and land on Buchanan's insistence that once it had begun "Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps." The implication here is simply that the Final Solution, the Endlösung vorgesehen in the German, was the fault of first the Poles for not giving over Danzig and then the Brits for not agreeing to peace, and perhaps even the Americans for getting involved at all. Not only is this absolutely ridiculous, it is patently absurd and borders on dangerous. Buchanan's comments championing the skills of good old Adolph as a leader, while recognizing his nasty, nasty antisemitism, have now - with this - become too leaden to be laughed-off* with a simple guffaw and an old-boy shrug. Not only is his history patently bad but he is, if not a denier, then an apologist.

-fp

*when first published the sentence read "too leaden to be supported . . ." - coming back for a reread "support" is not at all what was intended, "laughed-off" is at least a bit better.

But who is supposed to laugh?

There are some things that I have little truck with and some that I don't bother with and others that I simply let slide to the side. For a while at least I have tried to let this slide to the side and I have decided I simply cannot. Glenn Beck, self-professed "rodeo clown" of the media world, utilizing a strategy of throw it against the wall, see what sticks, has run through any number of right-wing conspiracies since before the election of Barack Obama last November. There was birth certificate-gate, but that was dropped (and not just by him) when it became simply and obviously and damningly-for-those-who-argued-it untenable. There was his self-serving 9/12 Project, so painfully and wittily and properly skewered by Stephen Colbert not long ago. And though I am sure I am skipping over any number of other ludicrous ideas offerred up there is this absolutely maddening and patently ignorant idea that the nation is being dragged down the road to fascism by the evil "them" that he so often decries. Such a steadfast belief is this new revelation of his that he was moved to apologize for getting it wrong when it was just encroaching socialism that he thought was the problem. Of course, the fascism he is so convinced we are heading towards is a "brand of non-violent fascism or . . . 1984" Leaving aside how ridiculous the idea of a non-violent fascism is, or the fact that despite his frequent invocations of Orwell's most famous work he has obviously never read it if he is to suggest that it is free of violence, we might simply ask if he actually believes this as all the footage that he shows in any of his near ubiquitous montages when he talks of these things is of Nazi Germany . . . certainly a non-violent state if there ever was one.

The turning point for me, however, was his recent round-table where he gathered a (very) select crew to discuss how the United States was headed towards fascism and revealed the moment that he knew something askew was up. Turning to footage from a relatively early debate among the Democratic candidate hopefuls he focused in on a clip of Hilary Clinton:

Clinton: "We are better as a society when we're working together"
Beck: "that is the key, 'we are better as a society when we'reworking together, [sigh] America do your homework." (roughly 6:40-7:00 minute mare of the above link)

Let me do my homework then, what does the word society mean? If we allow some heft for the Webster's dictionary definition, we might suggest that society means a voluntary association of individuals for common ends. Doesn't that sound absolutely dreadful? But because the issue for Beck is actually the New Deal (and if we want we'll turn to the issues of whether it worked or not at a later time) and government intrusion into the economy and the free market let us ask who Mr. Beck suggests stood up to this creeping fascism:

Beck: ". . . I want to go to the Depression, I want to talk about that. . . . Who is the person we should look to that stood up against this? Who are the people that were successful? I know Henry Ford was one of them . . . in FDR. He stood up against them and said 'This is wrong!'" (roughly 7:50-8:10 minute mark of the round-table link)

Let me get this straight. Henry Ford stood up against them - I mean he stood up against fascism?! Once again, let us leave aside the very nature of that which made Ford powerful and famous (besides head-breaking and strike-busting of course), the assembly line. Well, leave it aside after this -- as a means of manufacture there is no doubt that the standardization and uniformity of product of the assembly line brought (and continues to bring) higher production and even wealth to those who master the rote skills necessary but the best thing we can say about the assembly line is that it operates best when everyone is working together. The efficient mechanization of production was also a part of the Progressivism that has been so decried by Mr. Beck.

Now that that is out of the way let me try and get my head around this, Ford fought against fascism/nazism. This is the same Henry Ford who bought a dead newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, and used it to publish the pernicious The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and any number of equally anti-Semitic articles about American Jews, many of which were collected and published in 1921 as Jewish Influences in American Life. This is the Henry Ford who, in 1938, was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi state's highest honor for foreigners - who no less than Adolph Hitler declared an inspiration. This is the Henry Ford, the overseas holdings and factories of whom likely played no small role in arming the Wehrmacht? To reference a periodic Saturday Night Live mini-skit on the blogosphere, bitch pleeeaase!

Beck recently announced a comedy tour "where," according to the NYTs, "he will mix topical comedy with his modern-day take on 'Common Sense,' the Thomas Paine pamphlet that argued for American independence from British rule." If his grasp of Paine's surprisingly meaty pamphlet is as utterly slipshod as his hold on any number of other concepts, ideas and literary works I wonder what his comedy will amount to? But that perhaps brings us back to his notion that he is a "rodeo clown". On more than one occasion I have seen him ward off questions about what such a declaration might mean by joking that he has received mail from actual rodeo clowns who say that they work much harder than he does. Laughing, or at least chuckling, ensues and the subject moves on to the next empty answer. But perhaps we should stop and ask. A rodeo clown's job is to distract an enraged bull from a cowboy who has been riding him against his will. Maybe we should all ask who the cowboy is and who the enraged bull should be in Mr. Beck's scenario.

Can a person get a glass of wine around here?

What's happening to the French cafe?
The historian W. Scott Haine has discussed the French cafe in almost inestimable social terms. As he has argued, the cafe referenced (and lauded) not private accomplishment but public community and sociability, and fostered the creation of “micro-societies” which contemporaries called “café friendships.” Men of differing social and economic stations milled about together, engaged in discussion and serving as (sometimes unsuspecting) pedagogues for one another in interactions that were “an ever shifting and intricate mosaic . . . of social relations . . . that was simultaneously intimate and anonymous.” The cafe was an almost indispensible part of the political and social shifts from an aristocratic society to a broad meritocracy. The cafe is, as de Balzac wrote, the parliament of the people but it is apparently slipping into the past. As a social and cultural institution it survived both the Nazis and Coca-Cola, apparently now a smoking ban is the current wrinkle to be ironed out, but that is hardly it according to the NYTs piece - “The way of life has changed. The French are no longer eating and drinking like the French. They are eating and drinking like the Anglo-Saxons.” (I beg license for the meager changes I made in the quotation before). It comes to it, a question of what the French from the 1930s to the 1980s would call Americanization and afterwards, recognizing that the US was as apt to fall before it as any other nation, simply globalization. Walter Benjamin noted that Paris was the capital of the 19th century but must we leave it all behind. It is not just deals that were made "behind the zinc" as it were, it is life.

Vital to the United States - so they have said

It seems that this past Friday Citigroup had its stock fall beneath $4 a share. Just some weeks ago they were floating plans to buy Wachovia, another embattled financial institution, now they are being lumped into the "too big to fail" group. I will freely admit that I do not understand much of the intricacies of the financial markets, I also admit to being less than heartened by the fact that those who are supposed to understand the whole thing apparently need frequent tutorials. Here is what I do know, in 2002 the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the United States was the most unequal society of all industrialized nations and there has been plenty of time spent on discussion of a new gilded age where the top 1% control roughly 20% of the wealth (conversely, the bottom 80% manages some slippery control of about 17%!). But hey, as I referenced another time, in another context, as late as this time last year, there were those who were championing the idea that what was of importance was the "narrowing range of experience" - after all, "the distance between driving a used Hyundai Elantra and a new Jaguar XJ is well nigh undetectable compared with the difference between motoring and hiking through the muck."

It seems that much of that has changed with a growing global food crisis and a projected collapse of 1 in 57 banks. We have a massive banking bailout that is significantly higher than the $700 billion figure that is typically thrown about, a sum that left even those who are fans of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson concerned about the "prospect of unelected officials putting massive amounts of taxpayer resources to work without transparency or approval from Congress, and without a clear process at work, is indeed troubling." And it is the complete lack of transparency that troubles me most. Recently the Treasury released its "custodian" contract for implementing the lithely named Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which expressly states that "the Treasury may designate [private] Financial Institutions as financial agents of the United States . . . " Buried at the end of the document, however, is the troubling bit.

For all the shoddy talk that has been spread about concerning golden parachutes and whatnot, apparently it is unnecessary for the American taxpayer to know what the designated financial agents are to be compensated for their efforts!

Of course, the plan has abruptly and awkwardly changed from the buying of "toxic assets" and it remains to be seen what is going to come of the whole mess - though the initial reaction has not been entirely to the good. But I would be surprised if there was an opening up of the accounting books in any later versions. Let me reiterate, I do not know much about many of the financial tools that are in play here (though I don't believe many other do either) but I see little to suggest in all of this that anything has changed from two years ago (almost to the day) when Warren Buffett went on record saying "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” The even more recent $25 billion tossed to the Big 3 auto makers doesn't even really try and hide any of this. The money has few strings attached to it and (at least as it regards Chrysler) it is being given to a private company.

Ok, so let's allow for the seasoning that golden parachutes and extravagant AIG retreats have added to this witch's brew, but the discussion for the great bulk of this whole thing has been about sub-prime loans and now (with the automakers) legacy payments. The former is financial speak for "overreaching poor folks" and the latter refers to health care and pension guarantees won by unions. We need not even consider that in the last twenty years the word "liberal" has become something akin to political poison but . . . in an environment when a community action organization has been accused of being at the heart of both the sub-prime crisis and a grave threat to the very fabric of democracy, I don't think the class warfare is over though I do know which side I would put my money (what little of it is left) on.

Not Quite Year Zero - or - Obama's in the buildin'

16 years, 6 months, and what, a week? ago I was on the streets of my small home town with my best friend and wondered, in that untouched - hell, untoughed - way that only a half-educated and half-conditioned and half-cultured boy from the half-sticks can, about the culture and state of his nation as I knew that nearly an entire coast of the coutry was ablaze in riots and across much of the radio dial there were calls that, to put it kindly, emphasized not only a difference of opinion but a difference of being. As I said to that very same friend tonight - it's a machete strike to the breadth of our lives no doubt, but it is a mere wink of things when it comes to the age, the deep knee bend breaths, of the nation. I had actually planned on more vitriol, more Snidely Whiplash, well . . . lashings of things like "Focus on the Family", James Dobson's 16-page nugget of all the fear mongering trip that has come up in the last 20 months of campaigning but I would rather not. I wait for more. This seems too empty, not enough - let us see what comes, we all know my vote.

The chicanery of no expections

Well, what did those of us who expected her to flop out really expect? It's not as if Gov Palin was going to walk out on stage with toilet paper stuck to her heel and tumble down the stairs. She was in fact gracious and in control in the first moments as she strode across the stage and greeted Sen Biden between the podiums. Oddly, her (or both of their) body mike was turned up. Where it was impossible to discern what Barack Obama and John McCain said to each other quickly before their debate last week, her greeting to Biden was fully audible and marked her first success. After introducing herself and saying she was pleased to finally meet him, she asked quickly, "Hey, can I call you Joe?" His response, was inaudible but it surely as an affirmative as she then thanked him. So simple but also perfectly turned - not only did it play to her "folksy" informality but it reminded everyone of what has been passed as a gaffe by Obama from last week's meeting when he repeatedly referred to McCain as "John" while his older opponent stiff-armed him by eschewing similar niceties and called him "Sen Obama" while stating over and over his naivety. Obama ultimately switched to the more formal appelation but it has been characterized as a demonstration of McCain's greater gravitas and authority - or something that offered at least the simple appearance of such. Of course, other than another over-ripe cliched moment where she strung together a mottled twist of words that began with "Say it ain't so Joe" and then largely rambled off into something that reminded me of Bluto's speech from Animal House, she never addressed him in the familiar.

That might have been her high point, though she did demonstrate a dogged ability for staying specifically on point and knew that Israel had at some point negotiated a treaty with Jordan. Nor would she allow anything to stand in her way, early on she simply began disregarding the questions (or not understanding them perhaps), going so far as to note that she "may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear," but that she was "going to talk straight to the American people." Of course, part of that straight talk apparently goes something like "That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism." I only wish that she believed that what the American people craved was intelligible talk, doggone it.
-fp

I want an erection of the heart

I was surprised by how taken aback I was at learning of the death of David Foster Wallace some two weeks ago now. I have not been one of those who tackled his massive Infinite Jest, that 1000+ page tome to postmodern angst and ennui caught in the language of addiction and compulsive action. Rather, I am more familiar with his (more minimalist?) work in such bits as his collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and the nonfiction pieces of "journalism" that appeared in myriad places and publications. In fact, it was just these sorts of essays, ruminations on a (post)modern morality often, that punctuated my months and reminded me of the significance of the man himself - most recently in a near perfect 2004 essay on the Maine Lobster Festival that appeared in Gourmet Magazine; a piece that I took and read (and reread) in the days after learning of his suicide. It was thanks to the thoughtful work of my good friend Jon that I was reminded of an interview that DFW gave to Salon.com after the initial buzz surrounding the publication of IJ. Though it is a decade or so old, it remains a succinct reminder of not only Wallace's concerns, what most motivated his work and life, but also why he was so important an author. Whether it be the valuation and estimation of the work of other authors (and in that a reminder that good writing, though fundamentally a charade, can, as a friend of his had said, give you an erection of the heart), or simply the place of the author and literature in a postmodern world that is seemingly stuck in a cycle of hyper-entertainment and distraction, he spoke out loud the words that many of us who (and lets face up to this) came of age in the late 1980s and the 1990s, who are white and male and found ourselves in a position unfamiliar and unlike that of our fathers. It is too simple to say that our world was decentered and that "power" (in the Foucauldian sense) in the public sphere was slipping (had slipped) out of our grasp, rather the dissolution of the modernist metanarrative that had guided us for fifty or so years - that of the Cold War and righteous warriors - had necessarily faded with the collapse of the Soviet Union and was replaced (whether we realized it or not in the moment) by a narrative of plastic postmodernism. No doubt, the era of image politics had come of age in the US with the ascendency of Ronald Regan to the presidency (as has been noted elsewhere, George Bush actually was all the things that Regan simply pretended to be in the movies and as he aged the boundary between his "actual" memories and his "hollywood" memories became more and more transparent) but it was with the ending of the Cold War that we entered fully into the era that Lyotard had suggested in his short 1979 work, The Postmodern Condition, an era when information and its monopolization in non-governmental organizations pressed the levers of influence and power. Language changed with the ending of the Cold War and other technologies of exchange and transfers of information entered into the (Bourdieu-ian) field muscling onto the ground that had been the privlege of the narrative of the nation previously: "nobody speaks all of those languages, they have no universal meta-language, the project of the system-subject is a failure," wrote Lyotard - the day of a unitary and exclusionary identity has slipped well into the past. This was the tide of things that Wallace did not fight against but wanted to explicate and reveal the source of the alienation that seems to strike so many in today's America.

I can go back and read the work that he left behind at any time, but for now I have another proposition for myself. Recently, a former student in one of DFW's creative writing/literature courses at Pomona College posted a copy of his 2005 syllabus. Sophia, apparently now a graduate student in the hard sciences, nonetheless made reference in comments to her blog that her course with Wallace was her "favorite academic experience" despite the fact that she was a bio major. What I am now proposing for myself is to "take" DFW's course using Sophia's syllabus. I will read the texts listed and write the papers as detailed, and I will attempt to avoid the "rough-draftish" quality of much "semiliterate college writing" that apparently drove him crazy. With pencil, highlighter and a refresher primer on how to do a "close reading" of a text, I'm moving from behind the college lectern and putting myself back in class. I will have to wing some of it, in an attempt to follow as closely as I can his intent for the course, I will have to additionally assign myself at least a dozen smaller readings and produce 11 short writing assignments. Obviously, the elephant in the room here is that DFW is not here to provide his piquant and potentially withering but always spot-on comments on my interpretations and analysis of the assigned works and short assignments so I will be posting them here and leaving them available to anyone who happens across them and wishes to offer their own thoughts or comments. I am going to give myself a year to complete this project and as next week marks Rosh Hashanah, I will mark that as the start date for my class. That said, I will give this one caveat, I have other work, a manuscript, that must - must - be completed and with some luck (lo, how often in the past months have I uttered that simple and ugly phrase?) it will be completed in the next two weeks. It is then that I will actually begin this plan. After all, when another author who was sharing time and space with Wallace at the Lannan Foundation suggested that he was going to blow off the morning's writing to head 50 miles out of town in search of some fresh fish, DFW "looked intrigued, but advised, 'You'd better give that the old sniff test.'" It is time that I start giving much that I decide to do the old sniff test. Thanks Professor Wallace, see you in class - after I finish what I am supposed to finish.
-fp