StephenKMackSD's Blog

Last night, I was reading, just before turning out the light, Cyril Connolly's The Evening Colonnade. He is,now, utterly out of literary  fashion but a pleasure to read, in small doses. In part two titled Divers of Worship, Mr. Connolly is in every way literary, some would even call him pretentious, but the fact of his life was that it was fully literary: he has written three essay on the Dandy that are a joy to read, and that offer insights on the life of the Dandy, as lived by certain notorious historical personalities: Brummell, D'Orsay, Disraeli, Baudelaire and Wilde to name the most famous of that breed of cat. Which led me to a kind of insight of the contemporary American literary scene and the celebrity of Mr. Tom Wolf. Certainly a Dandy of a certain vulgar American cast. In a ungenerous mood one could refer to his style as that of an aging pimp,additionally excessive and cartoonish might be apt descriptors for that Wolf 'style' – this is tautological. I am compelled to admit my crime against logical rigor, but defend myself as being correct as regards the empirical evidence, at least as I see it. But there is one quote from T.H. Lister's Granby (1826) which portrays Brummell as the character Trebeck that is worthy of quotation and remembrance:
"There was a heartlessness in his character, a spirit of gay misanthropy, a cynical depreciating view of society, an absence of high-minded generous sentiment, a treacherous versatility, and deep powers of deceit."
Can we recognize some if not all these traits in our American incarnation of this historical type?
American Litterateur

                

“The custom among the Pirahã Indians of Brazil is that women give birth alone. The linguist Steve Sheldon once saw a Pirahã woman giving birth on a beach, while members of her tribe waited nearby. It was a breech birth, however, and the woman started crying in agony. “Help me, please! The baby will not come.” Sheldon went to help her, but the other Pirahã stopped him, saying that she didn’t want his help. The woman kept up her screams. The next morning both mother and baby were found dead.

The Pirahã believe that people have to endure hardships on their own.

The anthropologist Allan Holmberg was with a group of Siriono Indians of Bolivia when a middle-aged woman grew gravely ill. She lay in her hammock, too unwell to walk or speak. Her husband told Holmberg that the tribe had to move on and would leave her there to die. They left her a fire and some water and walked away without saying goodbye. Even her husband had no parting words for her.

Holmberg was also sick and went away to get treatment. When he returned three weeks later, he saw no trace of the woman. At the next camp, he found her remains picked clean by scavenging animals.”

Sir Politic Would-Be (SPW-B), in the opening paragraphs of his essay of January 10, 2013 titled 'Tribal Lessons' nominally a book review of Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday, willfully provokes his readers to a kind of revulsion at the customs of two tribal peoples. In fact he seems to revel in its recitation.  But the seeming report of the barbarism of these two tribes reflects perfectly the laissez-faire attitude of Modern Conservatism. In it's simplest terms an ethos of survival of the fittest, as refracted through the story that he artfully constructs in service to two rhetorical ends: shocking and manipulating his bourgeois reader into a state of susceptibility to an unfocused wonderment at his sociological/ethical grasp of our political present and it's interaction with 'primitive cultures'. Let the paternalistic characterizations stand as testimony to the patriarchal ascendant.

He also quite gleefully lays waste the Rousseauian myth of the noble savage, a mainstay of the Enlightenment mythology. Never miss an opportunity to exploit an advantage. But following that imperative, might the average reader point out that SPW-B belongs to a tribe that sanctifies the ritual sexual mutilation of eight day old infant males, as initiation into the tribe and a sacrifice to a tribal deity? Or would that constitute rank Antisemitism, a descriptor that seems to be redolent of this political moment.

Philosophical Apprentice      

Sir Politic Would-Be has the answer to so many questions, aided by his newest find, The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy edited by Eldar Shafir, of Princeton. Nothing better than a 'Brand Name Thinker' with an impeccable pedigree will do for our noted inquirer. But he does vigorously dissent over the burning question of 'moderation' or rather his usual list of policy prescriptions, proscriptions. While not forgetting to include those drone targets and the latest historical place holder for the Soviet Union, Iran:
" My problem with these efforts is that they are still so modest. What about the big problems? How do we get people to restrain government commitments now so that debt down the road won’t be so ruinous? How do we calculate the multiplier effects of tax cuts or spending increases among different subgroups of the population, or under different emotional conditions? How do we rig the context of budget negotiations so participants can actually come to a deal? How are people in different cultures likely to react to drone strikes? How do we structure sanctions against Iran to cause the greatest psychic humiliation?
These are the big questions, and most of our policies rely on crude folk psychology from a few politicians. But there’s hope. As Brian Wansink notes in Eldar Shafir’s volume, the 20th century saw great gains in sanitation and public health. The 21st century could be a great period for behavior change."
Political Cynic

One must give Mr.Richard N. Haass his due for resigning his position in the U.S. Government over the Iraq war. A civic act of conscious, in answer to that war of imperial opportunism by Neo-Conservatives, that must be honored as an act indispensable bravery. Can the remainder of his career, in the contested territory of Foreign Policy be built upon such an act? Can this recent collection of Neo-Liberal cliches,a meditation on the coming year titled The New Old Year, it's centerpiece being a possible,argued war with the 'intransigent', 'bellicose' Iran (of current myth) be indicative of his thinking in this historical moment? Regrettably, there doesn't seem to be much here except those cliches. It seems utterly appropriate to expect something more from a man and thinker of Mr. Haass' ethical and professional stature.
Where could a curious, concerned reader look for an ethical/political/intellectual alternative to this shopworn opinionating? My recommendation,for an auspicious beginning point,would be Ulrich Beck's Twenty Observations On A World In Turmoil. Here, collected, are the challenging,surprising and consistently argued positions of a sociologist who breaks free of ethical/political cliche and brings to bear on the world's problems his prescient, ethically engaged intellect. I don't think any reader could ask for a better guide to the myriad problems of our world than he.
Political Observer
      

If your feeling a bit low and need some cheering up,a dose of political comedy is what you need – actually you crave it – then look no further than the latest episode of David and Gail Confront the World at the NYT website. This segment is titled Hagelian Dialectic. Mr. Brooks excels at the telling animated cliche, which leads to the intellectual cul-de-sac of decorous political chatter.
Ms. Collins plays her part as a somewhat doubtful interlocutor and foil to Mr. Brooks’ speculative animadversions with a kind of astonished bewilderment.  One small observation, for a Conservative, Mr. Brooks seems to harbor a wholly mechanistic view of the human person. Quite puzzling.
Philosophical Apprentice

In his long introductory remarks, which take almost half of his essay, Mr. Brooks can't resist a reprise of his oft repeated arguments on the inherent 'evil' of government i.e. The New Deal/Great Society and their 'entitlements' as destructive visitation, indeed, europeanisation of the American nation. The same old party line endlessly repeated, to the point of caricature, is nihilistic self-parody. Mr. Hegel is the end point of this diatribe, awash in hysterical exasperation and premature I told you so's. But first we must take the bitter medicine of American Decline, with a decorative walk on by the dour political romantic,Oswald Spengler. Add to this the 'fact', as asserted by Mr. Brooks, of President Obama's budget being equivalent to Rep. Ryan's 'policy entrepreneurship'.
Mr. Brooks does not address the failure of the 'Free Market' in 2008, and it's continuing failure up to this moment! We live in the reality of failed Capital! Forgive me, I have my own hobbyhorse to ride. The policy dimension that Mr. Brooks presents, for our exploration, in the person of Mr. Hegel, is that he represents a steep cut in American military spending, and his Republican credentials will assist in that europeanisation of a remade America: we are fated to a benighted social democracy and Mr. Hegel is the Trojan horse of a mendacious president. I've condensed the argument. The ascent of Mr. Hegel is the harbinger of the decline of the imperial project and the rise of an unenlightened social democracy, as Mr. Brooks argues it. Another denouement in the American Political Melodrama has occurred. We anxiously await the next act.
Almost Marx
     

This beautifully boxed and carefully confected collection of poisoned bonbons by Ms. Rubin represents the crisis of the waning power of 'The Jewish Lobby' i.e. AIPAC in the wake of the explosive revelations of the Walt/Mearsheimer book. To call this book a public relations disaster for the powerful recipient of American largess, Israel and it's domestic apologists, is to state the obvious: manufactured moral/political hysteria become a dire necessity. Enter stage left, the straw man of Chuck Hegel, exposed as antisemitic homophobe, a creature of the political mendacity of President Obama: a riff on the perennial reactionary myth of the otherness of Obama. He and Chuck Hegel are not one of us, simply put. The apostates cannot be tolerated, to state it in the terms that reflect the current political theology, at least in language congenial to Ms. Rubin and her fellow travelers. In terms of The American Political Melodrama, as replacement for the Fiscal Cliff, it will be an admirable, edifying successor.

Political Observer

The critical reader of Mr.David Frum will note the oft used strategy of letting others speak home truths that might seem disingenuous or simply self-serving, if Mr. Frum himself did the opining.Also, the quoting of seemingly analogous history that takes the domestic sting out of his polemics, like a good trumpet player he knows a muted note sometimes has a more telling effect, when located in foreign climes is another overused rhetorical gambit of Mr. Frum.  He is practiced, glib and utterly well spoken, but if one pays attention to the badly orchestrated campaign against Mr. Hegel, on twitter alone RJC's tweets are desperate even hysterical, it all adds up to a collection of school yard taunts: in sum Chuck Hegel is BAD man! The waning power of the American Likudkiks, the marker being the  Walt/Mearsheimer book, has had a radicalizing effect on AIPAC and it's political allies. Perhaps the point of Mr. Frum's exercise in bricolage, not withstanding Mr. Aron David Miller's intellectual/ethical primacy, is that he doesn't take the burning question of Mr. Hegel's nomination as something that requires his full attention and/or rhetorical energy?

Political Observer

The arrogance of David Brooks produces unintentional comedy:
"Well, I’d like to help the Republicans understand what’s going on in the other camp. First, Republicans should understand the mood in the White House. A month ago, the president and his team were gearing up for a fight. They were belligerent and tough-talking. Now, their mood is one of deep confidence. They’ve had a good month. The business community is on their side. Public opinion is breaking their way. Republicans are disorganized. The Obama folks project the self-assurance of a Duke basketball team warming up against a Division III school."
Mr. Brooks in Delphic mode? But there's more:
" He cannot have a satisfying second term if the next four years look like the last two, with a string of debt-ceiling-type budget showdowns. If Obama’s going to govern the way he wants, he absolutely has to crush the Republicans on the debt-ceiling threat and on tax rates.
He’s going to be willing to fight tooth and nail to put the budget-showdown-era behind us. He simply has to win this. He’s going to be willing to go over the fiscal cliff and blame it on Republicans."
Imagine this scene: Mr. Brooks conducts a long distance mind meld with the president and his entire political team. Spock, the great creation of the creative collaboration between Roddenberry/Nimoy aids in the discovery of the motives of the President of the United States of America! Dare we utter this home truth: Mr. Brooks plumbs the depths of comedy and melodrama!
Yours in astonishment,
Myra Breckenridge