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“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
  In Flanders fields.”

-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. In Flanders Fields. 1915.
Although in the United States November 11 is a day to honor soldiers generally, it must be noted that the date of Veterans Day is the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. To many other countries in the world, it is called “Remembrance Day”, and places more emphasis on the World War I anniversary. Also, because of my own interest in that period of history, I cannot help but think of that war in particular. (The above poem was one of the most famous written in World War I.)
In many ways, it is grimly appropriate that it should have evolved from being a holiday in honor of those who fought in World War I to being one in honor of all who served. For World War I was an event that radically shocked people. I think that, more so than previous conflicts, it laid bare the horrors of war for all to see. I think people came to have a better understanding of how much suffering soldiers must endure, and why we must honor them for their sacrifice.

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“Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.” –traditional Guy Fawkes night rhyme.

Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot were popularized by the film V for Vendetta, and now it seems like everybody who’s protesting anything makes references to him. I’d heard of him before the movie came out, and always thought he sounded like a pretty interesting–pardon the semi-pun–guy. Then I read about him on Wikipedia and thought that his plot sounded kind of stupid. It’s not everyone who fails so spectacularly as to have a holiday dedicated to their failure.

But if nothing else, it makes for a good excuse to have a bonfire, and I think that it’s a good, melancholy sort of holiday, well suited to the season. In some ways, this atmosphere transcends the political purpose of the holiday. (For me, at least.) As Thomas Hardy put it in his novel The Return of the Native:

 “It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.”  

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Private Buffoon has an interesting post about the history of cholera and how Dr. John Snow‘s study of it in 1850’s London led to our modern-day understanding of epidemiology.

I read a great book a while back about this called The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson. It’s a fascinating book, though I would caution against reading it when you’ve just eaten, or are about to eat.

Most of the book is about the Broad street cholera outbreak, but the last chapter is a philosophical rumination on the structure of cities and city life. Both parts make for good reading. Just be aware that the title of his post applies to much of it.

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I’ve been wanting to write a post about history for quite some time. But I can’t.

History is such a broad subject that everyone who loves it is generally forced to pick a particular period which interests them, and focus on that. And I confess, I prefer some periods to others; I have a particular liking for the American Revolution and World War I. It was one of these that I was hoping to write a post about.

But this, in many ways, goes against what I love about History in the first place. What is so wonderful about History is the Grand, almost Cosmic sweep one feels when studying it. So awesome is the scope, so tremendous is the scale, that it is frankly impossible for anyone to fully comprehend. The only field which can compare is Astronomy–and truly, what is Astronomy but simply the ultimate in History?

For this reason, it is impossible for me to write cogently on the subject. For me, it’s too broad a field to really settle down and just write something coherent about a specific time period. I find that I am always distracted by other times; other epochs, and of course, other people. There is something poetic about history that defies clinical, scholarly writing.

In the novel Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres, there’s a part where one of the characters is trying to finish writing the history of the Greek island of Cephallonia that was started by her late father. She works on it so much, and works with so many scholars that, as de Bernieres writes:

 “…she began to feel in danger of finishing up by writing a ‘Universal History of the Entire World’, because everything connected to everything else in the most elaborate, devious, and elegant ways.”

This is how I feel when I try to write about history. It is so overwhelming that it is hard to put into words, it can only be experienced viscerally.

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This past September 26 was the fiftieth anniversary of the first Kennedy/Nixon debate in the 1960 Presidential Campaign. It is famous for being the first televised Presidential debate, and subsequently as an example of the influence television could have on a campaign.

Everyone knows the story: Nixon looked haggard and ill, Kennedy looked fit and healthy. Some say that Kennedy’s appearance in that debate was what won him the election. I feel that is only partially true–what helped Kennedy here was not just his good looks, but mainly his charisma, which was now being shown to a wider audience than in any previous election.

In fact, to me, this debate marks the moment when, because of television, charisma emerged as the most powerful force in U.S. politics. Nixon represented what Max Weber called “Legal Domination“, whereas Kennedy represented “Charismatic Domination“. My view is that Kennedy’s victory demonstrated that television had now enabled charismatic domination to come to the fore.

The real question, I guess, is: was this a good thing or a bad thing?

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On October 3rd, Germany will make its last payment on reparations for World War I.

It’s an odd thing; World War I was one of the most tremendous conflicts in history, and yet people know relatively little about it because it is so massively overshadowed by World War II.

Which is ironic, really, because World War II was just a continuation of World War I. Germany was bitter about the treatment they received at Versailles, and it was that which brought about the rise of the Nazi party.

I guess what’s really interesting is to think that the reparations are only ending now. I mean, World War I is still impacting Germany’s budget and economic policy. The war is ended in 1918, but its consequences are still being felt today.

I always find that kind of thing interesting, in a very tragic way.

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Writes Andrew C. McCarthy:

“The energy and the logic on the right wants Big Government dismantled. Very simply, it has been tried for almost 80 years, it does not work, it cannot work — not if you accept that there is a human nature and that it will always assert itself.”

Really, it just “does not work”? Like, at all? So, everything has just been rotten for us since 1933?

Economically speaking, from about 1953 to 1968 was about as good as it got for the USA, or really anywhere in the world. And, of course, “Big Government” did win us a little thing called World War II.

I’m not a big fan of “Big Government”. I think FDR was and is rather overrated as a President. But you can’t just ignore history.

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I was reading about the late historian Howard Zinn, and I found out that, among other things, he was no fan of President Woodrow Wilson. He once said:

“One of the things I want to do is to create a new set of heroes… instead of Woodrow Wilson, who was a racial segregationist and who got us into World War I, I would suggest Helen Keller. She protested against World War I.”

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Zinn was quite the left-wing radical, and proud of it. But you know who else doesn’t care for President Wilson? Popular TV host Glenn Beck, who says things like:

“Now, let’s look at one of the early 20th century progressives — I hate this guy — Woodrow Wilson, lauded by modern day scholars, ranked eighth on a U.S. news survey of our greatest presidents. Who did they survey? Your professors. Ask them why…. 

Wilson, this SOB — I hate this guy — he had different ideas. He started — he started to do all kinds of things. He imprisoned non-nationalized Germans in internment camps. Who the first people to round them up and put them into a camp? Woodrow Wilson. He had 6,000 people forced into internment camps. Wilson also made the decision to re — listen carefully — re-segregate government offices.”

It’s not a terribly big deal, in the scheme of things, but I do find it sort of amusing that both a far-left, socialist professor like Zinn and a right-wing anti-communist, anti-progressive, anti-socialist like Beck both hate the guy.

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I read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism when it first came out in 2008, but now that it is part of the Tea Party canon, I thought I’d try to go through it again. Besides which, I’ve posted numerous times on here about many of the issues Goldberg discusses in it, so it may be useful to go over it again.

There are two major errors I can recall just by skimming through it, both of which undermine some of its rather interesting observations:

  1. Goldberg puts too much stock in labels. So, those who called themselves “Progressive” in the early 1900s are of the same “family tree” (to use Goldberg’s metaphor) with those who do so today. The most fundamental instance of this problem is Goldberg’s oft-repeated use of the standard “Right vs. Left” dichotomy across both time and cultures; as in the chapter “Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left”. This is a mistake for reasons which I explain here, and I think it undermines the entire thesis to an extent.
  2. The issue of Nationalism and how it relates to Fascist movements is one which Goldberg does not spend enough time examining. This is a very dangerous thing to do, considering that what we classically think of as “Fascism” (Mussolini, Hitler) is very nationalistic, which, if Liberals are supposed to be Fascists, does not mesh well with the common Conservative idea that Liberals are anti-American. (When asked about this in an interview, Goldberg responded: “I just would want to emphasize that that ultra-nationalism comes with an economic program of socialism. There’s no such thing as a society undergoing a bout of ultra-nationalism that remains a liberal free-market economy. The two things go together…Today’s liberalism, there’s a strong dose of cosmopolitanism to it, which is very much like the H.G. Wells “Liberal Fascism” I was talking about … These trans-national elites, the Davos crowd who really want to get beyond issues of sovereignty…I think that is much more of the threat coming from establishment liberalism today, but I do think there is a lot of nationalism there too.”)  

Still, these issues aside, it makes for an interesting read. Perhaps I’ll post more in-depth points later.

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“…[A] certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”–Max Weber on Charisma.

“The cult of personality surrounding George W. Bush was abominable. It might have been even worse than the one engendered by Barack Obama. The United States has suffered three consecutive administrations of Presidents with severe narcissistic disorders: God knows we don’t need another.”–Christopher Knight, proprietor of The Knight Shift, recounting the recent history of U.S. elections.

A cult of personality must have at its center a person of extremely high charisma. Indeed, it is one of the defining aspects of charisma itself that it engenders this cult-like behavior in those surrounding the charismatic person.

As I have tried to establish on this blog, charisma is also key to winning elections in the United States in modern times, just as Paul Graham observed in his excellent essay. This being the case, however, it is all too likely that cults of personality will continue to form around Presidential candidates. Indeed, in this day and age, it’s almost a prerequisite.

I think Matt Taibbi was on to something in his bleak, cynical profanity-ridden tirade “Mad Dog Palin” when he wrote:

“…huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters.”

It is fitting that Taibbi used the analogy of television shows. Back before radio, and especially television, charisma’s impact on elections was considerably less than it is today. But nowadays, a less capable individual with charisma will get noticed and adored, while a more capable, non-charismatic individual will be passed over. History seems to have decided that the great turning point was the Presidential debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy’s charisma, they say, won over the television audience, and provided him with the edge he needed to win a close election.

Of course, charisma was a factor long before modern technologies enhanced the distribution of it. But, in times past, it was used to greatest effect mostly by prominent military leaders. Caesar and Napoleon achieved power through instilling fierce loyalty in the men under their command, and using their military force to gain power.

But now, mass communication makes it much easier to “transmit” the charisma, and so, in the developed world at least, military coups have been replaced with charismatic leaders who sell themselves as appealing individuals to the populace at large. Hence, the television analogies.In some ways, then, it is not humans who have changed but rather our technology that has facilitated the charismatic domination by these individuals. And, in its way, it is better that it should be so; after all, is not the endless conflict of these cults at least now being fought with votes instead of swords, guns and bombs?

All the same, it seems that Democracy is now reliant upon endless personality cults to sustain itself. I do not know if the current and past two Presidents really did have “severe narcissistic disorders”, as Knight believes, but to a large extent that is irrelevant. They must behave as leaders of a cult to maintain their power. In the end, they must use the worshipful tendencies of their ardent supporters, whether they want to or not, in order to achieve their goals.

This is, I feel, a dangerous situation. The blind loyalty felt by the devotees to their political messiahs is something which fundamentally alters the nature of the political conflict. And it is this, I believe, which drives the oft-bemoaned lack of “civility” and “moderation” in today’s discourse. Cults are not rational, but emotional.

What makes this all the more troubling is not that it is a corruption of the democratic system, but rather that it seems to be the logical conclusion of it. The average voter, after all, cannot really be expected to keep up with the nuances of the issues. To do so requires too much time. Therefore, rooting for the most appealing personality, as Taibbi says, is the only way most people can hope to participate in the political system at all.

So I think we must resign ourselves to the fact that charisma–and the resultant cults of personality–are going to be the driving energy of our political system for the foreseeable future. The best we can hope for, at this point, is probably that our elected leaders will not abuse their charisma. Given the corrupting influence of power however, that seems unlikely.