First Nanny

Now, the new, improved First Lady has suddenly emerged as full-blown First Nanny in "Partnering with" -never say "scolding"- the restaurant industry to cut down on the portions it serves. This is typical of the top-down unrealistic idealism that pervades certain circles of our society, and the audiences it garners, who believe that celebrity somehow equals authority. There' s not the slightest reason to believe that Michelle Obama is any better informed on this issue than the next person, and yet she receives instant credibility from the media.

In fact, there are many very good reasons why this proposal is going to fail. Restaurants serve large portions of food in this country because food is a relatively cheap part of overhead, and the portions justify the amount the restaurants must charge. Many people who don't want large portions simply get a doggie box and take what they don't eat as leftovers, which helps with their perceived value of the meal. And people who are still hungry will probably just eat more, regardless of the portions being served.

And, last, the timing of such an initiative is extremely poor. The country is in a recession, which has cut into restaurant revenues, and the proposal is to do something that may cut into them even more. Push this enough, and it could precipitate the ultimate disaster.....people might actually learn to cook for themselves.

How Can I Interpret This?

The following was recounted to me, and did not happen to me personally; I should feel myself having suffered temporary insanity if it had.

The interlocutor of the person relating the story was talking about a boy who grew up with parents who were both deaf.

He remarked, "Isn't that a wonderful way to grow up?"

Does this carry the probable meaning, that in the case of this particular boy, growing up with deaf parents enabled him to better relate to the disabled (however arguable the point), or

...does it imply that all persons would be better off being raised by parents with disabilities?

I think the first is questionable, the second preposterous, and yet I cannot escape the feeling (knowing this person only slightly) that he really believes the more global proposition to be true.

We live in a marvelous age, wandering around in our tiny hermetic worlds.

Moynihan Lives

The fuss over the misbehavior of a variety of pro sports athletes is merely in microcosm of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about, writ large:

"There is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos... And it is richly deserved."

-- Daniel P. Moynihan, Family and Nation [1965]

And, as he wrote before he died, what applied largely to the black community in 1965 has spread to include all sectors of society. The manifestation of this in irresponsible and brutal men has become an equal opportunity employer.....

Notes on Tragedy

Contrary to the common use of the term in our degraded times, where every stubbed toe is a "tragedy," the essence of tragedy lies in its inevitability. It may be that the inherent tragedy in representative government is that the representatives must lie repeatedly to their constituencies, making promises they cannot keep in order to be elected and re-elected.

The real damage is that the false promises comprise a secular Slough of Despond, in which any common regard for society is lost.......

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."

- Thomas Jefferson

Vital Data and Postscript

VITAL DATA

"There are two restaurants here and a tearoom, two bars, one bank, three barbers, one with a green shade with which he blinds his window, two groceries, a dealer in Fords, one drug, one hardware, and one appliance store. several that sell feed, grain, and farm equipment. an antique shop. a poolroom. a laundromat. three doctors. a dentist, a plumber. a vet. a funeral home in elegant repair the color of a buttercup. numerous beauty parlors which open and shut like night-blooming plants. a tiny dime and department store of no width but several floors. a hutch, homemade, where you can order, after lying down or squirming in, furniture that's been fashioned from bent lengths of stainless steel tubing, glowing plastic, metallic thread, and clear shellac. an American Legion Post and a root beer stand. little agencies for this and that: cosmetics, brushes, insurance, greeting cards and garden produce -anything - sample shoes - which do their business out of hats and satchels, over coffee cups and dissolving sugar. a factory for making paper sacks and pasteboard boxes that's lodged in an old brick building bearing the legend OPERA HOUSE, still faintly golden, on its roof. a library given by Carnegie. a post office. a school. a railroad station. fire station. lumberyard. telephone company. welding shop...and spotted through the town from one end to the other in a line along the highway, gas stations to the number five."

- William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)

.....and from the same author, in only a slightly different place: "Things have changed since then, but in none of the respects mentioned."

....and I would add: "Except- less of everything described, none of some, and the only addition, which is of questionable merit, of two meth labs."

Leverage this....

This post does a pretty good job, and in acceptable English, in explaining the origin of the shitrain that has fallen on the economy in the last two years. Interestingly enough, the terminology used here can be directly substituted for text like "buying on margin," "margin calls," etc., which were employed 80 years ago, when the stock market collapsed in October 1929 following years of speculation.

The object of our current malaise is real estate, of course, rather than stock certificates. Lots of people assumed it couldn't happen with real estate, because the collapse that resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930's was based on "paper profits" that resulted in worthless stock certificates, and the current imbroglio has tangible material assets behind it. Yep, but there was supposedly "real" assets behind RCA stock in 1929, too, but those assets were impossibly overvalued. Rather like some termite-riddled shack in Southern California being valued at an absurdly inflation million bucks before the bottom fell out this time. Some animated corpse in a suit once said that "An item is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay," or something to that effect.

Up to a certain time, the willingness of people who are ignorant of history, or the context of their own times, or just plain ignorant will persuade them to pay hugely inflated prices for something. Suddenly one morning it all looks like fantasy. Consult the great Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th century; it's only different because the subject was tulips, instead of stocks, real estate, gold, or baseball cards, or the armshells of the Trobriand Islands.

But this will simply recur as long as the human race exists, because it is based on what people want to believe.

This Country is Going Nuts

This is a compulsory blog, and I'll cut right to the chase: The United States of America is developing some sort of mass psychosis, which was moved into high gear by the events of 9/11, and manifests itself every time there is some -perceived- security incident.

It is very, very clear in the events surrounding the recent "airliner en route to Hawaii turns back" story.

Either there is something in this story that has not been reported, or we are going batshit as a nation.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

- Friederich Nietzsche

Whitman in jeans

A fascinating juxtaposition in the new Levi's ads is the poetry of Walt Whitman sandwiched with the consumerism of "We're funky; buy our duds!"

An even more fascinating element of the choice of Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers! as the audio track to gangs of mænads galloping over verdant landscapes, or rushing with torches through the night like some deconstructed Sturmabteilung.

In particular, I wonder how much flak Levi Strauss will receive for the use of the stanza:

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Whitman of course is now a darling to some because of the homosexuality that has been deconstructed from his work. However, given the intent of the Levi's ad, and its obvious political connections, one cannot help but wonder at the apparent advocacy of the ownership of firearms and melée weapons....although I approve of it.

A valid comparison?

George Will comments on the Obama administration's politicizing the arts, and

This.

Of course, to some people there is no comparison. The ends, as always to some humans, justify the means. We will be told that the ends of the former are noble, humane, and socially true, therefore whatever exigencies, whatever horror must be perpetrated to carry them into effect are just. The ends of the second example were horrible and perverted, etc.

The thing is, if you dug up anyone in history who had ever attempted to direct an entire society and its culture to their own agenda.....they would tell you exactly the same thing.

Living in Hyper Reality

While the United States cannot be said to have a proper hereditary aristocracy (unless one count those crowned by money, such as Rockefellers, or by public mania, like the Kennedys), we have an upper class pursuing a variety of "lifestyles" who comprise our Dons, Boyars, Mandarins, or similar de facto in our society.
These people might be characterized by having lots of money, but since few go around wearing hats with their combined assets printed on them, they can be difficult to identify. And, these days, even to be a billionaire has gotten rather ho-hum, in a time when garbage collectors an assembly-line workers have become millionaires. Hence, a problem that the Lords Twit-Stickybottom or the Marquis de Fromage don't have to deal with.
What we do to fulfill Thorstein Veblen's dictum that wealth/power must be displayed is to parade these folk constantly in the media, the amount of attention and size of retinue or retainers, fawners, and general hangers-on determining public status, leaving us to simply assume the amount of decimal points in their net worth commanding such attention.
A century ago, this class was comprised largely of industrialists. There are some now, Trump, Gates, etc., but in general it's become in bad taste to generally proclaim one's status by mere empire-building. Hence, Trump secures his status by his alternate roles as sometime pundit and game show host on TV.
The main groups in the U.S. living in what one pundit has referred to as "hyper reality" are movie and other media personalities, sports figures, politicians...not by any means all of any of these categories. We have to have standards, after all. Added to this must be any member of the hoi polloi who happens to break through for their 15 minutes of fame on any given day....or who the media will grant an extended stay by by disappearing under particularly lurid circumstances, or be the victim of a particularly hideous or grotesque murder. We also must not omit the criminals perpetrating same, preferably in the categories of "mass murderer," "serial killer," "pedophile discovered to be living in neighborhood" or anyone providing adequate titillation on America's Most Wanted.
As the relentless egalitarianism of our age attempts to grind us all into the same mold, these people have been elevated by the only criterion that can possibly matter: popularity. It's all a big award show, and it should be named after only one of the dozens out there: The People's Choice Awards.
Unless you're caught up in popular culture, it's all so banal and tawdry as to defy description.....but that doesn't matter. Vox populi, vox dei, and the people have decreed -at least in the United States, that They Will Be Entertained. Do so, and you will be suitably rewarded, whether you are Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt, Donald & Ivana Trump, or Michelle & Barack Obama. The reward isn't just money, power, or status; it's the relentless attention that feeds back the simulacrum of of the reality of one's own importance. Thus, we have a class of people that anyone with a microphone and camera automatically assumes to be experts on anything whatever......and the person in question, due to the positive feedback they receive, largely believes this to be true.
This phenomenon can even be observed spreading throughout the media such that a person who might in past years be asked to pronounce on their own specialty or something they actually know about -motorcycle racing, for example- is now asked to forumulate Middle East policy.....and actually expected to advance an opinion, which will be presented as the absolute equal of anyone else's. To write such a thing is absolutely ludicrous, and would seem the subject of fiction; and yet it's our daily news. The show must go on.

A Question of Character

.....which is, we are assured by many moderns, irrelevant and part of the bad and flawed past. Nevertheless, it lies at the root of misunderstanding the actions of such nations as China and Russia. Yes, nations, like the individuals of which they are composed, have a character. That character doesn't change with the label of the decade, or of the century.

China's character is fundamentally ethnocentric; the name of the nation, which may be rendered phonetically "Chung-kuo" means "Middle Kingdom." This doesn't mean halfway, it means it's seen by its people as in the center, just as in the Ancient Middle East, e.g., when Herodotus reported that the Persians considered all other peoples civilized by their strict geographic proximity to Babylon. In the case of China, other nations are barbaric and fundamentally inferior, and fall away in that inferiority strictly by their closeness to the Han (Chinese). Such a philosophy is reinforced by the simplest of expedients. Let's consider the current Olympic Games. Any activity in which the Chinese do not medal is considered irrelevant, unworthy, or simply ignored. Anything in which they do medal is considered irrefutable proof of cultural and racial superiority. All such actions are characteristically Chinese, and are displayed and recorded in their culture for centuries, and have nothing to do with any labels like "Communist," "Democracy," or any of the rest of Western socio-political terminology.

Russia's character is fundamentally paranoid schizophrenic. All other nations are regarded as fundamentally untrustworthy, and having at best negative, and at worst sinister motives toward Russia. All Russian interaction with other nations may be understood in this light. Consider the current invasion of Georgia. Many journalists are currently using terms to describe the Russians lying about a cease-fire while continuing their military operations against Georgia such as "inconsistent." No, they're not being inconsistent. They they are lying to buy time, in a very calculating manner that is perfectly consistent with the way Russians have acted for centuries. Then those nations opposing them will be faced with the fait accompli of the Russians basically occupying and controlling Georgia, and completely unable to field any force of their own to oppose Russia. Thus Russia's policy of paranoid expediency will have been vindicated -again. A Russian would not be resentful if his country were described as having a "cynical foreign policy." He would only display bewilderment...."What other kind would we have?" People only become confused by thinking about any "new, improved, post-Soviet Russia." No: there is only Russia.

End of story.

Another Theory of Spam

I have come to the conclusion over the past few years that day-to-day news is almost completely irrelevant. This is possibly supported by the statistical theory labelled The Black Swan, which posits that most important events and discoveries are unexpected....and the endless babble that has become the 24-hour news media is hard enough to deal with in separating signal from noise the way it is. Therefore, I need only wait for the important to occur, and if it's important enough, it will make itself manifest.

I have therefore concluded that "news" as it is understood in the early 21st century, as regurgitated by media in any form, is almost all identical to what is branded "spam" in e-mail, only different in that it pretends to information rather than advertising.

In the past three months, I have performed the experiment of having Google's News Reader perform the sole function of channeling news to my laptop, and the Tragic Lantern stays OFF. TV was a part of the familar everyday world to me for around 50 years- but I can't say that I miss it. It is now used for the sole function of prerecording shows or movies for entertainment, or showing same on DVD.

This in no way applies to local news, but "local" to me also has a very limited definition, and it's surprising how fast it falls off beyond Sangamon Township, where I live in what used to be a rural environment, but where those of us who moved here for reasons of our own have been joined by large numbers of city dwellers, who carry most of their urban predelictions with them as they fashion their estates -complete with drywall barns- in what they deem "rural splendor."

As far as "thinking globally," that was just another passing hallucination. Human beings are capable of dealing ethically with an absolute maximum of about 150 people; the rest is a mathematical abstraction.

I can have no impact on the fate of the dolphin or snail darter, the Amazon rain forest or the coming engineering of the human genome.....nor, as T.S. Eliot said, "-was meant to be." This attitude would no doubt horrify much that is embodied in fashionable ethics. I don't give a damn.

Moral obligations to distant others falls off fairly directly, and logarithmically, as the distance. I have the highest degree of obligation to my own beliefs and principles, followed by my friends and family. I have only to acknowledge the humanity of the inhabitants of Sulawesi or Central Park West. Although I have apparently omitted any connection to my nation, that, of course, is a convention. At my age, I consider my duties to society discharged (and more), and any ongoing reckoning I make, per formula, every April 15th.

Before I made this transition, I was like a happy man with a persistent deerfly buzzing around his head. Now the fly is gone.

"Chance" of Morons in the Neighborhood

OK, I've only got one thing to say about the controversy over whether Fred Rogers is responsible for the "entitled" generation: Get Over It, Take A Pill, Soak Your Head. Nothing on TV is responsible for anything; it's entertainment. Now repeat that until you never feel the need to take this kind of nonsense seriously, ever, ever again.

Also: "Grown Up" means being responsible. If you're an idiot, running around with some sense of entitlement to an A instead of a C, or that you've some right to esteem without having done anything estimable, that's your problem.

My Kind of Town

Spring in Newport, RI.....there may be better places to have a getaway, but this town is pretty nice. I suspect that late May is the lull between the rather low-level Winter and the hectic touristy Summer. Not our sort of place socially, of course. Apart from the Navy, much of the town seems to be folks with aspirations to gentility, but with more money than anything...including the knowledge of what they really want. They buy a house that was built in the early 18th c., but the founders of Providence Plantations who fled the New Jerusalem in Massachusetts are no closer to them, and no more of their mental furniture than those days in History class they missed. The old Quaker clapboards are mixed in with Victorian wedding cakes and the elegant Federal piles with fanlighted entrances....all telling their stories, if some part of a lifetime is spent learning to understand the tale. And there's precious little appetite for that, and, I suppose, in any age. What drives occupancy of these houses is the same thing that moves the owner to buy an Audi because the neighbors on each side have BMWs or Volvos: exclusivity. The overwhelming need of so many to somehow be distinguished from the mass of the middle class. We have no titles of nobility, and a ragamuffin's dress may belong to a bum or billionaire in this society, and so a particular accumulation of property becomes our identity, and a monument that will be raffled off like Scrooge's old bedclothes when we pass.

As for the rest of Newport- pretty much like the rest of these United States. Unserviceable traffic problems, made worse here by the insular geography. Street signs posted at regular intervals declare "Restricted Parking Resident Vehicle by Pass only 6PM - 6AM, May through October." These are the signs of our times.