Blindness of the Upper Middle Class Journalist

Posted on 23 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Social Class I have something else to say about Will Bunch. Writing in 2008, he has two big problems with the modern Republican Party: budget deficits and global warming. These are, of course, the great concerns of the upper middle class journalist. He may work out of Philadelphia, but there is a fair amount of Villager in him. The thing I don’t like about his writing is this sense I have that to him it is all very simple: he’s just looking at the facts. And it just so happens that the facts turn out to be what is best for him and his class! What a great coincidence that is time after time after time after time…

Now, I understand: budget deficits can be a bad thing. And when Reagan was racking them up, there was no need. He also racked them up in the worst possible ways: by giving big tax cuts to the rich and spending money on unnecessary military hardware. But Bunch seems to think they are just a bad thing in general. And you know what? For people who own things like bonds, they are bad things. If you own a bond that pays 5% per year, then the lower the inflation rate, the greater your gain! And God forbid that inflation would go above 5% and you would actually lose money! That would definitely prove that we do not have a loving God.

On the global warming issue, I’m with him. It is a huge issue. But it is an issue that only those with a good solid job can worry about. The truth is that fighting global warming could be turned into a huge jobs program. But I don’t hear that from Bunch. I’m not saying he would be against it. I don’t think he’s a bad guy. But nonetheless, global warming is really just a symptom of a larger problem: inequality. We would have solved the problem a couple of decades ago if it weren’t for some really rich people who are making so much money by allowing us to destroy the world. Oh, and an assist by poor workers who are afraid that nice upper middle class intellectuals will destroy their jobs without doing anything to replace them.

I haven’t read much of Will Bunch, but I think he’s quite a liberal guy. He has a blog that is quite good. But there is this problem that I have with political writers. I’m poor. I know my thinking is affected by that fact. But among the upper middle class, there is incredible ignorance of their class biases. It is very much like the way that we don’t notice the air or the way that early cultures didn’t see that the sky was blue. This is because they live in a bubble. They talk to other upper middle class writers and read their work. They don’t read Frankly Curious or the Socialist Worker (although I’m sure at least some of their writers make it into the middle class).

But I think this is a problem. (Of course I think everyone should read Frankly Curious so I too can move into the upper middle class and not see that the sky is blue!) It’s perfectly fine that steel works mostly talk to other steel workers. But when Ed Kilgore and Steve Benen and Greg Sargent are all talking to themselves it creates a troubling situation. In a sense, it is just as bad as the epistemic closure on the right. It isn’t that they aren’t aware of what people are saying on their right, but to a large extent they ignore or at best discount what people are saying on their left. We get this from Jonathan Chait all the time on a couple of issues. They’ve convinced themselves that they’ve found the sweet spot: maximum truth. But it is actually, as for us all, just the truth of their class. And I have no problem with that—as long as they acknowledge it.

And for the record: the sky is mostly blue and would always be blue if there were no ozone in the atmosphere. But ask yourself: what color is the air in your home? Grappling with that question will unlock the problem faced by the upper middle class journalist.

Democrats Must Stop Believing the Reagan Myth

Posted on 23 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

It’s been well over a month since I started reading Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth. It’s an important book and I learned a few things from it. But I come at it from the perspective that Presidents are not very important when it comes to the things we give them the most credit for. In the case of both Reagan and Clinton, they get credit for economic booms created by the Federal Reserve. In the case of Reagan, it was Paul Volcker cutting interest rates, after having brought inflation down by more or less destroying the economy. (There was also the aid of international fuel prices going down, which also had nothing to do with Reagan.) In the case of Clinton, it was mostly Alan Greenspan’s heterodox theories (which turned out to be right) that said that 5% unemployment was not full employment. So presidents: meh.

In international affairs, presidents can have a much bigger effect. And actually, Bunch makes an excellent case that Reagan’s openness to deal with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union on nuclear reductions was a profound and positive legacy. Of course, that’s not what people think about Reagan and the Soviet Union. The myth is that Reagan spent vast sums of money on the military (true) causing the Soviets to keep up (not true) and thus bankrupting them (also not true). Bunch doesn’t talk about it, but people always get the Gorbachev causation backwards. It wasn’t that he liberalized the government; it was that the government decided to liberalize itself, so it elected him.[1]

Bunch spends the end of the book at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. It gave me an idea for a documentary. I could go to all of the presidential libraries and scoff at them. It would not be partisan at all, because I think they are all fakers. Ultimately, that’s a bit of the problem with Tear Down This Myth. The truth is that we mythologize all of our presidents. And I really don’t think the fundamental problem with the Republican Party is that they don’t understand who Reagan really was. Because here’s the thing: all politicians exist in their environment. We all know that Richard Nixon as he existed in 1972 would fit very well in the modern Democratic Party. But we also know that if Nixon were alive in today’s political environment, he would be someone like Scott Walker—or maybe worse: Louie Gohmert.

So who would Reagan be if he were around today? Well, his rhetoric is most like that of Rand Paul if you ask me. He would absolutely be against any increase in taxes. He would absolutely be for gutting the social safety net. He would be (as he was) a clever racist politician. The only real difference I see is that Reagan would be more of an interventionist. But I fully expect Rand Paul to devolve on that issue.

The question that Bunch never grapples with is the effect of Reagan’s rhetoric on today’s Republican Party and I think it is about right. The big problem is not what Reagan means to Republicans. The big problem is what he means to Democrats. From Clinton on, they’ve done nothing but praise him. Reservedly, but clearly. Now is this just good politics because Reagan was so popular? I don’t think so. FDR was hugely popular but you won’t find any Republicans mentioning his name without spitting afterwards. And now Bill Clinton is very popular, but did any of the Republican candidates for president talk about how they wanted to be like Clinton or how they wanted to “end corporate welfare as we know it!”?

Bunch does spend a bit of time on this question. But overall, his message is that modern Republicans don’t understand who Reagan really was. Well, they do. When they talk about how he was a tax cutter, they aren’t talking about how he was a cutter of everyone’s taxes. They don’t care about everyone. I discussed this in some depth last month, Reagan’s Legacy: Tax Cuts for Rich, Tax Hikes for the Rest. He was their man! The modern Republicans understand this and Bunch just doesn’t.

What we need are Democrats running for president who say, “When Reagan became president, this country went way off course. He built up our military to a ridiculous level, even though the Soviet Union was crumbling. He cut aid to the poor. He gave unprecedented amounts of money to the rich. He pretty much destroyed private sector unions. He started a great shift of wealth from the poor to the rich. It is our job to reverse this. It is our job to go back to the days of a strong middle class. Reagan had an idea for this country. It was worth a try. But he was wrong. And now we must fix the problems he created.”

The problem with the Reagan myth is not that Republicans believe it. It is that Democrats believe it.

[1] Years ago, I wouldn’t have used the word “elect.” But the truth is that every country has its Overton Window. Gorbachev was elected. And although it is true that a Soviet Ronald Reagan would not have ever been taken seriously, it’s also true that today, an American Gorbachev would never be taken seriously. Americans greatly overestimate just how much democracy we have.

More Idiocy from Chris Matthews

Posted on 23 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Jonathan Chait offered up a snarky little article this morning, Chris Matthews Goes Tea Party on Elizabeth Warren. What happened was that Matthews was complaining that Washington wasn’t getting the things done that she things should get done. He said things like, “You’re blaming it on the Republicans, but you control the Senate and you control the White House.” To this, Chait right responded, “Well, right, but the Constitution doesn’t say that if the House, Senate, and president disagree on a bill, then best two out of three wins.”

The reason that Chait refers to this as going all Tea Party is that the main thing that distinguishes the Tea Party from mainstream Republicans is this idea that the former think somehow they can will themselves to power. They may only control the House of Representatives, but if they just hold firm the rest of the government will be forced to follow. This is what happened in the government shutdown. The real problem is that on the right there is a certain kind of delusion that we don’t see on the left. For example, I’m a very practical leftist who is open to pretty much anything that works. But I have no illusions that I’m not far to the left of the country. The Tea Party really does think that their policy preferences are popular, when they are actually a lot less popular than mine!

So I disagree with Chait’s contention that this delusional thinking is now breaking out on the left. This is just yet another case of Chris Matthews being a jerk. And he is hardly a liberal. He pretends to be a liberal because MSNBC is now a liberal network. When MSNBC was a conservative network, Matthews was one of the biggest proponents of war. He was also allegedly the main person pushing for Phil Donahue’s firing. And that should tell you all you need to know about Matthews: it isn’t about ideology. It is all about his power and money. His “brand” is as a straight talking truth teller. And the truth he tells is whatever is convenient at the time. It was once really convenient to be a big booster for the Iraq War.

In this interview, Matthews is just trying to sound serious and like an “every man.” He wants to know how the Democrats are going to bring back the middle class. Elizabeth Warren had good things to say. But Matthews complains that union aren’t doing anything—demonstrably false. He says the president says something different every day and he doesn’t know what is going on. And then he gets into his, “Why does the Republican control of the House constrain you?” Mostly, it just seemed like he needed a nap.

I don’t know why Matthews is on the air anymore. He must be good friends with powerful people. Because he’s an idiot. He’s got to know that Obama has, in fact, called for increased infrastructure spending and it has been blocked by the Republicans in Congress—especially because he called for it. Of course, he’s the guy who wrote the totally stupid book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. All he was doing in this interview was pushing the moderate’s answer to everything, “Why can’t the parties just get along?” Well, when one of them manages to win elections by not getting along, there isn’t much the Democrats can do until the voters wake up.

All That Fosse

Posted on 23 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Bob Fosse Last year, I wrote, Apologies to Alan Turing for the birthday post. It’s interesting that his birthday comes just a day after another computer pioneer, Konrad Zuse. But when talking about Turing, I can never seem to get into the work that he did. He was so badly abused by our culture. It is sad. I never forget him. But today, let’s think happier thoughts.

On this day in 1927, the great choreographer and director Bob Fosse was born. In terms of his theater work, it was so great that to this day, people produce musicals the way he did. The only other theater director I’ve seen that done for is Samuel Beckett, and that is most certainly not because he was a great director. Fosse’s approach to choreography was highly stylized. You absolutely can’t miss it. At the same time, from talking to dancers, it was a form of dance that was very hard on the body and often led to injuries and otherwise shortened dancing careers.

I’m mostly interested in him as a film director, because that’s mostly where I know him from. I can’t think of a more consistent filmmaker. And this is despite the fact that his films are shockingly different from one another. He started with Sweet Charity, a musical with fairly standard direction. But the dance numbers were fantastic—both for the dance and for the way they are directed. Here is “Big Spender”:

Then he did Cabaret, which is astounding in the advancement on Sweet Charity. Most notable about it is that he changed the play from a standard musical into a film that had musical numbers only in the scenes in the cabaret. This makes it far more real. He also made the sexual aspects of the film far more explicit—quite a change from when film versions usually toned down or completely changed the sexual content as in The Children’s Hour. Here is one of the great numbers, “Mein Herr.” The song works especially well in the film given that Sally Bowles is actually the opposite of how she is presented in the song. She is fundamentally a romantic:

Next, Fosse made his first non-musical film, Lenny about the rise and fall of Lenny Bruce. I remember the first time I saw the film. I had never seen anything like it. It is presented almost as a documentary. It has since become absolutely standard cinematic technique in films like, Leaving Las Vegas. It is a technique he would refine to a much greater extent in his last film, Star 80. That film is generally thought to be his weakest. I long thought that myself. But now I think the film is perhaps his more profound as he demonstrates that the exploitation and murder of Dorothy Stratten was not the result only of her estranged husband but of pretty much everyone in her life.

Between those two films, Fosse made his masterpiece: All That Jazz. It is a film like no other and I still watch it every couple of years. It pulls together everything in his life. As I talk about a lot around here, I like idiosyncratic art. Well, this film is idiosyncratic art by a master artist. It tells the story of a miserable artist who hates himself and pretty much everything else. Yet the filmmaker isn’t wearing a mask. He assaults every part of the entertainment business and himself with great relish. The best moment in the film is where Joe Gideon is hanging out with a janitor at the hospital. The janitor sings, “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag” at Gideon’s request a few times. It is a rare unpretentious moment in Gideon’s life where he reconnects with what he originally liked about show business: the pleasure of music for its own sake and not as a commodity fine tuned to the point where, at least for the artist, it loses all its charm. Sadly, that scene is not online. (Typical: the scenes I find most important are usually not interesting to other people.) So I’ll show this scene that ought to be shown to all aspiring actors:

Happy birthday Bob Fosse!

Ichi the Killer Is Silly But Not Fun

Posted on 22 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Somehow, the Q Filmcast guys sort of challenged me to watch, Ichi the Killer. Michael tweeted to me, “Have you seen ICHI? You may need some help sorting this one out Frank.” And followed it up with, “Yes, just to hear you attempt to make sense of it would be marvelous.” Now, I was deceived, but it was my own fault. The Japanese word “ichi” just means the number “one.” I have known that since middle school, but it didn’t occur to me until later. So it should be no surprise that there are a few films with “ichi” in the title, to say nothing of “zatoichi.” I saw a brief summary of the 2008 film, Ichi, about a blind woman who is a great sword fighter. It’s based upon the Kan Shimozawa Zatoichi novel series. Alas no.

When I searched for “ichi” on Netflix, I saw the image on the left. I immediately thought, “Oh my; this will not be fun.” Released in 2001, it has all the markings of a Japanese The Marix. I mean this in more ways than you might think because in a very basic way, the film is just torture porn. Most of the main characters in the film seem only able to experience sexual pleasure through violence and pain. But otherwise, I see a lot of the Wachowskis here. The film is divorced from reality in a similar way and is entirely dependent upon dialog to explain what’s actually going on: two defining characteristics of the Wachowskis’ masterpiece. The film is also intensely dependent upon pointless but often stunning special editing effects. And for all I know, it is the Wachowskis who were stealing from director Takashi Miike and not the other way around.

I can see why Michael would imply that the film doesn’t make much sense, because it doesn’t. The narrative shifts back and forth in time — sometimes in ways that are clearly meant to be vexing. The plot is really simple: Jijii is one of the Yakuza outcasts who has decided, for whatever reason to pit the rival gangs against each other. To do this, he has programmed Ichi into a killing machine using hypnosis, phone calls, and a whole lot of plot vagueness. But basically, this is all accomplished about 45 minutes into the film. The rest of the film centers on Kakihara, a sadomasochist who eagerly awaits Ichi’s coming because everyone has disappointed his masochistic side since his boss was killed (at the beginning by Ichi).

It is possible that I don’t exactly get the ending. But for some reason, Jijii programs Ichi to think that one of Kakihara’s thugs (who had in fact once been very kind of Ichi) is his long lost brother. This results in Ichi not killing Kakihara, who instead kills himself. This seems to bother Jijii. Who knows? Maybe Ichi was supposed to kill Kakihara and then the thug would kill Ichi and Jijii would rule the underworld. I don’t really know. The film also has a tag where Jijii is shown dead, most likely killed by the son of thug who Ichi once helped. Is that meaningful? I have no idea.

No, it’s not meaningful. Takashi Miike directs feature length films faster than anyone I’ve ever heard of. I’ve know some silent film directors who were pumping out films faster, but they were short — not two hours long. I think the film is what it appears to be: torture porn. From the filmmakers’ perspective, it is a very thin excuse to do various things with special effects makeup and gore. There is no hidden meaning. There is just two hours of the same kind of stuff. It’s very stylized, often beautiful to look at. The violence is disturbing for that first 45 minutes and then it just becomes funny. And that appears to be how it is intended. It is very much like watching a juggling act. But is there any juggler you’ve ever wanted to watch for over two hours?

One thing that surprises me is that the film is somewhat notorious for its violence. I will admit that there is a lot of it in the film, but it is straight out of comic books. (Not surprisingly, it is based upon manga series.) Ichi cuts his first on screen victim straight down the middle from top to bottom so finely that you can’t even tell he’s been cut until the pieces start coming apart. This gimmick is used over and over in the film, just like the other major gimmick: piercing torture. I didn’t feel any of it worked especially well. Give me Tom Savini any day.

The only thing that really bothers me about the film is that I don’t think that Miike realizes just what a silly film he has made. But it is the silliness of the film that saves it. Because if it weren’t for the excessive repetition of the same disgusting gimmicks throughout the film, audiences would know right away that the plot makes little sense. Major subplots disappear without a thought in the world. In fact, the script shows every sign of being two different films just jammed together. This is a film made by people who are far more interested in their effects than they are the story. It is, in other words, a fetish film.

Does the film work on it’s own terms? Kind of. It isn’t very creative. Some of the acting is downright bad, although the three leads are all quite good. The rest of it is professionally produced, I suppose. The lighting was very often compromised to the makeup effects. And there seemed to be little art direction generally — most scenes were just really boring apartments where all the filmmakers thought was necessary was the collection of needles pushed through the current victim’s face. But in the end, if I want to watch a silly movie filled with gratuitous gore, I’ll watch Dead Alive again. At least that film is in on the joke. I don’t really think that Ichi the Killer is in on its own joke.

Programmable Computers and Konrad Zuse

Posted on 22 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Konrad Zuse It’s quite a day for birthdays, as you can see from last year’s post, The Private Life of Billy Wilder. In particular, three women are retiring today: Meryl Streep, Lindsay Wagner, and Elizabeth Warren. But none of the people really inspired me. And talking about Freddie Prinze (who died at just 22) is too depressing.

On this day in 1910, Konrad Zuse was born. “Who?” you ask? He invented the first programmable computer. Up to that time, people built computers but they did whatever they were hardwired to do. His first attempt was the Z1 computer that he built in his parents’ apartment. It was programmable, reading instructions off “perforated 35 mm film.” I find that amazing. It was made of 30,000 parts and never really worked properly because of mechanical imprecision. As a result, it isn’t generally considered the first programmable computer, but it really ought to be.

Unfortunately, the original computer and the blueprints were all destroyed during a bombing mission in 1944. Toward the end of his life, along with three others and at a cost a half million dollars, he recreated the Z1 as you can see here:

He improved upon the initial computer, creating the Z2, which was based on telephone relays. It took up several rooms of his parents apartment. It is generally the Z3, however, that is considered the first programmable computer. According to Wikipedia, “The Z3 was a binary 22-bit floating point calculator featuring programmability with loops but without conditional jumps.” It was the first of his work to get actual government support—from the Nazis, but what was the guy supposed to do?

Perhaps as important as his hardware work, Zuse realized that coding in machine language was not going to work, so he designed the first ever high level language, Plankalkul (“plan calculus). It was not implemented in his lifetime. It looks kind of like the original Matlab code. But it is the idea that is critical.

After the war, he went into business making better and better computers. He was the first man to sell a working computer (another was sold before his but never really worked). His Z22 computer was the first to use magnetic storage. I don’t think he was much of a business manager, however. His company was sold to Siemens in 1967. I’m sure he was well placed financially, but as is typical, it is not the true pioneers who are rewarded the greatest. This is why the conservative movement fetishizes people who are large scale producers of commodities but not really the people who invented them.

Zuse died in 1995 at the age of 85. So he got to see the full extent of where his work had led. But by that time, he was retired and spending most of his time painting.

Happy birthday Konrad Zuse!

Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner 50 Years Later

Posted on 21 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Fifty years ago tonight, three American civil rights workers with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) were murdered in Neshoba County. They were, of course, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. They had just left the Philadelphia, Mississippi city limits when they were pulled over by a Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff. He arrested Chaney for driving 65 in a 35 zone and took the other two into custody for “investigation.” I have little doubt that there was no reason to pull over the car other than the fact that a young black man was driving. Regardless, it was all part of a conspiracy.

The three young men were held in jail until 10:00 that night. As they made their way out of town, they were followed by the very same Deputy Sheriff who originally pulled them over: Cecil Price. At 10:25, he pulled them over just before they were about to cross the county line. He had them get into his squad car and drove them to a deserted area where he handed them over to a group of fellow Klanmen who beat Chaney, I guess because he was black. Eventually, they murdered all three of the young men with gunshots. Ultimately, fifteen men were tried (seven were convicted) for the crime, but the conspiracy was undoubtedly far larger.

But lest you think this just a story about some southern bigots, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover wasn’t interested in the case at all. He hated the civil rights movement. He thought it was just a front for the communists. As I recall, he was the one that got the myth going that Martin Luther King was a communist. President Johnson had to threaten Hoover to get him to do anything. And rather quickly, other KKK victims were found. According to Wikipedia, “Navy divers and FBI agents discovered the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, 14-year old Herbert Oarsby, and five other unidentified Mississippi blacks, whose disappearances in the recent past had not attracted attention outside of their local communities.”

This is the very definition of terrorism. But those who were convicted for the crimes got tiny sentences. Deputy Sheriff Price got the maximum: six years but served only four and half. The mastermind of the crime was Edgar Ray Killen, a Southern Baptist minister. His case ended in a hung jury because one of the jurors refused to convict a minister. So he stayed free until 2005, when at the age of 80 years old, he was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and given 20 years for each count. He’s still alive. He’ll turn 90 next January.

But if Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner wanted to make a difference, they succeeded far better than they ever could have hoped. The case did manage to shine a light not just on their deaths but on the lives (and often deaths) of the African Americans who lived in that part of the country. Things have improved immeasurably. But there are still people like Edgar Ray Killen who want to go back to the days when blacks just stayed out of the way and never voted. And sadly, many of those people are prominent and powerful members of the Republican Party—not bitter old men rotting in prison.

Did Bush Win Political Capital in 2004?

Posted on 21 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

For ten years, this has been bugging me. After the 2004 presidential election, Bush the Younger said, “I earned capital in the political campaign and I intend to spend it.” Now, for years I’ve been arguing that, Political Capital is a Myth. But people talk about it all the time and I don’t get upset. I don’t care. They’re fools. But just what political capital was Bush talking about?

In the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter by almost ten percentage points. He got 489 electoral votes compared to Carter’s 49. I think Reagan was a catastrophe for the United States, but you have to admit that if anyone had earned political capital, it was Reagan. And he did it again in 1984, beating Mondale by 18 percentage points with an electoral college advantage of 525 to 13.

George W. Bush But did Bush earn any political capital in 2004? He beat Kerry by 2.4 percentage points. He got 286 electoral votes compared to Kerry’s 251. What’s more, if less than 60,000 Bush voters had voted for Kerry in the state of Ohio, Kerry would have been elected president. And I still think that the totally unjust way we do our voting where rich people get to vote easily and poor people have to wait in long lines in the rain could well have tipped the balance. Regardless, I admit: Bush won the election is 2004.

What I think Bush meant when he said he had earned capital was as simple as this: he actually won the election. In 2000, he didn’t win the popular vote. If the recount had been allowed to finish, he wouldn’t have won the electoral college. So all he was saying was, “I actually won this election so you can’t complain!” Of course, the implication here is that Bush presided as president during his first four years with the humility one would expect when one effectively stole an election by way of the Supreme Court. But that wasn’t the case. He ruled from the very first day as though he had be elected by 18 percentage points with an electoral college advantage of 525 to 13.

But the statement was very much what we expect from Bush the Younger: the cheerleader from Yale. I’ve never accepted the idea that Bush was stupid. But he has always been a deeply unserious man. Obama, for all this faults, is a very serious man. In 2012, he beat Romney by 1.5 percentage points more than Bush beat Kerry. He beat Romney by 91 more electoral college votes. He never claimed to have a mandate. And I think we all know what the media would have done if he had said he did: there would have been universal derision. But the media just accepted it coming from Bush.

I remember when I was the head of IT at a medium sized investment company. The owner was a big Republican supporter with pictures on the wall with him and Reagan and the two Bushes. After the 2004 election, I was crushed. But one of the agents (who was also a Republican, but not as hardcore), showed me a little comedy bit from The Tonight Show:

I was a good sport about it, but I didn’t find it funny. First, there was the fact that Jay Leno stopped being funny back in the late 1980s. But also, I thought it was more or less an accurate representation of what we got from Bush and another four years of that was so depressing. But the agent showed it to the owner and he seemed to respond the same way that I did. He didn’t like the idea of us having such an unserious man in the White House. But of course, he was glad he was there because Bush had saved him millions of dollars in taxes.

What’s bothersome there is that the reaction of the agent was more or less the reaction of the country. It didn’t matter that we had a president who took winning re-election about as seriously as winning a beauty pageant. He thought he had been given a mandate because that’s the kind of thing that presidents say. Like Reagan before him, he played the part of President of the United States. But oh how much damage was done by both men.

Afterword

And remember what he was going to use his political capital for: privatizing Social Security. This was not an issue in the campaign. Even if he had won by a landslide, he didn’t campaign on privatizing Social Security. He ran on the fact (and I still can’t get my head around this) that he had allowed the 9/11 attacks. It was the ultimate bait and switch, “Vote for me because I’ll keep you safe (and I hate fags), but then I’ll privatize your Social Security which I know you absolutely don’t want me to do.”

Thankful for Henry Ossawa Tanner

Posted on 21 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Henry Ossawa Tanner - Eakins - Detail It would be fun to write about Mary McCarthy today, given her decades long argument with Lillian Hellman. But regardless that McCarthy was the more serious political thinker, Hellman was the great writer. In a hundred years, people will still be performing The Children’s Hour, while McCarthy will be a footnote, which doesn’t take anything away from her; most of us will never even be footnotes.

On this day in 1859, the great American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner was born. The son of a free black man and an escaped slave mother, he grew up in Pittsburgh. There is a tendency to think of the United States at that time as being divided into the racist south and non-racist north. But that wasn’t true at all. The issue was slavery. Racism was the norm everywhere. As a young man, Tanner found it impossible to become a painting apprentice, because painters simply wouldn’t take on African Americans. Eventually, he was allowed into the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The timing was good, because the great realist painter Thomas Eakins had recently begun teaching there, where he revolutionized the study of art. Tanner became one of his favorite students and even did him the honor of painting his portrait, displayed at the beginning of this article. You can definitely see the influence. But I find Tanner’s work far more compelling. For one thing, Eakins was primarily a portrait painter. Tanner’s subjects were far more diverse. He had a particularly interesting approach to religious painting, which is what he spent most of his later years on.

I’m most fond of his paintings of everyday life. This best known painting is The Banjo Lesson, which in addition to its thematic value makes use of intense shadows, which is typical (though not universal) in his work. From the same period (probably with the same models), is The Thankful Poor:

He also did a lot of landscapes, although few as pure as Georgia Landscape:

Happy birthday Henry Ossawa Tanner!

Plots Are Excuses for Hanging Out in the Writer’s Reality

Posted on 20 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Right now I am listing Aimee Mann’s song “Frankenstein.” It’s kind of strange because I watched Frankenstein and then Bride of Frankenstein just last night. Well, it isn’t that strange. I watch those films a lot. If I like a film, I’ll watch it over and over again. But I don’t bring the song up because of Frankenstein. There is a line in the song, “I won’t find it fantastic or think it absurd; when the gun in the first act goes off in the third.” It is a reference to Anton Chekhov who noted, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” This is a problem.

Why have centuries of audiences loved tragedies and comedies? We all know how they’re going to turn out. Imagine the first four acts of Othello exactly the same: Othello has his little jealousy problem and Iago jabbing at it. Then, at the beginning of the fifth act, Iago has an epiphany, “Why am I doing this?” He runs to Othello and says, “Hey buddy! I am so sorry. I was pissed off at you about passing me up for promotion. Desdemona is pure as the driven snow.” And they both burst out laughing. “I’m really glad you told me that,” Othello says. “Because I was just about the strangle her!” Iago replies, “Well, that would have been a tragedy!” Wiping his brow, Othello exhales profoundly, “I’ll bet after I found out the truth I would have killed myself!” Then they walk out into the fog and Iago says, “Othello, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Other than those few people like me who would think that would be funny as hell, everyone would hate that ending. I mean, what was the point of those first acts anyway? The same goes for the comedies. Imagine if at the end of Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio lifts the veil and finds that it is Hero who he thought dead. But instead of rejoicing, Hero pulls out a knife and slits his throat. Actually, that’s a much better ending. But again, the audience wants what it expects. And Claudio is not the villain of the play (even though he is) and so he gets his happy ending.

Of course, I can see the two plays coming together. Because really: Claudio rejects and embarrasses Hero based upon almost nothing. And then, instead of confronting her in private, he does it in the most public way imaginable. Even if she were guilty, his behavior is abhorrent. So in the “Ballad of Claudio and Hero Part II” all it would take is a fifth rate Iago to move Claudio to strangle Hero. I think people would accept that even though the “Ballad of Claudio and Hero Part I” was a comedy.

The point is that when writing fiction, you have to walk this line where you give the reader what he expects but not so much that it is boring. The worst form of this is the Agatha Christie school of, “Oh, let’s just throw in red herrings.” Her best work is probably Murder on the Orient Express where the red herring is that there are no red herrings. But this is why I think postmodern fiction is a distinct improvement, because it isn’t about anything. It’s like the different between going to a regular party and going to a wedding. The essence of postmodern literature is that you are just going to hang out in a reality for a while and if someone gets married great, but it is hardly the point.

I think that this was always the case. Othello and Richard III are fun because of their smart villains. The overall plot of Much Ado About Nothing is stupid. The story of Benedick and Beatrice is concluded at the beginning of the fourth act. For all I care, Hero could have really died and the play end with Benedick killing Claudio. Although admit it: the play would be better without Claudio and Hero in it at all. The whole thing could be about tricking Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love. Much the same could be said about most of the other comedies.

So I don’t want random guns thrown into stories for no reason. But just the same, I don’t want everything to be important and everything to lead to something else. I just want to go to the party and I don’t want to feel like there has to be a wedding to justify it. Because I know how weddings end.

Afterword

For some reason, this song comes to mind:

I Am the Swampman

Posted on 20 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Donald Davidson I have said it many times before and I stand by it, “It is more important to be interesting than to be right.” It just so happens that usually, the most uninteresting people are wrong most of the time. This is because uninteresting people just think the same things over and over. Take Dick Cheney. Did he really have to make the media rounds for us to know what he thinks of the current situation in Iraq? Of course not! He might as well be a really simple program running on a Commodore 64. But one can be completely wrong and be incredibly interesting. So keep this in mind as you read my next sentence.

The philosopher Donald Davidson was wrong. He could not have been more wrong. And what amazes me is that most people think that he was right. I am speaking, of course, about the Swampman thought experiment. Here it is:

Suppose Davidson goes hiking in the swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt. At the same time, nearby in the swamp another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules such that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson’s body had at the moment of his untimely death.

This being, whom Davidson terms “Swampman,” has, of course, a brain which is structurally identical to that which Davidson had, and will thus, presumably, behave exactly as Davidson would have. He will walk out of the swamp, return to Davidson’s office at Berkeley, and write the same essays he would have written; he will interact like an amicable person with all of Davidson’s friends and family, and so forth.

Davidson holds that there would nevertheless be a difference, though no one would notice it. Swampman will appear to recognize Davidson’s friends, but it is impossible for him to actually recognize them, as he has never seen them before. As Davidson puts it, “It can’t recognize anything, because it never cognized anything in the first place.”

Well, actually, in a trivial way he’s right. Because you can’t just be talking about atoms. You have to get all the quantum states exactly the same. But let’s just assume that Davidson didn’t know any better (which is probably true). In that case, he’s totally wrong.

My memory of what my mother looked like is not the result of my eyes having processed the light reflected off of her. Sure, that was the way that I got the information. But then that information was stored in the atoms of my body. Note: I don’t say brain, even though clearly that’s the biggest part. But I’m sure that we think of ourselves as beings in much more than just the brain. Anyway, the brain is hardly discrete from the rest of our bodies. But it doesn’t matter. All the atoms and quantum states and all that jazz are the same.

What bothers me about this thought experiment is that most people seem to think that Swampman wouldn’t have all the information that the original did. This implies that there is you body and then the rest is a kind of fairy dust. (Maybe a soul?) But think about it for a moment. What does it mean for my eyes to have gazed upon my mother. The eyes I have now are different. Every year, the vast majority of your body’s cells are replaced. You are not the same person you were a year ago or even an instant ago. So who exactly are “you” anyway?

This is an issue that has long fascinated me. I don’t think I exist as a going concern. Rather, I exist for an instant, to be replaced by another version of me that is very similar, but not the same. This is why humans so love narratives. That’s what keeps us going: the narrative that we are a single thing. I have in my mind that I am the same person who was playing on the sidewalk at four years old. But I’m not. I just have that memory. And I have all the memories in between and so I think it’s all me. But it is not.

(So why don’t I just kill myself? I mean, since I do nothing but die over and over again at every instant? Just because I think these things doesn’t mean it feels that way. It seems like I’m the same person who started writing this article. And even if I’m not, why should I stop future iterations of me from their instant of existence?)

Getting back to Swampman: what I’m saying is that what goes on with the creation of Swampman is what goes on with us all the time. These eyes I have right now have never seen my mother who has been dead for over a decade. And yet I recognize her when she shows up in my dreams. The people who want to say that Swampman would be different in a fundamental way are missing the nature of our existence.

But you will have to forgive me if we disagree. I understand that a lot of people think there is some “secret sauce” that makes us conscious. All I can say is that you need to read more Schopenhauer. And then you have to obsess about it for a couple of decades.

Small Victory for Homeless in Venice

Posted on 20 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

People don’t seem to understand that it isn’t 1830 anymore. You can’t just, “Go west, young man!” Thus I find laws that attempt to limit the options of the homeless far beyond heartless (Which they certainly are!) and all the way to brainless. In 1983, the City of Los Angeles passed a law that stated that no one could use their cars as living quarters. Like most laws, it pretty much laid unenforced until some powerful people decided that had a problem that the law could be used for. The “fine” people of Venice got upset because there were so many homeless people living in their cars. So in 2010, the police started using the law to arrest the homeless and impound their cars—cars, I’m sure, that most of them lost because it is expensive to get your car back.

What exactly it meant tht people were using their cars as living quarters was a matter of debate. In some cases, it simply meant that the police saw food in a car. According to Scott Shackford at Reason Magazine, one woman was arrested after being pulled over. That is to say that she was driving through Venice. So the police decided that the law was so expansive that no one who was living in their car anywhere in the world could even drive in Venice where the rich folks might be offended by the sight of a passing car drivin by one of those people.

Another example sounds like it comes from a modernization of a Dickens novel. A homeless man started sleeping on the sidewalk to comply with the law. You see: it is legal to sleep on the sidewalk. But it started to rain, so he sat in his car to stay dry. The police arrested him and impounded his car. Welcome to America: home of the free (if you’re rich). This 1983 law is nothing more than criminalizing poverty.

I have had the experience of being homeless twice. Once was when I was quite rich. It was just about impossible to find an apartment in Silicon Valley at the height of the dot-com boom. My wife and I had a nice Subaru Outback, but we were still harassed a fair amount. We were never arrested—just told to move along. I’m not at all certain that these instructions were legal, but we’d learned long before that you should not mess with cops. Just as in the case of the 1983 law that was rarely applied until 2010, a cop can always find some excuse to put you in jail and impound your car.

The second time I was homeless, I was very poor. And as a result, I was much more anxious. I moved my car excessively. I never read by flashlight for fear that it would attract attention. And the terrible thing is that there are people (kids mostly) who will terrorize you if they find you living in your car. So you have to worry about everyone. No one is your friend. Eventually, I got a job working in a gas station, so I was able to park there without too much concern. (One of the homeless people in Venice was arrested for living in his car on private property—a church—so you never know.) And then I got a room and within six months I got a high tech job that paid me as much as I’ve ever been paid. I’m a very lucky person because of my background. Most of the people being abused in Venice are not luck; they have no way out.

Despite all of this, the story has a happy ending. A group of homeless plaintiffs took the city to court. A lower court found in favor of the city. Of course! Why not, given that it was just a bunch of homeless people? But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a unanimous decision (by all Democratically appointed judges) found that the law was unconstitutionally vague. As Shackford put it, “[T]he description of what behavior violates the law is so unclear that it was being used by police to (surprise!) harass homeless people who believed they were actually complying with the law.” (I love the parenthetical “surprise!” That’s my kind of libertarian: the kind who knows that the official power will be used to abuse the powerless. Of course, the powerless would fare even worse in a libertarian utopia. But that hardly matter right now.)

The city has decided not to appeal the case. Instead, they are going to craft new legislation that “respects both the rights and needs of homeless individuals and protects the quality of life in our neighborhoods.” I take this to mean, a constitutionally viable way of abusing the homeless. Notice that they are trying to balance the basic needs and rights of the homeless against the “quality of life” of the rich people. Maybe if the rich people don’t want the homeless parking on their streets, they could do something to help the homeless out. No! That would be un-American!

Afterword

My first novel was “Kamping on Asphalt.” It involved a group of people who lived at and around a KOA. I wrote it back in 1998. That picture at the top of the page kind of sums it up, except the novel is kind of a comedy. It was my attempt to write a modern Cannery Row.