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You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than the flames
that fence in the world.
The fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!
— people and powers —
It lets me imagine a great energy
is moving near me.
I believe in nights.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours
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This is a love poem to darkness: Mother Night from whom we come, darkness in the sense of great energy and potential that lies in not knowing. It’s not knowing that allows us to imagine gods, demons, ghosts — or, now that gods, demons and ghosts have fallen into disrepute, some great cosmic energy reaching us, flowing around us.
It's the Kantian Sublime, and the astronomer's unending feast and frustration: what about dark matter and dark energy? Will we ever know more than four percent of the universe?
Winter Solstice is the time of the year when we speak about the light, and rejoice that days will grow longer now. Without light there would be no life as we know it, nor would we see the the beauty of the world. For me, there is hardly anything as beautiful as light in a forest, filtered through leaves and needles, the shifting lacework of shadow and light.
But I also love darkness and I’m appalled at the idea of heaven that is eternal day. Night is soothing, and of course more mysterious, more like a work of art, with fewer details. Rilke loves the night the way we may prefer black and white photography: it’s more poetic, atmospheric, mysterious. “Less is more.” We can read our own meanings into the unknown.
The German original has marvelous music: “Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme, / ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme” My favorite rhyme is “Mächte/Nächte = powers/nights. Let’s make it easier to pronounce: Macht/Nacht — and now we see the similarity to English: Might/Night.
Science is a candle in the dark, Carl Sagan said — he who certainly loved the night. Science is actually driven by the unknown, by questions, by mystery.
Rilke, like all great poets, is ultimately a poet of the hard-earned affirmation — praising life in spite of the knowledge of suffering and loss. His, in the end, is a poetry of trust. He trusts the darkness to contain beauty. He trusts his own unconscious, which stems from that rich darkness. Life is worth living and it will be all right in the end. More than “all right” — there will be beauty.
My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me;
I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
~ Rilke, The Book of Hours
We often say, with a shrug, actual or implied, “Life goes on.” That implies the indifference of life, and a kind of indecent hurry, not giving us the time to grieve. But Rilke says, “And the song goes on, beautiful.” That song goes on even in the silence.
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WHY IS WAITING FOR GODOT A PERENNIAL CLASSIC?
~ Why do theaters keep presenting Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot? Somehow, this long, apparently dystopian play has become as perennial as The Music Man. Samuel French, Inc., which licenses it, reports that Godot will be professionally produced at least ten times around the world in the next three months, nearly 65 years after it first premiered. And the play’s cultural reach is even greater than these production numbers indicate. Already this year, Stephen Colbert appropriated it to skewer the health care debate, and Elon Musk named his nearly-impossible-to-build-but-finally-working tunnel driller after it. That’s the kind of longevity and cultural impact that most playwrights would kill for. So what’s Godot‘s secret?
The play is strong on its own merits, cultural zeitgeist aside. It manages to combine a specific tone and characters with an elusive setting and arc. From our position in the audience, we watch two men, Vladimir and Estragon, and listen to their dismal, circular debate about whether Godot will show up and what they should do if he doesn’t. While the men and their momentary visitors, Pozzo and Lucky, are distinct, nearly everything else is open for interpretation, from the set (post-Apocalyptic or wintertime?) to the costumes (former businessmen gone to ruin or vaudeville performers?) to Godot himself (God or . . . just some guy named Godot?).
And it’s always these same elements, pared to the bone. Because of Beckett’s demands, productions of Godot rarely change. And although theaters have ignored his dictates, what he wanted is what we most often see: four male actors, the dead tree set, the uncut dialogue, the gloom. Where Shakespeare’s words are endlessly adapted—cut up, re-worded, placed in new settings such as the controversial production of Julius Caesar at the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park this summer—Godot does not change to suit us. Among our own changing circumstances, it abides.
Luckily for Godot, although perhaps unluckily for us, existential crises, whether of humanity or of the individual heart, have not abated—and so despite the show’s stasis, we always see ourselves in it. Whatever we audience members bring to the performance, whether we’re thinking of the concerns of a dreary office job or a dying romance or, say, our elected official’s portentous threats of nuclear annihilation, Godot reflects and reveals our concerns back to us. It’s a little depressing to realize that humanity has changed not a whit in 65 years, I suppose, but there’s also perhaps a small bit of hope in seeing that we’re never exactly alone.
With Godot, every part’s the challenging center of attention; there are no maids or butlers here. That torqueing, circular dialogue? A challenge. Keeping the audience interested, even laughing, when there are only two of you onstage for many long minutes? A challenge. Finding new life in a play that most people who sit in the audience will have some preconceived notion about? A big, meaty challenge.
One of the pleasures of being alive is to approach challenges, especially those that are just on the edge of our capabilities, and push ourselves to meet them. I’d call this feeling a kind of joy, and, for theatre people, Godot provides it. It’s a bleak show that reminds us of our mortality, but it’s also a tour de force of skill and passion by (one hopes) the finest actors around. The audience can sit through two hours of mutterings, abuse, portent, dread, and harrowing confrontations with mortality at least partly because the very aliveness of what is happening onstage is apparent.
(Of course, we are not entirely fooled by even the most skilled performance: we know that that theatre is, ultimately, falseness. Let Estragon and Vladimir, Lucky and Pozzo rage: we understand that they’ll be laughing it up in their dressing rooms in a bit. This helps.)
One of Beckett’s main ideas in Waiting for Godot is: you only live once. He doesn’t mean it as a slogan or an excuse for bad behavior. He means it as a warning, or possibly a curse, and we keep showing up to hear it. Take this passage, when Vladimir says to Estragon, about Godot’s imminent arrival: “He said Saturday. (Pause). I think.”
“You think,” Estragon replies.
“I must have made a note of it,” Vladimir says. The stage directions tell us that as he looks for the note, he “fumbles in his pockets, bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.”
Here’s another Beckett reminder: this is what’s ahead for all but a few of us. I know exactly what he means, because I’ve seen my loved ones decline, and I’m entirely too aware that before too long, I’ll most likely be fumbling around in miscellaneous rubbish, too.
Momento mori, though, is not the end of what this play gives us. It points to more than just the despair that we know in our bones; there’s also an endurance we recognize. At the end of the play, Estragon says, “I can’t go on like this,” and Vladimir responds, “That’s what you think.” What Vladimir means—what Beckett meant, writing just after the end of World War II—is that we’ll go on because that’s what we humans do. It’s not beautiful or hopeful, necessarily. It just is. At the end of the show, Estragon and Vladimir famously don’t move—but they don’t die, either.
There’s pleasure in that for the audience, as odd as it may seem. To watch Vladimir and Estragon go on not going on is a kind of catharsis. Catharsis most often happens when we see actors expressing emotions that we feel simultaneously, and that happens in this play. For long moments, we sit while they stand, all of us waiting together. But then, Estragon and Vladimir are left to wait forever, lacking a resolution, while the rest of us get to leave their dour wasteland and pass back into our own lives. They don’t move, but we do, to our relief.
It’s enough to keep us coming back. More than half a century on, the play still has a gloomy magic. We still hear the lines of universal pain, still feel the tedium of existence. Which brings me to my pet theory, the truest reason why I believe it endures: we return to Godot at least partly to be able to walk out of Godot. It’s very grim, but it’s also finite. Our lives may be too, but we rarely enjoy the end of them. However, Godot ends, and we leave, perhaps moved or changed, but definitely free. We’ve slipped in and out of an apocalypse that feels nearer every day on the play’s coattails.
Putting on the show, or sitting in the audience of a production of it, feels like whistling past a graveyard: we do it because, damn it, we’re alive and we can. What joy. ~
It’s certainly an unforgettable play, an always-relevant commentary on the essence of life; arguably. it’s waiting. Aside from the time after we happen to be in love, aren't we always for something? Rilke says we're waiting for something great to happen in our life. Henry James (The Beast in the Jungle) says: something unusual, extraordinary. We're waiting for a vision, a miracle (sometimes that long-promised medical miracle), for the Prince or Princess, for real life to start . . . for retirement . . . and then finally for death.
“We are bored when we don't know what we are waiting for.” ~ Walter Benjamin
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“Many nights of 1974 were devoted to the question of whether a woman should telephone a man.” ~ Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road
Oriana:
The novelist Mona Simpson happens to be the biological sister of Steve Jobs. She didn't meet him until she was 25.
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THE BIG LIE AND ATTEMPTED SELF-COUP
~ The observations [that it was not a coup] are based on the idea that a coup is a sudden, violent seizure of power involving clandestine plots and military takeovers. By contrast, Trump’s goal was to keep himself in power, and his actions were taken over a period of months and in slow motion.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a coup attempt. Trump disguised what he was doing by operating in plain sight, talking openly about his intent. He normalized his actions so people would accept them. I’ve been studying authoritarian regimes for three decades, and I know the signs of a coup when I see them.
Technically, what Trump attempted is what’s known as a “self-coup” and Trump isn’t the first leader to try it. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) pulled one off in France in December 1851 to stay in power beyond his term. Then he declared himself Emperor, Napoleon III. More recently, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated a self-coup in Venezuela after losing the 2017 elections.
The storming of the Capitol building on January 6 was the culmination of a series of actions and events taken or instigated by Trump so he could retain the presidency that together amount to an attempt at a self-coup. This was not a one-off or brief episode. Trump declared “election fraud” immediately on November 4 even while the votes were still being counted. He sought to recount and rerun the election so that he, not Joe Biden, was the winner. In Turkey, in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan successfully did the same thing; he had called elections to strengthen his presidency, but his party lost its majority in the Parliament. He challenged the results in the courts, marginalized the opposition and forced what he blatantly called a “re-run election.” He tried again in the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019 but was thwarted.
There’s a standard coup “checklist” analysts use to evaluate coups, and we can use it to assess Trump’s moves to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power. To successfully usurp or hold power, you need to control the military and paramilitary units, communications, the judiciary, government institutions, and the legislature; and mobilize popular support.
Let’s see how well this applies to what Trump has done.
THE MILILTARY: During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump drew Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper out of a White House meeting to follow him for a provocative photo-op in front of a historic church. Paramilitary forces under the president’s command cleared a passage for his group across Lafayette Square. Trump was testing the military and the Pentagon to see if he could turn the U.S. armed forces into his own “Pretorian Guard.” The blowback from this episode emphasized the nonpolitical position of the U.S. military, but there was sufficient lingering concern that just days before January 6, 10 former Defense secretaries—including Esper, who had been forced out of his office for insufficient loyalty—felt compelled to issue an unprecedented public letter reminding Defense Department officials of their oath to uphold the Constitution.
THE COMMUNICATIONS: In the old days, coup plotters would seize the Central Telegraph or Post Office, and later, radio and TV towers. Trump put a loyalist in charge of the Post Office. He did not take TV and radio by storm, but he discredited the “mainstream media” that was critical of his actions as the “enemy of the people” and recruited or pressured Fox News, Newsmax, OAN and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into participants in his efforts to sway public opinion in his favor. Twitter, in essence, was Trump’s equivalent of the TV and radio tower. He directly messaged the 88 million people who “followed” his account. He used social media and cable news to propagate false self-serving narratives, reinforce messages to provide justification for his actions, and mobilize his supporters.
THE JUDICIARY: With the help of Republican lawmakers, Trump stacked federal courts with what he kept calling “his judges.” He successfully pushed through the appointments of three new Supreme Court justices ahead of the presidential election. He made his expectation clear that if the Supreme Court had to settle an election dispute, then “his justices” would tilt the verdict in his favor. Erdogan did the same in Turkey, purging the judiciary and installing loyalists who facilitated his rerun of the 2015 election and sentenced political opponents to long prison terms. Trump frequently called for investigations into his opponents and for courts and law enforcement to “lock them all up!”
GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS: As in Turkey, Trump purged Cabinet members and career officials who resisted him. He bypassed Congress and installed acting officials in crucial national security positions like the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, and, briefly, the director of National Intelligence. He made it crystal clear that personal loyalty was the primary factor for candidate selection. He removed Esper after he lost the election. Attorney General William Barr resigned in the same period amid rumors he would be sacked for failing to declare massive election fraud. Trump wanted officials in place in January 2021 who were entirely beholden to him and likely to support his efforts to stay in power.
THE LEGISLATURE: Finally, Trump usurped the Republican Party. He claimed the more than 74 million who voted for him last November as his personal base—his popular support. He threatened to destroy the careers of Republican members of Congress who did not favor overturning the election result. At the January 6 rally preceding the storming of the Capitol, Donald Trump Jr. even referred to the GOP as the “Trump Republican Party.” In the end, even after the Capitol was seized by Trump’s violent mob, 147 Republican members of Congress, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, did endorse some of Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results and overturn the constitutional order. So did Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and six other politically ambitious senators who wanted to tap into Trump’s popular support. In this way, Trump’s control of the legislature and a significant popular mandate was almost within his reach.
Finally, Trump usurped the Republican Party. He claimed the more than 74 million who voted for him last November as his personal base—his popular support. He threatened to destroy the careers of Republican members of Congress who did not favor overturning the election result. At the January 6 rally preceding the storming of the Capitol, Donald Trump Jr. even referred to the GOP as the “Trump Republican Party.” In the end, even after the Capitol was seized by Trump’s violent mob, 147 Republican members of Congress, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, did endorse some of Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results and overturn the constitutional order. So did Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and six other politically ambitious senators who wanted to tap into Trump’s popular support. In this way, Trump’s control of the legislature and a significant popular mandate was almost within his reach.
After the election was declared in favor of Biden, Trump refused to concede. He never stopped lying about the outcome to his base and the rest of America. He deployed Rudy Giuliani and his legal team to contest every single postelection juncture. He harangued state election officials in phone calls and in person to intimidate them into repudiating or even changing the vote tallies. He told Vice President Mike Pence to block the formal election certification process in Congress, which was beyond his constitutional authority. When Pence refused, Trump rallied thousands of his supporters to “stop the steal” on Capitol Hill.
So, what thwarted Trump’s slow motion, in-plain-sight attempt at a self-coup? Fortunately, there was pushback from all the key institutions you need for a coup. First, the military and other parts of the government resisted Trump’s efforts to personalize their power. Second, major media outlets reported the facts truthfully. Social media outlets flagged the president’s lies about the election—albeit belatedly—and Twitter and Facebook ultimately cut off his accounts. Third, the judiciary and courts held firm. “Trump judges,” all the way up to the Supreme Court, respected their oath of office and rejected the president’s appeals to overturn legitimate election results. Fourth, state and local government officials refused to be swayed. They repeatedly called out the lie that Trump had won the election. Finally, in the legislature, the vice president performed his constitutional role, as did the Republican Senate majority leader and most of the Senate. The only two elements that rallied behind the president’s coup attempt were the handful of senators and the majority of House Republicans and his popular support, in the form of an insurgency—the mob that stormed the Capitol.
The good news for the United States is that Trump’s self-coup failed. The bad news is that his supporters still believe the false narrative, the Big Lie that he won the election. Trump has not repudiated it, nor have the House and Senate Republicans who voted against the Electoral College results. Millions of people still think the election was stolen. They still support Trump the person, not the Republican Party, and many are prepared to take further action on his behalf.
As in the case of other coup attempts, the president’s actions have put us on the brink of civil war. Trump did not overturn the election results, but, just as he intended, he disrupted the peaceful democratic transition of executive power.
Unless the Big Lie is thoroughly refuted, we can expect more attempts to subvert the constitutional order from Trump’s supporters—and we still have to get through the January 20 inauguration. The president’s actions and his falsehoods have shattered America’s democratic norms, exacerbated its political divisions and put people’s lives at risk. Five people died during events surrounding the storming of the Capitol, including a member of the U.S. Capitol Police force. Many of the members of Congress who backed Trump’s efforts were themselves at risk of injury or death.
If we are to restore democratic norms and make sure this does not happen again, these congressional Republicans will have to take personal responsibility for their actions in support of Trump’s coup attempt. They must tell the truth to their constituents about the election and what the president tried to do in January 2021. They owe it to the people they represent as well as the country they serve. ~ Fiona Hill
Mikhail Iossel (Facebook):
In 1861 Senator Stephen Douglas said there were just two parties in the United States: “patriots or traitors.”
Here we are again, 160 years later.
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Without Twitter, Trump is nothing.
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TRUMP AND THE “LOST CAUSE” OF THE CONFEDERACY
~ As the Trump presidency comes to a close after a sound defeat, and after four years of having led a movement that many agree has undermined our Constitution and the nation itself, it is difficult not to see the parallels between his lost cause and the failed cause of the Confederacy in 1865. As individuals carried the flag of the Confederacy, the flag of rebellion against the United States, into the Capitol, it was a moment not lost on historians — and a moment of dire concern for most Americans.
Mr. Trump’s feeble message to his stalwarts about going home and keeping the peace was similar in tone to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s admonitions in the aftermath of defeat. “I think it wiser,” he wrote, “not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife.”
Lee was referring to the creation of monuments, but he was essentially telling those who admired him to “go home” and keep the peace. Yet by the time he made those comments in 1869, the myth of the Lost Cause and its justifications for Confederate defeat were in full flower. And it was Lee — not President Jefferson Davis, whom many white Southerners blamed for their loss — that helped to personify the narrative of a just cause. He was a leader who had not failed the white South; rather, he had been failed by others. He was also the man they believed best represented the values of their cause.
Mr. Trump’s lost cause mirrors that of Lee’s. His dedicated followers do not see him as having failed them, but as a man who was failed by others. Mr. Trump best represents their values — even those of white supremacy — and the cause he represents is their cause, too. Just as Lee helped lead and sustain the Confederacy over four years, Mr. Trump has also been a sort of general — in a campaign of disinformation.
And if there was ever a campaign of disinformation, the Lost Cause was it. The Confederacy, the lie went, failed only because of the North’s superior numbers and resources. But it went further than that. As Edward Pollard, the Richmond editor who coined the term “Lost Cause” wrote in 1866, “The Confederates have gone out of this war,” he wrote, “with the proud, secret, dangerous consciousness that they are the BETTER MEN, and that there was nothing wanting but a change in a set of circumstances and a firmer resolve to make them victors.”
This constitutes another parallel to the movement Mr. Trump has created. Under a change in circumstances — overturning the results of the election — the better man would have won. This is the “dangerous consciousness” of Trump’s supporters. Like Lee’s Lost Cause, it will not likely end. When Lee died just five years after the Civil War, the myths around Confederate defeat and efforts to memorialize it were growing exponentially throughout the South. The Lost Cause did not belong to Lee; Lee belonged to the Lost Cause — a cultural phenomenon whose momentum could not be stopped.
Even if Mr. Trump were to remove himself from public life in the coming years, his lost cause and the myths he’s helped create about elections, voter fraud and fake news will likely continue, a cultural and political phenomenon that shows no sign of ending.
Like the original Lost Cause, today’s movement has been aided and abetted by the president’s field generals — many of them Republican members of Congress. They espouse the same language, stoke the same flames and perpetuate the same myths — all to incite a base of voters to keep them in office. It also ensures that the “sores of war,” received in battles to restore white supremacy in the face of an increasingly diverse polity, not only remain but become gaping wounds that fester with racism, sexism, homophobia and nativism.
There is a saying that the South lost the war but won the peace — that military defeat did not stop the Confederate cause and that the Lost Cause was not entirely lost. It was won through the rewriting of history, electing officials who sought to reestablish political and social control over freedmen and women, through violence and draconian legislation, and by perpetuating the mythology that theirs was a sacred cause and that white Southerners were a patriotic people who had done nothing more than to try to preserve states’ rights.
Mr. Trump’s tweet to his followers echoed these same sentiments. He referred to his cause as “sacred” and to those who supported him as “great patriots” and admonished them to “Remember this day forever!” This is how the original Lost Cause emerged, and if history repeats itself in the decades ahead, Trump Republicans will continue to defend what he began, think of it as a patriotic duty, and not only will they “never forget,” they will most likely perpetuate these sentiments onto future generations.
This is how the myth of Lost Cause played out in the states of the former Confederacy. It grew in strength, found support among white Northerners and has lasted for generations such that even today, more than 150 years later, people defend its basic tenets.
Mr. Trump’s lost cause, however, is far more dangerous because it affects more than a region; it is national in scope. It has ensnared everyone from Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas to over 130 Republican members of the House to the Proud Boys and Women for Trump. Democrats may be able to win general elections, but Trumpism will live on in Republican-dominated legislatures whose members remain in power, in some cases at least, because of voting restrictions and district gerrymandering.
The constant refrain coming from Republican leaders is that the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is “not who we are.” And yet how else are we to explain what happened? If it is not who we are, then all members of both parties should reject this 21st-century lost cause. But too many Republicans haven’t — and unless they do, its impact could last for generations. ~ Karen L. Cox, professor of history the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Adam Johnson, 36, of Parrish, Florida, has been arrested and is now in Pinellas County Jail; the man with the horns has been identified as Jacob Anthony Chanceley, 33, and has also been arrested and charged.
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THE POWER OF FALSE NARRATIVES
~ I was ready to comment on our lack of foresight as a nation, and then the events of January 6 explosively demonstrated how dangerous our blindness, whether deliberate or not, has become. The ideas that we are still the world leader in terms of democracy, freedom, opportunity and leadership persist, but are no longer a reflection of reality. The US is no longer the land of opportunity. For instance, my own grandparentts, like John Guzlowski's parents, immigrated with nothing, worked hard, and were eventually able to buy property, and improve their lives —going from slave laborer or peasant to landlord. This kind of social mobility, of opportunity to improve one's state and quality of life was an actual lived reality. Parents could see their children regularly have social and economic lives better than they had, and children could expect lives better than their parents'.
This is no longer true. In recent generations children have fallen behind the previous generation in terms of economic status and in fact, can expect lives less prosperous and with less opportunity than their parents had. If they manage a higher education they are saddled with monstrous debt, at the same time that education no longer constitutes a surety of getting a good job. Many cannot afford to live independently, afford rent or a mortgage, or marriage and family. As the gap grows ever wider and deeper between the rich and the poor, and even accelerates, as has been happening here since Reagan, the sense of betrayal, of being cheated, the anger, bitterness and despair, grows and accelerates as well.
This is a volatile situation, ripe for exploitation by authoritarian power seekers. Fascism becomes more and more possible, more and more attractive to those feeling the anger of the
disenfranchised, eager to find scapegoats to blame, eager for revenge , eager for a powerful leader who promises to "set things right" and put them back in their proper place, on top. They are ready and eager for the fascist opportunistic false narrative that will exploit their feeling of being cheated, ignored, left out, and forgotten, they are ready for the great leader who will eradicate the "enemies" who have cheated them of their rightful and deserved prosperity and power.
So not only have we been blind to the changes sure to come as a result of climate change..changes that are already eroding our advantage in the world economy, we are also blind to the erosion of our position as leader in world influence..assuming we are still envied and regarded as the best and the brightest place to live, with the best opportunities and best standards of living. People still, for instance, speak of our health care system as the best in the world, even as it is demonstrably not, and is not even accessible to many, because all is determined by cost, not need.
This kind of blindness, of false narrative, is useful to those who benefit from it. The one percent. The powerful and rich. And I think it's largely responsible for our unpreparedness yesterday. Even though it's been in the works for months, and for the four preceding years, we didn't really expect it. We were shocked and shaken, and the security and police were not ready for it. If we had been, the insurrectionists would never have gotten as far as they did, into the very heart of the capitol. So on live TV we watched an attempted coup, not in some poor banana republic, but in our own.
But as you say, everything is both good and bad, threats are also opportunities. The current situation is a test of our democracy we may fail, but may also succeed in reaffirming and renewing. It's too early yet to say.
Interesting times. Certainly out of joint. And we are set to make it right. ~ Mary McCarthy
Yes. To me, the greatest false narrative was one accepted by many Germans after World War One: Germans would have won the war if they had not been “stabbed in the back.” Who stabbed them in the back? The Jews.
It was absurd on the face of it. German Jews were widely known to be German patriots and lovers of the German culture. During WW1, they fought and died for Germany. But the great lie, repeated often enough, and the overwhelming need for a scapegoat, turned out to have a horrific power.
This man has been identified as Robert Keith acker of Virginia. He has an extensive criminal record.
In the US, the myth of the nobility of the Confederate “lost cause” is said to have made the South “lose the war but win the peace” and subvert theReconstruction. It’s alive even 150 years later, causing harm and division even today.
On a minor level, it is still a shock for me to remember that decades ago, things always seemed to be improving — and now suddenly the quality of many goods is shoddy. Minor, yes, but symbolic. Much worse, the social mobility that made America a legend and a magnet for immigrants (including highly educated immigrants — remember the “brain drain”?) is no longer a given, to put it mildly.
I’m still trying to digest Wednesday’s horrific events (although actually not the worst — imagine if there’d been more dead). And the grotesque aspect of it — e.g. the guy in a faux-Viking/shaman costume. Still, that truly awful image: a man parading with a large confederate flag through the seat of the government.
I visited the Capitol during my first month in this country, when I happened to live in Washington, D.C. I was awed by the place — as all visitors seemed to be. I'm sure none of us could imagine that anyone, least of all any American citizens, could desecrate it.
As for the “banana republic,” one of my perceptions of America, already the first year, after seeing both Inner City in Milwaukee and South Side Chicago (I was yet to witness rural poverty, the mental illness and empty-eyed alcoholism there), was that it was two countries in one: a rich country, and a third-world country contained within a first-world country.
Now, to be sure, every country has its rich people and its poor people — it’s just that seeing poverty in America is somehow more startling. And that may be because of the false (or at least out of date) narratives you mention.
And now, for someone who grew up under a dictatorship, it's startling to see some Americans (frankly, any Americans) opposed to democracy, eager to obey their Führer.
By the way, here is a video narrated by a British reporter who was inside the Capitol — it’s no longer surprising, but it’s still unnerving: https://www.upworthy.com/new-footage-inside-capitol-riot
Mary:
That Confederate traitor flag carried through the Capitol says it all, the unresolved past our poisonous inheritance..still virulent enough to kill.
Oriana:
Nothing upset me as much as the sight of the Confederate flag in the Capitol. True, it wasn’t flying from the Capitol instead of the US flag — thank goodness for that. But one normally carries a flag to display it as a sign of victory. “See, we won — the Confederacy has won,” the flag meant to symbolize.
Fortunately, the elections in Georgia came just at the right time to offset that brief Confederate moment. The times have changed, and the past, though still virulent, cannot be restored.
The man has been identified as Kevin Seefried and is under arrest.
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A literary footnote:
Hamlet:
Let’s go together,
And still your fingers to your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint — O curséd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.
Hamlet says this after his father’s ghost reveals to him the crime of Claudius (Act 1, Scene 5, 186-190)
A dislocated shoulder would literally be “out of joint,” calling for a competent healer to “set it right.”
But this time what caught my attention was not “the time is out of joint” — brilliant as that is. It was the repetition of “let’s go together.” The only hope is people working together to restore decency.
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“To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid.” ~ Jane Austen (1775-1817)
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FOUR ANCIENT APOCALYPSES
THE STOREGGA SLIDES
Until about 8,000 years ago, the British Isles were a peninsula, joined to mainland Europe by a strip of chalk downs, swamps, lakes and wooded hills. Today, we call this submerged world Doggerland.
Today, fishermen routinely bring up carved bone and antler tools from the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who lived here. But by the end of the 7th millennium BC, a warming world caused sea levels to rise. The people of Doggerland must have watched with dread as their villages were swallowed up one by one. But one event would turn the slow advance of the sea into an apocalyptic terror.
The edge of the Norwegian continental shelf is an underwater cliff that runs for six hundred miles along the Atlantic Basin. And one autumn day around 6225–6170 BCE, this cliff collapsed. An estimated 770 cubic miles, or over 50 Mount Everests, of rock broke off and slid into the deep ocean. The rubble flow reached a speed of 90 mph underwater.
Meanwhile, on the surface, the ocean bent into a tsunami of unimaginable force. The waves may have reached initial heights of 260 feet, striking the Norwegian coast with 130 foot breakers, and Scotland with waves 65 feet high.
As for the people who lived in the low-lying fens of Doggerland, scientists believe this tsunami would have been catastrophic. A 16 foot wall of water buried settlements and farms beneath the waves. And there they would wait 8,000 years for the nets of fishermen to dredge up their remains.
Doggerland
(also called Dogger Littoral) was an area of land, now submerged
beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to
continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea levels around 6500–6200
BC. Geological surveys have suggested that it stretched from where
Great Britain's east coast now is to the present-day Netherlands,
western coast of Germany, and peninsula of Jutland. It was probably a
rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period, although
rising sea levels gradually reduced it to low-lying islands before its
final submergence, possibly following a tsunami caused by the Storegga
Slide ~ Wiki)
THERA ERUPTION
During the mid-second millennium BC, one power dominated the Mediterranean. From their capital on Crete, the Minoans’ influence reached Cyprus, across the Greek islands and into modern Turkey and the Palestinian coast. They left behind remarkable paintings and pioneered technological advancements like indoor plumbing. They grew and flourished. That is, until one summer day around the year 1,600 BC.
The volcano of Thera, on what is now the Greek island of Santorini, erupted with the force of two million Hiroshima bombs. The destruction would have been virtually instant, eradicating all life on the island. Today, you can stand on top of cliffs 1,000 feet high that form the bowl of the Santorini crater, and imagine the vast tsunamis that rippled across the sea, the sky blackening overhead. Minoan settlements on nearby Crete were swept away.
The event devastated the maritime trade that was their lifeblood, and the Minoan empire all but collapsed overnight. In the centuries that followed, they would disappear entirely, even down to their name (the word “Minoan” is a Victorian invention). The eruption sent 24 cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere, four times more than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. It blocked out the sun and threw the world into a period of bitter cold. Famines spread in Egypt as crops failed, and evidence of the eruption can even be found in the earliest Chinese written chronicles.
“At the time of King Chieh the sun was dimmed,” the records say. “Three suns appeared… Winter and summer came irregularly … Frosts in July.”
THONIS/HERAKLION
Between the 6th and 2nd centuries BC, the Egyptian city of Thonis (known to the Greeks as Heraklion) was one of the busiest ports of the ancient world. Located on the shores of the Mediterranean, Thonis was the port through which olive oil, wine and copper flowed to the rich lands of the south, and gold, incense and papyrus spread north to the rest of the Mediterranean. It was the Venice of Egypt, a series of islands and sandbanks joined by bridges, pontoons and a grand canal connecting its two ports. Its towering buildings must have looked like they would last forever. But a rare phenomenon known as soil liquefaction would soon spell its doom.
The heavy buildings of Thonis were built on soft coastal ground made of clay. Loose, sandy soil of this kind, when saturated with water and struck by earthquake tremors, can undergo a sudden change that makes it behave like liquid. This is still a challenge to modern architects in earthquake-prone areas like Taiwan.
As earthquakes rocked the Mediterranean in the final centuries of the first millennium BC Thonis began to sink into the sea. Commerce stopped flowing into the city, and at the end of the 2nd Century BC, its grand temple to Amun collapsed. It seems the Egyptians tried to save their city: ancient shipwrecks discovered in the bay seem to have been scuppered intentionally as a measure against subsidence. By the 8th century AD, Thonis was completely swallowed by the waves, and only its name lived on.
THE HECKLA 3 ERUPTION
The Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the second millennium BC was thriving. Languages and cultures mingled here as trade routes criss-crossed land and sea, from Egypt and Greece to Turkey and the shores of Palestine. Markets bustled in the great thriving cities of Ugarit, Hattusha, Mycenae and Babylon, and the region saw a golden age of literacy and culture. But by 1,100 BC, virtually every society in this part of the world would collapse, into ash and ruin. And the cause of all this destruction may have been over 2500 miles away, on the snowy slopes of Iceland.
Hekla is one of the world’s most active volcanos. It was thought to be the gate to hell, and the prison where the traitor Judas was tormented. And its most cataclysmic eruption in human history took place sometime around the year 1,100 BC, an event known as Hekla 3. It threw nearly two cubic miles of volcanic rock into the atmosphere, and kicked off a period of cooling that would last for years.
The rapid climate change that descended over northern Europe seems to have driven a vast number of refugees southward, placing unsustainable stresses on the region. The climate unrest caused several groups known as “The Sea Peoples” to begin raiding in the south, causing destruction and sacking cities. Under famine, rebellions and outside attacks, the interdependent societies of the Bronze Age collapsed like dominos, and a period known as “The Late Bronze Age Collapse” cast this whole region of the world into chaos. ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/these-4-ancient-apocalypses-changed-the-course-of-civilization?utm_source=dscfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dscfb&fbclid=IwAR3tsFiZGhedgwZcrLl56QnyVEbDGzOpW210VDHYKd6fchbOVN9KYjnyHv0
“ABOMINATION IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD”
~ In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.
The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations.
A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24.
The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord — Lev.1:9.
The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death.
Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
(It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian)
[This has been circulating on Facebook for a while now.]
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THE STORY BEHIND GENESIS
~ The first chapters of Genesis were not written to communicate history or science. Creation stories had an entirely different purpose in the Ancient Near East. They were written to give people a vision of their place in the world, and to help them make sense of existence. In other words, they gave people a narrative in which they could live their lives. This is not an outdated idea, as people today still live within functional narratives that cause them to see the world in a certain way. Perhaps the most forceful element of all creation stories is that they explain the essence of what it means to be human.
One creation story that was written before Genesis is the Babylonian creation tale, known as the Enuma Elish. This story has its own way of explaining humanity. The Sun god Marduk kills the goddess of primordial chaos, Tiamat, and forms the heavens and earth from her body. He then kills one of Tiamat’s sons, a rebellious god named Kingu, combines Kingu’s blood with clay, and fashions humans from this mixture. Marduk creates humans to be slaves, in order to do the dirty work so that the gods could be free to enjoy leisure. The picture of what it means to be a person in this story is that human beings are innately worthless and consigned to endure the evil curse of labor without any meaning. This is a story in which many people still live today.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2016/10/the-real-story-behind-genesis/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=FBCP-PATH&fbclid=IwAR1sfVDrUPvcOgiBCY8zqLN-Ryi4L6CNEzJsAqZAZmp3yuQyd9r_QKyMNCo
Baal and the sea monsters
The oldest creation myth in the Bible isn't in the Book of Genesis at all. It is alluded to in the Book of Isaiah, in the Book of Job and in Psalms.
The clearest and fullest biblical account of this ancient myth appears in Psalm 74: “For God... Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers. The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun. Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter” (74:12-17).
An archaeological discovery made in the 20th century shed light on this strange account of creation, revealing it for what it is: an abridged version of the Canaanite creation myth.
Among the ruins of the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit, tablets were found in a language very similar to Hebrew, recording the many myths believed by the city’s inhabitants — including that creation began with the storm god Baal vanquishing the god of the sea Yam and his sea monster-serpent-dragon helpers.
There are striking parallels between the Ugarit text and certain biblical verses. In the Book of Isaiah, for instance, the prophet says: “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1). That is nearly verbatim to what an anonymous Canaanite bard has to say about Baal: “When you killed Litan, the fleeing serpent, annihilated the twisty serpent, the potentate with seven heads.”
Generations of heaven and earth
Another completely different account of creation found in the Bible in Genesis 2, starting with the line: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4).
According to this account, God created man from clay, placed him in the Garden of Eden, and only then created animals, plants and a spouse for his benefit.
The writer of this simple prose has quite an anthropomorphic conception of God, most clearly seen when the author has him taking an afternoon stroll in the Garden of Eden, where he bumps into Adam and converses with him: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:8-10).
This creation myth evidently has a different source than the Canaanite version. Some elements of the story are familiar from ancient Mesopotamia myths, but they play out in a different way. For example, in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, man is cheated of immortality by a snake who eats a plant. If Gilgamesh had eaten it, would have made him immortal.
Our biblical account famously has the serpent beguile Eve into eating the fruit of a tree; she persuades Adam to do likewise. They gain knowledge but get expelled from the Garden of Eden.
Another Babylonian myth has the hero Adapa being tricked by the god of wisdom Ea into refusing food offered to him by other gods, which he does. This food, the narrator tells us, would have made him immortal.
No feet, no monsters
This leads us to the creation myth that opens the Bible. It is completely different from the two discussed above. Unlike in them, God is not called by his personal name, the tetragrammaton YAHWEH, but is instead called Elohim – simply, “god.” He isn’t anthropomorphized and he doesn’t fight monsters.
If anything, the author seems to go out of his way to negate the older creation myths. For example, if the ancient Canaanite myth pits God against sea monsters before creating the world, the author of Genesis 1 has God creating them: “And God created great whales” (1:21).
However, those “great whales” are a mistranslation of the Hebrew word "taninim", which today means "crocodile" but back in ancient times, meant "serpentine sea monster”.
In other words, Genesis 1 describes God creating the very sea-serpents that he vanquished in the ancient Canaanite myth (and that also appeared in Isaiah, Job and Psalms).
Another connection between Genesis 1 and the older Canaanite myth is the separation of the sea into the sky and the ocean.
In the Canaanite myth, God cuts the sea god Yam in two and creates the oceans and the sky. In Genesis 1: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters” (1:6). It is the same basic idea but depersonified.
The author of Genesis 1, probably a Hebrew scribe living in Babylon during the Babylonian Exile in the 4th century BCE, was apparently creating a new version of the old creation myth that could conform with the strict monotheism which was taking hold of Judaism at the time.
The primordial sea god
It wasn’t only the Canaanites who believed in the myth that creation began with a god vanquishing a primordial sea deity and forming the seas and the sky from its remains. The Babylonians believed in this story too, only in their case, the hero creator god was Marduk, not Baal, and the sea was not male like the Canaanite Yam, but a female goddess called Tiamat. (She may be alluded to in Genesis 1:2, where the Hebrew for what is translated as “the deep” is tehom — a Hebrew cognate of Tiamat’s name.)
This basic creation myth of a god slaying serpent-like sea monsters is not restricted to the Canaanites and the Babylonians. The Middle Eastern peoples apparently adopted it from Indo-European peoples from the north, since it crops up in the ancient myths of many of the Indo-European peoples: In Greek mythology, Zeus kills Typhon; in Norse mythology Thor kills Jörmungandr; in Hindu mythology, Indra kills Vrtra; in Slavic mythology, Perun kills Veles; and in Hittite mythology; Tarhunt kills Illuyanka.
In each of these cases — and there are more — it is a weather deity that kills a monster serpent, and thus brings order to the world.
The similarities between Indo-European languages led linguists to hypothesize the existence of an ancient language, Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken in the central Asian steppes thousands of years ago and from which all Indo-European languages are descended. Similarly, scholars of comparative religion hypothesize that these are manifestations of an original Proto-Indo-European religious myth involving a weather god killing a monster snake and bringing order to the world.
Apparently, one or more of these ancient Indo-European people, perhaps the Hittites, brought the myth to the Middle East. Here it was adopted by the Canaanites - and made its way to the Bible, only to be profoundly misunderstood by latter-day translators.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-where-did-creation-story-come-from-1.5404560?v=1609184935274
Oriana:
Our catechism nun was surprisingly progressive when it came to interpreting the verse about dividing the waters below the firmament from the waters above the firmament. She openly said, "That comes from the Babylonian mythology." I still couldn't quite figure out the waters above the sky (you need to know that the firmament was supposed to be a solid lid, so water could rest on it). But the very fact that anything we were told as the ultimate truth could be derived from Babylonian mythology — that made a big impression on me.
Charles Edelsburg:
“Misunderstood…"
No doubt there is a common cultural heritage behind the first chapter of Genesis. But this legacy or common cultural baggage wasn't "misunderstood" by the author of Genesis 1. It was "reinterpreted", reconfigured in an enduring, perpetual process of cultural assimilation and differentiation, the very lifeblood of religious exegesis. Some people call this the 'invention of tradition'. I prefer to see it as traditional inventiveness.
Oriana:
Not the author of Genesis, but authors, plural. And the misunderstanding is attributed not to these authors, but to the "latter-day translators."
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GLUCOSAMINE MAY HELP REDUCE OVERALL DEATH RISK AS EFFECTIVELY AS REGULAR EXERCISE
~ Two researchers from West Virginia University (WVU), in Morgantown, recently found that individuals who took glucosamine/chondroitin — one of the most common kinds of glucosamine supplements — on a daily basis for at least 1 year saw a 39% reduction in mortality from all causes of death and a 65% reduction in the likelihood of death from cardiovascular disease.
The study appears in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Glucosamine/chondroitin, a combination of two natural compounds found in cartilage, is widely used to help with osteoarthritis and joint pain.
In their study, Dr. King and Jun Xiang, a health data analyst at WVU, assessed data from 16,686 adults who had completed the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2010. All of the participants were at least 40 years old.
The WVU study was particularly interested in participants who had taken glucosamine/chondroitin for at least 365 days before their interviews. Among the participants, 658, or nearly 4%, had taken glucosamine/chondroitin for a year or longer.
When Dr. King and Xiang merged the NHANES data with 2015 mortality figures, they found that there had been 3,366 deaths among the participants and that 674 deaths had resulted from cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.
The authors caution that the 39% reduction in all-cause mortality and 65% reduction in death from cardiovascular disease that they observed among the participants who took glucosamine/chondroitin may have a simple explanation: People who use supplements may generally take more care with their health and be healthier overall.
However, the researchers stress that they did control for variables such as age, race, sex, education, and the frequency of exercise, making the simple explanation less likely.
Previous studies, including one from 2019 and another from 2012, had likewise demonstrated an association between the intake of glucosamine supplements and a reduction in rates of cardiovascular mortality.
One group of researchers hypothesize that glucosamine/chondroitin may lower systemic inflammation in healthy individuals with overweight, which could account for the supplement’s effects on mortality rates.
The WVU team cautions that theirs was an epidemiological study, not a clinical trial — confirming the link between longevity and glucosamine/chondroitin use requires further research. However, Dr. King considers the results so far “encouraging.”
Oriana:
Glucosamine has been a miracle supplement for me for decades now — ever since I discovered the secret: to get the anti-inflammatory effect, you need to take a megadose. Many people are strangely afraid to take more than one capsule a day, perhaps two at most. To get real relief you need to take six or more, depending on the severity of your pain.
Glucosamine is a substance native to the human body — it’s not a drug foreign to it.
ending on beauty and wisdom:
Everything is different from what you think, from what I think,
the flag still flutters,
the little secrets are still secret,
they still throw shadows, on this
you live, I live, we live.
~ Paul Celan, translated by Pierre Joris
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