Category: Culture
Needed: An honorable calculus of civility and incivility
Rosa Parks is fingerprinted after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, 1956, Montgomery, Alabama. Wikipedia photo.
Here are some sample problems to solve with a calculus of civility and incivility. What do you think?:
1. If a friend of a friend on Facebook trolls liberals by repeating a false and racist right-wing talking point, should every liberal within hearing distance let him have it with both barrels?
2. If a liberal walks into an auto parts store in a rural red county, and a man behind the counter is in the middle of loudly repeating a racist lie about Barack Obama, should the liberal say, loud enough for the man behind the counter to hear, “Watch it! Democrat in the room!” Then should the liberal engage the man, as briefly as possible, to expose for all within earshot what a dumbass little POS bigot the man behind the counter is?
3. Should a liberal discuss politics with Republican neighbors, or at holiday dinner tables with right-wing relatives?
These kinds of questions are frequently on our minds, and often we find ourselves in situations in which we have only a moment to speak up or not to speak up, and, if we speak, to decide what to say. But rarely is the question discussed in a thoughtful — I’ll even say rigorous — way. Today the Atlantic’s web site has a much-needed article on this subject by Adam Serwer, “Civility Is Overrated: The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol — it’s the false promise of civility.”
I cannot claim that my own thinking has been rigorous, but I’ve given this some thought, and I’ve parted company with my fellow liberals (such as Joe Biden?) who would argue that we should “reach out” to these people and try to preserve or restore civility. My view is that the Republican Party under the influence of Trump has become so openly and proudly racist, so delusional, and so damned mean that to remain silent in the name of civility would be a moral failing and a political mistake. I do not propose that we bait right-wing racists or troll them. I propose only that we respond when they lash out, even at the expense of civility.
I think I will not attempt to summarize Serwar’s case here; I’d encourage everyone to read this piece. But I would like to mention one of the political angles that Serwar worries about, which is that if the Democratic Party ends up losing to Republicans in 2020, then the Democratic Party might then try to “reach out” to white rural conservatives for the sake of political power and civility at whatever cost, while turning its back on principles of justice and equality, and on constituents that rural white conservatives don’t like. If that ever happened, I would be among the first to leave the Democratic Party. I do not want to be in the same party as rural, white, racist evangelicals. They could not possibly fit into the Democratic coalition unless others were pushed out. That is part of Serwer’s point in the Atlantic article.
My views, I hope, are always subject to rethinking and revision. But here is how I would reply to the three questions above.
1. Yes. Let the Facebook troll have it with both barrels and then some, even if it makes a scene.
2. Yes. Let the man behind the counter have it with both barrels and then some, even if it makes a scene.
3. Not talking politics in mixed company is a perfectly acceptable solution. With my neighbors, what works is to concern ourselves with local matters about which party politics and the polarized state of the nation have nothing to say. We talk about our common concerns, such as how our unpaved road is holding up in winter weather, or who needs firewood. None of my Republican neighbors has ever baited me. However, right-wing baiting and trolling clearly happens at holiday dinner tables all over the country. The calculus to apply, I’m thinking, probably will vary from family to family. Responding with both barrels is an option, but I would not argue that it’s obligatory in all situations. In other words, it’s a complex calculus, and we need to work on it, recognizing that the best answer at some Christmas dinner tables may not be the best answer in our state and national politics, a zone in which we must talk politics.
Update: Today at the Guardian, a columnist wonders whether civility was the wrong call: “The life lessons I learned over breakfast with a Trump supporter.”
Hastening their own demise
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, now a museum. Wikipedia photo.
The Economist has an article today with the headline “Arabs are losing faith in religious parties and leaders.” The article reports not only a sharply declining trust of religion in politics in the Arab world, but also that Arab young people are losing their religious zeal. This mirrors what is happening in the United States, as young people increasingly reject religion.
There is a reason why Islam and Christianity — two peas in a pod that hate each other because they’re so much alike — are the most dangerous religions in the world and why they’re the two religions that produce almost all of the radicals. It’s that Islam and Christianity are proselytizing religions, with doctrine that claims a divine mandate to spread and rule the world.
Two days ago, the Washington Post carried yet another article on yet another lord of the Catholic church taken down because of the sexual abuse of children. Most of the comments on this article were vicious. For example:
Tax all of these hideous rape cults out of existence.
It seems to me that the catholic church has become nothing more than a criminal enterprise.
Put these men of god in jail.
And then there are the American “evangelicals.” As much as I dislike Facebook memes, I came across a good one a couple of days ago:
Republican logic: God, who didn’t get personally involved during the Holocaust, two World Wars, Chernobyl, Sandy Hook, the Bhopal disaster, Hurricane Maria, the Armenian genocide, and the destruction of Pompeii, intervened in a U.S. election so Donald Trump would become president.
The more these religions lash out at the rest of us to try to save themselves, the more they expose why decent people don’t want to be in them. Their best hope for a future, really, would be to stop proselytizing, to try to quietly live the nicer parts of their doctrine, to leave the rest of us alone, and to settle for a fair share of the world rather than demanding all of it. American evangelicals, craving earthly dominion, think that Trump will save them. The opposite is much more likely: that Trump will figure heavily in the obituary of the Protestant church in America.
If religionists didn’t have blind spots, they wouldn’t be religionists. They blame the rest of us for their diminishing numbers, unable to see themselves as others see them. At the grassroots level, religionists in these parts have a new micro-aggression, micro-method of proselytizing, and micro-method of virtue-signaling that has been spreading for a few years now: “Have a blessed day.” I have never responded impolitely. There is no good comeback, and they know it. But they are not capable of perceiving the amount of quiet disgust that their virtue-signaling is generating in those who are not in their cult. Whether with the shovels of a Catholic criminality or the deification of Trump, or by the spoonful with little words, they are digging a hole that someday will be big enough for their church.
Update: FiveThirtyEight: Millennials are Leaving Religion and Not Coming Back
Battlestar Galactica
My shortlist of the best television ever made would include Battlestar Galactica, which ran on the Syfy channel from 2003 until 2009. And guess what: It’s coming back.
In September, the Hollywood Reporter and other news outlets reported that NBCUniversal will produce a new take on Battlestar Galactica for its Peacock streaming service. The new series is to be based on the Syfy series but will explore new storylines.
The 2003-2009 Syfy series coincided with my last years in San Francisco. Those post-9/11 years were extremely stressful not only for me, but for millions of people, particularly city dwellers. Traumatized by 9/11, we saw the election of the empty and belligerent George Bush and Dick Cheney, who lost no time in dragging the country into an insane war, a financial bubble, and a deep recession. Battlestar Galactica was a weekly dose of courage for those of us who are too smart and too kind to suffer Republican governments. Though the characters were constantly under attack and never got a break, they somehow kept going. The writing was superb, and the casting and cast chemistry were perfect. Oh, how we wished for a president like Mary McDonnell’s Laura Roslin.
I have been rewatching Battlestar Galactica for the first time, and though I remember virtually every scene and remember lots of the lines, it’s still thrilling. The cast are like old friends. You can stream the series for free if you have Amazon Prime video.
Game of Thrones left us all too soon, with too little to fortify us against the ugliness of the era. Note to the movie industry: Please don’t let that happen again. We need an escape, and something to buck us up, until the tide turns.
Update: As of a day or two ago, Battlestar Galactica is no longer available free on Amazon Prime. They’re charging $35 to $40 a season!
A road trip to the real Mayberry
Here is a video from today’s road trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains. American readers will be aware of the “Mayberry” angle from the classic American television show with Andy Griffith. Those of you in Europe may not be aware of the cultural complications, which relate to the fact that Andy Griffith the actor was a liberal but that most of those who idolize Griffith, and the television show, are make-America-great-again deplorables.
But never mind all that. It was a nice road trip with some autumnal Blue Ridge Mountain scenery, a wonderful local historian who has had a book of science fiction open every time I’ve been in her store, and scenes from the kitchen of the chef who made my lunch.
Catherine the Great
Helen Mirren in HBO’s Catherine the Great
The sets and costumes and colors are lavish. Helen Mirren is, as always, a remarkable actress. But one episode of Catherine the Great was all I can take.
Just as every story with a classical structure needs a villain, so every story needs at least one decent human being. In this story, there aren’t any. There’s no one to like, including Catherine the Great. It’s all debauchery and treachery and cruelty, all the time.
It has never mattered to me whether a story is “true to life.” I prefer the opposite, actually, because to me stories are about escape and imagination. Life itself is true to life, and that’s enough. HBO’s mini-series about Catherine the Great may be true to life, and true to history, for all I know. If I cared enough, I’d read a history. But, as a story, there was no one in it worth caring about — except, maybe, the Russian people, who, at least in episode 1, never appear.
Recently I wrote a book review here on the history of tyrants. Of the three types of tyrants that Waller Newell describes, Catherine the Great was a “reforming tyrant.” She did Russia proud. Is there something about the Russian people that they can be led only by tyrants? Or is it that tyrants are all the Russian people have ever known? I don’t know enough Russian history to try to answer the question. But I think I’m glad that I’m not Russian.
Nigel Tranter
I wish I could say that the prolific historical novelist Nigel Tranter left us with a rich and readable lode of historical novels set in Scotland. Unfortunately, I cannot say that, having just finished Sword of State.
Sword of State opens in the year 1214, when the young Patrick, the 5th Earl of Dunbar, is sent by his father to take a message to the even younger King Alexander II of Scotland, who has just ascended to the throne. The two young royals immediately become fast friends. For the remainder of his life, Patrick was friend and fixer to King Alexander.
Tranter cranked out something like 90 novels in his long life. He died in 2000 at the age of 90. Sword of State has a 1999 copyright. Tranter wrote this novel when he was approaching 90 years old.
As a novel, Sword of State fails. Many of the most important ingredients of a good novel — mystery, subplot, suspense, emotion, complexity — are missing. What kept me going is that I greatly liked the characters, and it mattered that they were once real. Tranter’s career as a writer started with an interest in castles. So there is plenty of castle atmosphere. Clearly Tranter also was fascinated with maps and terrain, and my guess is that he visited and was familiar with most of the settings. Detailed topographical maps of Scotland would make a handy guide when reading Tranter. As with Tolkien, I learned new words for types of terrain and water, such as “mull,” “kyle,” and “burn.” This novel would be quite rewarding to a reader whose main interest is what life might have been like in 13th Century Scotland. But its weakness as a novel is that the narrative, long on exposition and short on action, follows a simple and single trajectory as Tranter checks off the main events in the lives of Patrick and Alexander. Characterization, and some of the dialogue, is pretty good, though.
According to the Wikipedia article on Tranter, his novels are “deeply researched.” No doubt that is true, though I wonder what his sources were. This taste of Tranter left me wanting to know more about early Scottish history.
If this novel has a villain, it’s the church. This does not surprise me. My guess would be that Tranter would agree that the Celtic world would have been vastly better off if the church had never existed. Tranter’s churchmen are greedy for land, money, and power. Popes should have names such as Avarice III or Ruthlessness VI rather than, say, Celestine IV.
I was angry when I finished this book, because of how Patrick died — miserably and uselessly, far from his Scottish home. He was killed in the Seventh Crusade. This crusade was sponsored by Pope Innocent IV, who pressured kings, including of course Alexander, to send money and men to fight “the infidels.” This particular bit of madness and genocide by the church cost 1.7 million lives.
Pope Innocent IV, by the way, was executing a decree written by Innocent III, Quod super his: “Innocent decides that if a non-believer refuses to accept and adopt the teachings of Christ, he is not truly a full human being and therefore is undeserving of humane treatment and subject to force.” This decree was used in the 19th Century to justify American genocide against native Americans. Some kinds of people never change. Today’s politics and the theologies that go along with it didn’t just come out of nowhere, did they?
Drag queens reading to children?
Photo credit: dragqueenstoryhour.org
What is it about the conservative mind that totally flips out at the idea of drag queens? Even most of us liberals, I imagine, raised our eyebrows in surprise upon first hearing about Drag Queen Story Hour. It’s edgy for sure. But, upon reflection, liberals realize that children love costumes, and that every single one of us wears a costume every single day, because, if we don’t, we’ll get arrested. And liberals like the idea of children learning that it’s the person inside the costume that really matters, and that we all get our own free choices in how we present ourselves to the world. On the other hand, where conservatives are concerned, Drag Queen Story Hour has been gasoline on the fires of the culture war.
The New Yorker has a new article with the title “David French, Sohrab Ahmari, and the Battle for the Future of Conservatism.” For those of us who try to make sense of the addled authoritarian mind, this article is a must-read. Sohrab Ahmari, who was born in Iran and who converted to Catholicism in 2016, calls Drag Queen Story Hour “a five-alarm cultural fire.” He argues that such a thing is so dangerous that conservatives should set aside the First Amendment and use whatever coercion is necessary to stop drag queens from reading to children. This must be done, he believes, to defend “traditional morality.”
As you might imagine with someone who lived in San Francisco for many years, it has been my honor to have met many drag queens and transexuals. People who have been misunderstood and mistreated all their lives, if they survive with their wholeness and goodness intact, are very likely to have spent a great deal of time thinking things through and drawing some conclusions about what really matters. I have learned a great deal from them about what it means to be human. I remember reading some years ago (though I have not been able to find a reference) that studies have shown that religionless gay people generally score higher on tests for moral maturity than do priests. That does not surprise me, because, to authoritarians, thinking things through is dangerous. One’s beliefs about morality are to be received from moral authorities and are not to be questioned. But, freed from tradition and authority, one might find one’s way much more quickly to the leading edge of moral progress. During the 1980s, for example, while most of America was in a state of moral panic and moral paralysis on the matter of AIDS, it was the drag queens who stood with microphones under the lights of America’s gay bars to educate the at-risk population about what was going on and how to stay safe. No doubt they saved countless lives.
As a heretic and beneficiary of the First Amendment (which people like Ahmari would set aside), I think it is important not only to speak up for those who are different and whose differences are good and benign, but also to heap ridicule on the foolishness and hypocrisies of authoritarians. For example, Google for “Jerry Falwell Jr. and pool boy.” That’s a story worth following. Don’t miss the stories about that West Virginia bishop and his depravity: “A penthouse, limousines and private jets: Inside the globe-trotting life of Bishop Michael Bransfield.” While searching for photos for this post, I had a lot of good laughs at the photos of churchmen in their robes and finery, which I would call drag. I’ve included an example below, as well as the famous video of a priest slapping an infant during a christening.
I feel mean, and a bit guilty, when I write snarky posts like this one. But I do believe that public ridicule and public expressions of contempt are our best defense against the moral defectives who tell would people how to live. “Traditional morality” is a harder and harder sell. Why can they not see why?
Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, now disgraced. Would you trust your children to someone in this kind of costume?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtITrtpyEE
Or this one?
Harris tweed
Vintage Harris tweed jacket bought in Stornaway
The Scottish island of Harris is remote, windswept, rainswept, and underpopulated. How, then, did it become so famous? For Harris tweed, of course.
First, a technicality. The usual way to refer to this place in the Outer Hebrides is “the isle of Lewis and Harris.” That raises the question, are we talking about one island, or two? It’s actually one island. The northern part of the island is Lewis, and the southern part is Harris. Mountains form the geographical (and, to a surprising degree, cultural) boundary between the two places.
I have never particularly been interested in textiles. But what struck me about Harris tweed, as I learned more about it, is what an incredible model Harris tweed provides for a sustainable cottage-based industry. By law, Harris tweed comes only from these islands. All Harris tweed is woven by hand by the local crofters, at home in their cottages. (A croft is a small farm with its cottage and outbuildings.)
The production of Harris tweed peaked in 1966. But there are signs that it’s making a comeback, and production is expanding. The Wikipedia article gives a good brief history of Harris tweed. Crofters have been weaving it for their own use for centuries. In the 19th Century, it was discovered by the English aristocracy, and soon everybody wanted some. Everything came from the island’s own resources — wool from blackface sheep and dyes from wild local plants. Local mills spun the yarn. Once the cloth has been woven in the crofters’ cottages, the mills inspect, wash, and press the cloth.
I walked into a Harris tweed shop in Stornaway and was shocked at the prices. For handmade products of such quality, that is not surprising. Men’s jackets started at around £400 ($500). Even simple waistcoats started at about £140. I left the shop reluctantly, priced out of the market.
But fate stepped in. Upon returning to Stornaway some days later to catch a bus to the south of the island, a local man in a coffee shop struck up a conversation with me. He was wearing a Harris tweed jacket and waistcoat. After we had talked for a while, I complimented him on his jacket, saying that I’d love to have one but that the prices were just too steep. He told me where I might find a vintage jacket for much less. In fact, the shop was right nextdoor. In the shop I found a long rack of men’s jackets. The shop’s owner helped me try them on. The one I liked best fit me perfectly. The price was only £59, so of course I bought it. The cut is remarkably smart and modern, though the jacket was made in the 1960s or 1970s for Dunn & Company. The jacket is now at the cleaners, getting its buttons tightened up, along with a good cleaning and pressing.
To the men of this island (and elsewhere), where even in summer nighttime temperatures dip into the Fahrenheit 40s, a Harris tweed jacket is a year-round, everyday-casual item. I realized that, to be properly warm, the jacket should be worn with a waistcoat and scarf. I won’t hesitate to wear it to the grocery store this winter. I wore it to dinner at Oxford.
There’s a pretty good market for vintage Harris tweed items on eBay. I plan to look for a waistcoat there.
My post on Donegal tweed, September 2020.
A Hattersley loom. It’s probable that my vintage jacket was woven on one of these. Wikipedia photo.
Blackface sheep near the village of Ardmor.
A crofter using a Hattersley loom, c. 1960. The weavers are men as often as women. Wikipedia photo.
How hatred and racism are backfiring on Republicans
Periodically I hold my nose and look at the Facebook group of the Republican Party in my county. It’s a swamp of hatred and stupidity. There’s a sample above. Notice that someone named Sam Hill calls Democrats “Demoncrats.”
Is the racism study cited above legit? I believe it is. Right-wing media made much of the study and naturally interpreted it to mean that Trump truly is making America a kinder place. That seems to be true where racism is involved, but not in the way that Republicans suppose. Trump’s true believers, a group that I’d estimate at about 35 percent of the population, are feasting on the official approval of their of hatred and meanness. But everyone else is increasingly disgusted. That disgust is liberalizing people other than Trump’s deplorables. People are seeing that racism is real and that racism is dangerous. People are seeing what Republicans are trying to do.
In other words, Trump’s endorsement of hatred and racism is backfiring, politically. While feeding red meat and meanness to the deplorables, Trump is driving all the kinder people away. Trump is far too stupid to understand this, or to care. But one would think that there are Republicans in Washington who can see that Trump actually is hastening the end of the Republican Party.
Dan Hopkins, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, writes about this at Five Thirty Eight. The article is “White Americans Say They’re Less Prejudiced.”
Hopkins writes:
But in fact, there is evidence that Trump’s election did not make Americans more racist; instead, it may have emboldened those who were already prejudiced. As FiveThirtyEight contributor Matt Grossman wrote last October, the research doesn’t show “an overall increase in racist and sexist attitudes among white voters; rather, the evidence shows that liberal-leaning voters moved away from [Trump’s] views faster than conservatives moved toward them.”
Though these are hard times for decent human beings to live through, and though the dangers are rising as Trump and his deplorables lash out, we can hope that Trump is expediting our return to a decent America, just by showing decent human beings how ugly the worst of us can be.