Into the Woods – Page 36 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Turning our political radar north

The countries of the Baltic Sea. Source: Global International Waters Assessment via Wikimedia Commons.

Today, Sweden and Finland formally applied for membership in NATO. (Washington Post story here.) This is a very big deal. Remember when the Neocon war hawks of the Bush-Cheney administration tried to teach us that diplomacy no longer matters and strove to establish an American empire armed to the teeth, fueled by oil, and aligned with authoritarian oil countries? And then, eight years after the Bush-Cheney administration, Putin’s friend Donald Trump wanted to destroy NATO with a U.S. withdrawal, and, like Bush-Cheney, sucked up to the oil countries (that includes Russia) rather than looking north. That kind of foolishness might have been weakly arguable then. But now, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the exposure of Russia’s weakness and Putin’s misjudgments, and a rapid realignment of the Western democracies, the Republican madness — oil and authoritarianism — is obvious.

It may seem surprising that this realignment happened so quickly — in a matter of weeks, really. Partly, of course, that was the product of diplomacy. (One of the miracles of the Biden administration is how quickly Biden re-professionalized the State Department after Trump turned it over to hacks with conflicts of interest.) But in fact the situation was changing before Russia invaded Ukraine. This short report from the RAND Corporation, dated September 15, 2021, is about how three key Nordic countries — Norway, Sweden, and Finland — had in recent years become increasingly concerned about deteriorating relations with Russia:

“Overall, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have dramatically shifted their plans and actions in response to Russian threats in the European Arctic. For the United States, this change could represent an opportunity to further strengthen cooperation with its key allies and partners, helping to enhance security in the region and better counter Russian challenges in the northernmost reaches of Europe.”

If Republicans had remained in control, the consequences for the West would have been disastrous as the strategic and economic opportunities were lost and as the U.S. acted in favor of the Russia kleptocracy rather than our allies, the European democracies.

Norway has been a member of NATO since its beginning, in 1949. The admission of Sweden and Finland probably would be almost automatic, but Turkey has thrown some sand into the gears. Turkey’s reservations (mentioned in the Washington Post story above) seem rather silly, but it’s easy to suspect that Turkey’s underlying gripe (other than blowing a kiss at Putin) is that, as the Arctic becomes more and more important in a warming climate and as the world turns away from oil, Mediterranean countries such as Turkey become less and less important. One of the great advances from making oil obsolete will be making the oil countries obsolete. The Baltic Sea will become the new Mediterranean.

It was a book about the economic future of Scotland that first got me thinking about how important the Arctic will become as the climate warms, as ice melts, and as a navigable sea route to Asia opens up through the Baltic Sea. Russia and the Baltic countries are already preparing for the economic changes this will bring. Sweden and Finland joining NATO, I would think, will have economic consequences for the West far beyond its consequences for mutual security and defense.

The old kleptocratic order based on oil created billionaires literally by the thousands. Many of those billionaires are oligarchs like Putin who also have countries to rule and interests to protect. They won’t go down easily, no matter how many yachts we confiscate. This is what is behind much of the geopolitical drama through which we are living at present. Trump, a puppet of that old order, did everything he could to swing the United States away from a new order and toward the old. But four years under Trump wasn’t enough to convert the institutions of democracy into the tools of an autocrat (drain the swamp!) and turn the United States into Russia. If Republicans gain full control of the government again, it’s hard to imagine any result other than geopolitical disaster. If there is a next time, they’ll move faster and more ruthlessly.

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. As long as the Republican Party — the clueless tool of the .1 percent — can be kept out of power, and as long as the .1 percent who own their own countries don’t start using their nukes (big if’s unfortunately), then the immense military and economic power of the U.S. can help lead the progress toward a new order — more democratic, more sustainable, more fair, and with a prosperity more equally shared. The alternative is a United States fleeced of its wealth by kleptocrats and beaten down by a white Christian police state.

Centrist misdirection

After an 18-year-old with an AR-15 killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, The Atlantic was quick out of the gate with a piece typical of its radical centrism. The article was “America’s Gun Plague,” by David Frum.

Was the shooter a left-wing extremist? asks Frum in the first paragraph. A vegan animal-rights zealot? But of course it was neither. It was yet another right-wing crazy cracked up on right-wing propaganda.

In the fourth paragraph, Frum writes: “The crucial variable in mass shootings is not ideas but weapons. We cannot control ideas or speech and should not attempt to do so even if we could.”

Sorry, Mr. Frum, but you can’t change the subject to guns. We’re not talking here about “ideas.” We’re talking about noxious, dangerous, right-wing lies, knowingly weaponized by the Republican Party as political propaganda and retailed virtually everywhere — from the halls of Congress to the most noxious internet hidey-holes of right-wing radicals.

The Atlantic, for the most part, is thoughtful and even wise. But The Atlantic also frequently publishes addled-headed pieces by radical centrists claiming to be enlightened defenders of free speech who are horrified by what they see to their left but blind to what is on their right. They crank out breathless article after breathless article about campus leftists (as with the piece in the cover story above).

Centrists, you see, are not capable of doubt about whether they hold the moral high ground. They are absolutely certain that they do. Centrists used to throw around the term “moral leveling” as an insult aimed at the left. Their point was that “ideas have consequences” and that standards and principles exist against which we can claim that some ideas are better than other ideas. Good. But in their blindness, centrists cannot see that they are the greatest moral levelers of all. If the center is the high ground, then it is necessary for centrists to see equally serious wrongness both to the left and to the right. Thus centrists are mired in one of the most dangerous fallacies of our times — false equivalence.

The New York Times, this morning, bless its heart, does not fall into any centrist fallacies. The Times, with little to say about guns, puts this piece in the second most prominent position on its web site: “A Fringe Conspiracy Theory, Fostered Online, Is Refashioned by the G.O.P.” Yes. That’s the problem.

Centrists like Frum do often write about the dangers of Trumpism. But it also seems that, for every piece (or paragaph, or book chapter) critical of the right, they feel it’s necessary to come up with some kind of piece or paragraph or book chapter equally critical of the left. If they didn’t, then how would they display their centrism and their moral superiority?

My view is that, when the history of post-Reagan America up through the Trump era is written, the unintentional blindness of centrists will have done as much damage to the republic as right-wing radicals. Though centrist blindness is dim-witted and unintentional (sadly, they’re not as smart as they think they are), their misdirection is entirely intentional and calculated.

One of the reasons the right wing in this country has become so dangerous is that they have figured out how to weaponize the Constitution. The Second Amendment is cover for right-wingers and their militias armed to the teeth for the purpose of intimidation and the creation of fear even when they’re not shooting anyone. (“When do we get to use the guns?” they ask their politicians.) And the First Amendment is cover for the alternate reality blended with rage that is created by right-wing propaganda. Centrists like Frum call it “ideas.” A centrist will tell you that the remedy for twisted speech is more speech and better speech, not attempts to control speech. Does it follow that the remedy for guns is more guns and better guns rather than attempts to control guns? That seems to be the slippery slope we’re on, thanks to the right-wing weaponization of our Constitution.

I don’t claim to have an answer for the booby-traps in the American Constitution that right-wing radicals are exploiting. But one thing is clear to me: Radical centrists don’t have any answers either.

Note: The cover story for The Atlantic cover above (September 2015) was “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Is what college students want to hear and don’t want to hear really a problem? It may well be, for all I know. Maybe I’ll even worry about it a little in my spare time. But in 2022 centrists are still cranking out breathless warnings about speech on campus — in their articles as well as their books — even as the right actively works to crush the American democracy and its institutions, to ban books, to make laws restricting speech, to whitewash and dictate what students can be taught, and to punish corporations for disagreeing with Republicans, all the while loudly retailing their false alternate reality to keep susceptible minds confused and enraged. If centrists would come to their senses they could be very helpful. But I have never been able to get through to a centrist, any more than I’ve ever been able to get through to a right-winger.

Young Russians

Yesterday John Twelve Hawks posted on Facebook a link to this YouTube recording. A screen shot of his posting is below. John Twelve Hawks is reminding us that it’s not just Ukrainians who are dying in this war. Young Russians are dying by the thousands.

The recording is from 2019, so clearly the composer, Kirill Richter, wasn’t composing an In Memoriam for the war on Ukraine. Maybe he’s a bit prescient. Can we imagine how different the world might be if, instead of war, we had generous culture exchange between the West and the people of Russia and Eastern Europe? If it weren’t for social media, I for one would know nothing about the artists and musicians of Russia and Eastern Europe.

John Twelve Hawks is my favorite living science fiction writer. Unfortunately he hasn’t published anything new since 2014.

Kirill Richter, a young Russian. Source: Spotify.

Heartstopper

This series is British, but it comes along just when it’s needed in the United States: that is, as Republican states such as Florida and Texas try to invent ugly new laws designed to make the lives of young people miserable and to intimidate and punish anyone who dares to try to make the world safer for them.

So here you have it: Heartstopper dramatizes exactly what Republicans are afraid of — young people who will never, ever vote for a Republican. It also shows that, no matter what kind of meanness Republican cruelty can cook up to try to bring back the 16th Century, young people are not going back. I don’t think Heartstopper is intended as a pun, but in the U.S. it may stop the hard and feeble hearts of some old Republicans.

I’m a bit too old for this series. It’s made for young people. But from it I’m learning a lot about what young people are thinking these days and in what direction they will take the world. I even like some of their music. The charm is irresistible. I downloaded the first episode just to have a look because the reviews have been so good. Then I downloaded all of the first season.

Heartstopper can be streamed from Netflix.

Millay’s diaries (and sonnets)

Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Edited by Daniel Mark Epstein, Yale University Press. 390 pages.

I’m not going to review this book. I couldn’t possibly top the New Yorker’s review: How Fame Fed on Edna St. Vincent Millay. One of the reasons the New Yorker review caught my interest is that it mentions Millay’s sonnets. The New Yorker writes: “But other poems demonstrated Millay’s sophistication. She was not just a master of the sonnet but a student of it. Late in life, she started an essay about the form, naming Shakespeare as an influence.”

These days, I’m afraid, a poet who wrote sonnets would be called not “sophisticated,” but rather would be shamed as laughably obsolete. I admit that I have a hostile view of contemporary poetry (with few exceptions, such as some Irish poetry). The kind of poetry that the New Yorker publishes, for example, to me seems intentionally, militantly, and snobbishly unreadable and ugly, as though the point is to flaunt a sophistication very unlike Millay’s, a kind of sophistication that I don’t aspire to, nor do I know anyone who does. The Irish still read poetry, and so the quality of a poem can be measured by how it touches readers. Whereas (please excuse my bad attitude) the New Yorker’s standard seems to measure the quality of a poem by how it baffles readers and how dull and empty it is.

I discovered Shakespeare’s sonnets at the age of 19 or 20, from the beautiful 1964 edition with commentary by A.L. Rowse. I greatly admired the musicality of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and I developed, I think, a taste in poetry a lot like my musical taste — an admiration for what genius can create within a strict form — a fugue by Bach, a sonnet by Shakespeare.

A few years later I discovered Millay. A friend in New York had taken me to a one-woman show off-off-off Broadway. The actress, on a small and spare stage, became Edna St. Vincent Millay, talked about her life, and recited many of her poems. I became hooked on Millay and quickly suspected that Millay’s sonnets were inspired by Shakespeare’s.

About sonnet form: Sonnets are always 14 lines of iambic pentameter. The rhyme-scheme may vary some as long as it is even. The rhyme-scheme of this sonnet is ABBA, ABBA, CDC, DCD.

1880 edition of Ivanhoe

Click here for high-resolution version.

The way books are constructed has hardly changed in centuries. It’s daunting, though, to contemplate just how much human labor was required to publish a book in 1880. The Linotype was invented in 1884 (in the United States), but I’m sure it was years before they were widely in use.

Even today, publishing a book requires a huge amount of editorial labor (or literary labor, as Ken and I call it). But today the work involved is a mere fraction of what it used to be. (Thanks, Adobe.)

Even though I’ve been to Edinburgh twice in the last four years, it seems odd that I’ve never visited an antique bookstore there. I’ll correct that on the next trip. Part of the problem, though, would be schlepping books home in one’s luggage. International shipping of small items, though, is much quicker than it used to be, as long as things don’t get hung up in customs. This book cost £12.20, plus $3.99 shipping, from Cambridge Rare Books Ltd. in Gloucester. Delivery took 16 days.

The typography in old books is beautiful, an inspiration to those of us who make books (using Adobe products) today. Sadly, many old classics have long been out of print. They’re read mostly in digital editions today. At some point in the future, Acorn Abbey Books may make a few new hardback editions of old classics. The books wouldn’t sell well, but at least they’d get a bit of new life. Books published before 1926 are now in the public domain. In the United States, the rule is 95 years after publication. In the United Kingdom, I believe it’s 70 years after the author’s death.

Click here for high-resolution version.

Strawberry preserves

… Or maybe it’s more like strawberry syrup. Though I reduced the sugar a bit, which is probably what made the preserves too thin, I did cook the preserves until they reached 220 degrees. I greatly prefer preserves that are slightly runny, even if this batch is a bit too runny. To my taste, it’s a crime to use pectin in preserves. Runny preserves are better than any recipe that uses pectin. Many store-bought preserves contain not only pectin, but added water as well. Homemade preserves are much better and much cheaper.

A gallon of strawberries made just over five pints of preserves. If you’d like to make strawberry preserves now that it’s strawberry season, there are many recipes on line. The recipe I used called only for strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. After boiling the mixture until it reached 220 degrees, I put the preserves in jars and used the water-bath method. That is, I boiled the jars for ten minutes. All of the jars sealed nicely.

Banned in Texas

Better Nate Than Ever, Disney+

If you haven’t watched a Disney feel-good flick for a while, then here are two reasons to watch Better Nate Than Ever. One, it’s very funny and very sweet. It’s even got Lisa Kudrow. Two, the book the film is based on is a good example of the kind of book that some people want banned from libraries. Here’s an example of a ban-the-book list from NBC News: “Records requests uncovered dozens of attempts to remove library books from schools, nearly all related to titles dealing with racism, gender or sexuality.”

The book, by Tim Federle, was published in 2013. The Disney film was released a few weeks ago and can be streamed from Disney+.

Nate Foster is 13 years old and is in the seventh grade. He’s bullied for being different. His athletic older brother is ashamed of him. Nate’s method of surviving is to dream of Broadway.

When those who dream of theocracy start going after Disney — Disney! — then they’ve already lost. But the sad thing is that so many kids are still caught in the crossfire.

Not a seascape

The morning after the storm. Click here for high-resolution version.

If I were a poet, I’d try to write a poem that captures how forests and the sea are so much alike. Both are dark and deep and full of creatures. Both can be quiet and peaceful, but both are violent and dangerous in a storm. In a storm, they even make the same sound. The sea has its gulls. The woods have their crows. It’s funny how they sound so much alike. I would love to live on a high, heather-and-grass promontory above the sea. But, since I can’t, the woods are the next best thing.

Last night, starting before dusk, there was a tornado warning as a long train of violent storms passed through. Here at the abbey, as I sat by the upstairs windows and periodically checked the weather radar, the worst of the storms just missed us. Lily sat with me and watched the storms unless the thunder got too loud, then she would go hide. A tornado actually touched down about 12 miles to the east. Sometimes the window had to be closed because of the rain. But, during lulls in the rain, both Lily and I are greatly entertained by the wind and wild sea-sounds through the open window.

In the wind of a storm, the trees around the house billow and toss like the sea against rocks, with all the right sound effects. When there is lightning, I count off seconds to measure how close it is. A huge bolt of lightning hit the ridge just after dark, and a clap of thunder sent Lily scurrying before I could say “one.” I could almost imagine that I’m in a lighthouse on a tiny island, just above a roiling green sea.

Who’s afraid of the Ninth Amendment?

May 3, 2022. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

There is an unspoken rule among legal eagles that ordinary people (like me) should not try to interpret the Constitution. The reason is that constitutional law (legal eagles use the term “jurisprudence”) is very complicated and embodies a long history of Supreme Court case law about which we non-experts are expected to know nothing.

Fine. I know nothing.

But what about this:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

That is the Ninth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and it is part of the original Bill of Rights ratified in 1791. Could anything be clearer? And yet, for many years, legal eagles have put forth the idea that the Ninth Amendment does not contain any “substantive rights,” but rather that it is “a statement on how to read the Constitution.” Here’s how people like me, who know nothing, would read it: The authors of the Constitution knew perfectly well that authoritarians and preachers would claim that any right not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution does not — and can never! — exist, and that authoritarians and preachers would try to use the law to dictate how others live.

The U.S. Supreme Court is clearly terrified of the Ninth Amendment and has almost completely ignored it in centuries of “jurisprudence.” A 1947 case (United Public Workers v. Mitchell) actually had the effect of putting a limit on the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment is obliquely referenced in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the case having to do with a private right to use contraceptives, but that ruling was based on the Fifth Amendment, not the Ninth. There actually is still disagreement on whether a right to privacy exists, because privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

Now comes the right-wing hack Samuel Alito, who actually writes in the document leaked from the Supreme Court this week: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. …”

Coming from a Supreme Court justice, no less, that sounds to me perversely and knowingly anti-constitutional — not to mention that it sounds like propaganda, which know-nothings who know even less than I do will fall for. Alito is disparaging (and then denying) a right not enumerated in the Constitution, with reference to a made-up right-wing legal theory rather than the actual text of the Constitution.

The New Yorker writes: “If a right isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Constitution, Alito argues, following a mode of reasoning known as the history test, then it can only become a right if it can be shown to be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’ ” Really? Is that in the Constitution? But what do I know. These people get their instructions directly from God and billionaires.

But it seems clear to me that Alito’s concept of “jurisprudence” boils down to this: There can be no such thing as moral progress, because the concept of rights, justice, and equality are ossified, locked down, and cannot advance beyond the state of moral progress that had been achieved by the year 1791, when many members of the government and even the universities owned slaves. No wonder it took so long even to end slavery or to allow women to vote. And now the Supreme Court is not merely blocking constitutional rights, it’s taking them away.

Everyone has moral qualms about abortion. No one thinks that abortion is a good thing. But that’s not the question. The question is whether a minority’s moral views can override the Constitution and start putting people with different views in prison. And we know what these people really want and what their project is. We know this isn’t over and that right-wing religionists — a minority — will now move on to take away other constitutional rights, always the rights of the people they don’t like, and always with a particular, peculiar, vindictive viciousness toward anything having to do with sex.

There are so many things I’d like to say about the meanness of the people who consider themselves our moral superiors and intend to lord it over us, but so far I’ve still got a weak grip on civility. That’s really hard work these days.