Book Review: Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny"

This is a thoughtful, thought-provoking set of aphorisms and reflections.  As much as I enjoyed it – and believe that I benefited from reading it three times – I have to ask if the author would have written it had Hillary Clinton been elected president.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
by Timothy Snyder,
Tim Duggin Books (Penguin Random House LLC),
2017; 126 pages, $7.95.

“History does not repeat but it does instruct.” (page 9). 

“History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each one of them different, none entirely unique. To  understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible not for everything, but for something.” (125)

Snyder’s thesis is that Donald Trump represents a new fascism. Snyder includes  aspects of communism and Nazism, as well, acknowledging that all three are variants of the same collectivism of the early 20^th century.  A couple of warnings do apply to Democrat Party politicians; and at least one nice nod went to the unnamed George H. W. Bush for his “thousand points of light.” But Snyder’s target is Donald Trump.  And I have to agree, if only because Trump is the President, and, whatever her foibles, Clinton is not.

None of the quotations or citations are referenced; the book has no footnotes or end notes.  However, the writing is unassailable with nice segues across the chapters.  Snyder counsels us to be our own investigative reporters, to check stories, rather than just accepting what we want to view and believe.  Snyder also warns us to be wary of sound-bites out of context. He then commits both errors near the end of the book.

Explaining why Donald Trump is a nationalist, but not a patriot (which I accept), Snyder writes that Trump wants to return to the economic chaos of the 1930s:

The president himself has described a regime change in the style of the 1930s as the solution to the problems of the present: “You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster.” What we need, he thinks, are “riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.” (page 123)

So, I googled the statement, and found that it was made on February 10, 2014 about 6:36 AM on "Fox & Friends."  Then, I found a plausible interpretation from Snopes.  I checked four other claims Snyder made, and all of them were true. In any case, the quote above was unreferenced and taken out of context.

Chapter 6: Be wary of paramilitaries

He does not identify the Occupy movement of the left as a paramilitary, but neither does he dwell on the many “citizen militias” of the right. Snyder’s concern is with the crowd control at the Trump campaign rallies in 2016.  I found that less salient. Hecklers are there to disrupt, not to engage in dialog. In effect, they are thieves who violate property rights, denying access to the venue that was paid for by the candidate and the supporters.  However, Snyder is cogent when he points out: “The SS began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law.” (44)

That warning underscores the opening Chapter 1 and is reinforced by other examples as the book progresses.  

“Do not obey in advance.”  Many of the horrors of totalitarian regimes were not contemplated by the rulers at the top, but were invented by followers far below who anticipated orders they never actually received. Snyder cites the Nazis, but it applies to the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.  And it explains the violence of self-defined “patriots” who attack American Sikhs, thinking them to be Muslims, in effect carrying out what they imagine to be their leader’s command to rid the nation of undesirable foreigners.

Chapter 9: Be kind to our language

“Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.” (59)

Snyder warns against the domination of the screen with allusions to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.  Those are the best known, of course, but Brave New World (1932) had its “feelies” movie theaters wherein by holding a device you could feel what the actors touch.

“The choice to be in public depends on the ability to maintain a private sphere of life. We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.” (86)  (That closes the chapter and segues to …)

“So try for your self to write a proper article, involving work in the real world: traveling, interviewing, maintaining relationships with sources, researching in written records, verifying everything, writing and revising drafts, all on a tight and unforgiving schedule. If you find you like doing this, keep a blog. In the mean time, give credit to those who do all of that for a living.” (76)

 “We find it natural that we pay for a plumber or a mechanic, but we want our news for free. If we did not pay for plumbing or auto repair, we would not expect to drink water or drive cars. Why then should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment?  We get what we pay for.” (77)

Chapter 14. Establish a private life.

“Have personal exchanges in person.” (87)

About the liberals and the politics of inevitability:

“Yet they portray the present simply as a step toward a future that we already know, one of expanding globalization, deepening reason, and growing prosperity. This is what is called teleology: a narration of time that leads toward a certain, usually desirable, goal. Communism also offered a teleology, promising an inevitable socialist utopia. When that story was shattered a quarter century ago, we drew the wrong conclusion: Rather than rejecting teleologies, we imagined that our own story was true.” (119)

About the conservatives and the politics of eternity:

“It is concerned with the past, but in a self-absorbed way, free of any real concern with facts.

Its mood is a longing for past moments that never really happened during epochs that were, in fact, disastrous. Eternity politicians bring us the past as a vast misty courtyard of illegible monuments to national victimhood, all of them equally distant from the present, all of them equally accessible for manipulation. Every reference to the past seems to involve an attack by some external enemy upon the purity of the nation.” (121)

I could go on at extreme length, quoting Snyder and recording my reflections.  This is a book to carry around and read when you have a moment. More to the point, it is a book to discuss with your friends.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Libraries of the Founders

The Science of Liberty

The Economic Value in a Liberal Education

Tycoon Dough is Democratic 

Of Watches and Beaches and Atheists

I patronize the local atheist boutique to buy bumper stickers, pens, pencils, lapel pins, and badges. This one sat on my desk for a couple of weeks. Then, I had a reply. 

Watches only prove that beaches were not designed to be watches. And in fact, as variable as the tides seem to be to us land lubbers, for people who depend on the sea, the tides are more meaningful than an arbitrary clock, no matter how precise and accurate. You go out when the tide is right, not when the clock strikes an hour. 

Do watches prove that trees were not designed? Anything can be used to mark time. If we see a child after some months, we might say, "How you have grown!" Do watches prove that children were not designed?  In the near future, children might very well be more carefully designed than the best watch.

Our clocks are arbitrary. And we are always re-setting them. Timekeeping based on the rotation of the Earth is corrected against atomic clocks based on the vibration of Cesium-133 when excited by a specific wavelength of microwave radiation.  

Cesium Atomic Clock

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cesium.html

Leap Second

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161228213356.htm

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/space-timekeeping-nasas-sdo-adds-leap-second-to-master-clock

The fallacy goes to the root of arguments for atheism.  You cannot prove a negative assertion. When you try, you run into non-sequiturs.

When something is true, it is provable many ways. (Over 300 proofs are known for the Pythagorean Theorem.) True statements are supported by other truths, and in turn lead to still other truths.  Truths do not come from falsehoods or lead to fallacies. That is the nature of truth.  Furthermore, when a statement is false, it fails in several contexts, not just one. So, attempting to prove that beaches were not created leads to nonsense statements.

The burden of proof for the creation of the universe, the Earth, or us is with anyone who makes the assertion.  Atheism holds only that, so far, no proof has passed the tests of objectivity, i.e., of empirical evidence explained by a logically consistent theory.

It may remain that the universe, the Earth, and we humans are anomalies: objects or events that are observably real (empirically real), but which lack a logically consistent, rational  explanation.  Quasars and tachyons are in that class.  We discover more facts about them as we observe them more often, but we have no consistent theory to explain them.

Also, while it is true that the universe had no creator, the Earth might have.  After all, we build houses, and cities. So, those are two separate questions. The creation of humans might be a third event, not directly related to the origin of the Earth, which was just here with its evolved animals until “someone” tweaked the chromosomes of apes, merging two and making us. 

 

https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Human_Ape_chromosomes.htm

Be all that as it may – and I have no answers, even for myself – the fact remains that time and tide wait for no man because TIME and TIDE derive from the same root word. In the theoretical construct language “Indo-European” (spoken by our Caucasian ancestors about 6000 years ago),  dã-(i) meant “to part” or “divide.”  In modern German, the word for TIME is ZEIT, which is obviously close to TIDE. And in modern English, we still have archaic words such as Yuletide and eventide. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Imaginary Numbers are Real - but Pegasus is not
Atheists in Foxholes
god is not great
Kicking Nuns for Fun and Profit

Counter-Insurgency is a Wrong Turn

While I accept the thesis, I question its underlying assumptions. I take the wider view that war is crime, and therefore crime is war; and therefore, “counter-insurgency” is a response to crime. More deeply, it is only part of the same course of action that any emergency management program follows for any disaster: Response, Protection, Recovery, Mitigation, and Prevention.

Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace
of Counter-Insurgency
by Colonel Gian Gentile
(The New Press, 2013).

Col. Gentile’s thesis is there is no such thing as “counter-insurgency” as a separate kind of warfare.  In addition, the American mass media perpetuate a myth that the army was losing under old leadership with old ideas, but that a bold new leader brought innovative thinking that re-directed the efforts into productive and meaningful modes.  Col. Gentile maintains that (1) counter-insurgency is just the continued meeting of enemy forces; (2) American military actions were always generally successful with notable losses, failures, and errors (as is the nature of war), but no “outside the box” innovative tactics ever were called upon; (3) historically, since Alexander the Great (at least), every army has had to deal with civilian resistance, whether farmers with pruning hooks or doctors repurposing artillery ammunition into bombs under the roadway.  

Col. Gentile examines the classic cases of the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria, and the Americans in Viet Nam.  In every case, he shows that success came from continuing the offensive according to the same logic, passed from commander to commander through each rotation.  The American failure in Viet Nam was essentially sociological:

“But unless the United States was willing to stay in Vietnam for generations to do armed nation building, the collapse of South Vietnam was inevitable. In the end, firepower could not break the will of the North Vietnamese, the NLF, or the PLAF; nor could it correct the endemic problems of corruption within the South Vietnamese government and military. Moreover, it could not connect in a moral way the people of South Vietnam to the government and military. The United States and South Vietnam lost the war on all fronts.” (page 83)

 The book itself is short, 144 pages, but it is supported with 270 footnotes.  Col. Gentile has done his homework. It remains that he knew the point he wanted to make; and among the libraries and archives, he found the facts he needed.

His thesis is easy to agree with. He wrote for the narrow context of armed conflict, not the wider problem of why people harm each other, and what to do about it.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice 

Laissez-Faire Criminology  

Integrating Criminologies  

CERT: Community Emergency Response Team 

2017 National Coin Week Club Trivia Challenge

Better written than last year’s, this one still has some compelling ambiguities. The theme this year is "Conflict & Courage: Money & the Military." The Capital City Coin Club of Austin is primed and ready for the challenge. As we did last year, those who are interested have been working on their own. We will get together next Sunday for lunch to compare our answers and prepare our submission.

1.    What U.S. coin features a major general of a state militia who tried to get military help from France to form an independent republic called United Columbia?

2.   Name the famous militia veteran of the Black Hawk War and at least six U.S. coins on which he appears.

3.   A 1991 commemorative coin honors U.S. military involvement in Korea.  What anniversary does the coin commemorate, and why was this anniversary chosen?

4.   Which three service medals are featured on the reverse of the 1994 Veterans Memorial commemorative silver dollar?

5.    In 2002 Guernsey issued a one-pound silver coin featuring a famous military leader, and for what battle is he best remembered?

6.   England struck coinage made from gold and silver seized from Spain after an 18^th-century naval battle.  What privy mark was added below the bust of Queen Anne on these coins?

7.   A famous American is featured on both sides of a coin issued in 2007. What is this person’s name, what heroic deed is depicted on the coin, and in what war did this deed occur?

8.   This coin design (pictured below) was issued by the Emperor Augustus to celebrate a diplomatic “victory” with the return of Roman standards captured by Parthia. During what battle did the Parthians take these symbols of Rome’s power?

Gorny & Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung > Auction 244
CoinArchives.com

9.   In the mid-4^th century A.D. the Roman Empire issued a series of coinage with a common reverse legend, including a design featuring a Roman soldier spearing a barbarian fallen from his horse. What is this reverse legend?

10.         In 1915 a private Bavarian-made medal was used by Great Britain as a World War I propaganda piece. What artist produced this medal, what was the subject,  and what error did the original medal contain?

11.     In 1916 German forces in East Africa during World War I produced emergency money using artillery shells recovered from a scuttled German ship. Was the name of the ship?

12.         A Belgian euro coin issued in 2015 was the source of controversy in France. What is the coin’s denomination, and what made the issue controversial?

13.         In 2015 the Royal Australian Mint issued a four-coin set honoring a famous campaign in World War I. What campaign was honored, and what four countries’ efforts are commemorated?

14.         Military payment certificates were produced as a means of currency conversion control. Between what years were the certificates issued, and what was the name of the U.S. cabinet member who first called for their production?

15.     Some of the most famous siege coinage (pictured below) was produced during a pivotal conflict in English history. Name the conflict.

Baldwin's Auctions Ltd et al., > The New York Sale XL CoinArchives.com

Baldwin's Auctions Ltd et al., > The New York Sale XL

CoinArchives.com

Spink > Auction 16006 CoinArchives.com

Spink > Auction 16006

CoinArchives.com

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Challenge Coins 

Short Snorters 

Mere Gold is Not Enough 

Money as Living History 

Away from the Keyboard Again

My assignment with the Domestic Operations task force of the Texas Military Department has been extended through the end of the month. 

In addition, I still have other weekend calls with my home unit, the Command Group & General Staff of the Texas State Guard.

DOMOPS Task Force in the House Chamber
at the Texas State Capitol 8 March 2017

Previously on Necessary Facts
Start the Presses!
Raymond Loewy
In Suspect Terrain
Slow Down and Think
Science versus Common Sense

From Pearl Harbor to 9/11

It might be said that the enemy is different, not a nation state but a dispersed and diffuse array of "lone wolves."

It might be said that we are different now, soft, frivolous, and self-involved with tweets.

It might be said that while the Japanese forces withdrew to new positions, the 9/11 perpetrators all died in the suicide attack: it was over as soon as it began.

It might be said defeating Japan was a military problem, whereas defeating Islamic fundamentalism is a philosophical problem or a cultural problem.

It might be said that both were contrived by conspiracies internal to the government of the United States.

It might be said that both were the result of failures to understand the enemy and the threat.

It might be said that both were the consequences of American actions that caused a reprisal from them that looked like an attack to us.

It might be said that the world of 1941 was not much different from the world of 1841, but that 2041 is going to be very much different.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Etruscans and Americans  
Counter-Insurgency  
The Syrian Quagmire 
War is Good for Absolutely Nothin'  

I Quit Meetup

I sent this to CivicAction@Meetup.com and to the Austin #Resist when I received a Meetup request from them.  I also sent it to the organizers of the groups that I belonged to, most of them for computer users.

I am cutting my access to all of my Meetup groups and to Meetup.com as of February 28, 2017, in response to a corporate decision by Meetup to support the Resist political action collectives. 

“We decided that we wanted to do more to support these efforts so we created a network of 1,000 #Resist Meetup groups with a few special characteristics.” --
https://www.meetup.com/help/article/2736376/

 While I am sympathetic to many of the social justice causes pursued by Resist, I must object to Meetup’s delivering a special value to them. My comrades on the right wing also have advanced the cause of freedom. Their methods and their successes do not grab headlines.  It is a matter of culture.

What are the politics of pasta?

As collectivists, my progressive comrades form strong groups, and groups are easy to see. They grab headlines when they grab other people’s property. But that property had to be created first. The exceptionally great wealth of America was the work of millions of individuals who mostly minded their own business, making their own lives as best they knew how by the standards they chose according to their personal values. That does not make the home pages of news media – unless it is to “doodle” in celebrating the historical birthday of a dead writer, musician, inventor, or scientist.

Meetup.com is a tool for those conservatives, libertarians, and Objectivists who advance the ethics and politics of individualism.  By creating new, no-cost platforms for one political group, Meetup.com of necessity excludes those of other political beliefs – and those groups with no political agenda. It is also a platform for millions of individuals who share personal – sometimes peculiar – interests of their own, far removed from politics. And that speaks to a fundamental problem with progressive causes.

It is critical that this be understood. Dr. Martin Luther King looked forward to a future in which each person is judged by the content of their character.  But character is an attribute of a person, not of a group. 

The Pursuit of Happiness is selfish.

Choosing not to do business with someone because they are not from your ethnic, social, gender, class, or religious group is irrational.  But freedom of association is a fundamental political right. While my collectivist comrades try to eliminate discrimination by engaging the power of the state, my friends on the right go to the root of the problem: lack of character.

If the owners of Meetup.com want to end social injustice, they should empower their customers who meet to build character. But that would mean creating a 1000 special groups for some religions or some philosophies in preference to others.  And there is no way to parse that, because, after all, even karate builds character.

Therefore, I will delete my Meetup account and switch to some other service or set of services, such as Google Groups, which, in fact, evolved from the age-old Usenet maillists.  Ultimately, no one needs Meetup.com. That is something to keep in mind.

Michael E. Marotta

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Science of Liberty
Liberty's Kids
Money as Press and Speech
Libraries of the Founders

2017 Austin Energy Regional Science Fair

For the sixth consecutive year, I judged the middle school and high school exhibits in Behavioral Sciences in the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival. I also judged both sections of elementary school entries.  As always, it was challenging and fascinating. 

Before the show, I walked the event looking for
projects with military applications.

This year, none of the entries in Behavioral Science was advanced to the Best of Show competition. Unlike previous years, none had the best statistical summaries, and none got beyond the Internet for research citations. Nonetheless, many of the 50+ were outstanding. We judges argued over our two rounds of selections to find the best five, three of which were sent on the state level of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Drones and robots are already
engaged in the battle space.

Synesthesia, Attitudes of Foreigners Toward American Values, the emotional content of colors, how sales personnel influence buyer decisions, the difference in to-go versus in-store serving sizes, judgments of personality types based on eye color, the physiological stresses associated with lying, and gender differences in multitasking were some of the many entries.  Woody Allen famously said that 85% of success is showing up. These kids all acquired special learning and perhaps ineffable experience by carrying out their experiments, recording their results, and presenting their findings.

It gives a new meaning to "Mobile Infantry"

This was reinforced for me the day before the fair when my officemates were puzzled by an assignment to present a broad set of findings over the past year to a large floating assortment of public officials. "You need three-fold presentation boards," I said. "What are those?" they asked. After the science fair, when the tasking was discussed again, our supervisor (who was out of the office earlier) said that he bought them for his son's science fair project.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Where All the Children are Above Average
World Peace Through Massive Retaliation
2014 Austin Energy Science Festival
2016 Austin Energy Science Festival
Monsters of the Id
Teaching Science with Science Fiction

12 O'Clock High

One of my captains recommended this. “You ought to get a lot out it, even based on what you know now,” he said. I think that he meant the problem of identifying with the men you have to send into battle, their deaths taking a toll on you, your wanting to protect them from the mission even though the mission comes first. 

For me, the first thing that resonated was when the flight commander was told that the warning had just been issued and that new orders will be there soon.  WARNO… OPORD… FRAGO… is the battle rhythm, even for those of us who are not issued weapons because we provide community care.

A Fragment amends an Operations Order. Operations Orders have five sections. (When it is one page – at the insistence of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower – those are five paragraphs.) Situation; Mission; Execution; Sustainment; Command and Control. 

The consequential lesson here was the importance of discipline to morale. In the movie, BG Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) arrives at the 918^th Bomb Group by busting a sergeant down to private for failing to challenge him at the gate and failing to salute. In real life, the most politically liberal staff officer in my group insisted that as a petty officer second class (E-5), when talking to a staff sergeant (E-6), I should be at parade rest. She said that she saw it stateside and she saw it in theater: you do not build morale by being lax; the tightest groups, the ones with the strongest esprit, were the ones with the best discipline.

After watching We Were Soldiers, I read the book by Hal Moore.  (Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore just passed on February 10.)  That book was different from that movie.  (See my review here.)  In this case, the authors of the novel, Bernie Lay, Jr., and Sy Bartlett, wrote the screenplay.  Unfortunately, the book is not available at my local university or city libraries.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Primary Leadership Training  

TXSG Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course 

Love My Rifle More than You  

Armies without Weapons  

World War II Sweetheart Dinner and Dance (2017)

The Texas Military Forces Museum hosted a Valentine's Day party Saturday evening, February 11, 2017.  Period dress was encouraged, though not required. About a dozen men and a couple of women were in uniform.  About 15 or 20 women were in 1940s dresses and hair-dos. The evening was highlighted by a silent auction with an array of period artifacts and other interesting items. The 20-piece swing band was fronted by The Memphis Belles. It was an opportunity to relive a moment of the Greatest Generation. 

The Band

The Memphis Belles

Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me ...

The Lieutenant and I were both 4th Army.
They were a training group at Fort Sam Houston.
My other sleeve was for
2nd Infantry Division ("Second to None")
which developed new techniques and tactics
at Fort Sam and Camp Bullis.

I bought my uniform at The Quonset Hut because the owner, Ed Hall, works closely with the Museum. Ed made me a deal, pointed out my uniform with oak leaves and other authentic brass, and gave me background on my units. The ribbons are my own:  Adjutant General's Individual Service Award, Humanitarian Service Award; Leadership (2), Physical Fitness, and Basic Training.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Short Snorters  
A Successful Imitation of Alan Turing  
Peace is More Powerful  
The Fourth Star  

Romantic Realism

Romantic Realism is a school of aesthetics that developed as a consequence of the works of Ayn Rand. Rand saw herself (paraphrasing) as "the last of the Romantics or the first of their return."  The label Romantic Realism appears nowhere in Ayn Rand's  The Romantic Manifesto (1969). However, many of the artists who create these modern expressions of heroic values found validation in Rand's works. Quent Cordair Fine Art Galleries of Napa, California, sells their sculptures and paintings. (One artist not in their sales group, but in that style, is Michael Newberry.) 

Bryan Larsen at Quent Cordair Galleries

Perhaps the best known realist painter was Norman Rockwell. The problem with his realism is that the themes are from the naturalist school: quaint, commonplace, everyday. Some of his works do step outside of the village life typified by Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Perhaps his best was "Freedom of Speech" one of the Four Freedoms series that he created as propaganda for America's efforts in World War II. But that was an exception.

Tamara Bonêt at Quent Cordair Fine Art

Aesthetic romanticism was launched by the French school of the 19th century: Gericault, Delacroix, and Rodin. It was expressed best by the Academic schools (France, America, Britain) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. William-Adolphe Bouguereau's realistic myths typify that. But they were submerged by later critics and theorists who promoted Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, and stuff even worse. The reason (or excuse) that I learned in an art history class in college was that the invention of the photographic camera made realism unnecessary. So, artists sought new modes.

Quent Cordair at Quent Cordair Fine Art

Of course, it is impossible to get a snapshot of a successful Icarus descending. And even mundane images of shepherdesses or mourners would have to be staged, lit, shot, and developed, each step an artist's choice of values.

Karl Jensen at Quent Cordair Fine Art

That is the essence of aesthetics, according to Ayn Rand: "Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments."  And that is where Bouguereau failed: his people are often sad and wistful, the girls often vacuous. None of his figures are positively assertive. The best are enraptured with passion, but it is passive pleasure given by others in adoration.

Pursuit by Michael Newberry at
http://www.michaelnewberry.com/

Romantic Realism takes the style of  the Academic school and empowers it with the internal engine of motivation.

"Quent Cordair Fine Art was established by artist Quent Cordair in 1996. As a premier provider of contemporary Romantic Realism in painting, sculpture and drawing, QCFA has grown to serve an international clientele of private and corporate collectors.
"Romantic Realism, the movement which renews the high esthetic standards and techniques of pre-20th century ateliers, brings a rebirth of comprehensibility, beauty, romanticism and stylization to contemporary subject matter. The gallery's collection emphasizes themes which celebrate the moments of happiness, joy and success possible to Man on earth.
"Subject matter includes figurative, narrative, allegorical, still lifes, seascapes and landscapes. Award-winning painters and sculptors of international renown are represented, as well as emerging artists of unique vision and accomplishment. Commissions are available for portraiture, murals, garden and architectural projects.
"QCFA's extensive website serves as an invaluable resource for private collectors, interior designers and landscape designers. For additional information, please call (707) 255-2242." -- http://cordair.com/

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Art as Ordered Narrative  
The Art of Finance 
Art & Copy 
Money is Speech 

Postmodernism

On The Federalist blog is a recent essay identifying Pres. Donald Trump as an anti-postmodernist. (“Donald Trump is the First President to Turn Postmodernism Against Itself” by David Ernst, January 23, 2017, here .)  As interesting as it was, I have a different understanding of the anti-hero.

(This is based on my post on this subject at Rebirth of Reason here. )

Earlier on RoR, I suggested that The Thomas Crowne Affair from 1968 portrayed an anti-hero. Played by Steve McQueen, Thomas Crowne lost interest in his orchestrated heist. I contrasted that with the 1999 remake where the screenplay gave Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crowne a heroic stance.  See RoR here.)  There, I also pointed to Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man by Thomas Mann (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, which I read in a high school German class).  It is not that the anti-hero has bad values, but that he has none. 

Writing for The Federalist blog, David Ernst pointed to Tony Soprano as an example of the anti-hero.  (We tried the first episode of The Sopranos, and as much as I liked the ending, it was not compelling.) But I get the point from other stories in the genre such as Goodfellas and The Godfather. In the movie version of The Godfather, at Sonny's wedding, Michael's wife Kay Adams is taken aback by the gangsters around her.  "My father is just a powerful man, like a governor or a senator," Michael says.  "Governors and senators don't have people killed!" she protests.  "You're naive, Kay," he replies.  But if the dons did not care, if they put their men into losing battles just for the fun of it, if they walked away from a deal with all the money on the table because money means nothing, they would anti-heroes. In fact, Michael Corleone is a hero in the romantic sense. (As a side note, under Don Vito, the family never dealt in drugs. He found them immoral. Sonny took the family into drugs by disobeying his father; and his own lack of judgment, his lack of values, got him killed.)

Donald Trump does have values. He is not only not an Objectivist in any sense of the word, his values apparently are not even objective. (Your life is an absolute value. Your career is an objective value. You can choose from many, but to be good for you, your career must meet the absolute standard of promoting your life. In a discussion with her attorney, Henry Mark Holzer, on legal theory, Ayn Rand pointed out that Roman Law was objective. It was not primarily or even necessarily concerned with individual rights. But it was publicly posted for all to know, and it was uniformly enforced. For Rand, the evils in a dictatorship were reflected in arbitrary enforcement of secret laws.) 

The Federalist article by David Ernst does make an interesting point, though. When Donald Trump gave money to Democrat Party candidates, no one complained.  My point here is that Donald Trump contributed to the party that buttered his bread. If he tossed contributions to any party, willy-nilly, that would have been anti-heroic.

On the matter of post-modernism, Objectivish writers have been cogent and incisive in pointing out that despite their protests of innocence, the postmodernists are not "value free." They are solidly ethno-centric. I refer to Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks reviewed on RoR . I did not read this book.  But I did have a graduate class in postmodernist theory; and later, here in Austin, at the local Ayn Rand Meet-Up, one of the others at our table, who did read it, spoke well to the truth.  

In my class (criminology theory), my classmates were going on and on about cultural relativism and all cultures being equal and all that.  So, I brought up the then-current investigation of insurance wholesalers by Eliot Spitzer, and the Bernie Madoff scandal.  "They just cheated other rich people. And it's the rules of their own game.  So why do you care? Don't they have a right to capitalist culture?"  Of course, no one had anything to say...

Postmodernists are not cultural relativists.  Postmodernism is an assault on reality, reason, and integrity in order to dominate anyone and everyone by the destruction of other people's values in order to impose their own rule.

De-construction (so-called) can be a valid intellectual tool -- if your goal is to understand how something is constructed. But "de-contruction" is an anti-concept. The concept is analysis.  Ayn Rand was excellent at "taking apart" the intellectual framework of modern politics, showing that collectivism rests on altruism which rests on mysticism. But her point was not to demonstrate that all ideas are meaningless mutterings taught by your local subjective culture. And it was not her goal to impose her own rule to fill the vacuum.

I have had a hard time getting people Galt's Gulch Online to understand why Ayn Rand valued the liberals of her time. She admired Adlai Stevenson, but disagreed completely with his politics. The liberals of that earlier time offered an intellectual approach to politics: they identified problems and offered solutions based on a theory of human action. She disagreed with all of the particulars.  But she also vehemently opposed the "me-too" traditional conservatives who had no ideas except to keep whatever it was we seem to have inherited from the past.  The liberals and progressives of the previous century were wrong in many particulars, but were right in their approach. When the conservatives of Europe wanted to ban comic books, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke up for freedom of the press.

That is a conflict of values, on both sides. The postmodernist anti-hero has no values because those who preach postmodernism want to impose their own rule for no other reason except to rule. Power is an end in itself. All of that was explained well in Ayn Rand's fiction and non-fiction. The most dramatic statement I know on that point is found in George Orwell’s 1984: “Imagine a boot stepping on a man’s face – forever.”  That is the goal of postmodernism.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Science of Liberty

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The Sokal Affair

Apollo 11: Task Accomplished

War is Good for Absolutely Nothin’

One person can make a difference. Whether that is for good or bad depends on much that is outside the control of that significant mover and shaker. In the cinema version of Charlie Wilson’s War, Gust Avrakotos tells the parable of the Zen master who at each turn of events deflects the popular wisdom with “We shall see.”  In other words, external events can bring unintended consequences to your choices. That is the truth brought forward by these two books. Charlie Wilson’s War is about Afghanistan, and Bright Shining Lie is about Vietnam. 

• Book Review: Charlie Wilson’s War: the Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.
• Book Review: Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan, Vintage Books, 1988. (Material here is from a review first published as a class paper for HIST 586: The U.S. in World Politics, Dr. Kathleen Chamberlain, Eastern Michigan University, Fall 2009.) 

The foundation of each narrative is the nature of the complex person whose work was unperceived at the time. Not all of the damaged souls in our social world are capable of great feats. Not all of those who move the world or shake it wrestle with internal demons. Often they do. Perhaps that internal energy is the secret motor that powers achievement, certainly for them, forcing other people to give way or to follow, but always to succumb to the irresistible force of highly motivated charisma.

Charlie Wilson (1933-2010) was a Congressman from East Texas whose conservative and Baptist constituents repeatedly re-elected an alcoholic womanizing liberal. Fired up by a story about the mujahidin who fought against the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, Wilson made their fight his crusade, turning a $5 million dollar stream of 100-year old rifles into a $500 billion Noahtic flood that included Stinger missiles, cryptologic radios, satellite reconnaissance, Tennessee mules, and the uniting of Israel and Saudi Arabia in a common cause under the control of Pakistan.

The phrase “bright shining lie” comes from Vann’s own description of the press conferences for which he coached Gen. Huynh Van Cao to give optimistic projections for victory. While working for the RAND Corporation, Vann’s close friend, Daniel Ellsberg, discovered that for the first fifteen years of the Cold War, the USSR lacked the hardware for significant intercontinental strikes, raising questions about the origins of the Cold War. Another lie was that Vann’s military career was thwarted by his outspoken advocacy of his own cogent analyses, when, in truth, it was blocked by a charge of statutory rape, the outcome of just one of many infidelities. Thus, John Paul Vann is a symbol for America, outwardly heroic, but factually corrupt, nicely navigating the gray shades of ethics to maintain a towering jackstraw jumble of lies. Vann’s eight years “in country” were so important to the effort in Vietnam that he eventually was given immense military latitude, technically a civilian but with the trappings of a major general, another living lie, reflective of America’s ambiguous status in the war.

Like America, John Paul Vann was self-made. Illegitimate and poor, the son of an alcoholic floozy, Vann took the family name of the man who was his actual father years ahead of the formal adoption.  

The author admits early on that Vann had a detachment of mind that let him criticize his own assumptions. This gave him an intellectual edge over men too easily convinced by their own wishes. However, later Sheehan shows Vann caught in his own web – calling for air strikes, propping up corrupt officials, excusing the very policies he earlier opposed – but Sheehan never shows the transition, if there was one.

In fact, Sheehan says very little about the direct work that Vann did which Vann himself considered fundamental to the war effort. We never see Vann meeting with villagers, meeting with frontline military. We do know of his arguments with the top brass, but we never see the dialectic within his own mind.  In Charlie Wilson’s War, we do. 

A producer for Sixty Minutes, Crile invested years of continuous effort, interviewing the people in the story, constructing a coherent narrative of external events and internal thoughts.  The author takes us with Wilson into the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands, first to see the problem, soon to donate his own blood to the medical efforts (several times), and eventually to travel into Afghanistan on horseback, dressed as a local, to receive the thanks and praise of the mujahidin. We also hear the private reflections of the Congressman, the CIA chiefs (and their “Indians”), the Congressional leaders, even the President of Pakistan and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, among very many others. 

As books go, I found Charlie Wilson’s War to be a pleasure to read. Whether Crile is a true master of good English or had good editors or both, I found none of the many little annoyances that plague modern literature. Better than the lack of negatives, Crile’s history is positively compelling, hard to set aside, always to be anticipated as a reward. I do have a quibble: he refers to the USSR and its soldiers as “the Soviets.” It is common and convenient, but wrong. I learned to avoid that mistake in 2008 from Dr. Pamela Graves (a good Marxist) when taking HIST 456: Modern Europe 1945-Present.

Ultimately, both Vann and Wilson failed. The government of South Vietnam was incapable of prosecuting the war because it was incapable of earning the trust of its populace.  Just as bad for us was the victory we brought to the mujahidin, and our consequential involvement there and in Iraq, and now in Syria.

Ayn Rand pointed out repeatedly that US foreign policy in opposition to the USSR was doomed to fail as long as our government failed (refused) to acknowledge that America’s moral superiority is built on reason, individualism, and capitalism. All through those decades, our government yielded the moral high ground to the USSR, which claimed scientific history, altruism, and collectivism, all of which our own government did not contradict, but in fact endorsed.  Therefore, we failed in Vietnam. And the successful defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan only brought us Abrahamic co-religionists who destroyed the World Trade Center – and who now carry out acts of horror in offices, shopping malls, and airports. 

In the 1960s and 70s, the USA and the USSR competed in Afghanistan by building roads, hospitals, and schools.  Modernism never was strong in Afghanistan. Its reformist monarch Amanullah Khan and the liberal nationalist intellectual Marmud Tarzi had their zenith in the 1920s.  Yet, whatever its many flaws, the one thing that Russian socialism had to offer was modernism founded on public education for everyone.  But the USSR abandoned that path in Afghanistan, resorting to brute force against an enemy that lived for it – and believed that brutality toward one’s Earthly enemy is the path to heaven.  That the USSR pushed an officially atheistic secular humanism only guaranteed an irreconcilable conflict. If the USA had kept to its earlier course in Afghanistan, investing in infrastructure and education, rather than arming the resistance, it is difficult to imagine an alternate history worse than the real one.

Previously on Necessary Facts

Peace is More Powerful 

Armies Without Weapons  

Cities: the Urban Visions of Jane Jacobs  

Raymond Loewy