Unending Conflicts: Reflections on “The Longest Day” and “The Last Battle,” by Cornelius Ryan

Listening to the audiobook version of Cornelius Ryan’s account of the fall of Berlin, The Last Battle, read by the fabulous Simon Vance, inspired me to buy the audiobook of The Longest Day—which turned out to be much better than the Hollywood movie, despite the monotonous sing-song intonations of the reader, Clive Chafer.

In The Longest Day Ryan highlights the tremendous good luck that blessed the Allies, and the amazing foul-ups that doomed the Germans. First, the stormy weather that told the Germans the invasion could not possibly occur in early June, and the break in the weather that was just long enough to push Eisenhower to give the go-ahead. Then, the first group of Army Rangers attacking the cliffs at Pointe-du-Hoc missed their landing spot, causing a delay in their reaching the top of the cliffs; as a result, their reinforcements, hearing nothing from them by the agreed hour, diverted to Omaha Beach, which probably saved the Americans from being driven back into the sea there. On the German side, Hitler was convince that the Normandy landings were a feint, and that the real invasion would arrive in the Pas-de-Calais. Rommel left Normandy to go home to Germany for his wife’s birthday on the 6th, and to see Hitler to persuade him to release to him the reserve Panzer tank division. In his absence, the Germans badly miscommunicated the early reports of the landings, and Hitler delayed release of the Panzers until it was too late to drive the Allies off the beaches. By the time Rommel was finally alerted and got back to Normandy, the Allies had a firm foothold in Europe and Germany’s defeat, caught between Eisenhower in the west and the Russians in the east, was inevitable. In short: the success of the D-Day landings was almost a miracle.

The Last Battle, like The Longest Day, weaves its narrative around portraits of a diverse collection of Germans, Russians, Americans, Brits, and others of all sorts, both civilian and military. The accounts of atrocities committed by the advancing Russians, often in revenge for atrocities committed by German soldiers in Russia, are recounted in some detail. Among the German leaders, the cowardly Himmler and the vainglorious Göring vie in ignominy with the sycophantic yes-men surrounding Hitler, who by this time was a shrivelled, delusional basket case. But even the best of the Germans, like Heinrici, despite their intelligence and courage, were using their undeniable talents to support a regime of psychopathic bigotry and brutality.

As a child I would come home from school and watch WWII movies on television. They seemed like ancient history to me. Later I realized that the end of the war had been just 15 years before my afternoon television entertainments. Later still I realized that many of the fathers of my schoolmates had fought in the war. Today as I read news reports of the war in Ukraine, the atrocities in Gaza, and the neo-fascist ICE raids in the U.S., I realize that the Second World War did not end, really, but merely paused to catch its breath, like the American Civil War. These conflicts flare up into overt violence, then subside to uneasy truces, then flare up again, but seem never to end.

Some big, fantastic notion

E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1973) remains a fount of wisdom—wisdom which is in short supply today, and which we need. Desperately.

The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion—political or otherwise—which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time. —E. F. Schumacher

The economy is more important

The economy is more important, so we must continue using fossil fuels.

The economy is more important, so we must stop wearing masks and tracking deaths from the pandemic.

The economy is more important, so we cannot stop doing business with murderous dictators.

The economy is more important, so we cannot prioritize human rights.

The economy is more important, so we cannot spend more on schools, hospitals, and low-income housing.

And so on.

Environmentalists need to get behind nuclear power

Why? Because the only options to nuclear are 1) fossil fuels, or 2) no-growth, and neither of those is a viable option.

Nuclear power sucks, but only in the same way that everything else in an industrialized society does: multinational corporations, international banks, big tech. None of this is going away; the only hope is to manage it through sensible and effective regulation.

Wind and solar are great, but limited. Only nuclear power can supply enough energy to replace what we get now from oil, coal, and gas—as well as powering the inevitable growth in developing economies. France has been using nuclear power successfully for decades. It is long past time for the environmental movement to stop the fear-mongering about nuclear power and begin the hard work of expanding its use as quickly and safely as possible.

Not all regions need nuclear power, or are well suited to it. Coastal British Columbia, for example, prone to earthquakes and with plenty of capacity for wind- water-, and even solar-generated electricity, is not ideal for nuclear power. Eastern BC and Alberta, on the other hand, make a lot of sense for nuclear development, particularly in Alberta, where nuclear power could displace the oil and gas industry and re-train and re-employ its workforce.

Ron Chernow’s “The House of Morgan” (1990)

Chernow tells the story of the Morgan banking dynasty from the 1850s to the 1980s—as sobering and depressing a tale as one could ever care to read. From the earliest days onward, the Morgan crowd was invariably on the wrong side: against workers and unions, in favour of monopolists, always on the side of the super-rich. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Morgans (J. P. Morgan, Morgan Grenfell, Morgan Guaranty, Morgan Stanley, etc.) financed the rise of fascist governments in Japan, Italy, and Germany. Any Latin American despot who offered stability and profits became a client, with Juan Peron of Argentina at the top of the list. Beginning in the 1970s they tapped into Arab oil money—an effort aided by their longstanding anti-Jewish policies. They bitterly resisted any and all efforts at banking regulation, which they branded as “socialist” and “communist.” And they found ways to make money out of every war from the Civil War on. They rode the wave until finally being reduced to just another Wall St. company at the end of the dog-eat-dog cowboy financing of the 1980s.

The story is depressing, first, because the Morgans made billions from being on the wrong side; and second, because of how empty and soul-destroying their lives were. Mansions, estates, yachts, limousines, hobnobbing with royalty, gold-plated fixtures, and all their time spent thinking about how to make more money. It is hard to imagine a more boring group of people.

U.N. identifies companies complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/un-report-lists-companies-complicit-in-israels-genocide-who-are-they

The U.S. response: sanction the author of the report: https://apnews.com/article/francesca-albanese-gaza-genocide-sanctions-un-israel-ff0501f318b7dd0d923c30f10b639724.

Lockheed Martin
Leonardo S.p.A (Italian arms manufacturer)
FANUC (Japanese)
Microsoft
Alphabet (Google)
Amazon
IBM
Palantir Technologies
Caterpillar
Rada Electronic Industries
Hyundai
Volvo
Booking		 Airbnb
Drummond
Glencore
Chevron
BP
Bright Dairy & Food (Chinese)
Orbia / Netafim (Mexican)
BNP Paribas (French)
Barclays
BlackRock
Vanguard
Allianz
AXA

Mark Carney: A Canadian Macron?

Just as the French elected Emmanuel Macron to stave off a surge of support for Marine Le Pen’s far right populism, so Canadians have elected the Liberal Party led by Mark Carney to stave off the threat of Pierre Poilievre’s poisonous right-wing populism. Both men are former bankers. Macron, for all his strutting and showboating internationally, has been a disappointment domestically, failing to satisfy either conservatives or progressives. In Canada, progressives who normally would have voted for Green Party or NDP candidates voted Liberal, hoping that Carney would not only save us from Poilievre and stand up to Trump, but would also effectively address the climate crisis and the housing shortage.

So far, he has talked tough about U.S. aggression, but accomplished little. He has snuggled up to the Albertan oil and gas lobby, apparently in what is surely a doomed attempt to win over enough Albertans to break the Conservatives’ stranglehold on the province and tamp down the nutbar secession movement; but has done nothing to promote carbon-free energy development. And he has pushed through a bill that will accelerate construction projects, alarming both environmentalists and indigenous groups.

It is very early days, and I hope to be proved wrong, but at the moment Carney seems headed toward the same fate as Macron.

Meanwhile in the U.K., the Labour Party under Keir Starmer is criminalizing peaceful protest and free speech by anyone who happens to object to genocide in Palestine, while the neo-fascist revolution in the U.S. is proceeding briskly. We are living, as the fake “Chinese curse” says, in interesting times.

[To be updated as events unfold.]

Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels

I read through most of these detective novels many years ago, but the other day was offered a sharp discount on the audiobook version of Unnatural Death, and I have been enjoying it very much. Wimsey, the second son to a noble father, is independently wealthy and amuses himself by solving crimes the police cannot. He is a traumatized WWI veteran; his trusty man-servant, Bunter, was his batman during the war. Usually jaunty and flippant, Wimsey occasionally falls into deep depressions, and these lingering effects of his backstory add depth to his character.

Besides being witty, well-written, and well-plotted, the Wimsey novels provide a wonderful look at Britain between the wars, including the surplus of marriageable women left with few options, the casual sexist, racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Jewish prejudices, and the class divisions that were so fundamental to British society. Sayers’ depiction of women, culminating in the character of Harriet Vane, makes her feminist sympathies clear, but her attitudes otherwise remain veiled.

For an imperfect but more detailed overview of the Wimsey novels, see this Wikipedia article.

Revisiting “Brideshead Revisited”

The video, starring Jeremy Irons. I have not read the book.

There was a great deal I did not remember at all, and some I misremembered. The one detail I recalled correctly from 1982 was Diana Quick’s bare boob—the first bare boob I had ever seen on television. On the other hand I was completely wrong in thinking it was a story about the World War—the First? the Second?—that concluded with the empty estate of Lord Marchmain being commandeered as a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers.

Jeremy Irons spends most of the eleven episodes staring glumly or blankly as others talk to him or around him. Anthony Andrews, the other lead, literally disappears into a weirdly pious alcoholism in North Africa. The great delight for me was John Gielgud’s performance as Irons’s quirky, perversely funny father. And Nickolas Grace gives a bravura performance as the flamboyantly gay Anthony Blanche—”Antoine”—who in the end proves the most clear-eyed of them all.

Part way through watching the DVDs I wanted to read the book—especially the Moroccan episode, which I had completely forgotten—and I may get around to it. But by the end I was worn out: far too many unhappy rich people and far too much Catholic piety for my taste.

French military discipline, 1914

As the French army falls back toward Paris in the face of an overwhelming German advance, the Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy, decides that the ineffective General Victor-Constant Michel must be replaced as Military Governor of Paris. At the same time, a majority of the newly-formed coalition government decide that Messimy must himself be replaced. Barbara Tuchman, in The Guns of August, picks up the story:

Michel stormed when asked by Messimy to resign, protested loudly and angrily and obstinately refused to go. Becoming equally excited, Messimy shouted at Michel that if he persisted in his refusal he would leave the room, not for his own office at the Invalides, but for the military prison of Cherche-Midi under guard. As their cries resounded from the room Viviani fortuitously arrived, calmed the disputants, and eventually persuaded Michel to give way.

Hardly was the official decree appointing Gallieni “Military Governor and Commandant of the Armies of Paris” signed next day when it became Messimy’s turn to storm when asked for his resignation by Poincaré and Viviani. “I refuse to yield my post to Millerand, I refuse to do you the pleasure of resigning, I refuse to become a Minister without Portfolio.” If they wanted to get rid of him after the “crushing labor” he had sustained in the last month, then the whole government would have to resign, and in that case, he said, “I have an officer’s rank in the Army and a Mobilization order in my pocket. I shall go to the front.” No persuasion availed. The government was forced to resign and was reconstituted next day. Millerand, Delcassé, Briand, Alexandre Ribot, and two new socialist ministers replaced five former members, including Messimy. He departed as a major to join Dubail’s army and to serve at the front until 1918, rising to general of division.

In Tuchman’s account, refusal to obey orders was rampant in the French army, from the Minister of War down to the lowliest private, but was frequently found as well  in the British and Russian armies. As in Tolstoy’s version of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia, Tuchman tells of continual miscommunication that, added to chronic failures of military discipline, leaves one persistent impression of the opening weeks of World War I, on all fronts: utter confusion.

Language wars

The left keeps fighting the language wars and losing everything else.

Unhoused, not homeless. Undocumented, not illegal. Transgender, not transsexual. Sex worker, not prostitute. And let’s be extremely careful about what word to use to refer to people of colour in the United States. Negro, the word used by Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, Jr., is out. Afro-American and African-American (with or without the hyphens) had their day, but no more. This week the acceptable term is Black, with a capital B (which is the exact meaning of Negro, but . . . never mind).

Meanwhile, millions of people continue to live on the streets; immigrants continue to be abused by employers, traffickers, and government thugs; people with gender dysphoria continue to be harassed and vilified; women continue to be sexually exploited; and racism continues unabated.

Cartoon idea: Crowd chanting “She’s not illegal, she’s undocumented!” as ICE thugs hustle a woman into an unmarked van.

Essential vocabulary in the Age of Trump

autocracy: government by one person with absolute power
homophobia: fear and hatred of homosexuals
misogyny: contempt for women, and the determination to limit their freedom; sexism
oligarchy: government by a small group of people
philistine: a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them
plutocracy: government by people whose power derives from their wealth
racism: fear and hatred of those identified as members of a marginalized racial or ethnic group
transphobia: fear and hatred of transsexuals and transgender people
troglodyte: a person whose opinions are ignorant, reactionary, and anti-intellectual
xenophobia: fear and hatred of foreigners

At the local coffee shop

A quietly posh, white-haired grandmother sipping her coffee. Across from her a pretty seven-year-old, evidently her granddaughter, sipping her hot chocolate. Both of them taking small bites from their pastries. I wondered whether the grandmother was remembering, as I was imagining, a day when she, at seven, was taken to tea by her grandmother and sat quietly, answering the grandmother’s questions, as the little girl did today.

“Ithaka,” by C. P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

“C.P. Cavafy is widely considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/c-p-cavafy

Pessimistic prediction

Check back in late 2026 to see how this holds up:

  • Trump’s fascist ICE raids, his trashing of government agencies, and his Neanderthal bullying foreign-policy initiatives will prove quite popular.
  • He will “make deals” on his tariff threats and pass another big tax cut, so the economy will begin to rebound.
  • In the mid-term elections Republicans will hold the Senate for sure and possibly keep their majority in the House, too, because the Democrats are hapless.

Patrick gets the answer right

A parable of education

I was working at the YMCA’s daycare centre. It was summertime, so the kids were there all day. My boss was not happy with the programme for 4- and 5-year-olds, so she asked me to spend some time with those classes and just observe what was going on.

Patrick was the youngest of the 4-year-olds. He was skinny, pale, and freckled, with a large bush of orange hair and enormous blue eyes. He looked like a little clown. He was usually off in his own world somewhere, oblivious to everyone else. His mum dropped him off quite early, and when the teacher arrived he was already deep into a box of Legos and far away on Planet X. The teacher would greet him, “Good morning, Patrick!” and Patrick, as if awaking from a dream, would turn briefly from his toys and reply, “Hi, honey!” Everyone found this amusing, but when Patrick’s mum found out she sat him down and explained that his teacher had a name—Mrs. Johnson—and he should call her by her name. The next morning, greeted by the teacher, Patrick replied, “Hi, Johnson!”

On swimming day the 4s and 5s had the pool together. There was some sort of holdup with the snacks, though, so while the teacher of the 5-year-olds sorted out the problem, the teacher of the 4-year-old class had both groups sitting in a circle, waiting. She began talking about colours in a syrupy, sing-songy voice. She had a few sheets of coloured construction paper. “Yesterday we learned our colours, didn’t we?” she began. “Georgia, do you remember the colour you learned?” She continued around the circle in this way, and finally got to Patrick, who was way off on Planet X as usual, returning only when he heard his name at the end of the teacher’s question. “Do you remember the colour you learned, Patrick?” Startled out of his reveries, he looked up to find everyone staring at him expectantly. He knew he had been asked a question; he knew everyone was waiting for him to answer; but he had no idea what the question was. He bent his head and began balling his fists up inside his striped t-shirt.

A helpful and sympathetic girl from the 5-year-old class asked, “Is it on his shirt?” Patrick’s eyes went to his shirt, searching desperately for the answer. “No,” the teacher said, “it isn’t on his shirt. But it is on his shoes.” 

Patrick was wearing red sneakers. His eyes leapt from his shirt to his shoes. Everyone waited, hardly breathing. Suddenly, Patrick had the answer. His body relaxed. He lifted his head up, smiled, and answered triumphantly, “Dogshit!”

And he was right.

“The Glass Key,” by Dashiell Hammett (1931)

There are no normal people in this novel: only gangsters, ward bosses, corrupt politicians and corrupt government officials and corrupt cops and corrupt journalists. No children, no young lovers, no happy married couples, nobody going to work or shopping in the neighbourhood or picnicking in the park. Noir, noir, noir.

There is a murder—or at least an accidental death—to solve in this novel, but there is no detective, per se. Instead, the protagonist is a political operative and collection of incongruities, Ned Beaumont. He takes a multiple-day beating that makes the typical knock-out of classic detective fiction seem a mere love-tap, but never reciprocates. He has been in the town where the story is set for only a year and a half, and yet he is best friends with his boss, the town’s political kingpin, and on very affectionate terms with his boss’s mother and sister—besides knowing everyone, down to the last punk and cab driver and speakeasy operator. Relentlessly stoical and transcendently astute, he is nevertheless addicted to gambling. Irresistibly attractive to every woman in the story, he never shows the slightest interest in them and seems as much the career loner as any mysterious cowboy gunslinger in a Wild West novel; and yet he leaves town with the best of the women at the end. And despite an extended stay in hospital after that beating, he seems to suffer no long-term effects: no limp, no scars, no kidney damage, no chronic weakness.

But still there is something compelling in Hammett’s grim, stripped-down, laconic narrative style. Like his protagonist, Hammett never lets up, never gives in, and we are pulled into his narrative’s irresistible current.

Baseball Clichés

There’s a lot of ballgame left to be played. It hasn’t been a textbook start. They’re trying to chip away at the deficit. A two-run blast! The game has really sped up on him. He hasn’t got his best stuff tonight. He threw a rocket to first base. Let’s right the ship. That was way upstairs. It’s a game of inches. He came to play. It’s getaway day. He got squeezed on that pitch. He left the yard. His first trip to the plate. They’re playing him to pull. That’s two gone. Two out, nobody on. He’s clutch at the plate. At the top of the zone. A chopper to short. His baseball I.Q. is very high. He plays the game right. He sends it down the right-field line. It hugs the line. A big turn around first. He takes the base—a two-out free pass. No defence against a walk. He smacks one to left field. He found a hole. He’s tipping his pitches. With two strikes he needs to shorten up. That swing is too long. It caromed off the wall. They swept the series. They went wire-to-wire. The count is even. A walk-off! He rounds the bases. It ran inside. Jammed him. It’s a different team today. He lays off that pitch. Peaking over his shoulder at the runner. You can feel the momentum. It’s a hitter’s count. The stars are aligning. It’s a pitcher’s count. He’s on the bump. He kicks and fires. Strike ’em out throw ’em out. That was just a bad at-bat. Don’t let the ball play you. Play a clean game. He’s trying to find the strike zone. Back-to-back K’s. Picks it up on one hop. He steps up to the dish. Power hitters. Those bats are warming up. He misses downstairs. The tying run is at the plate. The count is even. He ran through a red light. There’s traffic on the base paths. Station to station. Top of the lineup. Bases loaded. He’s throwing smoke. He challenged him with a fastball. Swing and a miss! Don’t expand the strike zone. Clips the outside corner. He’s dealing. High-leverage arms. Back-to-back hooks. On deck. Waiting in the wings. In the hole. Comes in with a heater. Right at the knees. Threw it right by him. Struck him out looking. A pitcher’s pitch. He rings him up. He swings through it. Busted him up and in. A little chin music. Tough to do damage. Make him throw strikes. He was taking all the way. One pitch one out. The runner was stranded. The last nine outs are the toughest. He picked his pocket. He goes back to the warning track, he’s out of room, looks up, and it’s gone! A sky-scraping home run! A monster home run. A bomb! A no-doubter. The right fielder just turns and watches it go. An insurance run. They’ve blown the game open. They’re putting up some crooked numbers. He’s taking one for the team. The bottom of the order. The seventh-inning stretch. Retired at first base. They haven’t cashed in on their opportunities. Struggling offensively. Buzzed his tower! Up and in. Down and away. The inner part of the plate. The outer part of the plate. A defensive swing. Drifting foul. Couldn’t get there in time. He misjudged it. The series finale. They’re playing match-up. A 1-2-3 inning. Retired in order. A bloop hit. A lazy fly ball. An ice-cream cone catch! He closed the door. He missed the bag. It’s a new ballgame. The wheels have come off. It’s all about getting outs. That first out is so important. He scorched it! His bat’s starting to heat up. Right at the centerfielder. Right back through the box. A rocket off his bat. He gave it a ride but the ballpark held it. A long out. Very playable. Popped him up. That’ll find the seats. He fires to first. He might have chased Ball 4. He’s battled through injuries. Ahead in the count. Just got a piece of it. Just wide of the chalk. Another big inning. Down the stretch. One game at a time. Brushed him back. Taking all the way. Can o’ corn. Another goose egg. Did he go around? A productive out. Move the runner. Putting up zeroes. Down to their last out. Down to their last strike. He went up there hacking. The lead held up. A dandy of a pitching duel. It was a team win.

 

Nothing like us

Very few people study Ancient Greece these days.

For one thing, the Greeks were terrible misogynists. They seemed always to be at war. Their politicians were mostly driven by personal ambition, and many of them were plainly corrupt.

The richest of the Greek city-states, Athens, founded its wealth on slave labour and the economic exploitation of its smaller and weaker neighbours.

And yet, out of all that mess came great art, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and even science and medicine.

The Greeks were, in short, nothing at all like us.

Addendum: Greek words that are completely irrelevant today:

Misogyny, democracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, autocracy, demagogue, sophistry . . . well, you get the idea.

Every form of government tends to perish

Here’s more Will Durant, paraphrasing Plato’s Republic in The Story of Philosophy:

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. In either case the end is revolution. When revolution comes it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims; but though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring serious disease (556). “Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power” (557).

But even democracy ruins itself by excess—of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses (588). “As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them” (Protagoras, 317); to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey,” that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the “protector of the people” rises to supreme power (565). (Consider the history of Rome.)

The lust for the spoils of office

From the “Plus ça change” Dept—

Will Durant, in The Story of Philosophy, paraphrasing Plato’s Republic:

[After describing a rural paradise of simple, healthy, peaceful life] he passes quietly on to the question, Why is it that such a simple paradise as he has described never comes?—why is it that these Utopias never arrive upon the map?

He answers, because of greed and luxury. Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others. The result is the encroachment of one group upon the territory of another, the rivalry of groups for the resources of the soil, and then war. Trade and finance develop, and bring new class-divisions. “Any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the other; and in either division there are smaller ones—you would make a great mistake if you treated them as single states” (423). A mercantile bourgeoisie arises, whose members seek social position through wealth and conspicuous consumption: “they will spend large sums of money on their wives” (548). These changes in the distribution of wealth produce political changes: as the wealth of the merchant over-reaches that of the land-owner, aristocracy gives way to a plutocratic oligarchy—wealthy traders and bankers rule the state. Then statesmanship, which is the coordination of social forces and the adjustment of policy to growth, is replaced by politics, which is the strategy of party and the lust for the spoils of office.

Clerihews

Definition
“A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem of a type invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875 – 1956).

Form
“A clerihew has the following properties:

  • It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people
  • It has four lines of irregular length and metre for comic effect
  • The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages.
  • The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject’s name. According to a letter in The Spectator in the 1960s, Bentley said that a true clerihew has to have the name “at the end of the first line”, as the whole point was the skill in rhyming awkward names.

“Clerihews are not satirical or abusive, but they target famous individuals and reposition them in an absurd, anachronistic or commonplace setting, often giving them an over-simplified and slightly garbled description.” 

—From Wikipedia

Samples (by E. C. Bentley)

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St Paul’s.”

The younger Van Eyck
Was christened Jan, and not Mike.
The thought of this curious mistake
Often kept him awake.

Some Original Clerihews
1.
Young Winnie Churchill
Thought, “A career in the Church’ll
Surely drive me barmy.
I think I’ll join the army.”

2.
The philosopher Socrates
Said, “I try not to mock at these
Tedious fools, but they all take a fall
‘Cuz they’re such know-it-alls.”

3.
Miss Florence Nightengale
Ditched her farthingale
And thought, “I will hie me a
Ways down the road, perhaps to Crimea.”

4.
Steven Jobs
Threw away gobs
Of mess and fuss
And designed a computer for the rest of us.

5.
Miles Davis
Thought, “God save us
From slavish imitation.
Let’s try some innovation.”

6.
Thelonious Monk
Was in a deep funk
Until he manufactured
Chords that were fractured.

More of E. C. Bentley’s clerihews can be found at Project Gutenberg, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46691/pg46691-images.html

Oligarchy, the anti-democratic sentiments of the wealthy classes, and the rise of authoritarian leaders: 2025? 1930? Try the 5th century B.C.E.

Yes, history keeps rhyming, and yes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Here is Will Durant setting the stage for the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle:

[As for the Sophists,] there is hardly a problem or a solution in our current philosophy of mind and conduct which they did not realize and discuss. . . . In politics they divided into two schools. One, like Rousseau, argued that nature is good, and civilization bad; that by nature all men are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions; and that law is an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak. Another school, like Nietzsche, claimed that nature is beyond good and evil; that by nature all men are unequal; that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong; that power is the supreme virtue, and the supreme desire of man; and that of all forms of government the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.

No doubt this attack on democracy reflected the rise of a wealthy minority at Athens which called itself the Oligarchical Party, and denounced democracy as an incompetent sham. . . . The Athenian oligarchic party, led by Critias, advocated the abandonment of democracy on the score of its inefficiency in war, and secretly lauded the aristocratic government of Sparta. Many of the oligarchic leaders were exiled: but when at last Athens [was defeated in the Peloponnesian War], one of the peace conditions imposed by Sparta was the recall of these exiled aristocrats. They had hardly returned when, with Critias at their head, they declared a rich man’s revolution against the “democratic” party that had ruled during the disastrous war.

—From The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant

My favourite memory of science class

It was in Grade 7.

Our teacher was a no-nonsense fellow who addressed us as Mr. This and Miss That.

We were having a lesson about the properties of matter.

Steve Brodhag, sitting in the back row, had dozed off.

The teacher, noticing this, called out in a loud voice, “Mr. Brodhag, what’s matter?”

Steve, wakened suddenly, groggily replied, “Uh, nothin’.”

The Harlem “Renaissance”

In 1927, there were perhaps 300.000 African Americans living in the vicinity of Fifth and Seventh Avenues, roughly from 130th to 155th Streets. They lived, according to census and Urban League studies of the period, in housing designed for 16,000. . . . Many lived in tenements so “unspeakable” and “incredible,” in the words of a 1927 city housing commission report, “the state would not allow cows to live in some of these apartments.”

—Black and Blue: The Life and Lyrics of Andy Razaf, by Barry Singer

“Spinoza: A Life,” by Steven Nadler

This is an excellent biography of an extraordinary man. Benedict Spinoza, a lapsed Jew excommunicated by his synagogue and living in a Holland rancorously divided between Calvinists and Catholics, republicans and monarchists, was far ahead of his time. Even the most liberal of his contemporaries could not stomach his sceptical views of religion. The only major work that he published (anonymously) in his lifetime made him the target of vicious attacks, to the point that his grand opus, the Ethics, was published only after his death. Besides being brilliant, Spinoza lived very modestly, never sought public attention, and was known for his kindness and even temper. He died young of a respiratory illness exacerbated by years of grinding lenses and inhaling glass dust, but he may have been lucky to die when he did. Just five years before his death in 1677, the De Witt brothers, Jan and Cornelis, were beaten to death by an angry mob that stripped them naked, mutilated their bodies, and hung them up by their heels. Spinoza’s insistence on logic and reason put him at odds with his own age, and indeed with almost any place or time, and it is not hard to imagine him becoming another victim of the mob. I wish I could have met him, and shook his hand . . . and warned him about inhaling glass dust.

Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, and Tony Hillerman

Zane Grey’s writing is corny, clunky, and amateurish.

“Out of date” is a polite way to describe his language and attitudes, which are casually racist. His characters, at best barely better than cartoonish, adhere to age-old sexist stereotypes.

The historic popularity of Zane Grey’s work can only be understood as his readers’ recognition of their own values in the “Old West” mythology of white settlers, ranchers, rustlers, and gunmen as the heroes of a white-supremacist melodrama. (Or else, if you came to Grey’s stories in your youth, you might have a nostalgic love of them.)

The anti-Mormon screed in Riders of the Purple Sage, too, would have appealed to most of his original readers.

Louis L’Amour adopted Grey’s basic ideas, created a formula, and cranked out a prodigious number of stories built on it.

The Old West in the novels of Grey and L’Amour is a largely lawless Hobbesian state of nature in which evil men seek to rule and dominate by any means necessary, while good men band together under the leadership of a hero to defeat the villains and protect their land, property, and families. These novels are quintessential boys’ fiction, allowing male readers to wonder if they would be wise, brave, and strong enough to defeat the bad guys.

Tony Hillerman’s detective novels, set in the same region a century later and featuring Navaho policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, are much better on all counts. Within the conventions of the genre (we still have melodramatically evil villains) Hillerman introduces realistic, well-rounded characters, authentic portrayals of indigenous people and their cultures, and female characters who are something more than patriarchal caricatures. If you enjoy detective fiction, I warmly recommend Dance Hall of the Dead as a good introduction to Hillerman’s work.

Sailboats

“Sailboats” —a poem for teachers

Like children with toy sailboats,
we launch students into the water.
Carried by the current,
most disappear from view,
their fates obscure.

A few return nostalgically
to find their places taken by
younger, unknown faces,
their teachers preoccupied
with tests, papers, lessons to prepare.
We see their surprise
as they realize that nothing has changed,
but everything has changed.

Pleased, or saddened, or both
by their visits to the past,
they launch back into the waters,
resuming their journeys to
uncharted futures.

—February/March 2025

Spinoza: the consolations of recognizing necessity

From The Ethics, Part IV:

Human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power to adapt things outside us to our use. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly all that happens to us . . . so long as we are conscious that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this . . . the better part of ourselves will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us . . . . For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor be absolutely satisfied with anything except what is true.

And Part V:

The more this knowledge that things are necessary is applied to particular things . . . the greater is the power of the mind over the emotions . . . . For the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated as soon as the man who has lost it perceives that it could not by any means have been preserved.

Spinoza explains the origin of religious belief

Because people, writes Spinoza,

find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them . . . , for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, etc., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means [to an end], they cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the [way they themselves do things to achieve some purpose], they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe . . . who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; . . . but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing  . . . which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together.

Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc.: so they declared that such things happen because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant . . . than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God’s judgments far transcend human understanding.

. . . If a stone falls from a roof on to someone’s head, and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for if it had not by God’s will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. “But why,” they will insist, “was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?” If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: “But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?” So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last they take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.

—Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics, Part One, Appendix

Spinoza (1632 – 1677) wisely stipulated that his work be published only after his death.

Robert Graves, “Good-bye to All That” (1929, 1957)

Robert Graves, born in England in 1895, enlisted as a second lieutenant in August 1914, rising to the rank of captain by October 1915. He was badly wounded at the Battle of the Somme (July to November, 1916). He was expected to die but, sent back to England, he recovered. He nearly died again in the flu epidemic of 1918.

He went on to become one of the most notable and controversial writers of the twentieth century: critic, poet, novelist, and memoirist. In 1921 Graves and his wife moved to a village outside of Oxford.

. . . The Rector . . . asked me to speak . . . at a War Memorial service. He suggested that I should read war-poems. But instead of Rupert Brooke on the glorious dead, I read some of the more painful poems by [Siegfried] Sassoon and Wilfred Owen about men dying from gas-poisoning, and about buttocks of corpses bulging from the mud. I also suggested that the men who had died . . . were not particularly virtuous or particularly wicked, but just average soldiers, and that the survivors should thank God they were alive, and do their best to avoid wars in the future. Though  [some in the audience] professed to be scandalized, the ex-service men had not been too well treated on their return, and liked to be told that they stood on equal terms with the glorious dead. They were modest men: I noticed that, though respecting the King’s [request that they] wear their campaign medals on this occasion, they kept them buttoned up inside their coats.

Amen! But let’s hope we have not been “doing our best” in the last century to avoid future wars . . . . If we have, then God help us.

From Beethoven to Taylor Swift: How to Earn a Living Making Music?

The Life of Beethoven (1998), by David Wyn Jones, revived for me an old question about how we pay for art, and the consequences of that choice. Consider the words of Christian Gottlob Neefe, Beethoven’s first teacher of any note:

A composer should not concern himself with the plebeian listener, who never knows what he wants, and understands virtually nothing . . . . Woe betide the composer who wants to address such people. He will spoil his talent, that has been given to him, by having to compose minuets, polonaises, and Turkish marches. And then—good night talent, genius, and art.

In Neefe’s day and in Beethoven’s younger years, “plebeian” listeners could be more easily ignored, as musicians were hired—not for “gigs,” as they are today, but on salary—by noblemen, for whom a retinue of court musicians was as necessary as coachmen and gardeners:

For Neefe and Beethoven princes and patrons had a moral duty to support the work of the artist, something that would earn them respect; if they did not offer this support they deserved, and in Beethoven’s case were to receive, contempt.

This comfortable situation was disrupted for Beethoven when Napoleon’s armies occupied Bonn in 1794, turning Beethoven’s patron into an out-of-work aristocratic refugee. That particular cataclysm was part of a general trend, however, and Beethoven spent most of his career earning his living by selling his work—which required him to pay attention to the tastes of “plebeian listeners,” as seen in this letter he wrote turning down a request to write music for an opera because the popular taste had turned to realistic plots in contemporary settings:

If your opera had not been an opera with magic I would have snatched it with both hands. But the public here is now as prejudiced against a subject of that kind as it formerly looked for and desired it.

Today, a full-time musician must cater to popular taste. The jazz saxophonist Lou Donaldson, asked why he had abandoned avant-garde music for rhythm and blues, said, “I like to eat.” The theoretical alternatives are these: 1) find a patron, either a wealthy individual or a foundation or government body dedicated to supporting the arts; 2) inherit enough wealth that earning a living is unnecessary; 3) resign yourself to poverty; or 4) play what will sell. Each of these options is problematical in ways similar to other aspects of life. David Wyn Jones writes of Beethoven,

As a musician he wanted to compose only the greatest of music, but was also obliged to compose for money; as an individual he wished to maintain the highest ethical and moral standards but continually fell short.

In some semi-mythical community of yesteryear, music was a pastime, not a profession. In the evenings or on holidays people would put aside their work and pick up their instruments. Music was also at the centre of religious services. The resulting “folk music” was simpler than anything Beethoven or Duke Ellington composed, but occasional virtuosos of a kind would emerge. The blind singer or musician, like the limping blacksmith, is a familiar figure from ancient Greece to our own time—though blacksmiths have all but disappeared. These days, most people do not pick up an instrument or join a community sing when work is done—they listen to professionally produced music, usually by themselves, with tiny speakers stuck in their ears. And most of the professionally produced music they listen to, though composed and performed by immensely skilled musicians, is written to appeal to “plebeian listeners” who have, for the most part, zero musical education, and whose tastes are predictably unrefined.

As patrons, like blacksmiths, have virtually disappeared, musicians determined to play and compose “only the greatest of music” are left with few options. On the margins, a few serious jazz and classical musicians are still able to find work, supported by small but devoted audiences, but almost all of them must supplement their performance income with teaching jobs, either privately or in universities or music schools, or both—or with other “revenue streams” generated by “creating a brand” on social media. Or they depend on their spouse’s income. Or they do some other kind of work on the side to support their music-making.

Since we are now in a world run by billionaires, it would be nice if the super-rich “had a moral duty to support the work of the artist, something that would earn them respect.” So far, however, that does not seem to be happening.

Bebop, 1945

Left to right: Dizzy Gillespie, Harold “Doc” West (I think) on drums, Slam Stewart (I think) on bass, Charlie Parker, at (I believe) the legendary Town Hall concert, NYC, June 22, 1945. Unseen pianist is probably Al Haig.

The height of West’s drum throne is remarkable, as is the setup of the drum kit, which resembles an early New Orleans style: snare drum low and strongly tilted, big bass drum, rack tom on the side of the bass drum, and small cymbals. A more modern setup à la Kenny Clarke would feature a smaller bass drum; much less tilt to the snare drum, which sits higher and flatter; larger cymbals, especially the ride cymbal; and a much lower, more natural seating position.

 

Kenny Clarke ca. 1955 in (I believe) Rudy van Gelder’s house, converted into a recording studio.

Plus ça change . . . (Nostradamus edition)

1789:

Among all the possible causes for the French Revolution that historians have proposed over the past two centuries, three stand out. First, the financial irresponsibility of Louis XVI severely limited his options when the crisis arrived. Second, the French nobility, blinded by their arrogance, failed utterly to understand that a few short-term accommodations might, in the long-run, preserve their status. Third, a series of droughts and other agricultural disasters pushed the country from a general depression into a disastrous situation in which thousands faced ruin and starvation, while the government failed to take any useful action. Other factors may have played a role, but these three seem sufficient to explain the cataclysmic events of 1789.

2025:

Among all the possible causes for the collapse of the Fifth Republic, three stand out. First, the financial irresponsibility of several successive governments severely limited President Macron’s options when the crisis arrived. Second, the French elite, blinded by their arrogance, failed utterly to understand that substantive change was required. Third, the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the impacts of climate change to prolong a dismal economic situation, while the government failed to take any useful action. Other factors may have played a role, but these three seem sufficient to explain the cataclysmic events of 2025.

Go pound sand, Ezra (wisdom comes, but too late)

A cautionary tale for those who so willingly proclaim the latest discoveries of the literary promoters to be masterpieces.

In Humphrey Carpenter’s 900-page biography of Ezra Pound, A Serious Character: the life of Ezra Pound, the man is nearly as annoying a century later as he must have been in real life. Half-literate, sloppy, hyperactive, supremely egoistical (even when promoting other artists); a young man whose eccentricities, confined to the harmless realm of literature, turned toxic in middle age when he left letters for politics. A narcissist incapable of admitting error. A flinger of insults when criticized, or just to claim superiority, but also a kind and generous friend. A man who, aspiring to be regarded as an intellectual, lacked the discipline to become truly learned about anything. In short, an American snake-oil salesman purveying poetry and invented poetic movements with all the boastful ignorance of a circus promoter. And the exact model of millions of obsessives today who embrace crackpot theories and bigotries and spread them enthusiastically on social media.

Immediately after his meeting with Mussolini he began a period of frenetic activity, in which he set himself up as a prophet of salvation through right economics, an interpreter of history who could save the world from its errors, a scourge of government who could unmask international conspiracies. . . .

It might be supposed from this that he had lost his sense of proportion; yet he was only behaving in character. The fervour he now devoted to questions of economics and government was the same with which he had pushed himself into the London literary world in 1909, had set up Imagism, promoted Vorticism, and championed Gaudier-Brzeska, Joyce, and Eliot. 

Pound’s internet was, of course, the radio, and his infamous wartime broadcasts from Italy got him arrested, charged with treason on dubious grounds, and confined to a mental hospital on dubious grounds for more than twelve years. Within five years he was receiving regular visits from a fan club of flaky young groupies: proto-hipster would-be poets, neo-Nazis, and anti-Semites. 

And yet this jackass did somehow produce a few lines of memorable poetry, was credited by William Butler Yeats and William Carlos Williams as having a fine ear for rhythm, and by T. S. Eliot for editing “The Waste Land” into what came to be regarded as the poster-poem of Modernism. Having said that . . . if one were inclined to skepticism about Modernism, a closer acquaintance with its leading lights is unlikely to change that inclination. Even Eliot, whose public persona was downright priggish, turns up here writing silly letters to Pound and exchanging ridiculous nicknames with him (Possum for Eliot, Brer Rabbit for Pound). These are men in their 30s, not schoolboys. Modernism’s rebellion against traditions and conventions may have aired out literary salons that had grown staid and stuffy; but it also opened the doors to a boatload of half-baked nonsense pretending to be art, supported by equally half-baked claims that artistic judgment itself is nonsense, that whoever proclaims himself an artist is one, and that whatever claims to be art is immune from critical appraisal.

All the attempts of later avant-garde enthusiasts to find profundity in his work are rebuked by Pound himself. At 81, asked to explain the structure of his Cantos, he answers, “It’s a botch. . . . I knew too little about so many things. I’ve read too little and I read very slowly. . . . I picked out this and that thing that interested me, and then jumbled them into a bag. But that’s not the way to make . . . a work of art.” His defenders have claimed alternately that a) he said no such thing, or that b) the poet’s judgment of his own work has no value. To which I say, well, o-o-okay! A year or two later he tells Allen Ginsberg, “At seventy I realized that instead of being a lunatic, I was a moron.” When Ginsberg praises Pound’s poetry, Pound says, “A mess. . . . Stupid and ignorant all the way through. Stupid and ignorant.” He also renounced the anti-Jewish calumnies in which he had indulged.

Thus in his dotage Ezra Pound seems to have arrived, finally, at a kind of wisdom and self-knowledge, à la King Lear—reminding me of that time-tested definition of tragedy: wisdom comes, but too late.

The Magic Mountain, then and now

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924) stands at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th as Dante’s Divine Comedy stands at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. The threadbare plot is merely a framework within which Mann’s characters can indulge in long undergraduate arguments (“undergraduate” because of their enthusiasm, but undergraduate at a very high level—Oxford or Cambridge, for example) about history and philosophy, and his narrator can linger, endlessly it seems, over the minute details of weather, landscape, a lady’s dress, or Hans Castorp’s intricate thoughts and feelings. The history and philosophy debates sum up the Western tradition to that point—Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Christianity, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the bourgeois anxieties of the 19th century—while somehow anticipating the insanities of the 20th century in which, as Mann foresaw, the brutalities of far-left ideologies would be matched blow-for-blow by the brutalities of far-right ideologies. There is more than a whiff of Dostoyevsky, too, blowing through Mann’s tuberculosis resort, both in the violent oscillations of the arguments and in the dark forebodings of the future. The Karamazov brothers would fit right in with the hypersensitive patients of The Magic Mountain. Inevitably, the novel includes an evening séance, but without a ouija board or certified Theosophist in attendance. These pampered folk, perpetually bored, search for entertainment just as their progeny do, three or four generations later. The only artists among them are dilettantes. The only intellectuals, Settembrini and Naphta, talk and talk and talk, without effect, until their comic-opera duel and the symbolic suicide of the Jesuit Bolshevik, Naphta. The fecklessness of the Magic Mountain’s inhabitants mirrors that of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1901); the pointlessness of their lives, that of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953).

The scoundrels, criminals, gangsters, and swindlers who actually make things happen never appear on the Magic Mountain. They are down below, cooking up the catastrophe we call World War I. A century later, what has changed, essentially?

The failure of the Left

The left-of-centre parties in Western democracies are failing because both their economic policies and their social policies have alienated the majority of middle-class voters. 

By embracing globalization and deregulation of financial markets they have spiked the income- and wealth-gaps, leaving the middle class, at best, treading water; more usually, actually losing wealth and income against inflation; and at worst, jobless and unemployable after the export of manufacturing jobs to developing economies overseas. 

At the same time they have adopted increasingly marginal social policy reforms that have alienated many voters, generated backlash, and left the minority groups they aimed to help little better off than before. The two trends go together, of course: economic resentments feed social resentments, and vice versa. 

Meanwhile the upper-class elites of the Left have been padding their stock portfolios, planning their next exotic holiday travel, and hobnobbing with celebrities at gala dinners. The geniuses who championed globalization seemed utterly oblivious to the families thrown into poverty by the closure of factories. All they noticed, apparently, was the cleaner air and water. They have allowed public education to flounder for generations, while sending their own children to private schools. They have failed to lift marginalized communities—indigenous people, immigrants, people of colour—out of endemic poverty, while they and their families live in posh suburban communities equipped with parks, recreation facilities, and state-of-the-art security systems. 

These failures have produced apathy among marginalized minorities, along with a majority population dominated by low-information, low-skilled citizens ready to welcome populist demagogues and vote for them—and decidedly not ready to listen to well-reasoned policy discussions by guys in $500 suits who seem to know nothing at all about the way most people are living. The populist demagogue in the $500 suit who sounds like he is just as pissed off as they are seems a better bet. 

And that’s the way it is, as Walter Cronkite used to say, in December 2024.

The “Sad Truths” Dept., from H. L. Mencken et al

No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

—H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, Sept. 18th, 1926

Approximately 32 million adults in the United States can’t read, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that 50 percent of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

—everylibrary.org, June 2017

Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign.

—Will Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)