11/4/23

 Saturday, November 4, 2023

In bed by 10, up at 4:54, and the last half of the night on the lzb, back pain.  43°, high of 50°, mostly cloudy, AQI=58 (PM), wind, wind NNE at 11 mph, 2-11/20.  Sunrise at 7:30, sunset at 5:39, 10+9.

Treadmill  24:01   0.50 slow walk

LTMW as I 'come to' at 7:42 after nodding off in my recliner I see the rear end of a healthy-looking buck trotting across our front yard.  I couldn't count the points on his antlers as he moved over to Mequon looking for a doe.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Man's wolf to man.  In my throne room reading yesterday I came across Marianne Moore's poem In Distrust of Merits, a cry against the Second World War.  In it, she uses the phrase 'man's wolf to man' which reminded me of Randall Jarrell's poem Eigth Air Force, also decrying WW II and asking "shall I say that man / Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?  I thought that was curious and turned to Wikipedia to learn that the term is an English translation of the Latin homo homini lupus from a play by Plautus (254 B.C.-184 B.C.)  titled Asinaria, or a play about asses or donkeys.  The saying has me thinking of Ukraine and Gaza, of Putin, Hamas, the ayatollahs, Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Trumpism, feral capitalism, indeed modern conservatism, Republicanism, America Firsters, et al.  In yesterday's newsletter from Heather Cox Richardson, she reports:  Today, Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who was former president Trump’s Interior Secretary until he left under accusations of misconduct, introduced a bill to ban Palestinians from the United States and to revoke any visas issued to Palestinians since October 1 of this year. Although the U.S. has resettled only about 2,000 Palestinians in the last 20 years, ten other far-right members of the af House signed onto Zinke’s bill, which draws no distinction between Hamas and Palestinian civilians."  Zinke and his pals would deny there is any racism in this ploy but Quaere would he make such a move against Irish Catholics wanting to visit the U.S. during the terrorist attacks in Ulster by the IRA?  Or against Irish Protestants during terrorist attacks in Ulster by the Unionist extremists?  The move obviously mirrors Trump's Muslim ban one week after he was sworn in as president.

Winston Churchill's and William F. Buckley's racism and today's Republican party.  Geri's dear niece Katherine is a great admirer of Winston Churchill, as indeed are most Americans.  Although I greatly admire his leadership and tenacity during World War II, I never forget that Churchill was a dyed-in-the-wool racist with little use for Britain's colonial subjects except as they may be useful for the enrichment of Great Britain, which is to say, its ruling and moneyed classes.  He looked down his well-fed English upper-class nose on those England ruled or wanted to rule, like my Irish forebearers.  My maternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland in the early 20th century, when Ireland was still under the British boot.  In reading Karen Attiah's column in this morning's WaPo  "The colonial history of Israel-Palestine: Bringing the receipts", I came across this lovely quote from the great racist:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” (My bolding.)

 I am reminded of the words written in 1957 by that icon of modern political conservatism, William F. Buckley, in his editorial in his magazine National Review titled "Why the South Must Prevail."

The central question that emerges-and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal-is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not pre- dominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes -the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between ci- vilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes', and intends to assert its own.

NATIONAL REVIEW believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence. (My bolding.)

Contemporary Republicanism's antagonism to democracy, to broad enfranchisement, and to majority rule is nothing new.  Its roots are ancient.   Its spirit was dominant in the country's constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1987 and led, among other things, to the creation of the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, and an appointed judiciary.  There is no surprise in Churchill's being a "Tory" or Conservative or William F. Buckley's being a Republican or Conservative.  Each was powerful during times that were in large measure conservative, Churchill prior to the British Empire's collapse after World War II and Buckley in America after the New Deal but before the Great Society of LBJ and Nixon's substantial expansion of the federal government.  With LBJ we got the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and the Fair Housing Act.  With Nixon, we got the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the federal protection of endangered species, OSHA, and the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.  The current federal workforce is approximately 2.25 million full-time-equivalent civilian workers.  Federal statutes, regulations, and rules are impossible to enumerate.  Virtually every aspect of business and employment is subject to an array of regulations at all levels of government, but most onerously, from the federal government.  Starting with FDR's New Deal in the 1930s, the federal government has become the "administrative state" that Steve Bannon has as his goal, and as President Trump's goal when he was president and Bannon his high level advisor, to "deconstruct."  And a great many Americans, tens of millions of them, are very unhappy with life under this state of things, so unhappy that they, like Buckley in his 1957 essay, are contemplating whether attaining "the prevalence of [their] will is worth the terrible price of violence."  As is often said, January 6th was just a rehearsal.  I am terribly afraid that Trump is destined to regain control of the federal government in the next national election, and that the "American experiment" begun in 1789 will be concluded, unsuccessfully.  Anyone who has studied the rise of Hitler in inter-war Germany cannot fail to see the similarities in the two men and in the two electorates.  Certainly, there are huge dissimilarities as well, notably the absence of the Great Depression, no Treaty of Versailles, and many others.  But Hitler showed how a minority movement can, given the right circumstances, attain control of a government.  There appear to be plenty of circumstances, starting with inflation and immigration and with his age and health and the unpopularity of Kamala Harris and now perhaps his identification with Israel, and the peculiarities of our constitutional system of government, that could lead to his defeat next year.   Then 'God help us', though we know s/he or it won't.