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Objective: Zero

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Can You See Three Ayatollahs in This Picture?

Oh oh, there I go again! I said I wouldn’t write about politics, and a few hundred bombs and a thousand casualties later later I got so upset that I couldn’t help myself.

I have just finished reading a book about the Second Punic War, in which a Carthaginian force under the generalship of the brilliant Hannibal Barca, invaded Italy and for seventeen years fought the Roman Republic. In his book Hannibal’s War, British Military Historian John Peddie writes:

Wars, historically, wear many different complexions: they may be ideological or defensive, punitive or vengeful. They may be fought for economic or social causes or for reasons of aggrandisement. But however they may rise, of one thing we may be certain: they cannot be successfully fought without a clear-cut, grand objective [italics mine], within which will lie other, minor, objectives, each one a stepping stone, culminating, hopefully, in victory.

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States seems to have lost sight of this simple fact. What was our objective in Korea? Vietnam? Nicaragua? Iraq? Afghanistan? In every case, we just decided it was just eating up too much in time and resources and just declared a victory. But in every case, was it a victory?

The same is the case with Benjamin Netanyahu’s block by block destruction of Gaza. What has he accomplished to date? Oh, and yes, he is with Trump in invading Iran. And how will that end?

I can just see gas prices rising so quickly that Trump will have to declare a victory prematurely. Wars used to be pretty popular, until we started losing all of them.

Talking Politics at Home

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It Has Become Dangerous to Talk Politics, Even at Home

I learned the lesson early in life. My father, otherwise an excellent man whom I loved, was a member of the American Independent Party and a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s politics. There have been presidential elections when my mother, my father, and I voted for different presidential candidates. I got used to loving members of my family irrespective of their politics.

Then, in 1987, I fell in love with Martine Hedges. Born in France, Martine is a typical stubborn Norman, with what the French call a tête Normande, a “Norman head.”. When Martine takes a position, there is no moving her from it. As it happens, she is a Republican who supports many positions taken by Donald Trump.

Do Martine and I talk politics at home? Not unless we want the temperature in our apartment plummet to freezing. She knows my politics, and I know hers. ’Nuff said.

As a result of traveling extensively in South America to countries which have suffered through heinous dictatorships and bloody insurgencies, I have learned not to take positions. In Argentina, there was the rule of the generals and the “disappearances”; in Chile, there was the rightist rule of General Pinochet Ugarte; in Peru, there was the insurgency of the Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path; and in Uruguay there were the Tupamaros.

And now the United States has become one of those countries where talking politics could be dangerous. There are guns everywhere, usually in the hands of people who are mentally disturbed. Back in the 1960s, I actively participated in protests against the Vietnam War. At one time, I was in a protest on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that was attacked by Cuban rightists who converted their signs to clubs and commenced cracking skulls. Now I prefer to be more peaceable.

Although I have strong feelings about politics, I don’t write much about them in my Tarnmoor blog. Why should I? My readers will have no trouble finding vituperative blogs of different shades of opinion. I would prefer to write more about things that interest me.

England in 1819

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English Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1790-1822)

In his sonnet entitled “England in 1819,” Percy Bysshe Shelley evinced as great a disgust of what was happening in England during the last days of George III as I do when I look at Trump’s America. Sadly, Shelley did not outlive George III by much: He died in an 1822 boating accident off the coast of Italy.

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Pirates of the Caribbean

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Move over, Cap’n Jack Sparrow, you’ve met your match! Ol’ Fuzzywig has now committed international piracy by seizing an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.

Is it full of gold doubloons? Or possibly silver from the Cerro Rico of Bolivia? No, me buckos, it is full of all kinds of grief for our Presidente, who now has to be worried about being called to the International Court at the Hague to answer for his crimes.

Every day, a new outrage!

Going … Going … Gone

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The White House in Ruins 1814

I don’t like writing about politics, but not to react at all to what is happening to my country would be to suppress my fears and my rage at the second presidential term of Donald Trump, or, as I call it, the Revenge Tour.

With the shutdown of all government functions that our president doesn’t like—in effect, most of them—our nation is being diminished day by day. Here is what I see happening until the Devil takes the man:

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HE UNITE STATE F AMERIC
E UNIT STAT AMERI
UNI STA AMER
UN ST AME
N S AM
A
[NOTHING]

At present, flights are being delayed or canceled by 10%. Perhaps in a few days, it will be 20% How long before it becomes 100%

I am angry that ignorant voters could become a majority and unravel everything that made this country great. I can see it all now: Venezuela, Somalia, Myanmar, Haiti, and us. Ugh!

A Renaissance Man, Not!

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The Original (and Still Current) Logo of Cracker Barrel

The current occupant of the White House is a man with wide-ranging opinions and talents. (Snicker!) When Cracker Barrel wanted to change its logo, the Trumpster weighed in and set nyet! In addition to [mis]governing a large democracy, he also plans to take change of the 2028 Olympics in his favorite city (Los Angeles) and strike back at anyone who doesn’t like him.

I fully expect to go to the supermarket one day and find empty shelves which contained foodstuffs not liked by our presidente. The meat department will be all fried chicken and hamburgers. Fruits and vegetables? What are those?

Perhaps he will step in to break the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Not that he likes either of them: It’s just that they don’t deserve to be happy together. How could they be if they don’t like him? Mr. Likeability-in-Chief.

This presidency is a slow motion nightmare that just keeps going on and on and on …

Our Nero

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Roman Emperor Nero (AD 37-68)

Much as I dislike writing about politics, I have recently noticed some strange resemblances between the current occupant of the White House and the Roman Emperor Nero:

Actors. Nero appeared before the Roman public as a poet, musician, and charioteer; while our president was famed as the actor in a reality TV show called “The Apprentice.”

Wrecking. Nero purportedly burned down a large part of Rome so he could build a gigantic palace for himself called the domus aureus, “The Golden House.” Our president is destroying the institutions of government that he feels do not benefit billionaires like himself.

Praetorian Guard. Nero was murdered by his own Praetorian Guard. Our president, on the other hand, is developing his own Praetorian Guard called ICE. To date, they have not murdered him.

Low-Class Supporters. The provision of “bread and circuses” to the Roman masses made Nero popular among lower class denizens of Rome. Whereas the persecution of various minorities is popular among the red-hatted MAGA supporters of our president.

So far, our current president has not directly ordered any of his family murdered, but if I were Melania, Donald Junior, or Eric, I would not sleep well of nights.

The Pill of Murti-Bing

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“The Tower of Babel” by Peter Bruegel the Elder

When I used to write ads for the software company whose director of corporate communications I was, I was always running afoul of management, who always insisted that I put a positive spin on every point I made. Anything that could possibly be seen to be negative was to be avoided at all costs.

Being a bit negative is a part of my Hungarian heritage. When your country is on one of the two main invasion paths into Europe (the other being Poland), you can’t help a certain amount of negativity. It’s part of our nature.

I feel there is something wrong about always being positive. It tends to encourage the persons on the other end to be passive and accepting. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, writing in The Captive Mind, a book about why people accepted the promises and lies about Communism, quotes an earlier Polish novel from the 1920s:

In this story, Central Europeans facing the prospect of being overrun by unidentified Asiatic hordes pop a little pill [the pill of Murti-Bing] which relieves them of fear and anxiety; buoyed by its effects, they not only accept their new rulers but are positively happy to receive them.

In an article entitled “Murti-Bing Conservatism” written for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher develops this idea:

For Miłosz, Polish intellectuals who capitulated to communism and Soviet rule had taken the pill of Murti-Bing. It was what made their condition bearable. They could not stand to see reality, for if they recognized what was really happening in their country, the pain and shock would make life too much to take.

This is why people who have no financial or status tied up in protecting abuse of corruption within an institution can nevertheless be expected to rally around that institution and its leaders. Those who tell the truth threaten their Murti-Bing pill supply, and therefore their sense of order and well-being. To them, better that a few victims must be made to suffer rather than the entire community be forced to wean itself from Murti-Bing.

In the United States, we are facing a similar situation today—all the way from the opposite end of the political spectrum. It is not Communism that is the cause, but Trumpism. Millions of voters who are either ignorant or disingenuous choose to believe that water runs uphill and that the current President is spouting truth when in actuality he is lying like a rug.

I recommend that anyone interested in what happens to this country read Milosz’s The Captive Mind. It is by far the best book about Communism I have ever read.

Oh, and the Tower of Babel? That’s what happens when our sense of reality has become so fragmented that our society begins to fracture.

Enter the Crane

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From Ancient Greece Comes the Story About Who We Are

This is a reprint from a blog that I posted eight years ago. I would not change a word. Except: Note that I was not at the Santa Monica Library today.

In case you are not familiar with this ancient tale by Aesop, here is a retelling from a website called Fables of Aesop:

The Frogs were tired of governing themselves. They had so much freedom that it had spoiled them, and they did nothing but sit around croaking in a bored manner and wishing for a government that could entertain them with the pomp and display of royalty, and rule them in a way to make them know they were being ruled. No milk and water government for them, they declared. So they sent a petition to Jupiter asking for a king.

Jupiter saw what simple and foolish creatures they were, but to keep them quiet and make them think they had a king he threw down a huge log, which fell into the water with a great splash. The Frogs hid themselves among the reeds and grasses, thinking the new king to be some fearful giant. But they soon discovered how tame and peaceable King Log was. In a short time the younger Frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older Frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly to Jupiter about the government.

To teach the Frogs a lesson the ruler of the gods now sent a Crane to be king of Frogland. The Crane proved to be a very different sort of king from old King Log. He gobbled up the poor Frogs right and left and they soon saw what fools they had been. In mournful croaks they begged Jupiter to take away the cruel tyrant before they should all be destroyed.

“How now!” cried Jupiter “Are you not yet content? You have what you asked for and so you have only yourselves to blame for your misfortunes.”

In the archaic L’Estrange version, the moral is: “The mobile are uneasie without a ruler: they are as restless with one; and the oft’ner they shift, the worse they are; so that government or no government; a king of God’s making, or of the peoples, or none at all; the multitude are never to be satisfied.”

As I sat down reading in the Santa Monica Main Library this morning, I noticed that the people seated around me look as if they had lost their battle with life. One black man alternately wept and swore; and a bearded youth in a hoodie kept calling his family to beg money for his anxiety medications. The coffee shops are full of people with notebook computers, undoubtedly using social media to communicate with people they don’t know or really care about. The natives appear to be restless.

This restlessness is probably what elected our current President, who is very much like Aesop’s King Stork. He seems to be comfortable only with billionaires and despots. And what can we expect from him? The answer, in one word is covfefe, and lots of it—brown, gooey, and pungent.

Fade to Black

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This will be my last election-related post for a while. Not because I am satisfied with the Trump dictatorship, but because my own personal happiness depends on a positive response to bad government. Most countries go through bad spells, and it was inevitable that, over a long lifetime like my own, I would encounter it at some point.

I am reminded of a quote from Russian Nobel Prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky: “If one is fated to be born in Caesar’s Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore….”

Well, I am some 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean. I do live in the provinces, so to speak, compared to New York City or Washington, DC. And I am becoming increasingly aloof, especially when someone tries to engage me in a political discussion.

Times like these call for a more creative inner life. I will spend more time reading, meditating, and watching classic old movies. And much less time watching late night comics or news on TV. Also, most important, I will spend more time with my friends.