More Arendt

… which I’m sure you were itching to read this morning.

But first, an item of local interest: a graduate of nearby Goshen College is the author of the Library of America’s latest “story of the week.”

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From Origins, chapter 7:

It took the Boers several decades to understand that [British] imperialism was nothing to be afraid of, since it would neither develop the country as Australia and Canada had been developed, nor draw profits from the country at large, being quite content with a high turnover of investments in one specific field [gold mining]. Imperialism therefore was willing to abandon the so-called laws of capitalist production and their egalitarian tendencies, so long as profits from specific investments were safe. This led eventually to the abolition of the law of mere profitableness and South Africa became the first example of a phenomenon that occurs whenever the mob becomes the dominant factor in the alliance between mob and capital.

In one respect, the most important one, the Boers remained the undisputed masters of the country: whenever rational labor and production policies came into conflict with race considerations, the latter won. Profit motives were sacrificed time and again to the demands of a race society, frequently at a terrible price. The rentability of the railroads was destroyed overnight when the government dismissed 17,000 Bantu employees and paid white wages that amounted to 200 per cent more; expenses for municipal government became prohibitive when native municipal employees were replaced with whites; the Color Bar Bill finally excluded all black workers from mechanical jobs and forced industrial enterprise to a tremendous increase of production costs. The race world of the Boers had nobody to fear any more, least of all white labor, whose trade unions complained bitterly that the Color Bar Bill did not go far enough.

The racism described here is race-rule. Boer clans subsisted by forcing native tribes to farm for them. They didn’t want this arrangement upset by the development of industry or bureaucracy. (They got their wish.)

“Mob” in Arendt refers to the agglomeration of misfits: people excluded from the workings of a polity: people fulfilling no communal organizational or economic function. Mere hoarders of wealth; speculators; subsistence farmers; unemployed workers (the individualistic ones, not those moved by solidarity).

As separatist farmers, Boer clans belonged to the mob. So did people involved in the gold rush: investors as well as individual miners. Rich and poor.

Mob-rule occurs when such people use politics to prevent the development of “normal” governance and commerce. For example: Jews

settled down permanently into a unique position for a white group. [Footnote: “Jews constituted roughly one-third of the total immigration to South Africa in the twenties, and … in sharp contrast to all other categories of uitlanders, settled there permanently; their share in the annual emigration is less than a per cent.”] They neither belonged to the “lifeblood” of Africa nor to the “poor white trash.” Instead they started almost immediately to build up those industries and professions which according to South African opinion are “secondary” because they are not connected with gold. Jews became manufacturers of furniture and clothes, shopkeepers and members of the professions, physicians, lawyers, and journalists. In other words, no matter how well they thought they were adjusted to the mob conditions of the country and its race attitude, Jews had broken its most important pattern by introducing into South African economy a factor of normalcy and productivity, with the result that when Mr. Malan introduced into Parliament a bill to expel all Jews from the Union he had the enthusiastic support of all poor whites and of the whole Afrikander population.

The timeless lesson is that it behooves the most speculative and exploitative businessmen – captains of mostly useless industries (extraction of ornamental minerals, space exploration, gambling, luxurious transportation and housing) – to maintain a dysfunctional society: to lord it over desperate, disconnected, disaffected workers and voters. Plodding but sound officials and workers who bring order to chaos are best eliminated. Energetic immigrants who do so are best kept out. You can see how this describes our own moment.

As I read, I’m tempted to draw analogies between past and present, almost to treat Arendt as an oracle. Of course I don’t know enough to judge whether she gets the past right. And the analogies that suggest themselves in certain moods seem farfetched in others. How closely can Obama really be likened to Arendt’s Disraeli? I don’t know.

I meet a politician; the Golden Rule; one thing leads to another

Political ads have been landing in our mailbox, and today a candidate came to our house. I stepped outside to talk to him.

(Samuel wanted to go outside, but I wouldn’t allow him to. He stared out the window, howled, and made a piteous face. Daniel chugged his milk.)

The candidate wore a U.S. Marine Corps baseball hat. The flyer he gave me didn’t say which party he belonged to, but it named and criticized a certain Republican candidate, so I figured he was a Democrat. He unenthusiastically confirmed this. “I’m running as a Democrat because I was raised as one,” he said, “but I’m against the extremists in both parties who are tearing our country apart.”

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R.I.P. Harry J. Gensler, the Jesuit philosopher who wrote a helpful (if expensive) “Golden Rule book for everyone.” You ought to treat others as you’d like to be treated, the Rule says. In most societies, this is regarded as common sense. But is it philosophically defensible? How, exactly, should the Rule be interpreted, formulated, and applied? And what is its place in an overall picture of morality and value? One could do worse than to begin with Gensler’s book.

Incidentally, if you use Amazon to search for books on the Golden Rule, you’ll be led to authors affiliated with the Templeton Foundation. I don’t object to Templeton; but if you click on too many Templeton Golden Rule products, you’ll soon be shown items from Douglas Wilson’s Canon Press, with titles like The Case for Christian Nationalism. Gensler cites examples of Golden Rule reasoning due to Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and concludes that the Rule’s appeal is “bipartisan.” Alas, the Web bots suggest otherwise.

Obama’s elf

Another week, another successful mowing of the lawn. Karin went to the dentist’s today. She brought home a complimentary goody bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, etc. I didn’t notice these goodies until I saw Samuel carrying them around the house. He also emptied a bottle of “Flavor Chews” (off-brand TUMS) onto the floor.

At bedtime, I told Samuel to quit the living room, and I turned out the lights. I waited. He didn’t come out. I went into the dark living room and found him lying on the couch under a textbook and a blanket, his hands behind his head, his expression serene and prepared. I carried him to his crib. I went to Karin and read to her from Saki’s Beasts and Super-Beasts. This night’s story, “Laura,” was one of those to do with a super-beast.

Daniel has started to laugh.

It is better to be in a family than to be Obama’s Elf.

An anniversary outing

Happy wedding anniversary to Karin & me – our sixth. My Aunt Ruth and her husband, my Uncle Tim, visited from Spain; they looked after Daniel and Samuel so that Karin & I could go on a little date. We went to Kroger and Goodwill. Because of the latest COVID surge, we got takeout instead of eating in a restaurant. We would’ve eaten at a park, but today was rainy. We took our food home and ate it in front of our guests and sons.

Uncle Tim liked Samuel’s murals (wall scrawlings). He kept talking about the pictures he saw in them. (Whenever he looks at a Rorschach test, he immediately sees dozens of pictures, I gather.) He wanted to take Samuel’s crayons and draw his own embellishments upon the murals, but we wouldn’t allow him to; Samuel can do with less encouragement.

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I’m reading The Premonition, Michael Lewis’s COVID book, another of his tales of “mavericks” outperforming “experts” by looking at statistics and ignoring red herrings, social pressures, etc. The previous book I read by Lewis, The Fifth Risk, was about how the government keeps disaster at bay. The Premonition, so far, is about how it’s a wonder that the government prevents disaster at all, so unbudgeable is its bureaucracy. If a few brave statisticians didn’t do their statistics in obscurity, on their own time, in defiance of CDC orthodoxy, the country would crumble to pieces. The book has a couple of nice stories about George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the mid-2000s, Bush read John M. Barry’s history of the flu pandemic of 1918, decided the country needed to prepare for another pandemic, and set wheels turning which generated a containment strategy. Then, in 2009, a swine flu was detected in Mexico, California, and Texas.

What’s the worst case? asked the new president [Obama].

Nineteen eighteen, said Carter [Obama’s lone holdover from Bush’s pandemic containment team].

What happened then? asked Obama.

Thirty percent of the population was infected, and two percent died, said Carter. In the current situation, you’d be looking at two million dead.

Bush was a terrible president, but I’m grateful that he read books.

Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

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Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

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Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)

Diagnoses

So, the clinic called today. The tests confirm that I have SEVERE sleep apnea. The clerk who relayed the news didn’t know how to pronounce “apnea” – hup-NEE-uh, she said – but I asked her to spell it, and A-P-N-E-A, indeed, is what I have. I was told to buy a CPAP machine at my pharmacy. Would I like to schedule a “titration” at the sleep clinic? Yes, please, I said, but what was I supposed to do first? Buy the CPAP machine, or have the “titration”? After more phone calls it was determined that I’d do nothing further before going in for the “titration” on January 20. (Really, the slowness of this process is baffling.) I’m still not sure I understand what to do; I plan to investigate further.

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Our coffee pot broke a week ago. Karin & I have been keeping awake with sodapop and storebought iced mocha. But by this morning, those supplies had run out; moreover, after two days of relative calm, Samuel decided to shriek and shriek. By the time I’d prepared his bottle and gotten him suckling, I could hardly stay awake. I dozed off watching a TV show about heinous Australian crimes. Samuel slept in my lap. I dreamed I was visiting certain professors in Ithaca – ones under whom I didn’t prosper. My dreams were vivid; my wakefulness, hazy; but, all the while, I was aware of Samuel’s breathing.

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Yesterday, I was more alert (I had two glasses of iced mocha), and I read a terrific essay by Nathan J. Robinson analyzing the memoirs of various staffers of Barack Obama’s White House. Robinson isn’t a columnist I ordinarily seek out. On several occasions, though, I’ve admired his work without realizing he was the author of something I’d admired previously (one piece I’ve highlighted in this blog is his assessment of Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial credentials). Now I’m attending more closely to how Robinson connects his political dots.

Interestingly, his condemnations of Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren (whom he used to esteem more highly) seem to hinge on similarities that he perceives between those candidates and Obama. Robinson really doesn’t like Obama’s political style, and I increasingly agree with him. (I put more stock in reasonableness than Robinson does – I’ve written a dissertation about that governmental virtue – but I also lament the manner in which Obama employed reasonableness as an ideal.)

The best thing about Robinson’s analysis of those fanboys’ memoirs is that it conveys what’s dangerous about the allure of a leader who styles himself as elite. Such a person will likely be a technocrat who considers himself above his electorate and his party, or else a panderer to financial elites who play him for a sucker (or both).

Read the article about Obama and his fanboys.

Weep.

Ask how we can do better.

A busy holiday in my chair

I had my Spring Break this week, and I made good use of the time, sitting at home in my armchair. I wrote and read and kept company with the kitties. I applied for one full-time job (the response, so far, has been perfunctory) and plotted to apply elsewhere. I wondered if I could get a scholarship to do research in Scotland. … Tonight I read Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2007 essay about Barack Obama. I typeset it into a handsome 13-page, 2-column PDF, using William Addison Dwiggins’s neglected font, ITC New Winchester. (The relevance is that this font is like Dwiggins’s Eldorado, and Obama’s maternal grandfather hailed from a Kansas town named El Dorado.)

Karin went to work each day and played video games each night. On Tuesday, we ate supper with our old pastor’s family, and, last night, we washed our clothes.

Karin has been trying to interest the kitties in their mirror reflections. Ziva is downright alarmed by hers. Jasper at first feigned indifference to his reflection, but tonight I noticed him perching on the bathroom sink, looking at himself.

Quitting, pt. 2

Quite a few of the teachers were screening the presidential inauguration in their classrooms. I stopped and watched it for a few seconds. It seemed a big deal.

“Today is your last day on the job,” said one of the teachers. “Yours – and Obama’s.” We stood a little while, shaking our heads, tisking.

My last shift wasn’t more strenuous than usual, but it wasn’t easy, either. One teacher asked me to digitally scan more than 100 pages of a hefty volume. Other teachers dropped off a great jumble of course texts – Scarlet Letters, Of Mice and Mens, To Kill a Mockingbirds – for me to sort and put away. Others made last-minute photocopying requests. Others, I had to train in the ordering of supplies.

Two teachers, old men, were quite sad to see me leave. I offered to join them one day for a meal at their favorite nearby restaurant, the Oaken Bucket.

Then, very weary, I turned in my keys and left the high school. I stopped at the public library to visit Mary, who was working at the circulation desk. She was about to go to lunch.

I told her about my last shift at the high school.

“In honor of your quitting your job,” she said, “would you like me to buy you lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The Oaken Bucket,” I said. “No. Just kidding. Subway.”

After lunch, I went home, collapsed into an armchair, and snuggled with the kitties. From the indoors, I enjoyed the mist – my favorite weather.

End of an era

Bargain Books opened in Mishawaka during my freshman year of college. Tomorrow, it’ll close for good. Martin and I shopped there one last time. The books were being sold for $1 each. My haul was this:

1. Royce Flippin, ed., The Best American Political Writing 2007 (this has Larissa MacFarquhar’s essay on Barack Obama, “The Conciliator”);
2. Penelope Lively, The Photograph (all I know is, she wrote Moon Tiger);
3. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (I’d never heard of this);
4. Barry C. Smith, ed., Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine (this book, I once wouldn’t have touched; but, yesterday, when I glanced at it, its tightly argued pretentiousness was irresistible);
5. D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel (I’d never heard of this);
6. Alec Waugh, Hot Countries (his brother, Evelyn, wrote much, much better);
7. Frank Welsh, Australia: A New History of the Great Southern Land;
8. Paul West, The Universe, and Other Fictions;
9. Mo Yan, The Garlic Ballads.

I’ll report if I read any of them.

Martin, who teaches U.S. literature to 11th-graders, bought a couple of Oxford World’s Classics: Letters from an American Farmer, and Wieland: “One of the earliest major American novels … a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism” (this last find was much admired by everyone in our household).

As we were leaving the store, Martin noticed some tacky old i-Pod cases for sale, and so he returned to buy one. I went out to the parking lot to enjoy the weather. The clouds were thick. The temperature was in the fifties (F). A desolate little lake had been created from the melted snow. The breeze formed tiny ripples on it.

Since this was a Friday afternoon, Grape Road had a good amount of traffic.