The Final Solution: Paradigm Shifting

The July/August issue of Foreign Affairs asks “Which World Are We Living In?” The editor of the issue, Gideon Rose, prefaces it by citing a lovely quote from Bismarck to the effect that “the statesman’s task was to hear God’s footsteps marching through history and try to catch his coattails as he went past.” What follows is a paradigm party with hats and balloons supplied by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Amy Chua argues that “Humans, like other primates are tribal animals.” Stephen Kotkin points out that, “Every hegemon thinks it’s the last.” And Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry argue that the “a decent world order will be liberal” despite the fact that “illiberalism, autocracy, nationalism, protectionism, spheres of influence, territorial influence—have reasserted themselves.” You might look at these three modalities like the gears on an old-fashioned manual shift car, with tribalism representing a downshift back to #1, realism and realpolitik #2 and liberal or globalism #3. Primitive tribalism, the starting point seems to be holding sway in the current Trumpocracy. It’s hard to say if the administration has evolved to the kind of self-reflexive consciousness that would make it aware of #2 or its own tendency to implode. Remember the l000 years of Rome? What about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, “the entropy of any isolated system increases.” The US was cruising comfortably in third gear under Obama, but so much water has gone under the bridge that it seems unlikely that the country will ever get up to speed and finally make it to that fourth gear of geopolitical satori.

Mission Implausible?

The hero of the latest installment of Mission Impossible--Fallout, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is saddled with the task of saving the world. His tragic flaw if he can be said to have one resides in the fact that he’s obviously a student of Philippa Foot’s famed "trolley problem." You may recall from your course in ethics, it’s the idea of whether you should or shouldn't sacrifice one person for the sake of the many. The villain of the movie, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, is a millenarian anarchist named Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) who ascribes to the dictum: “the greater the suffering, the greater the peace.” Mission Impossible could be called Mission Implausible since the action sequences ie 99% of the plot all derive from classic montage where the girl is tied to the tracks and the train is coming. Armageddon is waiting at the end of the film and in the last 15 minutes there are girls tied to tracks everywhere. Like the James Bond movies Mission Impossible is a travelogue in which beautiful people chase each other around equally exotic or iconic places. The current installment in the franchise starts in Berlin and ends in the snowy mountains of Kashmir with the Indian army amassed to protect a wounded hero. But the enjoyment is the tongue in cheek way in which the film treats biting sociopolitical issues (like terrorism) while also thoughtfully tipping its hat to musings on subjects like the humanity of the Ubermensch--and yes, the theme of the one versus the many which motivates both the forces of good and evil.

Little Nothings

Very few cosmologists breach the question of what occurred before the big bang. If there were no particles in the ether of the infinitely smaller universe that existed at the beginning of time, how to describe the void? Was it still a multiverse, albeit composed of infinite layers of emptiness? And how is it possible to conceive of a beginning? Such ideas strain the limits of imagination, even for those who toy with notions of higher beings and creators. It’s as if particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider were just the icing on the cake or the tip of the iceberg of something far grander whose essence no scientist in their right mind would even dare to touch. However does the inexplicable necessarily beg the question of divinity or is it just that there are no tools to explain the varying levels of nothingness that describe space before there was anything. It’s comforting to fill emptiness with spirits and terrifying to consider the notion of something lacking in any describable characteristic, including duration.

The Cemetery in Barnes (but not Noble)

Thanks to Gabriel Josipovici whose The Cemetery in Barnes elicited the following paragraph from Michael Caines in the 6/15 TLS: “Gabriel Josipovici’s people are a rum bunch. His oeuvre includes a clown turned private investigator; a girl who listens to her father reading Pope’s Homer and dreams of being like Thetis; some version of the painter Pierre Bonnard; an art historian who once wrote a book about Bonnard is now struggling to write a book about Joseph Cornell. These characters discourse about life and art with a Josipovician jouissance,learned yet light.” One could go on. Actually it’s unclear who to thank the writer or the critic. Without the cast of characters, the review would not have its ne plus ultra faut de mieux. Ah, Wilderness! was the title of an O’Neill play, but this is the reverse. This piece of criticism could be called,  Ah, Western Civilization Goes On After All! The review proceeds on. Suffice it to say, it’s not fair to Mr. Caines to rely totally on his response to Josivopici’s edifice of citations, but it’s hard to hold back on the following: “There is—quoi d’autre?—much quotation from and rumination on Joachim Du Bellay, Shakespeare et al.” Thankfully not a word of politics infects the writing, but one can’t help thinking that the existence of the humanistic enterprise, for all its effeteness (to employ the word that Spiro T. Agnew used to descibe those who opposed the Vietnam War) is some kind of statement, even a protest against the earth spinning off its axis ("Global warming could tilt world off axis," ComputerWeekly. com, August, 2009).

The Final Solutilon: Trump's Willing Executioners

Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a book by Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen’s thesis is that German people as a whole were guilty of complicity in the Holocaust. Now the same appears to be true with theTrumpocracy. The president himself has said that he “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” (CNN, 1/23/16). And even the indictments of two of his former henchmen one of whom points to the president's direct involvement in illegal campaign activities ("Michael Cohen Says That Donald Trump Directed His Crimes," The New Yorker, 8/21/18) is unlikely to bring about an end to a presidency which has a support of a vast majority of Republicans (whether the Mueller probe determines that the Trump campaign was “complicit” with the Russians or not). It’s really wrong to believe that dictators repress the populace. In one way of looking at it a dictator expresses the will of a large enough part of the public to stay in power. The difference between a dictator and a mere demagogue or even liberal politician is simply the parliamentary piece. Erdogan rules dictatorially in Turkey and Orban in Hungary. In Poland you have Duda, but none of these personalities would have legitimacy if it weren’t for the fact that a good portion, if not majority, of the polity were tired of immigration, globalism or any of the other pet peeves that fire the imagination of masses of disgruntled voters today. As has been evident, populism in its modern form itself is an expression of fascism, particularly since it holds democratic principles like due process and individual rights in such low esteem. Disaffected and disenfranchised thugs filled the ranks of the nascent Nazi Party and there were undoubtedly criminal elements too. Now we're learning that two early members of the congressional "Trump Caucus" (Chris Collins of NY and Duncan Hunter of California) have both been indicted for their criminal activities.

Circulation des elites

Fulgencio Batista (photo: Harris and Ewing)

Imagine having your favorite morning yoga or spinning class interrupted by commandos, who order you to get off the mat or bike. You were going on your merry way lost in thought about whether tonight was going to be steak or sushi and had no idea a revolution was in the offing. Something like that undoubtedly happened in l917 and the again in Cuba in l959, when Batista was overthrown and the one time playground of the rich became the capital of revolution. It’s a wonderful relief and source of hope that there are bad guys, horrible aristocrats and members of the bourgeoisie that deserve to be slaughtered so that the good guys can thrive. Were that politics or religion for that matter were so simple. Power is conservative and self-perpetuating. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto coined the term “circulation des elites” to deal with the amorality of the realpolitik. Daniel Ortega, the one-time Sandinista leader, had been the hope of Nicaraguans. Now President Ortega is the subject of demonstrations in one of the most troubled economies in the Americas (“Ortega is becoming the kind of autocrat he once despised,” The Washington Post, 7/16/18). Asia Argento one of the first women to come forth about the depredations of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has become the subject of an inquiry concerning her own abuse of a 17 year old ("Asia Argento, a #MeToo Leader, Made a Deal With Her Own Accuser," NYT, 8/19/18). Sanctimony is a warm and cozy feeling, but beware the guy or gal helping you to hoist the outstretched banner. He or she could be your jailer.

The Gastro-Industrial Complex

Among foodies and those concerned with health and longevity, the gastro-industrial complex is looked at a little the way one regards the seasons of increasing virulent hurricanes. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Popeyes, KFC, Dunkin Donuts and the chains offering a slightly higher level of modestly priced fare like Red Lobster and Applebees are looked at with both suspicion and disdain. Rumors abound of farms producing genetically engineered parts of chickens and there's always the question of the quality of ingredients like meat. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation was a famous expose of an industry credited with an epidemic of obesity amongst the poor. Low income individuals don’t have the assets to afford delicacies like farm fed beef and organic vegetables which tend to command premium prices. There’s no doubt that diet and health are inextricably intertwined. On the other hand there's something wistful about fast food and the nostalgia occasioned by the childhood memories of ubiquitous McDonald’s arches which greet anyone cruising down Route #1(this was in part the message of the Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown classic, Learning from Las Vegas). McDonald’s is like a utility and it’s familiar Big Macs, Quarter Pounders and McNuggets can be as reassuring as the site of a post office. Vacationers seek out the exotic, but they also take pleasure in feeling at home wherever they go and the fake fireplace in the latest generation of Wendy’s with their Baconators can provide a respite from the alienation and estrangement of modern life. The Colonel is a piece of advertising hype, but have you ever smiled to yourself when you looked into his face after a long ride, facing a host of mnemonic olfactory sensations that derive from the remembrance of “buckets” past.