The Ethicist: Not So Great Expectations

Dear Ethicist: I’m chomping at the bit. I can’t wait. The problem is that my expectations aren’t great. They’re rather modest. I want to go out to dinner. I want to watch certain series on Netflix. I want to know. I hate it when anything is ambiguous. I find that people around me intentionally withhold fulfilling even the most modest demands because they sense my anxiety. This doesn’t seem fair. If I could generalize, I’d ask why doesn’t the world give me what I want? If my desires are so easy to satisfy why not just satisfy them to get me out of the way.

Not So Great Expectations

 

 

Dear Not So Great Expectations: I hear you, but what happens when someone says, OK let’s get a bite at the Dionysius? From my experience, people with your particular complaint are never satisfied. Yes, these are all small demands which would be relatively easy for anyone to meet. What creates the problem is that once you get what you want, it’s never enough. You immediately want more. There are those with big ambitions who're constantly going for it, but these kinds of folks, believe it or not, are easier to tolerate since once they get or don’t get what they want, that’s it. In other words, it’s better to be a predator than a pest. If you notice, horses constantly swat their tails at flies. Do you want to be a horse or a fly or, for that matter, a mouse who's chased by a cat? 

 

Dear Ethicist: Can I think about it and get back to you?

Dear Not So Great Expectations: Sure!

Read review of Francis Levy's Seven Days in Rio, New York Journal of Books

An Immodest Proposal?

Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal famously solved famine in Ireland by serving up children. Would it be a false equivalent to suggest that GOP is solving its problems by devouring those thoughtful conservatives and originalists who pride themselves on constitutionality. In the Coen brothers Fargo, a wood chipper is notoriously used to dispose of a body. What’s going on in the Republican Party would qualify as Swiftian satire were it not so terribly sad. The Insurrection occurred on January 6. What’s followed has been The Inquisition. The cure says the current Savonarola is to rid the party of all brains and principle and for that matter anybody who opposes his will. Grind up the George Conways, Mitt Romneys, Adam Kitzingers and Liz Cheneys and spit them out. Hail Caesar!  Heil Hitler! Remember Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor who put Christ himself on trial? Mitch McConnell’s current objective by the way is to stop the Democrats. Is that a platform?

Read Francis Levy on Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, The East Hampton Star

The Counter-Reformation of the GOP

Comparing Trump to Hitler used to be an exercise in hyperbole that didn’t garner attention. He was bad, but he didn't kill six million Jews. It was just like calling Trump an asshole or a piece of shit. After all his daughter had, in fact, married a Jew. In addition, the Israelis liked him for putting the embassy back in Jerusalem. But now the orchestrated attacks on literally anyone in the party who opposes him give intimations of even more frightening things to come. If there seemed to be a short respite from Retrumplicanism, it turns out to have truly been the calm before the storm. Liz Cheney’s impending loss of her number three position is the coup de grace. In fact, Trump’s “big lie,” the issue she's fighting, itself exemplifies, in macrocosm what she has had to face on an individual basis. By attempting to delegitimize the Biden presidency, Trump has attacked the electoral process, and the social contract that makes democracy possible. Hitler didn’t attack constitutional government. He merely bypassed it.Trump has done something far worse which is to create a black hole of doubt which may forever tarnish the validity of American democracy. You may not agree with Liz Cheney’s ultra conservative positions, but she's courageous in standing up to a juggernaut of unquestioning fealty to one of the most imperious autocrats in history. One can only pray she succeeds in her quest to delegitimize Trump’s delegitimizing of the election thereby creating a successful counter-reformation in the GOP. 

Read "Trumpty Dumpty's Great Fall," by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Dear Ethicist: Overeating

"Gourmands" by Krzysztof Lubienicki (1659-1729)

Dear Ethicist: I'm an avid overeater and I’m gaining a lot of weight. The problem is that eating is all I like to do. I have been this way all my life. In fact, a kid I knew in elementary school once rebuked me for talking about food all the time, by asking, “is eating all you like to do?” I had a brief respite when all I could think about was sex, but now it’s food. I feel badly since this obsession can impact those around me. For one I take up lots of room in bed. Secondly, my wife has accused me of becoming so narrowcasted in my gluttony that I’ve lost interest in things like theater and dance. Thirdly, I hog everyone else's food. I used to look at eating as a reward after attending some boring cultural event, but now I don’t want to take the time out for the opera, even if it’s Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”  We are losing friends because many people are trying to diet and lead healthy life styles and I’m a bad influence. I used to look at myself like a joyous ribald 18^th century aristocrat, with my joint of beef in hand. However, I'm beginning to fear that my lifestyle may not only be off-putting, but immoral.

Overeater

 

 

Dear Overeater: You’re not sick (in the head), though I imagine you must get the occasional stomach ache due to your need to devour. You’re a pig. I had a friend like you who ate too much and developed a snout. I think if you’re an addictive personality, which you plainly are, you may be better off going back to sex—which is good exercise and actually helps people to lose weight. I’d echo the sentiment of your elementary school pal when it comes to eating. Is that all your interested in?

Dear Ethicist: Right now yes.

"Read It's Not a Rehearsal" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Amateur Hour

Do you remember Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour? Remember  it was sponsored by Geritol, the cure for “iron-poor tired blood?” America has become a nation of ambulance chasers, professional pundits who turn up on Fox as well as CNN, with their pre-rehearsed sanctimony and long faces they take right to the bank. The vote recount is now going on in Arizona. Cyber Ninjas one of the companies hired is apparently owned by a "stop the steal" advocate, but you can easily find pre-packaged ideologies on the left. The attitude of smug self-congratulatory indignation fuels the mentality of the lynch mob. You might not agree with Brad Raffensberger, the Republican secretary of state who upheld the Georgia vote and who's  now arguing for initiatives which will adversely affect minority voters, but his very mode of discourse takes the higher ground—a position which has lost its charisma in the current environment. Ditto  Liz Cheney whose conservative positions might be anathema to liberals, but who has stood up to the Retrumplicans with dignity and great courage under fire. The geri of Geritol refers to geriatric and perhaps what America needs is a form of political Geritol which will bring back the youthful and idealistic belief in the principles of enlightened discourse in which opposing sides really listen to each other. Right now gerrymandering is going to be countered by a dose of the same. The two parties are like the angry divorced couple fighting over the children. How would King Solomon have handled the fighting over this baby?

Read "MAGA and the Coronavirus" by Francis Levy, The

East Hampton Star

1917

The Democratic party is a little like Russia in l917. At first the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, the Trotskyites and Leninites were all united in their opposition to the Czar (Trump). Then there was a split between the political and cultural avant gardes. Socialist realist art and architecture would prevail in the Stalinist era which ushered in a new form of repression.The voices of the Mandelstams, Mayakovskys, Pasternaks and Malevichs would be silenced. Poetry, ironically became more vital in its underground form as Perestroika, but that’s another story. The Biden presidency united all branches of the party and many independents who shored themselves up against a common cause, the destruction of American Democracy, epitomized by the January 6 insurrection. However, now the cancel culture of the left is beginning to mobilize its Newspeak thinking thought police. One-time allies increasingly find themselves on opposing sides, particularly around the issue of free speech. Columbia linguist John McWhorter’s "How the N-Word Became Unsayable" (NYT, 4/30/21). “Just writing the word here, I sense myself as pushing the envelope, even though I am Black,” wrote Mr. McWhorter. McWhorter went on to use the C word and F word in his piece. A subsequent Times headline read thusly, "Debate Erupts at N.J. Law School After White Student Quotes Racial Slur"(NYT, 5/3/21). The Times describes how “The first-year student at Rutgers Law School in Newark, who is white, repeated a line from a 1993 legal opinion, including the epithet, when discussing a case.” The result was a call for apologies. For what? Reading from the record? How do you teach Huckleberry Finn or even Othello? It’s not hard to figure out what words were forbidden during the Stalinist era? It’s certain gulag wasn’t one.

Read "When Not to Use the "N" Word On or Off Campus," by Francis Levy, HuffPost

 

 

The Ethicist: Refuse to Take No-for-An-Answer

Dear Ethicist: You don’t need to be paranoid to believe someone is following you. But obviously better to believe someone is following you. Why? Because you know what the problem is and can consequently feel a sense of agency. For instance, you can turn around and bark, “stop following me!” The same can be said of a long fallow period in which you’re turned down by everyone. You could just say it was bad luck, yet it’s better to think that you’re cursed or that there’s some kind of mole in every institution you’re dealing with who has been placed there to make sure you walk away feeling dejected. In the long run, it’s nicer to think some former lover has cursed you and put a pin in a voodoo doll than to simply find yourself rejected or worse ignored for no reason. Having the cosmos yawn (with a bored look) in your face is not fun for anyone. Oedipus listened to the oracle and brought about the very thing he feared. All this is better than having no explanation. What would you rather be faced with, hatred or indifference? You can see I’m stewing because I’m not getting attention. In addition, I’m impatient to get my needs satisfied, as someone my age could die any day. Should I refuse to take no for an answer or become accepting of what fate has in store for me. 

 

 Refuse to Take No-for-An-Answer?

 

 

 

Dear Refuse to Take No-for-An-Answer? If you don’t mind my saying it, you sound very primitive and at the very least self-involved. Do you even realize that other people have lives and for that matter needs and problems? Do you get that there are other people in the world besides you? My only advice is let go and let G-D.

 

 

Dear Ethicist: I didn’t think of that. Thanks for the advice.

Read "The Final Solution: When Big Brother is a Bully" by Francis Levy, HuffPost