The Illness of I

I’ve been thinking about the last few times I’ve written for this blog. I mean, the entries where I worried about how the psychiatric profession might be anti-individualist—and, indeed, might even define the self as madness.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more uncomfortable I’ve become with that thesis. I wonder if it isn’t kind of a straw man argument. I mean, I don’t know that many psychotherapists to start with, and of these I’ve only known a few …alright, three…who could be really called fans of mass conformity. There was “Dr. Churl,” who I mentioned before. Then, there was a therapist I had (very briefly) who feared that maybe my interest in writing and video were misplaced. Though, honestly, I don’t know whether that was so much a comment on my individuality as a comment on my talent, or complete lack there-of.

And there was a fellow I met at a party some years ago. He was a psychiatrist, an M.D., and not merely (as he was quick to assure you) a psychologist or therapist. Anyway, he found out I was writing about the UNIX operating system for various magazines (this was the 1990s), and then he became really quite abusive. I was, he said, clearly an advocate “for some bizarre, non-standard equipment,” meaning, not Microsoft. Though, of course, this was back in the bad old days of the operating system wars, and you could expect that sort of thing on a regular basis from all sorts of people.

(Oh, and by the way, that was one of my rare triumphs. I gave as good as I got in that particular argument. Indeed, I told him exactly where to get off, and what he could do at the toll booth when he got there. The fact that I was also right, and that UNIX and UNIX-like systems are still going strong after all these years, also adds a certain pleasure to the memory.)

But, well, other than that, and maybe a couple more here and there, that’s about it. Psychotherapists and their kin don’t seem to be any more anti-individualist than any other professionals, and certainly a good deal less than some.

So, why my insistence on writing about the issue? I suppose there are three reasons. First, I genuinely am concerned about the power of the psychological sciences if they are employed in the wrong way—as they were in the Soviet mental “hospitals” in the bad old days of the Cold War. And, frankly, I’m not sure that something like that couldn’t happen again, particularly as it seems Liberal Democracy gets a little more shaky every day, and mind control gets a little more possible by the hour.

And, second, I suppose Dr. Churl left a real welt on me. I’m still working him out. Maybe these entries are a way of doing that—a sort of self-analysis to deal with the analyst.

And, third and finally, maybe I was just looking for a topic that would let me use one word in particular.  To be precise, Drapetomania.

What is that? Well, before the Civil War in this country, when slavery was legal, slave owners looked for ways to justify their exploitation of others’ sweat and toil. One way of doing that was to define slaves as being intellectually ill-suited for freedom…indeed, to be naturally inclined to servility. And so, ergo, obviously, if an [Insert N-word Here] longed for freedom, well, then, that [Insert N-word] here must be insane.

So, one prominent physician, Samuel A. Cartwright, obligingly provided a diagnosis and a word for the disease of liberty, “Drapetomania,” from the Greek drapétēs, meaning “runaway,” and manía, of obvious meaning. He even offered a treatment or two. They involved the whip, the chain, the strategic mutilation…toes, for instance.

And so, my friends, hence my fears…for as I look out upon the world as it is today, where the power imbalance between the great and the potent and the rest of us grows ever more uneven, and vast corporations demand more and more of their employees in return for less and less…

I fear…

How easy it would be for some future Dr. Cartwright or TED-talking Management Guru or obscenely powerful CEO to decide…

That our freedom, our liberty, our individuality …was quite simply, quite literally …

Insane.

The Great American Individual

I was just re-reading my own writing, specifically the recent posting about individualism in America. It struck me that I might be vulnerable to criticism with that piece—more so, that is, than usual—because I seem to indicate that America has a problem with individualism, at least in terms of writing and self-expression.

Yet, isn’t America the quintessence of individualism? Isn’t our culture the one which, more than any other, grants every citizen the option to make or remake their selves as they see fit? Choose the career, the life you like, the person you wish to marry…and, with luck and with pluck, and much hard work, you may succeed. Or you may not. But either way it is up to you.

It is, I think, very much at the heart of American identity, of our shared and not always conscious conception of ourselves. I also think it is true, or pretty much so. We really do give people the right to make or break themselves in whatever manner they see fit.

Certainly, that’s a great deal more the case here than in much of the rest of the world, even today, even in this twenty-first century. In many places still, people are born into an identity, which they cannot change. (I remember seeing a scene in the movie Gods And Monsters, which was a sort of fictionalized biography of James Whale, the director of the 1931 movie version of Frankenstein. At one point, the aged Whale [as played by Ian McKellen] has a memory of his youth. In the scene, a flashback, Whale as a young boy in an English Midlands farming family is busily sketching in a notebook. His mother rebukes him. “Don’t get above yourself,” she says. “Leave drawing to the artists.” It never once occurs to her that he might be one.)

So, yes, we are a nation of individualists.

And yet…and yet…

I can never escape the feeling that there is a difference between being an individualist and being an individual. That is, you can “stand on your own two feet,” and “stand your ground,” or whatever you want to call it…and still be exactly like the person next to you, who is also standing on their own two feet and standing their ground, a .38 Special in one hand and a copy of Atlas Shrugged in the other.

And I’ve a feeling that society wouldn’t be so eager to grant you the right to be an individualist if you were also a bit odd…if, for example, you were standing-your-ground while holding not a gun but an unpopular opinion.

In fact, come right down to it, I sort of think we’re allowed to be individuals so long as we are the kind of individuals that the larger culture demands we be. We are part, to quote an advertisement for Dr. Pepper that I saw long ago in the 1970s, “of an original crowd.” (What a lovely contradiction in terms that is.)

Specifically, I think we are allowed to be (or try to be) an individual who is a success in business or the professions. Not too successful, of course. And not in any way challenging to the system as a whole. But, a success…with a house in the ‘burbs and an IRA, and a long standing membership in the Church of Our Choice (even if we don’t go very often, and so long as it isn’t the wrong Choice), and children in a Good School, and with a Good Future (to be just like we are). Or, maybe, just to make the image a little more modern, we’ll also offer the option of a condo in the city and being an atheist or agnostic, so long as it is the right sort of atheism or agnosticism, nothing, that is, which might be too distressing to the minds of the many and the pure.

Or, to put it all another way, we are the rugged and self-sufficient individuals…that the Power Elite wants us to be…

…the individualist who is un-troubling, and undemanding, and causes no worries to the great and the powerful. And who believes that if he fails, that it is his own fault, and not that the System is stacked against him. And who, out of his shame and guilt, will never ask that the rich, in however small a fashion, share their wealth with others…

We are, in other words, the perfect caste. Our own Gods and Monsters…

The evil mother in our heads telling us, now and forever, and with such certainty…

Not to get above ourselves.

The War Against I

The other day I ran into a friend at the gym. We greeted each other with some surprise (neither of us knew the other was a member) and then chatted before returning to the various instruments of torture with which we hope to regain something like youth and health.

In the conversation, he told me that he had begun reading my most recent book, Padre. It’s the one I wrote about my parents and their passing. Then, he said an interesting thing. “You write like you talk,” he said. “Reading the book is like hanging out with you.”

I think he meant it as a compliment. I’ll take it as one, anyway. But, why I mention this (besides my own egotism) is that I’ve heard something quite different more than once. I have spent much of my life fighting tooth and nail to write as I do…or, indeed, even just to employ the first person pronoun.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been rebuked for it. I once had someone count up the number of times I used “I” or “me” in a text that was about one of my own experiences, and then she presented the total to me as though it were evidence of a complete moral failing. I had the impression that she would preferred it if I had written about myself entirely in third person. (“And then Michael Jay Tucker considered the oncoming car. Would he jump to the left or the right? Or would he perhaps run straight into the grill as a gesture of defiance? Michael Jay Tucker considered his options…”)

But it isn’t just “I” and “me” that offends people. It is the sheer sound of my voice that annoys them. For example, I once did a book on Seward Collins, a literary figure of the 1930s who hasn’t been much explored but who should be better known. He was an early lover of Dorothy Parker, and later a self-described fascist.

My book did get fairly good reviews in Academe, on those rare occasions that it was actually reviewed. Though, not everyone agreed. For example, there was an academic I encountered on the web and with whom corresponded. She had written a couple of books on similar topics. I tried to read them. Frankly, they were so larded up with postmodern jargon that they were almost indecipherable.

Anyway, we exchanged emails a couple of times, and she asked me to post glowing reviews of her books to Amazon and some of the academic networks. Because I thought we’d have sort of quid-pro-quo thing in operation, and that she’d post similar reviews of my book, I did.

So, I sent her a copy of my own book on Collins…and she wrote back, horrified, that she couldn’t possibly review it. Oh, the facts and conclusions were fine…but the tone…the tone! “You write like you talk!” she said, utterly aghast.

Needless to say, I removed all my glowing recommendations from Amazon and elsewhere as fast as my little fingers could hit the delete key.

Though, to be fair, it wasn’t just the odd academic who hated the fact that I sound “just like I talk.” I gave a copy of the book to a friend. Actually, I thought he was one of my best friends. Later, I found out I was probably wrong. Anyway, I gave him the book. He read it, or said he read it, though he resolutely avoided discussing the book whenever we met. Finally, I encountered him in a parking lot one day and bluntly asked him what he thought of it. “Well,” he said, uncomfortably, “I can hear your voice in it.”

It was said in the tone of a man who is struggling to find something neutral to say, like someone asked to comment on the baby’s most recent BM. That’s not so bad, is it? Well, yes. But then again, no.

Still, I suppose that wasn’t exactly an objection to my voice, merely to the book as a whole. Which, I guess, is a step up. After a fashion.

But getting back to my point, I have consistently encountered objections to any form of unique voice in writing—mine, or anyone else’s—pretty much everywhere I’ve gone in the world of text. And, I suppose, maybe, I guess… I can understand it in the case of mainstream journalism (not New Journalism, which is really Creative Nonfiction) because in mainstream reporting, you are not the subject of your story. You’re writing about something else. Your purpose is purely to convey information. So, maybe…

However, I’m less sympathetic to such claims when it comes to academic work, at least in the liberal arts, because I think they’re basically fraudulent. I think that what the academic is attempting to do with “academic style” is feign the objectivity, detachment, and “evidence based” conclusions of writing in the STEM professions. And, frankly, a paper about what this or that author really meant with this poem or that novel is not like a paper on the production of muons or the extinction of synapsids. The level of certainty is simply not there.

(Ironically, this is particularly true of postmodernists, who so often cling desperately to certitude, even while they claim that an objective evaluation of the universe is not possible. I understand the arguments, but I do not envy those who make them. Their position is too vulnerable even to their own self-reflection.)

And when I encounter opposition to a “personal voice” in fiction, poetry, or personal essay I am genuinely appalled. Surely, in these, the most individual of arts, the individual would be valued most of all. Yet, it is not so. Instead, you hear far too often a call for some kind of dis-individualization …for the fiction or the poem which is “not self-indulgent,” for the essay that contains no sign of the first person singular, for absence of the dreaded self.

Somehow we have come to an odd place in our intellectual development as a society. Somehow, the individual, the ego, the self…these are catered to in the popular culture. Indeed, to be selfish is presented as a virtue (think of Ayn Rand), and, more importantly, as a marketing strategy (“expensive, yes, but you’re worth it”).

However, to be self-ish is not necessarily to be individualistic. You can be a pig, and yet be identical to all the other squealing furies in the pen.

Thus, somehow, we honor the ego, even narcissism, in the market…but in self-expression, the self is suspect.

What concerns me most of all, though, is that I think this dis-individualization of the individual appears even in our conception of mental health. I’ve already mentioned in a recent posting, I think, the therapist I had once who defined my pleasure in writing, and writing in my own voice, as evidence of a disturbing neurosis.

And, of course, in the greater scheme of things, there have always been people, even psychologists, who have said that the use of “I” and “me” in writing is the dead give away of a morbid narcissist. I gather that one’s been debunked a bit, but, more recently I have run across studies which claim people suffering from Depression are more likely to use the first person singular in their writing.

Not to say a word against this research or the researchers, but I am concerned. I could see the less tolerant among us (and there are so many such) seizing upon such papers to support a profoundly dangerous thesis—to wit that selfhood is itself menacing, questionable, to be treated medically, and, in time, repressed as thoroughly as smallpox and plague.

And thus we would enter an age as fruitless as can be imagined. The day of the un-person. The era of the empty suit…

Never once self-indulgent.

As uniform and soulless as the termite.

And just as much without joy.

The Therapist Who Wasn’t

This is the story of Dr. Churl.

I have already confessed that I have some small mental issues… specifically, I have persistent depressive disorder (PDD), which is sort of like Depression’s little brother. I have, naturally, sought to treat the condition medically. Usually this means chemicals. That is, I take anti-Depressant medications.

Occasionally, though, I have also sought what is known as Talk Therapy, that’s where you go and meet face to face with a doctor or other specialist and chat with them about what you feel and why. For me, this has been at least as effective as medications, though not always, and sometimes my therapists have been good, sometimes quite bad.

However, among the therapists I’ve had who were not good, one stands out. Strangely, I can’t recall his name. I have the odd habit of not being able to recall the names of people who have offended me or even actively harmed me. For some reason, their names fade away. Maybe it is the secret tool of my vindictive id—the denial of the very existence of my enemies, to consign them to limbo.

Anyway, his name was something like Churl. That wasn’t actually it, of course. But there was a C and an H involved somewhere along the line. So, Churl will do for the moment.

I got his name off a list of providers that my insurance company had given me. I called each therapist on the list, one after another, working my way from A down. Some of the doctors didn’t call back. One, a somewhat stridently ideological individual, did not want to deal with a “male.”

After getting through the Bs, I came to the Cs, and Dr. Churl. He agreed to see me. We made an appointment and a week or so later I found myself at his office.

It was a nasty little place in a shared office complex in an upscale neighborhood. When I say it was little, I mean little. It had just barely enough room for two chairs and his desk. What made it feel all the more tight was that he was a big man, and he thus loomed over you as he squatted in his chair across the room.

We began. I tried to get to the point. This meant that I needed to talk about the unpleasant feelings I‘d been having, particularly those of my being without worth, and that meant in turn my crying.

I looked up and realized that he was staring down at with a look of, well, disgust. What I’d thought was honesty about my emotions, he felt to be unmanly. In his eyes, I realized, I was nothing but a wimp. A weakling. A man who had never been shown how to be a man, or else had ignored the lesson. And, bluntly, he then told me so.

This was, of course, exactly what he should not have said to me because a part of my problem was that I didn’t feel I had lived up to the role assigned to me by society…at least as society was when I was growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. What I needed was someone to tell me I had actually done rather well. I’d been a decent father and husband, and, if I hadn’t made a fortune, I’d been passible in the money department. And as for working hard and being stoic, those I had down pat.

But he did not say these things. He did not reassure me. He was, instead, a constant reminder of my failings.

What was worse was that he decided that my parents were the problem. They had…he decided… been unfeeling and cold. And, so, he went on, all my problems spun out of that relationship. He had me reading Alice Miller’s The Drama Of The Gifted Child, which is an important book, maybe even a classic…but it had nothing to do with my situation. My parents were unfailingly kind. Though he wouldn’t hear a word of that.

Finally, and logically (if incorrectly), he decided I suffered from grandiosity, another symptom of the Millerian child. I believed (he said) that I could do things which I actually couldn’t (“delusions of adequacy”), and then suffered from the agonies of the damned when I realized my true and many limitations.

And what grandiose goals had I set for myself? Well, for one thing, to make a living as a professional writer…clearly, he said, I didn’t have the talent. I should abandon that futile dream. The fact that I was a professional writer at the time—specifically, a journalist—was beside the point. He had made his judgement. The facts were not to get in the way.

As I say, I stayed with him far longer than I should have. I should have abandoned him as a tragic waste of human life, not to mention a threat to my mental health, after the first session. But, I didn’t. He was a therapist, by God. And a doctor. I assumed he knew what he was doing. I thought he might be able to help.

I’m not quite sure what made me realize that he wasn’t doing me any good. I think I just woke up one day and understood that he was dangerous to me. So, I canceled my next appointment, and when he phoned to ask why, I made up some story about going back to graduate school, and never saw him again.

In retrospect, I suspect the real problem was not my mental illness, but his. I think he was some sort of narcissist. I think his purpose in my “therapy” was to denigrate me, to prove his own superiority, and to demonstrate his ability to dominate others. In other words, he was a bully, and the worst thing about it all is that I let him bully me, because I thought he was helping me. He definitely wasn’t.

An aside, in the few months I knew him, I never once saw him laugh or smile. He never reacted well to one of my jokes, even to be polite. I later read that this is a sign of a bad therapist. Had I but known…

Anyway, time went on. I profited a couple of ways from my experience with him. For one thing, I learned to be more selective in my next choice of a therapist. For another, I used him as inspiration. I do very short, limited animation videos as a hobby, and he provided excellent subject matter for one of them. It even got me an award from a little video contest I entered.

But I did worry, and I still worry, about the harm he may have done to his patients. I mean, I’m only mildly neurotic, and he still managed to do me some real injury. What, I wondered, did he do to others…to those more vulnerable than I was?

And besides, I did want a little revenge.

So, I tried to track him down. I envisioned confronting him…maybe even bring his case to the attention of the authorities.

But…that was when I discovered I couldn’t recall his first name, and I was only about 75% sure of his last. And, more, by this time we had moved to New Mexico, where I was caring for my parents. That meant I couldn’t simply drive over to his office and seek him out, or at least note down the name on his door. (Even if I could recall his exact address, which I couldn’t.)

I turned to the web…did some searches…working with various versions of his name, or as much of it as I could recall…and found nothing.

Finally, I gave up. It seemed the universe did not intend me to find my therapeutic tormentor.

I wonder what happened to him. The most obvious, if least satisfying answer is that he just retired and is somewhere even now in comfortable circumstances, making life miserable for someone near and dear to him. Or, more interesting if less probable, he finally went too far…some patient committed suicide, or (better) turned on him. And, now he has lost his license, can no longer practice, and sits out the remainder of his life in bitterness and rebuke.

But, well…

I am a story-teller by inclination, and I can’t help myself.  I’ve worked up two more stories for him…those are complete fictions, based on neither evidence nor reasoning. They are simply tales, myths, but with a certain charm for all that…

In the first story, it turns out that he has genuinely vanished. He knew that eventually his patients would discover his actual nature…would realize that he had hurt rather than helped them…and so, fled before their anticipated fury. And, as a final triumph, an exquisite last act of gaslighting, he covered all his tracks and traces. Not even his birth certificate remains. Thus, his sadism…for how can he be guilty if you doubt he really existed?

Impressive and perhaps chilling…the stuff of horror movies… (what happens when one of his former patients encounters him by accident? As I say, the stuff of stage and screen.)

Now, the second story

In it, karma is the prime mover, and the central character…

In this other tale, what happens to the good doctor is akin to my own suppression of his memory…that just as I cannot fully recall his name, so too the universe has perceived his cruelty, and sought out a fitting reward.

To wit, how better to injure a narcissist than to condemn him to obscurity?

And so, the reason I cannot find him is that he, now, begins …

His slow, deliberate, and total erasure. So that, in the end, all he did, and all he might have done… all the cures he did not administer, all the psychic injuries he caused…nothing will remain.

And he will vanish…or, rather, blur into nothingness, like a watercolor in a cold winter rain…

The reds and blues and yellows washing to gray, to earth…

To absolute…to deadly…and fatal…

Oblivion.

Sadness, Repentance… Useless

The other day, I was in a rather grim spot, emotionally, and I found myself going over my various failures and transgressions — my, for lack of a better word, sins.

As I say, it wasn’t particularly pleasant. It was, indeed, one of my little side trips into the persistent depressive disorder (PDD) that I mentioned a while back. But, I thought it might be useful to examine those incidents in which I had hurt others, and then, perhaps, learn from that history, so that I wouldn’t do such things again. Go ye forth and sin no more, and all that.

Honestly, my confessions weren’t too exciting. My sins are real enough, but rather colorless. I have not killed anyone. I haven’t bullied or tormented anybody. I have remained faithful to my wife. I don’t think I was abusive to my son. At least I don’t remember hitting him or screaming at him or a regular basis. Though, God knows I was tempted.

Even so, I do feel that there are things I’ve done that I should be ashamed of. And I did feel shame. I found myself thinking, almost compulsively, about the things I’d done wrong — things which, on a rational level, were rather petty. Yet, for me, they seemed overwhelming. And I must confess that I began to wonder about my own value to anyone.

And then, I had a curious insight.

To wit, self-reproach—at least when it reaches a certain, melodramatic level—is strangely akin to self-love. Or self-pity. You are, in a funny way, evading responsibility. You find yourself saying something like “how could you…God, or Circumstance, or Fate, or Society, or Mom and Dad, or Whoever…have allowed me to be so flawed that I did such awful things?” Or, to put it another way, how could heaven and earth allow me to suffer with the knowledge of my sin?

And thus, the focus of the story ceases to be on the victim… of whoever you have harmed…but yourself. And there is something horribly narcissistic in that.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Regret, shame, repentance…these things are good, when they have some positive result, that is, if they drive you …drive me…to atone, or not to hurt others again in the same way…

But if they do not, I fear they have no benign effect. I fear, in fact, that they actually compound the problem. After all, if you have already decided that “Oh Lord, I am not worthy,” there is nothing to be done…no reason to work and sweat and sacrifice to seek redemption.

And thus how comfortable…how serene!…it is to remain exactly where you are… armored with your guilt, defended by your shame.

Perfection and death

December 16, 2018



So, the other day, I was thinking about my own aspirations and ambitions. Not just the ones I’ve got at the moment, but the ones I’ve had at various times over the course of my life.

Some of them I’ve realized. I successfully married and have been, well, I think, a passable if not perfect husband. I think I’ve been an acceptable father. And so on.

There are, of course, though, things which I have not achieved, and which, frankly, I never will. For example, when I was single I was not as sexually successful as I would have hoped. I was never athletic, nor tall and commanding. I was never a business success, nor have I won fame and fortune.

Naturally, I regret my failure to achieve these things. Indeed, my sense of self-worth has suffered because of it.

And yet, as I was thinking about it the other day, I was struck by how my aspirations were at variance with my identity. At its simplest, I cannot be taller and stronger without fundamentally and forever altering my appearance. And, then, on a deeper level, I couldn’t be a business titan, say, a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg, without changing my interests and talents. I would have to be somehow fascinated by profit and loss, and competition in market—things which, at the moment, don’t appeal to me at all.

In fact, I wonder if, to achieve all of that, I’d have to be another person entirely—someone else, in effect. Someone who wasn’t Michael Jay Tucker. Maybe, indeed, someone I didn’t like particularly.

All of which is to say, well, I wonder about ambitions. Oh, they’re good and important to have. I value them in myself and in others.

But I fear, too, that if indulged too much…

They tend toward a kind of annihilation…a murder of self…

Akin to suicide, and oblivion.

My Special Shadows

I suffer from mild depression. Well, actually, it isn’t Depression. Technically, it is “persistent depressive disorder,” (PDD), though when I was first diagnosed with it, it was called “dysthymia.” I don’t know why they changed the name. I’m glad they did, though. PDD is so much easier to spell.

But, whatever you call it, PDD is defined (here quoting Wikipedia) as “a mood disorder consisting of the same cognitive and physical problems as depression, with less severe but longer-lasting symptoms.” I’m thankful for the “less severe” part. I’ve never had a serious, really deep Depressive episode. And, if it is all the same to the universe, I’d just as soon I never did.

Which isn’t to say that dysthymia/PDD is particularly enjoyable. It is “treatment resistant,” and, as the name suggests, it seems to last forever. I’m basically never free of it. Even the most intensely joyful moments of my life are a little shadowed. Usually it involves finding fault with myself—I’m not successful enough, I’m not wise enough, I’m not strong enough—and the incident which should be ecstatic becomes, somehow, a little sour, a little flawed…

I am taking meds for the condition. I have done so for years. Right now, I’m on Bupropion. Truth be told, it isn’t clear to me that it works all that well. I feel no happier when I take the medication. Yet, I keep taking it because when I stop I find myself experiencing deeper troughs and darker lows. I suppose you could say that the drug seems chiefly to restrain the shadows, but not remove them.

Which is odd, because when I first started taking anti-depressants (I believe it was Zoloft in those days) they worked quite well. For about a week, I was genuinely not depressed. It was a strange and curious experience…and it was (alas) quite temporary. I later learned that this is typical for those with have PDD.

There may be, however, a touch of dawn’s early light on the horizon. Some researchers are saying that tiny doses of hallucinogens—psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD—seem to have powerful anti-depressive effects. I’ve also run across several articles about using ketamine as a treatment for depression. I even read that some of these new drugs sort of reboot the brain, and that at least some of the people treated with them never have depression or PDD again.

Unfortunately, these are illegal at the moment. The hallucinogens are class one drugs. Ketamine, “Super K,” is a club and rape drug, and therefore carefully controlled. But, even so, I’m guessing that eventually you’ll be able to get those sorts of drugs as part of any normal treatment for depression.

So, maybe, someday, I’ll be able to try them. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones and my PDD will vanish forever.

Maybe.

Or maybe…maybe more likely…it won’t work. The drugs might be fine, yes, but maybe they won’t work on me…because …because…

I’m not sure I can abandon my depression. I am not sure it is in me.

You see, I’ve had the shadows in my life for a very long time. They have been my constant companions. They keep me company. They fill up my day. They give me purpose and even an identity. They are, sometimes, I fear, how I define myself.

If I were somehow rid of them…the shadows, and all the things that dwell within them…all the teeth and claws…

Would I still be me?

Or someone else?

Someone that I, and others, would not recognize…

And might not love?

Political Considerations (and otherwise)

I have been thinking about this blog, and the essays that have appeared here, and which will appear here in future. Last night, I looked back over the postings. I was startled to realize how long I’ve had the blog — since 2005! — and by how often I’ve posted here. In 2005, for instance, I had 42 entries. In 2012 I had no less than 73! That’s more than I usually did each year in the emailed version of Xcargo.

The 2012 collection has the most essay-like stuff in it. That was when we were moving from Massachusetts to New Mexico. My mother had had a stroke. My father was in ill health. So off we went to care for them. The material I wrote the year is somewhere between a very personal diary and a travel log. I am actually looking forward to making it into a book.

But many of the other postings from other are hardly as interesting. Much is highly political. I believe I was working on the assumption that to gain readership, I had to address current events. This I did with a passion.

I think that was a mistake. You see, writing about politics is all very fine, and I will continue to do so, particularly now that I’m writing for a political blog, Liberal Resistance dot net.

However, as I look at the pieces I attempted, I am distressed by how unoriginal they are. What I said was what everyone was saying, at least those of us on the moderate left. The 2005 entries (which I’m just re-reading now) cover a number of topics which, indeed, were vital at the time. I wrote, for example, about the consequences of the Second Gulf War, when George W. Bush and Cheney went into Iraq. I pointed out that we were attacking the wrong country, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

I was pretty much right. But so what? Everyone, except the most strident of Neo-Conservatives and the most venal of oil company executives, knew that the invasion was a mistake and had been mishandled. After five years of war, we also knew that we were going to be in it for a very long time, and with little to show for it afterwards. (We are still there now. And it has been, what? Something like fifteen years as I write this. And there’s no sign of an exit any time soon.)

But, all that was obvious…to everyone.

Thus I had nothing new or unique to add to the discourse. I could only be one more member of the Greek Chorus, proclaiming to the audience the disaster that everyone already knew was coming…

Which had, indeed, already arrived.

I return to Xcargo

And so I consider returning to Blogspot. Or Blogger, of you prefer. Though I was never very fond of that name.

Either way, I’m not sure that I should. I’m told that blogging is dead. And that even if it isn’t, then Blogspot/Blogger is certainly dead. I’m told that no one goes here any more. I’m told that the future lies in Tumblr, or Wordpress, or on the “micro-blogging” sites, like Twitter, to which our current president (alas) so regularly goes to comfort his supporters, and terrify the rest of us.

But, then, I missed the blogging boom back in the early years of this century. I’m always a bit behind, it seems. Or else just a little too far ahead. My timing is notoriously bad. So, why not? I shall return to explosive-cargo, my blog, which was based on my e-zine, just when such things are entirely passé.

Anyway…

I will try to post here at least once a week. At least, when I have the energy to do so, which may not be all the time, I’m sorry to say. At sixty-one, I seem to have somewhat less vigor than I did once.

But I’ll try, because I want to focus again on my own writing — personal essays, chiefly. That’s what the original explosive-cargo (Xcargo) was all about. I find that, now, I want to return to that sort of thing. I want to, once again, write short pieces, dealing with my life and my observations of that life, however myopic my observations may be.

I might as well use this space, at least for a time, to begin.


*

I must confess, though, I am uncertain whether to remain here, on blogspot. And I’m uncertain whether to keep the name “explosive-cargo,” which was the name of the ezine, and of the newspaper column before that (a long story which I’ll tell you someday). I’m uncertain about the name because I’ve always had the vague feeling…a superstition, really…that there was something ill-ill-fated about the name itself, and that if it had been something else I would have been much more widely read, maybe even become a professional columnist. As I say, an irrational concern, but maybe there’s something too it. A professional marketer could tell me.

As for Blogger, it never felt really right to me. It seemed a little cumbersome at the best of times. And it never really motivated me to write. You see, with an e-zine you get feedback from your readers. In a blog, you sometimes do and sometimes don’t. And when I tried to restart Xcargo as a blog, it felt as I were shouting into a vacuum. No one seemed to hear.

I suspect I won’t be heard now, either. I suspect the only hits I’ll get will be from bots, and half of them Russian, in search of a mark.

*

Why do it at all, then? I guess because it is a way of getting myself back into motion. Even if no one reads this, I will at least publish something. And, then, afterwards, perhaps I’ll include this material in a self-published book.

Which may or may not be read, either. But that’s fine. At least I’ll publish it.


*

But should it be here? On Blogger, I mean? I begin it here because, when I started, it was about the only game in town. And it was (still is) owned by Google. Which is pretty impressive.

However, if I had to do over again, I think I would have done it on Tumblr. It has a better look, and rather better technology. I’d be tempted to restart this blog on Tumblr, in fact, but Tumblr just terminated all its adult material. I have nothing that could be considered “adult” on my site, but I worry. Could, someday, my political opinions be considered controversial? And could I be then shut down.

That being the case, I’ll start posting here, and then check around a bit — find out what else is out there. If I find something better, I’ll switch. Then I put lots of links to the new site in my last post, here.

*

So, stayed tuned. There is more to come.

As I used to say twenty years ago…

Onward and upward.

My most recent posts to Liberal Resistance

And lastly, there are my most recent posts to Liberal Resistance:

First, "Shinning Faces in the Gold Light," which is my response to the Neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville:

https://www.liberalresistance.net/shining-faces-golden-light/

Second, "A Most (Un)Civil War," in which I speculate on the commonalities between the mindset o the Antebellum slaveholders and our current lords and masters on the Right:

https://www.liberalresistance.net/un-civil-war/

And third, "Houston and Ireland, Famine and Flood," in which I compare the British authorities who failed to act during the Great Famine, and our leadership, which seems so reluctant to respond to the floods in Houston...and perhaps for similar reasons.

https://www.liberalresistance.net/houston-ireland-famine-flood/

check 'em out when you get a chance.

cheers
mjt

Some other places I'm posting...

Just fyi, in addition to XCargo, I'm currently posting to a couple of other places. Much of what you see here (at least the political material) will be subsequently posted as well to the DailyKos site, specifically here:

https://www.dailykos.com/blog/Xcargo

I'll also be posting to caucus99percent.com:

https://caucus99percent.com/

My particular handle there is mjat1957.

Lastly, there will be some other material, not included here, that I'll be posting to Liberal Resistance. You can see the main page here:

https://www.liberalresistance.net

Though most of my material will be in the blog section, here:

https://www.liberalresistance.net/blog/

So, stayed tuned. More to come!

just fyi...Creative Commons

Hi, Everyone,

Just to restate, all of my material you find here is offered under a Creative Commons  license, specifically the:

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

This means that you are free to forward it about, but you must attribute it to me,  you must leave it unmodified (no changes, in other words), and you cannot sell it.

Thanks hugely,

Michael Jay Tucker

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Reading From the Book Of Giants

And so we come to the end of the world...

Well, maybe not really. Not the end, exactly. But you must confess, there is something a little apocalyptic about the scenes coming out of Houston right now.

And I’m going to write about that today. I’m going to get rather (sorry) Biblical on you. Or, at least, I’m going to use pseudo-Biblical language. And I’m going to reference the apocryphal book of Enoch.

For you see, I’m going to talk about floods, and Giants, and very, very wealthy men...

Who, it seems, if they could, would consume the world right down to the bedrock.

And never once consider they shouldn’t.

*

Background: for a variety of obscure reasons (obscure even to me, sometimes) I’ve always been interested in the various literatures which float around at the edges of religion—books and stories, that is, that arise from the same sources as do the major holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but which are not themselves considered canonical. (And, by the way, I’m no scholar. I’m just reading these books out of curiosity. If you are a specialist in the field, feel free to write in with comments and corrections.)

Now, understand, I’m not particularly religious. I don’t treat these books as sacred texts. (I’m not sure I believe in sacred texts.) But, they can be rather fascinating, both as literature and history.

And, there are a bunch of such books about, actually. Jewish books, early Christian books, Gnostic books, and on and on. you’ll recall that a Gospel of Judas showed up back in the early 1980s, though the book itself supposedly dates from the late second century C.E. It relates the tale of Jesus from the perspective of a Judas himself, here presented as a hero who does what has to be done so that Christ’s mission will be complete. Needless to say, the book created rather a stir in certain circles.

But, right at the moment, the books which interest me the most are Enoch 1 and Enoch 2.

Enoch, of course, shows up briefly in Genesis as the prophet who “walks with God,” and ultimately vanishes into heaven. It’s almost just a cameo role, hardly worth mentioning, and Enoch might not be remembered at all if it hadn’t been for someone (or many someones) who sometime around 300 BCE adopted him as a major character in a whole series of tales (epics, really) in which his adventures in heaven are recounted in great detail.

For a variety of reasons, the books of Enoch almost completely disappeared in the West (both for Jews and Christians). But, fortunately, they survived elsewhere, for instance in the Ethiopian Bible.

Why I mention all of this is that Enoch...or rather, Enoch’s authors...also talk about the Great Flood that drowns out mankind for its “wickedness” in Genesis. But Enoch has a curious take on the whole story. In his version, where everything goes wrong is waaay back, sometime after the expulsion from Eden, when certain Angels looked upon “the daughters of men,” and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, got the hots.

They, these angels, descended to earth and got very busy with the ladies. Then, when they were done, the women in question had hybrid children, the Nephilim, or Giants, who unfortunately, did not take after the heavenly side of the family. Rather, they grew up to be monsters, brutish and evil, and wholly devoted to themselves.

In fact, the Giants ate everything. They consumed all they could find, utterly without restraint, eating the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea...and, finally, humans. The world, indeed, was stripped bare, as we read in Chapter 7 of 1 Enoch:


And the women conceiving brought forth giants,

Whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labour of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them;

When they turned themselves against men, in order to devour them;

And began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood.

Then the earth reproved the unrighteous.


Finally, things got so bad, that heaven had to respond or else all life on earth would perish. So, the Great Flood was sent, and the giants vanished under its waves.

*

There’s lots of other really great lines in the book. For instance, at one point, the humans who are being cannibalized by the Giants appeal to heaven, “And men, being destroyed, cried out; and their voice reached to heaven” (1 Enoch 8: 9), and what may be my very favorite line is in Chapter 9, and involves the earth herself seeking redress, “The earth deprived of her children has cried even to the gate of heaven,” (1 Enoch 9: 2).

I’ve always been interested in Enoch’s interpretation of the Flood because it sort of says that it wasn’t humans who’d sinned, and who were getting exterminated, but rather the Giants, who never learned empathy, never learned to control their appetites, and never discovered the virtues of self-restraint.

That’s rather more satisfying, don’t you think, than the more usual view of things, where we are ourselves the villains? And Enoch gives us a God who is our avenger rather than our destroyer, which is comforting.

But...also...doesn’t it sound just a bit familiar?

Doesn’t it sound, just a little, like the run up to Houston?


*

We’re learning, now, that when Harvey hit Houston, it may have encountered a city uniquely vulnerable. It appears—at least from what I’m reading in the papers and on the Web—that some city authorities, some city planners, and some real estate developers had been told repeatedly that there were dangers in the way they were building and where they were building. It seems that they had been informed that constructing homes and stores over wetlands, and in areas that might have taken run-off during storms, was to court disaster. But, or so I’m reading, they did not change their behavior. It was easier, more profitable for them, to just keep doing what they were doing.

I’m reading, too, that Harvey himself was a bit of a surprise to some authorities, both in Texas and elsewhere, because it was a super-storm, a storm of almost unbelievable power. Again, they had been warned that such storms were coming, and more will come, because the world is warming, and the consequences of that will include ever more, and ever more potent hurricanes. Indeed, if they’d ever doubted it, they could have simply looked at recent history—Katrina, Sandy, and now Harvey.

Yet, they were surprised anyway. Why? Maybe because they were busy telling themselves (or, at least, telling the rest of us) that global warming was a “Hoax,” “Junk Science,” and “a Liberal conspiracy hatched by the Chinese to cripple our economy.” Or, to put it another way, it was in their interest to deny the facts.

Moreover...and here’s the really scary one...we are discovering, too, that this will probably not be the end of it. We are finding that the Great and the Powerful will almost certainly not learn from Harvey...just as they didn’t learn from Katrina and Sandy. As I write this, I am already starting to see comments in certain quarters about how Harvey really wasn’t the result of climate change, and how it wasn’t anyone’s fault that Houston is underwater, and how, really, government relief and/or regulation would be a mistake, and we ought to just sit back and let corporations and Free Enterprise get on with their high and holy business.

Or, again to put it all another way, those of us who are not rich and powerful, should know our place, not interfere, and wait quietly while storm, and flood, and fire, and desert...grow closer every day.


*

In short, the Rich and the Powerful, the 1%, the Billionaire Boys Club, whatever you want to call it...in Houston and elsewhere...had no intention then, and has no intention now of hearing calls for restraint. They will drill, and they will extract, and they will mine, and they will burn, and they pollute as much they like, thank you very much. And if we object, well, tough shit for us.

Their will to power is unbounded, their capacity for consumption unlimited, and their hunger is (alas) insatiable.

By now, I am sure, you see the link...my none-too-subtle metaphor, the connection between the Giants who consumed the very earth itself, and our own Power Elite...who, like Giants, have no interest in self-restraint.

Which is...disturbing.

Thus, I hope there is, out there, somewhere...maybe you who read this...an Enoch, who will have the talent and the prophetic power necessary to confront our Giants, and help them understand that restraint and self-control are absolutely necessary for our survival—theirs as well as ours, for not even Giants are tall enough to stand above the Flood which may be coming.

Or, if there is not an Enoch...

Then let us pray...or, if you do not pray, then devoutly hope...that there is at least a Noah, and an Ark big enough to carry birds, and beasts, and ourselves away...

From the children of rebel angels...whose appetites were such that they devoured all, until, at last, and in anguish, the earth deprived of her children cried even to the gate of heaven.

And heaven’s fury may well be...

Brutal, beyond our power to imagine.




---

Sources:

The Book of Enoch http://book-ofenoch.com/

A transgression, but in a good cause

[Note: I will shortly be posting the following to cacaus99percent.com, a liberal web-based publication.]
1.

I am about to violate the letter, if not the spirit of the law...that is, the law of this website. But, I hope you’ll forgive me, for I do have a good reason.

It has to do with our unity as a movement, and the salvation of our country, in an age of incipient tyranny.

Let me explain.


2.

The rule that I’m about to break is in “The Dreaded Site Meta #1,” by joe shikspack. The rule in question is “Don’t Throw Spitballs,” and joe shikspack elaborates this with, “A lot of folks have come here from another site where there was much unpleasantness,” and he asks that users not waste valuable bandwidth by, well, hating on the unnamed Other Site.

I agree with the rule. It is an excellent idea. And, most of time, I will do my level best to obey it. But, I need to mention that Other Site, not to vent, but to express a concern about the larger political system.

First, background. Yes, like almost everyone else here, I was on the Other Site, posting essays. And, yes, I ended up taking heat about a couple of them.

Though, I ought to mention that this was, in a way, my fault. I had discovered the Other Site and been delighted to find a place where I could post my inarticulate left of center mumblings. But, I committed the one unforgivable sin of the freelance writer. I did not thoroughly investigate the publication before I submitted. If I had, I would have realized that the Other Site had a very particular slant, and a very particular point of view.

There is nothing wrong with that, by the way. Every publication does have a preferred slant, even if they think they don’t. It was just that I hadn’t realized that the Other Site’s particular slant was that Hillary Clinton should have won (I agree) and that Bernie Sanders, or more particularly, Bernie Sanders’ supporters were a problem (I don’t agree).

But, stupidly, I had not bothered to figured that out. I had assumed there was room on the Other Site for some mild criticism of the DNC and perhaps of Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy, if not for Hillary Clinton herself.

As I say, I’d been stupid.

3.

You all have your own stories, I’m sure, of bad times on the Other Site. And I suspect most of yours are far more gripping than mine. So, I’ll be short. I had two incidents of interest. The first was when I made some fairly off-handed remarks about an article I’d seen in which Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying that people didn’t want the Democratic party to change, or to have a new strategy—this only a few weeks after the election of Donald Trump, and coming just before a series of additional humiliating defeats in special elections for vacated Congressional seats.

I posted the piece, and I had a few complimentary remarks, but I also had several that were absolutely furious. One individual accused me of being, frankly, not able to read, and that I had completely misinterpreted the article. I went back and looked at it, afraid that I’d made an error. But, no, it said exactly what I’d said it said.

The second incident occurred a little later. Here, I did a mostly comic piece about how the Trump administration was beyond parody. How can you mock a clown? But, again, in one throw-away line...just one line...I made some reference to the idea that if Bernie been allowed to run, he would have won.

Most of the comments I received on that posting were positive, maybe not completely so, but positive in varying degrees. However, to my amazement, I got a comment that was really quite bitter. It took that one line about Bernie Sanders and made it a personal affront. How dare I, this reader asked, say such a thing? How dare I imply that Hillary wasn’t the better candidate? Then she concluded, “Enjoy your flag.”

I was startled. How could anyone be so emotional about one line? Also, I didn’t know what a flag was. I’d never heard of them. I looked them up. I discovered that if enough “trusted users” give you a flag, your comment can get erased, and your own posting privileges endangered. In other words, this individual was so furious with me, furious over one line, that she was willing to pull out the ultimate weapon of the Other Site... and use it.

It was kind of startling.


4.
But...none of the above is really important.

I’m not, repeat not, particularly concerned about the negative comments I received on the Other Site. Even the “flag” doesn’t bother me over much. Simply put, if you’re going to post to the web, or try to publish anything, you’re going to get negative comments. We don’t have to like it (and I don’t), but it is true.

But the issue...the real issue...is the fury that seemed to transfix the individuals who so violently disagreed with my postings. The man who accused me of illiteracy, the woman who flagged me, there was an awful lot of anger there. Which, I’m afraid, is indicative of a much larger phenomenon. I see it in a lot of places. Not just on the Other Site. That is, many Hillary Clinton supporters are justifiably furious that their candidate was so grievously cheated...but, sometimes, that fury is released not on the Republicans who put Trump on office, but on the Bernie supporters whose candidate represented an alternative to Hillary.

Which is not to throw stones. I see a very similar behavior in some Bernie supporters (not to mention third party people). I see a similar fury, and I see that fury sometimes vented on people and organizations who are really quite innocent. I suppose, now and then, I’ve done it myself. Mea Culpa, and all that.

Just human nature at work? Yes, I suppose. But, it worries me. We are in, let’s face it, the fight of our lives. We have in the White House an unstable, would-be despot who is fully capable of plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust. We have around him, either near or far (even if they’ve recently returned to Breitbart), people who can only be called overt Fascists. We have behind him, supporting him with money and propaganda, vastly powerful Oligarchs who dream of reducing the Federal government to a shell, and of reducing us, its citizens, more or less openly to the status of serfs.

That, I submit, is a genuinely existential crisis. Unless we fight back, and fight back hard, we are going down. America as a nation is over. American democracy is finished.

So, I wonder, if maybe, there needs to be some kind of greater attempt at unity. I wonder if, somehow, we need to put aside...at least temporarily...our internal divisions. I wonder if we don’t need to say, “Yes, my side was cheated, and I’m angry at your side, but we will, for the moment, work together. Because the consequences of disunity are too horrible to consider.”

5.
Is that possible, I wonder? Can we somehow come together?

I hope so. I’m certainly going to make an effort. I’m going to continue to post to this site, but also to the Other Site. I’m sure many of you do the same.

So, maybe it is possible. I hope so.

Yet, I also worry. I keep thinking of that “flag.” That flag so quickly and freely given.

Because, you see, it reminds me of another flag I saw once. It, too, was defiant and proud, and it sent a message.

The problem? It flew over the National Cemetery of Santa Fe, just an hour’s drive from where I live.

And that flag, for all its beauty and defiance, will be seen by few of the living...

And absolutely none of the dead.

~mjt

Speaking In Tongues

This is going to be difficult to write. I may, indeed, fail at the effort...for which I will ask your forgiveness in advance.

But, here is the thing. I am about to attempt an essay in which I will combine two men...two radically different, indeed, antithetical men. So different that, to use a metaphor from science, one might be matter and the other antimatter. And should these two ever meet...annihilation is all too possible.

To explain:

We went to visit our son and his wife in San Antonio last week. We returned on Tuesday, exhausted from the confusions and discomforts of travel in the modern age. But, once home, we rushed back out again, this time to the Central United Methodist Church and the second meeting of the Poor People's Campaign, “a national call for moral revival,” hosted by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

It was, needless to say, amazing. Reverend Barber was, well, astonishing. I wrote later he may be the single greatest public speaker I’ve heard in decades. And, he was surrounded by a great many other individuals, including Rev. Theoharis and a great many local clergy and of various faith (or no faith) communities in the state.

The church was packed...people filled the place beyond the bursting point, every pew was occupied, every spot of habitable floor was filled, scores of people waited in the parking lot outside, listening to the proceedings on loudspeakers.

We got lucky. We were able to get in to the vestibule and could actually see the proceedings...if not exactly closely. I was even able to take a few photos with my phone, albeit not very good ones. More importantly we were able to hear the speakers. Commentary ranged from the demonstrations and later murders in Charlottesville to the generally depressing moral standards of our benighted times. Barber and others also discussed the Poor People’s Campaign and its general aims and goals—which, the speakers implied, was not so much to be a new resistance group as to assist and co-ordinate the efforts of the many, many already existing resistance groups around the country.

As to that, as to the Campaign, well, I’ll say little about it other than that it seems to me a remarkable effort. I intend to get involved with it in some fashion, and if you have any interest in doing something similar, here’s the website: https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/

But, mostly, at least in this piece, I am going to focus on Barber...partly because he was such an impressive speaker, but also because he is a perfect symbol for our situation. Here is a man who is genuinely charismatic, who genuinely represents what is best about political Christianity, and who (with others) has begun a movement that could really and truly bring moral focus, and vast energies, to the struggle against the Trump Administration and the insidious forces behind it.

Frankly, I found him...and his proposed movement...quite fascinating. And that’s not easy for me to say. I don’t come from a Christian background. My parents were agnostics, rationalism and materialism have always been key components of my personal belief system, and when I finally did get involved in a church some years ago, it was because of those vague and flabby reasons that cause most of us to drift into organized religion at some point in middle age—“We are going for the kids,” etc.

Yet, in Barber, I discovered an individual who could make me...well, not exactly believe, but, shall we say? take the church’s role in progressive politics very seriously, indeed. Even before I heard him speak, I’d begun to wonder if churches and synagogues and mosques and humanist secular assemblies, somehow working together, won’t be the backbone of the anti-Trump movement. (Even the tiny, little resistance group I helped to organize here in town, all twelve or so of us, calls itself “not faith-based, but faith-informed.”) Now, with Barber, and the people I saw around him that night, I have become almost certain of that supposition.

Which is an interesting thing, don’t you think? A curious possibility. That religion in general and Christianity in particular, which in their Right-Wing forms have done so much damage to our nation, and to our democracy, might become as well (forgive the liturgic image) our salvation?

But...

I said that this piece was an attempt to bring two opposites into the same text. I shall attempt that now.

Not long ago, I wrote another little essay about another man, Charles Koch, half the Koch brothers and a dedicated enemy of all we hold dear. According to several sources (I am, myself, using Rebecca Onion’s article in Slate, “What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority”), Koch sees himself as something of a religious figure as well. Not in the sense of a man of God or anything like that. Rather, he sees himself as a champion of “economic liberty,” which, in practice, means he opposes any attempt to impose limits and boundaries on the behavior of the very wealthy, i.e., himself.

I suppose a theologian would argue that Koch is thus guilty of the sin of self-worship. He has defined himself as God, and anyone who opposes the will of God is to be sent straight away to hell.

For the moment, I’m going to take a pass on the theological aspects of Koch’s mentality and look instead at his self-perception. Again, according to several sources, Koch has compared himself to Martin Luther, as a man at the heart of a moral revolution, unleashing powers of unimaginable fury, capable of remaking the world...

Curiously enough, I think Koch may be quite right.

Only, not as Martin Luther. Not in the sense that he defines the principles, for good or bad, which will transform the world...

But rather, as the man...or something in the shape of a man...who so offends the world that all good men and women unite against him...and find, in the process, strength they had never once imagined they possessed. And, then, in their union and with new found powers...they remake the world.

Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say?

Almost, indeed, Biblical.


***

Addendum

At one point during the meeting (and how much like a gospel meeting it was!) the Reverend Barber mentioned that he is of the Pentecostal tradition. I must confess that I didn’t know there was a liberal, progressive Pentecostal tradition. I always thought of Pentecostalism as, well, you know, hand in glove with the reactionary right...denying evolution and insisting that homosexuality is a mortal sin.

How very wrong I was! For, here, in Barber, was a completely different Pentecostalism, one I could admire.

And it just so happened that I the week before I’d finished reading a book which mentioned Pentecostalism—specifically, Philip Jenkins’ *The Next Christendom*. In it, Jenkins writes about the emergence of a southern Christianity, focused in Africa, Asia, and South America, and very different from the Christianities of Europe and Euro-America (which, he suspects, may be dying out).

In the book, Jenkins also makes the fascinating observation that Pentecostalism, which is one of the fastest growing Christian communities in the world, is actually not really a part of the Reformation tradition. It is, in some ways, actually a completely new branch of Christianity, different from Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy. Why? Because it completely democratizes the faith. It says that anyone...anyone at all!...can have direct contact with the divine. There are no uniquely blessed apostles superior to the rest of us, no saints who are uniquely touched by God, no Popes or Bishops who are uniquely empowered to speak for the Greater Glory, no ...well, no seal of the prophets.

Whether that democratization is a good thing or a bad is an open question. After all, a good many lives have been lost after some undiagnosed schizophrenic has decided he’d been having regular tête-à-têtes with the All Mighty and then led his followers into battle. (Think the Lord’s Resistance Army and The Taiping Rebellion.)

Still, once again, as a metaphor for our own situation, I wonder if it doesn’t work quite well. The myth of Pentecost is that, of course, the apostles were wrestling with the fact that Jesus was no longer among them. And then, behold! The Holy Spirit descended upon them and they found themselves filled with fire and prophecy, and they went forth to teach all nations.

Well, I don’t know about the Holy Spirt part. But fire and prophecy? And the going forth to save our (secular) nation?

Those, I think, are very much on hand.

***

Until next time...

Onward and upward.

Knights Templar

So, here’s the deal. I keep thinking about Trump...as do we all, of course. But, also as we all do (I suspect), there is another aspect of the Trumpian problem that concerns me, perhaps even more. I mean, of course, the people behind him.

Oh, yes, that includes the “deplorables,” who voted for him, and the alt-Right, and Bannon and his crowd of...of...of, well, whatever the hell they are. (Strasserist? Apocalyptist? I really don’t know.)

But, more importantly, I’m thinking of a certain discrete slice of the wealthy and powerful who support him. Not all of them, to be sure. But, a slice...

And what frightens me most about such people is this: Are they a movement? Or a church? A very dark and shadowy church.

To explain, the other day I saw an article in Slate by Rebecca Onion, “What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.” It is an interview with Nancy MacLean, who has recently done the fascinating book, Democracy in Chains. In the book, MacLean details how certain members of the obscenely rich, and particularly the Koch brothers, have organized into what I can only call a conspiracy (though MacLean dislikes that term) with the goal of imposing on the rest of us a kind of dictatorship of the Plutoletariat, a system in which government would be prevented—by law!—from interfering with the economy. Which is to say, from imposing any real restrictions on the behavior of the rich and powerful.

They’ve even, says MacLean, selected a Marx for their revolution, the anarcho-capitalist academic James Buchanan.

It is terrifying material. But the thing that struck me the hardest was a comment that MacLean made about one of the Koch brothers, specifically Charles. She notes, “I see him as someone who’s quite messianic. He’s compared himself to Martin Luther and his effort being like the Protestant Reformation.”

I believe this is a very important insight in that it explains much of what really motivates the anti-democratic Right in our day and age. Specifically, it reveals that objectivism/libertarianism/whatever is not, in fact, a rational movement. It is more akin to a religion, and its efforts are more like a crusade than a political movement.

I think it also explains a bit about why we, on the Left, are having trouble opposing such people. We do things like, say, look at the actual record of economic policy and expect law makers to respond in a rational manner. For example, we ask, “do higher minimum wages increase the overall prosperity of the society as a whole.” We carry out our studies, and sure enough, it turns out that they do. So, we point at the data and say, “See? See? It just makes sense.”

But we miss the point. Prosperity is not what these people are after. (At least, for anyone but themselves.) What matters to them is “morality.” For them, it is a sin for anyone to tell them to pay an employee more than they wish to.  If, in the process, they end up bankrupting most of society...well, so be it, so long as their high and holy “right” to do as they please, economically, is not infringed upon.

Which means we are at a disadvantage. We approach them expecting them to behave as we would...expecting them, that is, to be a political movement in the same sense that we are a movement, and, like us, heirs to the Enlightenment tradition.

But they are no such thing. They are a religion, a church militant, armed and zealous...like Templars in Jerusalem.

The difference being, of course, that these Templars worship neither God nor the demon envisioned by the knights’ destroyers. Rather, for them, the supreme law, the supreme judge, the supreme being whose will it is a sin to oppose in even the smallest things, is...

Themselves.

 *
 Rebecca Onion, “What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority," Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html

On why it isn’t possible to sound like P.G. Wodehouse and talk about Trump (a lament)

Okay, so a while back, I did a little piece on the kind of science fiction I’d like to do about the Trump administration. One of the people who bravely suffered through my turgid prose, “La Dona,” very kindly suggested that I might want to try to actually, well, write the aforesaid story...instead of just talking about writing it.

As I say, La Dona was being very kind and I deeply appreciated the encouragement. Yet, I realized, upon reflection, that there is a real problem with writing about American politics today. To wit, I have an urge to make it funny. To be precise, I want to write like the great British humorist, P.G. Wodehouse. To be even more precise, I would like my prose to sound a bit like the nasal intonations of one of his most famous characters, Bertie Wooster.

As I’m sure you know, Bertie’s a charming young Johnny of the upper class who’s nice enough...quite the dickens of a fellow...but he’s got all the brain power of your average cherry stone clam after a lobotomy. I mean, basically short on the jolly old brain cells, if you know what I mean. A bit thin in the cerebellum, as they’d say down at the Drones Club. (But, not to worry. For general sagacity and profoundity, he relies on Jeeves, his butler, who is positively dripping with the stuff. Never can tell who’ll get a big one. Brain, I mean.)

Anyway, that’s who I want to sound like while I’m doing fiction about Washington. I mean, good old Bertie is just the chap. Dead solid cinch and all that.

Except...except...then I tried to do it. I mean, I tried to write like him. And, the result? Well, the term “total, full-speed, fourteen carat debacle” drifted into the frontal lobes. With a side order of abject disaster.

Here’s the rub, as the poet chappie would say. Suppose you sat down to your high powered, fuel injected, German engineered word processor and set out to write a funny story about American politics today. Well, you could start out with the DNC being handed on a silver platter a candidate (one Bernie) who could raise billions with the twist of a nostril, and who packed ‘em at the campaign meetings like Billy Sunday on a Tuesday. Somebody bound to win, in other words.

But, then, lo and behold, the Powers That Be decide instead to throw the election to a candidate who may or may not be just ducky...personally, I’m rather keen on her....but she’s about as popular with a certain (large) class of voters as a plutonium enema and so, basically, bottom line, viz., therefore, and thus...they snatch Defeat from The Bicuspids of Victory and guarantee themselves a loss.

Boffo stuff, to be sure. But it’s been done! I mean, someone has beat us to the punch. It’s been on TV and everything.

Okay, so let’s try another approach. Let’s say that the RNC finds itself confronting a candidate so vile, so vulgar, so fascistic, and so basically ridiculous that he campaigns on a slogan of “grab ‘em by the pussy” and openly talks about walls and storm troopers. Oh, and he also brags about all the help he’s getting from our friends, the Russians.

But, rather than unite against this ranging loony tune who’s an existential threat to the nation if not the entire Western world, the GOP cheerfully says, “so long as he cuts taxes on billionaires, snuffs Obamacare, and makes the world safe for oil companies...well, that’s terrific. And what the heck if whole bunches of poor people die in the street, and Putin’s in the White House, and China takes over the Pacific and crushes our economy, so long as we get ours...”

Hysterical, to be sure. Laughable as all get out. But, again, we’re just too late. We’re coming in three lengths behind on the outside rail while everyone else is popping corks at the winner’s circle. I mean, someone else has already milked the gag for all the laughs that could be squeezed, pasteurized, and shipped to Piggly Wiggly.

Fine...

So suppose, instead, we do a story where the aforesaid Luna Tuna is now in the White House and he then proceeds to alienate America’s friends near and abroad, proves utterly ineffectual at working with Congress, communicates chiefly via tweets (which he sends while on the toilet in the early hours), talks about modifying (or scrapping) the constitution to increase his own power, terrorizes the White House staff, appoints cabinet members whose real job is to undermine the very agencies and causes they’re meant to promote, and then wraps it all up by haranguing  boy scouts and bashing trans-gendered Navy Seals and Marine Corps officers.

Yes, yes. I know. Knee slapping. Roll ‘em in the aisles. Tears of mirth, a cert, an absolute cinch and all that. But, once more into the breaches (or at least lederhosen) dear friends, ‘cause someone’s beaten us to it again. They rode up to the carousel on a Harley and made off with the old brass ring before we even got out of the gate. Danged frustrating, if you ask me.

Well, all right, if we gotta...let’s try again. This time we’ll make the White House a nightmare sitcom where the long suffering White House Press Secretary, Sean (“Melissa’s Mini-Me”) gets used like an errand boy until finally he can’t take it any more and quits when President Looney Toons hires Anthony (“Scarface”) Scarmucci,  who, in turn, launches off into an expletive laden rant about his boss, Reince (“And Repeat”) Priebus, who then gets tossed out the window a few days later...only to be joined by Scarmucci himself who gets canned after ten days, or actually, before he technically starts work ... which means he had a tenure measured in the negative numbers.

Ah...but...wait for it. You know its coming. As utterly absurd as this story may seem to you, me, and, of course, Gussie Fink-Nottle... and as silly a piece of ye olde theater of the absurd as we could wish...alas, it’s old hat and older underwear. Another wordsmith has hammered and tonged his way into the same plot ages and ages and ages ago. As in, on July 31. Or, as I write this on Wednesday, day before yesterday.

So, you see my problem. I just can’t keep up with the competition.

Ergo...sadly, alas, and regrettably, when it comes to modern politics, I’ll just have to abandon Bertie, and comic writing.

We need, you see, someone else...someone whose style...and subject matter... really matches the administration at hand.

Someone like, uh...er...

Stephen King springs to mind...

Wouldn’t you say?

Until next time, onward and upward.

LIke A Business: A Short Story

So, the other day, for no real good reason, I thought about writing a bit of science fiction about our current administration and where it would like to take us. I won’t actually write it, of course. It is beyond, I fear, my limited abilities as a writer. But, it is interesting to amuse myself with, if nothing else.

Anyway, the story revolves around the fact that one of the underlying themes of the Trump administration is that government needs to be run “like a business”—i.e., with efficiency and dispatch, avoiding waste, and making a real profit.

Of course, this idea is not restricted to Trump himself or even just his close associates (those that are left, that is, after his periodic purges), but also the whole crew of individuals who are behind him --  for example, the “dark money network” of wealthy men and women (the Koch Brothers, for example), Fox News and its Supporters, the self-described anarcho-capitalists and their ilk...the whole, in short, cadre of Right Revolutionaries who clutch their copies of Atlas Shrugged and James Buchanan, and dream of a world where liberals and socialists are kept in cages, and billionaires are properly recognized as the only true children of God.

So, for the moment, let’s say they succeed in their goals. What sort of government would they construct? Well, I think you would have the Constitution revised, or wholly replaced, so that the President is more like a corporate CEO, his/her powers no longer so very limited by what Trump has famously called the “archaic” nature of our system. Then, Congress would be supplanted by something like a board of directors whose purpose would not be to legislate but rather to make certain the CEO remained efficient and effective, and that share-holder value was increased on a daily basis.

And the Supreme Court? Well, it is hard for me to see what role that institution would have in this new, improved, business-oriented world. It would get in the way, you see, of effective action. But, maybe, it could be replaced by a sort of central accounting office, a new body whose purpose would be to limit unnecessary expenditure.

The independent press, meanwhile, would cease to exist—replaced by some sort of Department of Public Relations. Social services would be drastically cut or eliminated entirely. The police and the military would still exist and, indeed, be enlarged...though, their purpose would subtly change. The former would no longer be quite so concerned with defending the public and would be rather more interested in keeping that public in line. The latter would be less focused on national defense, and more on expanding the overseas power of financial interests...corporations, banks, and so on.

And even they, the police and the military, would find their autonomy gradually eroded, and their functions slowly privatized. The Navy Seal would be replaced by the Black Water mercenary.

Okay, so that’s the setting. Where do we go from there? Where does the story go?

Well, in it, there is a new dawn in America...an age when James Buchanan’s “economic liberty” trumps (no pun intended) all other kinds of freedom. All the organs of government (those few that still exist) adopt a sound business model.

And, for a time, it works. One national CEO is gracefully replaced by another, and then a third. There is an economic boom (at least for some people) as regulation is itself regulated to the scrap heap of history.

But, then, gradually...very, very gradually...strains and stresses appear. For, of course, governments are not businesses. The art of governing is not identical to that of business management. The possession of an MBA does not make you an expert in everything.

Privatized schools and universities... where “education is a business like any other”... fail to genuinely educate their charges. The “shareholders” and “customers” ...the wealthy and the powerful...seek more profitable investments elsewhere (in nations that still have a tax-supported infrastructure). The “employees”...everyone else...grow ever more restive and dissatisfied.

And finally, there is a disaster. There is some sort of crisis—an outbreak of plague which the disbanded CDC can no longer oppose, an excess of corruption on Wall Street which the SEC was not there to forestall, a war...with a nation which still believes in nationalism and the loyalty (or otherwise) of whose military is not up for sale.

And the whole Grand Prix down Fifth Avenue comes roughly to a halt.

How does my little story end? I think it concludes with the national CEO, and the Board of Directors, and the other members of our Power Elite, confronting this debacle...and suddenly realizing that (by God!) there is, in particular, one way in which government is most assuredly not like a business.

To wit, in business, failure...even catastrophic failure...is an option. You declare bankruptcy, the stockholders eat the cost, and the chief officers retire to Caribbean islands with their “performance bonuses.”

However, in government, when there is an invading army at your gates, or an insurrection at your door... consequences are swift, and fierce, and very often, fatal.

But...still...

As I say, this is only my fiction. And I have already revealed that I am not a talented writer. I lack the skill to write the piece. So we will simply leave it there.

Though, maybe, perhaps...some other, more potent author than I will adopt this tale, and tell it.

With details that are most concrete. And vital. And critics will applaud its refreshing, if distressing, brutality.

Almost as good as American Psycho, or even Blood Meridian.


~mjt

The Secret Life of Stephen Bannon

The other day, I saw yet another article about the books you need to read to understand Stephen Bannon, the current White House’s ideologist-in-chief and resident Jabba The Hut impressionist. Specifically, the piece was an excerpt from an upcoming book by Joshua Green, and ran under the title “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steven Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia.” I saw it in the online version of Vanity Fair.

In the excerpt, the author, Joshua Green, makes the compelling argument that Bannon may be considered a radical traditionalist, and that his thinking can be traced back through authoritarian political Catholicism, through the Italian national-racialist, Julius Evola (1898–1974), and finally to “René Guénon, an early-20th-​­century French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Shari.”

I’d heard of Evola, but Guénon (1886–1951) was completely new to me. According to Green, Guénon, like Evola, believed the West has been sickened by materialism and modernism. Thus, we need to return to a purer, more simple age, when spirituality was a living thing among us.

I rather enjoyed Mr. Green’s writing. It was informative and interesting. But, it struck me that the excerpt is actually part of a larger genre—that is, texts which try to figure out Bannon by looking at his reading. I’ve seen a good many such pieces in the last few months. In February, Neil Howe wrote in the Washington Post, “Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.” Howe says that Bannon is “enthralled” by The Fourth Turning, the book Howe wrote along with the late William Stauss proposing that American history runs in roughly 80-year cycles spanning prosperity and crisis, with us very much due for a crisis in the near future.

Meanwhile, last March in the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal  and J.M. Rieger, say that you can’t make sense of Bannon without reading The Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail. This, they say, is key to understanding Bannon’s conception of race. It is a dystopian tale in which Europe (and white people) are overwhelmed by hordes of economic migrants from the Third World.

And, I could go on, naming article after article. I’m sure, too, that such works are useful things, and that they really do help us understand what is happening in Washington, and the world, at this particular moment. After all, if we are to understand and oppose our adversaries, it is necessary to get into their heads...know what they are thinking, what ideas they hold dear, and what ideologies. Given that Bannon seems to be the closest thing to an official ideologist that the Trump cabal has, it is therefore important to understand him and his intellectual underpinnings.

Still...

Sometimes I wonder if all of that is quite as useful as we think. People on the Left tend to be....not exactly bookish, but at least reflective and self-aware. We tend to take ideas seriously. So, we assume that other people do so as well.

However, in the case of Bannon...or, rather, in the case of Trump’s inner circle...

Consider the Great White Shark. From one perspective, it could be considered the supremely philosophical beast. It is perfectly attuned to its world, it knows neither guilt nor shame, it suffers not from self-doubt, it never feels ennui, is never neurotic or maladjusted...always lives life to the fullest, always seizes the day.

Yet, were it somehow possible to enter its brain, I doubt you would find there thoughts of Nietzsche or Adorno...or even of Evola and Guénon...but something rather less. Say, something more like elemental passions—hunger, fear, rage, the siren scent of blood in the water.

I draw no parallels. However, should you wish to do so, you would have my truest encouragement and fullest consent.


Addendum

In the piece above, I (entirely unoriginally) use the metaphor of the shark. It’s amazing how much things have changed with that particular animal. When I was young, it was regarded as the quintessential apex predator, to be feared and hated and perhaps destroyed. Now, forty-something years on, the shark is very much under siege. Overfishing and shark fin soup have begun to seriously endanger its populations and men and women of good will are now working to protect them.
But, of course, “good will” is not a term I would use for the Trump administration. Which worries me.
I wonder, do they...those genuine apex predators, those suits and ties at the top...have any idea what they’re doing? And how grim and sad and empty a world it would be, should we not learn to practice restraint?

---

Sources:

“Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” an excerpt from Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green . Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

“Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book,” Neil Howe, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.f1c725a4baf5

“This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” by Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03


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