Travelogue 1038 – March 31
And the Winner Is …!

Why should I be the only one with no comment to make on the biggest event of the week? Never mind the war or the pandemic or the economy. Never mind the political infighting that makes Lincoln’s election look like a game of softball. The event of which I speak is, of course, “The Oscars Slap”. I could hardly be taken seriously if I did not publicly wring my hands over what happened on that Hollywood stage, could I?

Well, who did not like the two of these men before the Slap? Two more genial and likeable superstars could hardly be found. And who did not feel a bit disappointed after watching that video clip. Even before forming a judgement about who was right and who was wrong, who did not experience that familiar queasiness, the signal that humanity had disappointed you again? And not in the predictable way, like when you see Marjorie Taylor Greene creeping up to a microphone. You know she will leave a mess on the podium for the rest of us to clean up. No, this one was not supposed to happen.

More important to register is the tide of disgust rising underneath the individual disappointment in Smith or Rock. The Academy really botched this one. Ninety-four of these shows, and they cannot see their way to a clean performance. This ninety-four-year-old house needs some work on its foundation. Ricky Gervais was singing it to them from the stage of the Globes. Everyone rolled their eyes.

We might have been the ones given a good slap, the kind that gives you sight. Suddenly there were two middle-aged rich men on the stage, posing like they would duel, and the house was full of people in eighteenth-century costume and made up garishly, and they were gasping theatrically. Suddenly we were extras on the set of “Dangerous Liaisons”.

This is just the glimpse the Academy does not want to offer us. It’s on this platform of disgust that radicals of the left and right meet. It’s where the jihadist and the militiaman from Idaho become acquainted, where they discuss the degeneracy of Western culture.

Much of the right-wing position is a lament. Is it any wonder that the Right gathered so much steam, just as Clinton and Obama allied the White House with Hollywood, just as worldwide media and entertainment congealed like pools of paint that have spread across the floor and become one uniform sheet? Two things have happened. First, we see everything: we no longer have the power to dismiss the Right as the sad cranks they are. They were always there in the shadows. FDR had to fight them off, for God’s sake. We can’t believe that our age created the brand.

Secondly, media and entertainment have evolved into kind of a creepy aristocracy. Just about everything they do confirms the Right in their assessment of our civilization. The media-entertainment ‘Meta’ world insists it is our mirror, and it is inescapable. Earth is their funhouse, and many people are repulsed. While Clinton and Obama were fine with affirming that Hollywood was a part of the ‘liberal establishment’, in fact, there have always a number of right-wing kooks in Hollywood, like Voigt and the Sandler gang. And no wonder that many of them remain silent now. The association of ‘liberalism’ with the ancien régime is a very handy one.

Travelogue 1037 – March 23

The Wolves

Little Ren wanted to tell me something. She took my cheeks in her hands and made me look at her. She told me that when I grew up, I would be given a sword. The purpose of that sword was to protect her from the wolves that chased her in her nightmares. I replied that I understood, and that I would be ready for that responsibility.

Yes, the world has become a scary place. We wake to scary headlines every day now, pandemics and dictators running amok. Whither the halcyon days of healthy Barack staring down pallid Vlad, when we were all so secure? Maybe it was a media dream. The world impinges upon our restful sleep. We need someone to stand guard with his or her sword against the wolves.

People say the darndest things in times of stress. Several friends have commented on how quickly COVID became a non-issue, when all media attention swung toward the war in Ukraine. “It’s a propaganda machine,” was one’s summation. The state of the world can be dismissed that easily. “I don’t read the news anymore,” they say resentfully. “It’s too depressing.”

I would challenge the logic. What is the opposite of propaganda? I don’t think it’s cynical relativism to ask. We’re a political species, and therefore a rhetorical one. Everything we say, even in a spirit of objectivity, has a purpose. Is that good or bad? Neither. How is it that the same person who has fortitude enough for the big, bad world just the way it is faints away at the vagaries of the press? How is it that dictators are human, but journalists must be … more. It’s odd.

If we admit everything is propaganda, then what’s our basis for condemning press coverage of COVID or Ukraine? COVID was a public health crisis. Even if the crisis was exaggerated – which remains far from proven, – who shall we fault for going “too far” to save lives? And why shame anyone over Ukraine coverage? I hear people mutter, “Well, people are suffering everywhere in the world. Why so much attention on Ukraine? The same has been happening in Syria for years.” It’s all political, they complain. Um … yeah.

It’s 2022. We’ve been passively watching for nearly a decade as right-wing strongmen advanced their agendas around the world. Now the European press reports a European war, launched by a right-wing strongman, and are we really going to complain about bias? Maybe the mutterers are too young to remember when the civil war in Syria dominated the press? It did so for quite a long time. Maybe it’s their attention span … which is all the fault of the media ….

Travelogue 1036 – March 17 

The Real World

I picked up a second-hand book the other day. It’s a collection of essays from 2007. It’s one the Best American Essays series. Why would I read essays from 2007? I don’t know. I like essays. Some of the essays from 2007 didn’t age well. Some are very good. One of the longer ones was about the Iraq War.

I remember the Iraq War; I was alive then. Many of us were. When I think back to 2007 in my own life, it doesn’t seem so far away. Why does the Iraq War seem like ages ago? There’s an urgency to the essay that only serves to underscore the remoteness of the event.

The incompetence of Bush seems almost quaint beside Trump’s. The bluster of a Rumsfeld seems light compared to the legion of Fox News zombies we endure now and the snakes like Stephen Miller or Ron Johnson. Cheney’s evil seems to pale next to Putin’s.

The truth is, there’s more alike in the circumstances separated by fifteen years than we would like to admit. Iraq and Ukraine were both brutally invaded with slight cause, at a great cost in human life and property. A horrifying number of people died in Iraq, and the reasons for invasion were as vague and unsatisfying then as Putin’s are now.

Weirdly, Putin was around in 2007, too, smirking and staring out from the Kremlin like a gargoyle on the face of Saint Basil’s. (No, I don’t think Saint Basil’s has gargoyles. It’s a flawed metaphor.)

The world seems worse, but perhaps the only difference is a key change in the press-saturated West. Trump and Brexit, COVID and inflation, and now Putin’s war have made us feel like the hard and painful “real world” was back, like millennial peace and prosperity were caving under the pressure of a natural order of struggle and strife. But has there really been a qualitative change? In some areas of the world, the round of disease, war, and corruption has never really let up. One war looks like another, and integrity in government is like sunshine in Holland: it breaks through the clouds rarely and unexpectedly, and you simply enjoy it while it lasts.

Travelogue 1035 – March 9
Smart

Recently, John Oliver taped a segment about Alexander Lukashenko, president and dictator of Belarus. During what’s shaping up to be another memorable era for dictators, this segment serves as one more reminder of how ridiculous, in fact, the run-of-the-mill dictator is. The average dictator is a bundle of idiosyncrasies and cruel tics with a tinsel-sheen of charisma, someone born to be a bully when young and a revolting buffoon as he ages. To be fair, all humans do poorly with unquestioned power. We act foolishly, and we slide into regrettable behaviour. But then, for most of us, that wouldn’t extend to killing innocent people.

Let’s address – again – this myth of the genius of dictators. Simply because Putin doesn’t act like a clown, hug flag poles, wear ridiculous hair styles, squeeze Steven Seagal’s knee, have public affairs with porn stars, or doctor weather maps with sharpies, he looks like a genius among his pals in the dictator club. It doesn’t mean he is one. I might feel like an Olympic athlete if I ran a 10K against third-graders. Might!

Why does this kind of rhetoric get any traction? The deployment of the term “genius” is often as not an admission of laziness or ignorance. That’s never truer than in the praise of a mob boss of one sort or another. The primary virtue of a mob boss is audacity, the sort usually granted by trauma or chemical imbalance in the brain. Law-abiding citizens don’t expect violence. They are easily surprised by violence. That does not make the good citizen stupid and the aggressor a genius. Why does this need to be explained?

Just because you can’t imagine yourself, say, beating a child senseless doesn’t mean that you don’t think you’re smart enough to do it. You are not saying you lack the technical skills or the strength to beat a child. You are simply saying that you find it difficult to picture. You find the idea repulsive enough that you have difficulty giving it shape in your imagination. Do you think that makes you stupid?

At the time of 9-11, I was puzzled by the admiring rhetoric. How smart they were! How courageous! They threatened passengers with violence, took over a plane. They aimed it at a building. Such vision! That must surely put them in the same league as Shakespeare and Newton and Caesar!

Success in life does not mean genius. Do you think your boss is a genius? Does anyone think Biden is a genius? Does it matter? Genius is even less a factor in the world of thuggery. Putin was trained in the use of intimidation and violence. It works well among societies that are (more or less) used to law and order.

The various memes of Trump calling Putin “smart” will survive into a future that holds the both of them in contempt. The memes will survive as tragedy and as an embarrassment to everyone who is not a part of the shameless Trump family. They survive as a singular display of personal gain over dignity, and of Trump’s ugly disdain for his own children. What father leaves such travesty as a legacy for his children? No wonder the Trump kids all seem so soulless.

Travelogue 1034 – March 6
From the East

Cold winds are blowing from the east, and the skies have cleared. It’s like Nature is providing commentary on events in the Ukraine. Cold winds are blowing from the east. What is life in the post-2016 world without fresh disasters? 2022 began with altogether too much hope. The skies have cleared. Usually a symbol of hope, clear skies can also signify unclouded sight. Our Uncle Vlad has shined a torch at the rotten beams in our security ceiling. And as a final flourish, he has held the torch under his face and lifted his mask. That was cruel blow. As much as we had suspected the smirking face was a mask, we had found it attractive.

March has brought us clear and cold skies, both literally and figuratively. The literal skies have been a pleasant break from the dreary clouds and the exhausting windstorms barrelling in from the English Channel. Though the temps might barely be above freezing, the Dutch have flocked to their outdoor tables at cafes and restaurants. The sun’s warmth feels like a cure for misgivings.

It doesn’t do much to cure history. Dire images and messages flow to us from Ukraine, and every day we try to assimilate what’s happening. We struggle with disbelief. This doesn’t fit with our conception of the world order. How does this happen?

We are even tempted to learn lessons. Lessons we’d forgotten, like war is not a movie or a video game. It drags on in a distressing way. It challenges the romances we had with political gamesmanship and with military fantasies. It profoundly undermines ideas of victory or glory.

There are lessons about dictators. We idle away the years we feel safe chuckling at gremlins like Trump and Carlson, who tell us inverted fables with inverted morals, how might makes right and how most of the human race appears to be expendable from the prospect of their imaginary thrones. But then we suddenly feel the shadow of the real thing, a real dictator.

If any episode from the past week illustrates that we can no longer afford dictators in the twenty-first century, I think it ought to be the Tale of the Shelled Nuclear Plant. It’s worth re-thinking, the notion that sovereign states are untouchable, like enchanted lands we tell stories about, like places where nesting dolls come from. The cold winds from the east might be carrying more than charming folk tales soon.