Jon Meacham's 'The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels' (2018), Part I

Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York: Random House, 2018.

A thoughtful overview and discussion that helps put crazy times in perspective. Well-documented. 

In the introduction, Meacham brings up Richard Hofstadter's concept of "the paranoid style in American politics," a phenomenon even more widespread in 2018 than it was in 1963. There is always grand conspiracy, the End Times approach! "Time is forever running out." (page 17)

Just a few days ago, I came across a perfect example of the paranoid style in American society: TV evangelist Jim Bakker (born January 2, 1940), now broadcasting from Branson, Missouri. 

Jim continues to shriek about the End Times, but meanwhile, audience, send lots of money, buy containers of dried food, buy books and recordings. 

It doesn't add up. Bakker claims that Christians are persecuted and suppressed in the USA, even while he continues broadcasting away, one of legions of dedicated channels that spotlight tax-free Trump-supporting Christian evangelicals. 

Bakker's show is a perfect combination of paranoid, crazy, greedy and delusional, and somehow it's also crudely entertaining.

In The Soul of America, Meacham provides plenty of excellent quotations. Here's a snippet of Ike Eisenhower: "you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault' - not 'leadership' . . . I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion -- and conciliation -- and education -- and patience. It's long, slow, tough work." (page 39). 

From Robert Penn Warren: "a crazy man is a large-scale menace only in a crazy society." (page 53).  That's Trump in a tiny American nutshell.

One of the most perceptive of American thinkers that Meacham cites is Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who comes across as more 21st century than 19th century in his outlook. Douglass' analysis of Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln within an American context is brilliant. 

The current president, thinking Douglass still among the living, claimed early last year that "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice."

Early on Douglass came to understand the value of reading and learning -- a good role model for all. Meacham gets it, too, even if a man named Trump never will. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.    

Howard Thurman (1899-1981): With Head and Heart ~ Take I

Just about finished reading With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (originally published in 1981). What a life! What an arc!  

He's looking up and seeing Halley's Comet in the year 1910. Around the same time, a traveling salesman is peddling "comet pills" to save you from comet-crashing-infernos. . .

Hungry, resourceful and often on the move, Howard makes friends with librarians wherever he goes -- and reads as many books as he can at all times when not writing his own. Like Frederick Douglass, he is propelled by the initial ability to read, and thereby to ponder, and thereby to kick out the jams, and thereby to bust another move way on down the line. . .

He outflanks segregation time and again, raising consciousness -- his own and that of those he encounters -- along the way.

Thanks to one act of kindness by a good Samaritan, he's able to take a train with luggage and some food . . . on to Morehouse College in Atlanta; later to Rochester, New York and Roanoke, Virginia; King's Mountain, North Carolina; Oberlin, Ohio; Howard University, District of Columbia; to India and meetings with poets, writers and Gandhi (in 1936, mind you); to San Francisco and the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in the very midst of the Second World War; to Boston University; to the Middle East and Africa; and back to San Francisco . . . almost all this time during the segregated/American Apartheid/Jim Crow years . . .

Thurman's thinking-journeying is advanced and inspiring for any age or time -- including the 21st century. 

"In my mind, religion had become so identified with sectarianism, and its essence so distorted by it, that I felt a need to bring to bear all the resources of mind and spirit on the oneness of the human quest. . . the human situation, the human predicament, the human plight" (1st edition, pages 199-200).

You read this, you want to do things, and communicate them.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund: Cidade de Deus / City of God (2002)

Cidade de Deus / City of God (2002), Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's film based on Paulo Lins' novel -- both grounded in historical and contemporary reality -- causes chills (and evokes empathy) in its observations of life and death in the vortex of drug-and weapons-fueled urban street warfare. Set in the favela of Cidade de Deus that straddles Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it's an excellent, if often horrifying, film, spanning the latter 1960s to the early 1980s.    

Cidade de Deus / City of God (2002) is like a combination of Lord of the Flies (the 1954 novel and subsequent movies) and A Clockwork Orange (the 1962 novel and later film) - only with heavier weaponry and more widespread violence. Above all, it has the feel and texture (albeit in full color) of a Luis Buñuel masterwork released in 1950 - Los Olvidados [The Forgotten Ones]. 

Age is no barrier to becoming a trigger-happy monster like Li'l Dice here. As Li'l Zé Pequeno, he grows up to become an Al Capone of the favela.

I saw, too, Notícias de uma Guerra Particular / News of a Private War (1999) -- the accompanying documentary by Kátia Lund -- which is also excellent. It brings us up to date to the end of the 20th century. 

Both films remind me of comments made by Frederick Douglass in 1886:  

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Addito Salis Grano, or: Who Do You Love, Who Do You Hate?

Recent comments by Frank Freeman, one of my UNC-Chapel Hill classmates, led me to some thinking, resulting in this little flow chart of sorts. Active reference to this may help clarify how you or anyone feels about anybody, ranging from the president of the United States of America to a next door neighbor.

Frank pointed out that a person in general support of President Obama would support a certain specific action by him, but if President G. W. Bush had done more or less the same action, they'd have stood in opposition; likewise, political enemies of President Obama would not and will not support his actions no matter what they were or are or could be, precisely because they are opposed to him. Seeing this, Frank said he was more or less "on the fence," and took a more neutral position in many matters.

To play the game, imagine various different names as Person A.  What if Person A was Abraham Lincoln? Frederick Douglass? Angela Davis? Try Ted Cruz. Dick Cheney. Sarah Palin. Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton. And so on.

Figuring out your attitude by using one of the columns may help clarify where you stand on just about anybody and anything.  

Some attitudes shift with the passage of time. A person may hate a certain boss only while said boss holds any direct power over said person. All power is temporary, if only though mortality or external change in circumstance. 

Another person may unconditionally love a spouse for a while, and later unconditionally hate that same spouse, perhaps as s/he changes status to become an ex-spouse. And so on. 

What do you think?

In conclusion, people on either end of the spectrum will probably never be able to get through to each other. To a person in love, the object of love can do no wrong. To a person in hate, the object of hate can do no right. Neither side will ever convince the other of anything, at least for the time being.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Nancy Buirski: 'The Loving Story'

Nancy Buirski's The Loving Story (2011; HBO 2012), focuses on Mildred (Jeter) Loving (1939-2008) and her husband Richard Loving (1933-1975), their desire to remain legally married in the Commonwealth of Virginia after marrying in Washington, D.C. in 1958, and the Supreme Court ruling on Loving v. Virginia (1967) that struck down then still existing state laws (in sixteen states, all of them in the South), thereby making "mixed marriages" legal throughout the USA ever since. 

The Loving Story is beautifully done, with fantastic archival footage of the Loving family, their lawyers, and some of their opponents. It's a microcosm of American history, and completely pertinent to battles over marriage even now, in 2014. It's quite moving. 

The Lovings come across as gentle, yet firm people. Though Mildred communicates more openly, there are worlds of depth in Richard's soulful eyes, and in hers, too.  It's also interesting that Mildred was part African American, part Cherokee and part Rappahannock, the latter a small amalgamated tribe that has survived in the area of Caroline County (northeastern Virginia, about 90 miles from Washington, D.C.) since the 1600s. 

Today's Rune: Signals.  "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass (1857). 

David France: How to Survive a Plague (Part I)

If, as Frederick Douglass put it in 1857, "power concedes nothing without a demand," David France's How to Survive a Plague (2012) shows an immediate demand -- faster, more effective response to the AIDS crisis, more resources for effective treatment --  via well-organized groups ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its 1991 spinoff TAG (Treatment Action Group). Much of this compelling documentary covers the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s. In it, one will see not only the rank and file of ACT UP and TAG and their allies, but also buffoonish conservative enemies like North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, and let's not forget the mixed response of Pat Buchanan on Firing Line. Also: see George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Charlie Rose, among many others, drawn into the maelstrom. 

How to Survive a Plague is moving, fast-paced and exhilarating all at once. Fantastic!

Today's Rune: Signals.     

Borodino 200 / Antietam 150

Borodino and Antietam: the bloodiest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars took place two hundred years ago this month while the bloodiest single-day battle of the American Civil War transpired one hundred and fifty years ago on this very date.

These battles were fought on a gargantuan scale. At Borodino, Napoleon's French Imperial forces attacked the Russian Imperial Army, resulting in a nightmare that collectively sucked in 285,000 men and ended with 72,000 casualties. Borodino was followed fifty years later at Antietam, Maryland, when Union forces attacked Confederates in another epic battle, this one involving 113,000 men and resulting in 23,000 casualties.*
*Numbers approximate.

Antietam and Borodino are testaments to men's apparent inability to reach a rational negotiated settlement without turning to massed violence. Or, it may simply be humankind's built-in fate to fight amongst ourselves.

In both cases, Borodino and Antietam, power was at play, a real headbangers' ball. At Borodino on September 7, 1812, empires led by autocrats went for broke, while at Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as Confederates dubbed it) on September 17, 1862, two fledgling democracies tried to force each other to their desires -- or at least their ruling classes did. One slave-based (the pro-States' Rights Confederate States of America) and not that different in their leaders' minds from, say, the ancient Greeks, the other something a little different, a democratic republic possibly striving for a more egalitarian democracy (the Federal Union, i.e. United States of America) -- at least in its most vivid dreams and according to its most eloquent intellectuals, particularly a small handful of visionaries such as Frederick Douglass, and also according to its most pragmatic, evolving institutional leaders, epitomized by President Abraham Lincoln. Just days after Antietam, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in Confederate territory effective New Year's Day, 1863. Lesser known in North America, perhaps, is the fact that Czar Alexander II had already declared emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861. 

War & Peace. Do we collectively enjoy war and if we don't, why is war the norm and peace the exception?  

Today's Rune: The Self.  (Maps: Wiki Commons).

   

Lenny: A Film by Bob Fosse

Initial response to Luis Buñuel's L’Âge d’or / The Golden Age (1930) included physical attacks in movie theatres by fascists and other "right wing" types offended by its subversive freedom of expression and satire of "traditional values." The film was pulled from general circulation -- globally. It wasn't even widely available in the United States until 1979 and after!

Move the clock forward from 1930 through the rest of the 20th century. The use of napalm, atomic weapons and poison gas on the one hand, the freedom to use words on the other, and civil rights, human rights in general. It seems that even now in the early 21st century, many people in the US are far more concerned about Second Amendment (especially gun rights) than First Amendment rights -- i.e. freedom of speech, writing, publishing and assembly. Between the time of Buñuel's early work and the 1960s, the imposition of Hollywood Codes and various "official" policies around the US chilled serious and comedic exercise of freedom.

The situation changed only when people challenged the new status quo. As Frederick Douglass framed it in 1857, "power concedes nothing without a demand." He also observed this: "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

In free speech matters during the mush years, Lenny Bruce (1925-1966) became one of the demanders. He pushed and pushed, using "blue language," spotlighting hypocrisy in social mores, questioning American society's tolerance of violence vs. its treating sex like a "dirty shameful thing." He challenged the status quo directly and helped liberate the use of language in the USA.

Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974) is a good place to see how events played out. Lenny Bruce was arrested, charged, fined, banned and convicted along the way. He died of a drug overdose in 1966 and, at least in New York State, was only officially "pardoned" in 2003!

Even while he was alive, Lenny Bruce's influence was immediate and not just among the ranks of comics (George Carlin et alia). Take Jim Morrison, for example, and go from there. Even now Home Box Office (HBO) has the spirit, for instance.

Today's Rune: Warrior.     

     

The Books in the House

Bill Maher made a sublime point the other night: kids will probably do better in life if there are books in the house when they grow up.  Certainly they'll be able to live more on their own terms from a younger age.  But it's never too late. There are no more eloquent testimonies to the power of books, ideas, and literacy than the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X.  At least that I know of.

I thank my parents -- if never enough -- for making freely available a large and eclectic book collection, and for reading advanced material to me when I was very young.  Instead of sugar-coated Disney versions, I heard Brothers Grimm fairytales, Greek myths, and world legends told straight up. I remember also Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1958) when I was very very young.  When I became a little older, no reading material was ever pushed on me by my parents, but little was off-limits, either.  Perfect atmosphere for curiosity and exploration. (This is also how I learned about music). 

Off the top of my head -- and before my father greatly expanded his American Civil War collection (more on that in the future), my parents read widely (as did my sisters, both older, and later my younger bother): history, biography, art, architecture, religion, philosophy, mysteries, Westerns, science fiction, fantasy, classic novels . . . they still do. 

I remember specifically the Will Durant series, Matthew Brady's Photographic History of the Civil War, a two-volume photographic history of the Second World War, various Bibles and commentaries, Asian religious and philosophical texts, Sun Tzu's Art of War, JFK's Profiles in Courage, novels by Pearl S. Buck, works of Voltaire originally acquired by my father's father, a great book by Clarence Darrow (I forget its title), novels by Hemingway and Jane Austen, and a terrific and exciting book I loved called Thinking Big.  Finally, with the mysterious title Borstal Boy drawing me to it, there was the writing of Brendan Behan. When I look back, all of these books have stuck with me to varying degrees.

How about you?  What was your experience growing up with books, or did you come to them later, like Malcolm X?  Do you think kids today read enough, or have they become completely infantalized with games, crappy movies and etcetera? 

Today's Rune:  Strength.

New York: Seneca Falls and the Finger Lakes Region

In 1998 and during a couple of later visits to New York's Finger Lake Region, was able to explore the area around Seneca Falls, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake. The lakes are sort of like Loch Ness in Scotland -- very long and very deep, formed by receding glaciers quite a little while ago. This was Iroquois country, thick with history as well as scenic beauty.

About halfway down the western side of Seneca Lake, tried out a kayak, swam in the clear chilly water, and meandered through dense stands of timber. Checked out Watkins Glen and onto Ithaca, Cornell University and Ithaca College. Then, with a veteran of the area, on to Trumansburg, a counterculture village featuring the Rongovian Embassy to the USA that dates back to the Nixon years. Next to Lodi and Ovid, and back to Seneca Falls.


















At Seneca Falls, lots to see. The high point of the first visit was the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Radical sentiments in 1848 (same year, after all, as The Communist Manifesto):

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The equality of men and women? Still a radical idea in 2010, to many in the world and yes, even in the USA. Attendees in 1848 included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and many other hepcats of the day.

In 1998, Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the keynote speech -- while her husband Bill still occupied the White House. She afterwards moved to New York and was elected one of the state's U.S. senators in 2000.  Today, like New York's William H. Seward, Sr., of the Finger Lakes back in Lincoln's day, she is also Secretary of State -- in the Obama Administration.

Today's Rune: The Self.

Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand

I. Demand Change.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass, 1857.

II. Get Rid of Ass Clowns of All Stripes.

Remove from office arrogant, power-corrupted jerk-offs like former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (done -- he's in jail as of this post, and under federal investigation) and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (found guilty on seven counts, but not to be sentenced until after the election and swearing in of the next Congress -- if he wins his bid for re-election next week despite conviction, S. Palin will be able to choose his replacement in 2009).

Why does it take so long to get rid of spoiled politicians and CEOs? To quote Douglass again, from the same 1857 text as above: Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . .

Today's Rune: Communication.

And the Wayfarer Stays

Having to make the best of a required student reader textbook, I assigned for discussion Frederick Douglass' "Learning to Read and Write" and Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue." Then I actually reread them (it's early in the semester). They're pretty cool. Douglass is correct: being able to read and write is a mixed blessing at times and does not always bring joy. Perhaps especially during what the Chinese call "interesting times."

For a little respite from the daily grind, there's always poetry and various other art forms to turn to, including one of my favorite meta texts, the Tao Te Ching / Dào Dé Jīng, which comes in its original ancient Chinese forms and also via hundreds of modern translations. Here are a couple of English versions of "Thirty-five," nice and calming (is it Wednesday today?).

An excerpt from the D.C. Lau translation:

Have in your hold the great image
And the empire will come to you.
Coming to you and meeting with no harm
It will be safe and sound.
Music and food
Will induce the wayfarer to stop . . . . .

Same thing approximately, Lin Yutang translation:

35. The Peace of Tao

Hold the Great Symbol

and all the world follows

Follows without meeting harm

Lives in health, peace, commonwealth.

Offer good things to eat

And the wayfarer stays.

But Tao is mild to the taste.

Looked at, it cannot be seen;

Listened to, it cannot be heard;

Applied, its supply never fails.

Today's Rune: Protection.