#and having substantive moral symbolism of his own

[cologona]

Yeah nothing Jason does would work in the real world. Good thing he does not live in the real world. He lives in Gotham, which operates on the logic of Hollywood movies from 40 years ago. Oh wait- perhaps that’s integral context for his character!!!

[warrioreowynofrohan]

This is similar to one of my previous posts, but it has some new elements so I’m copying it over. This is the second of my posts on the core themes of each book in The Stormlight Archive. The first, on Rhythm of War, is here.

This post contains Rhythm of War spoilers.

Stormlight Archive Themes - Redemption in Oathbringer

If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means I can’t have grown to become someone else. It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.

Redemption is a theme running through the entirety of the Stormlight Archive, but it is strongest and most central in Oathbringer- not only in Dalinar’s character arc but also in Szeth’s, in the start of Venli’s redemption arc, and - in a negative manner - in the arcs of Moash and Amaram. Oathbringer also, to my mind, encapsulates the philosophy of the entire series regarding redemption in one scene of striking symbolism.

The idea of redemption is Oathbringer is often paired, in analyses, with that of accepting responsibility for your actions - indeed, I almost titled this essay “redemption and responsibility.” And that is absolutely a necessary element that distinguishes the successful redemption arcs from the failed ones. But in thinking about it I realized that I had things in the wrong order - for both Dalinar and Venli, mercy is is what enables them to take responsibility, not the result of them doing so. They are both able to grapple with their actions and take responsibility for them, and this is what enables their redemption arcs, but in both cases it is a consequence of them already having been shown grace before they exhibited any change in behaviour.

When Dalinar visits the Nightwatcher, he has been a brutal conqueror for 23 years and then a drunk for the last five and a half. His sole redeeming characteristic is that he knows in his soul what he needs and it isn’t power or strength or to return to the man he was before Evi’s death, or the ability to blame someone else for his deed. He knows he’s guilty, and he begs for forgiveness. And what Cultivation gives him is not precisely that, but the chance to become someone better. It is crucial to remember that, while he forgets his actions and forgets Evi, that is not what asked for; his goal was not to be free of the knowledge of what he did, but the chance for it not to be the end of his story; the chance to be something other than the monster he knew he was.

When he rejects Odium’s offer to take his pain, on the battlefield outside Thaylen City, it is without any expectation of forgiveness or of freedom from his crushing guilt. Evi’s forgiveness is not something he has remotely earned or deserved, by that action or any of his actions; it is pure grace. When we talk about redemption arcs, “deserving” has nothing to do with it. Dalinar didn’t remotely deserve his. He knows this, and it’s why he’s ready to hold out the possibility of redemption to Amaram and, in ROW, to Taravangian - because if Dalinar can be redeemed, then the door is not closed to anyone. The difference is not in worthiness of redemption, but willingness to accept it.

And this is also seen in the beginning of Venli’s redemption arc. Timbre finds her and stays with her long before she’s demonstrated any positive qualities that would subgest fitness for being a Radiant. In the context of ROW, knowing that Eshonai bonded Timbre just before her death, I believe it’s because Eshonai asked her spren to look out for her sister. As with Cultivation’s gift to Dalinar, it is Venli’s bond with Timbre that enables her to become a better person, to make herself accountable to her people for her actions, to begin taking personal risks to do what is right.

Something similar is also present in Elhokar’s arc. Kaladin saves him before he’s done anything substantive to change, when Elhokar has only shown the first beginnings of recognition that he is not the person or the king that he should be or wants to be. He is capable of the change he exhibits in Oathbringer, the genuine humility and desire to serve his people, because Kaladin’s rescue gave him the chance to become that person. It’s not truly a failed or prevented redemption arc. He died, but he died trying to be better, and that matters.

The difference with Amaram, that prevents his redemption arc, isn’t that he’s uniquely evil. (Dalinar has also killed his own men, in battle-lust rather than in cold blood.) What prevents it is the rejection of the truth he knows in his soul: that he has done something horrifically evil, that he is in the wrong.

“No, he’ll never forgive me.”

“The bridgeman?”

“Not him.” Amaram tapped his chest. “Him.”

Amaram’s rationalizations during his fight with Kaladin are the consequence of him refusing the knowledge of who he is, or trying to escape from it. Ironically, Amaram previously put up quite a good pretence of willingness to accept responsibility for his own actions - he told Dalinar that after the war was over he’d be willing to stand trial for what he did to Kaladin and his men. I believe he meant it - but what he wanted, like Taravangian, was to be seen as, or see himself as, some kind of martyr, sacrificing his morality for the greater good. Which is a very different thing from the recognition that you’re wrong.

Moash’s arc is also one away from accepting responsibility - in his first chapter in Oathbringer, he feels terribly guilty for betraying Kaladin and recognizes thst he was wrong, and then he moves further and further away from this in every subsequent chapter, until Odium’s whispered lies - What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn’t my fault. I was pushed into it. I can’t be blamed. - begin to take hold. When he gives up his pain to Odium, he remains driven by the desperate need to hide from his guilt, and his campaign in ROW to drive Kaladin to suicide is driven in large part by the need to prove to himself that giving up hus pain was the only possible decision by driving Kaladin to make the same one. As long as Kaladin lives, he is proof of an alternative path. (Yes, a twisted death wish that regards this as mercy is also part of it.)

Moash, like Amaram, and Dalinar, and Venli, does receive an offer of redemption undeserved, not in Oathbringer but in the first part of ROW, in Renarin’s vision of him as someone who protects rather than destroys. He responds with terror - it can’t be possible, it needs to not be possible, because if another course is possible then his actions are not inevitable and he is responsible for them. (I know this vision has been compared to part of the magic system the Mistborn books, but to me it’s far more intuitive for it to be the Surge of Illumination, which we’ve already seen used by Shallan in a similar way in her drawings of Bluth, Gaz, and Elhokar, among others.) He spends the rest of the book trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to extinguish that possibility.

And finally we have Szeth’s redemption arc. Szeth has never been in doubt that he is morally responsible for his actions, even when he did not concieve of himself as having a choice about them. I see his arc in the prior books as something much more nuanced than “just following orders” - that’s an excuse used by people who want to get out of making hard decisions, who prefer comfort and complacency. Szeth very much did not want to be in his position as assassin - he loathed it, and himself, and was willing to do anything within his power to avoid it; after killing Gavilar, he actively seeks out a life in obscurity as menial slave, concealing his abilities as far as he can, because that means he won’t be used to kill. It’s a life Kaladin spent years trying to escape from, and it’s Szeth’s idea of a best-case scenario. Szeth is in the position of desperately wanting choice, but conceiving of it as a privilege that he no longer possesses. I thimk this is connected to the meaning of Truthless - the underlying concept/rationale for the oathstone seems to be that literally anyone - any random person in the world - is capable of malimg better choices than you, so they, and not you, get to decide what you should do with your life. It’s near the end of his arc in Oathbringer - But it had always been nothing more than a rock - that he at last recognizes that he did have a choice about his actions.

Szeth, in his arc in Oathbringer, is very much motivated by the desire to do what is right and make right decisions, thpugh he is very out of practice at making any decisions at all. In the first test of the Skybreakers, he perceives that there’s something more important going pn that just chasing after wretched criminals, and that the warden’s immiseration of them is the worst crime of all. But it’s the second Skybreaker training session, with the practice fight using the balls of coloured dye, that gives us what I think is the heart of the theme of redemption both in Oathbringer and in the Stormlight Archive as a whole.

The contest feels a little out of place and low-drama - the recruits’ first test is killing criminals, and their second one is a game? But I believe it is absolutely crucial via the metaphor it communicates. Szeth starts out diing very well in the game - no one has hit him yet - and is actually enjoying himself for the first time in many, many years. And then he thinks this: He could not be happy. He was only a tool of retribution. Not redemption, for he dared not believe in such. If he was to be forced to keep living, it should not be a live that anyone should ever envy.

Other characters either accept both responsibility and redemption, or reject both. Szeth accepts responsibility, accepts guilt, tries to do right, even without the belief that redemption is possible.

And immediately after thinking that, he gets hit with the dye for the first time. He was doing well in the game when he was enjoying himself; now, when he rejects the possibility of redemption, he stops doing so well, and ultimately loses. Almost as if the universe were trying to tell him something.

And then, when he is bombarded with dye, runs out of Stormlight, and falls into the Purelake at the end of the exercise, he realizes something. It’s not actually about how many stains you have. He washes them off in the Purelake. And he wins the game.

To me, especially knowing Brandon’s religious background (and being a Christian myself), this is extraordinarily powerful symbolism of baptism, of the washing away of sin and entry into new life. It is stating the theme of redemption for the whole series. How many stains you have, what you’ve done in the past, doesn’t matter for redemption; what matters is whether you’re willing to accept redemption, accept the mercy that is offered, choose to be a new person. There is no such thing as being beyond redemption. The heroes of the story are not some perfect ideal, not the ones who manage to pick up very few stains. They are the ones who are willing to recognize that they have them and to wash them off; to recognize the wrong they have done and to change.

[thevividgreenmoss]

Let’s remember what the left critique of Obama’s administration is. Leftists argue, roughly, that while Obama came in with lofty promises of “hope” and “change,” the change was largely symbolic rather than substantive, and he failed to stand up for progressive values or fight for serious shifts in U.S. policy. He deported staggering numbers of immigrants, let Wall Street criminals off the hook, failed to take on (and now proudly boasts of his support for) the fossil fuel industry, sold over $100 billion in arms to the brutal Saudi government, killed American citizens with drones (and then made sickening jokes about it), killed lots more non-American citizens with drones (including Yemenis going to a wedding) and then misled the public about it, promised “the most transparent administration ever” and then was “worse than Nixon” in his paranoia about leakers, pushed a market-friendly healthcare plan based on conservative premises instead of aiming for single-payer, and showered Israel with both public support and military aid even as it systematically violated the human rights of Palestinians (Here, for example, is Haaretz: “Unlike [George W.] Bush, who gave Israel’s Iron Dome system a frosty response, Obama has led the way in funding and supporting the research, development and production of the Iron Dome”). Obama’s defenders responded to every single criticism by insisting that Obama had his hands tied by a Republican congress, but many of the things Obama did were freely chosen. In education policy, he hired charterization advocate Arne Duncan and pushed a horrible “dog-eat-dog” funding system called “Race To The Top.” Nobody forced him to hire Friedmanite economists like Larry Summers, or actual Republicans like Robert Gates, or to select middle-of-the-road judicial appointees like Elena Kagan and Merrick Garland. Who on Earth picks Rahm Emanuel, out of every person in the world, to be their chief of staff?

Centrism and compromise were central to Obama’s personal philosophy from the start. The speech that put him on the map in 2004 was famous for its declaration that there was no such thing as “blue” and “red” America, just the United States of America. A 2007 New Yorker profile said that “in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative.” Obama spoke of being “postpartisan,” praised Ronald Reagan, gave culturally conservative lectures about how Black people supposedly needed to stop wearing gold chains and feeding their children fried chicken for breakfast. From his first days in office, there simply didn’t seem to be much of a “fighting” spirit in Obama. Whenever he said something daring and controversial (and correct), he would fail to stand by it. For example, when he publicly noted that the Cambridge police force acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. for trying to break into his own home, he followed up by inviting the police officer and Gates to sit down and talk things out over a beer. A disgusted Van Jones has characterized this as the “low point” of the Obama presidency, but the desire to be “all things to all people” had always been central to the Obama image. Matt Taibbi described him during his first campaign as:

…an ingeniously crafted human cipher… a sort of ideological Universalist… who spends a great deal of rhetorical energy showing that he recognizes the validity of all points of view, and conversely emphasizes that when he does take hard positions on issues, he often does so reluctantly… You can’t run against him on issues because you can’t even find him on the ideological spectrum.

Adolph Reed, Jr., who as early as 1996 had described the politics of “form over substance” being practiced by a certain “smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics,” warned in 2008 that “Obama’s empty claims to being a candidate of progressive change and to embodying a ‘movement’ that exists only as a brand will dissolve into disillusionment,” and his presidency would “continue the politics he’s practiced his entire career.” Reed saw the devotion Obama inspired as a kind of “faddish, utterly uninformed exuberance” and said that Obama’s “miraculous ability to inspire and engage the young replaced specific content in his patter of Hope and Change.” (When Obama did get specific, Reed said, he often “relies on nasty, victim-blaming stereotypes about black poor people to convey tough-minded honesty about race and poverty,” talking frequently about “alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black communities.”)

Obama supporters think all of this is deeply cynical and unfair. But those who want to argue that Obama was the proponent of a genuinely transformational progressive politics, his ambitions tragically stifled by the ideological hostility of reactionaries, have to contend with a few damning pieces of evidence: the books of Pfeiffer, Rhodes, and Litt.

Granted, these men are all devoted admirers of Obama who set out to defend his legacy. But in telling stories intended to make Obama and his staff look good, they end up affirming that the left’s cynicism was fully warranted. Litt, for instance, seems to have been a man with almost no actual political beliefs. Recently graduated from Yale when he joined the campaign, he was never much of an “activist.” Litt was drawn to Obama not because he felt that Obama would actually bring particular changes that he wanted to see happen, but because he developed an emotional obsession with Barack Obama as an individual person. Pfeiffer feels similarly—he fell in “platonic political love.” Litt’s book begins:

On January 3, 2008, I pledged my heart and soul to Barack Obama… My transformation was immediate and all-consuming. One moment I was a typical college senior, barely interested in politics. The next moment I would have done anything, literally anything, for a freshman senator from Illinois.

He describes the beginning of his brainless infatuation: “[Obama] spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed.”

Litt’s memoir is remarkable for its lack of interest in actual policy. He mentions climate change in one or two sentences (p. 111), but seems to have spent most of his White House years preparing jokes for various black tie events like the Alfalfa Club Dinner and the Al Smith Dinner. (Litt’s rule for writing speeches for dinners of rich donors: “Jokes about money are acceptable… Jokes about power are not.”) Litt helped the president record videos for BuzzFeed (to get in touch with millennials), and Between Two Ferns (to plug the floundering healthcare.gov website), and to tape a birthday message for Betty White. But he was particularly in his element in preparing Obama’s annual comedy monologue for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD). The WHCD, now thankfully gutted of its significance, was mocked outside Washington for the icky chumminess shown between political elites and the press corps. But Litt obsessed over it, and anecdotes about it take up page after page of his book. (An incident in which one of the president’s comedy PowerPoint slides failed to display correctly is told with dramatic flair over two full pages.)

This is the Washington of the Turkey Pardon and the Easter Egg Roll, where photo ops and symbolic gestures matter far more than such comparative trivialities as “what the actual policies of the administration are.” In fact, Litt even says that during the second term, he felt as if he was being given “the political equivalent of a vegan cookie” because the speeches he was writing focused on things that were “all nutrition, no taste” like “help[ing] more students pay off loans” and “insur[ing] more people.” He wanted to make jokes about Republicans, not try to talk to the American public about housing policy. In fact, Litt, Rhodes, and Pfeiffer all subscribe to a politics of gesture, where if you want to address some crisis you give a grand speech about it. One of Rhodes’ proudest moments is writing “the Middle East speech,” and describing a moment of political difficulty, Litt writes: “We needed something to break through. That something was a speech.” These three men are speechwriters, so we can forgive them for being preoccupied with descriptions of things rather than the things themselves. But this tendency to prioritize “getting the words right” over the actual experiences of human beings ran through the whole Obama presidency. Ordinary people were a kind of alien species—Litt says they referred to them as “real people (RPs)” and tried to litter speeches with “RP stories” to make them relatable. “In Washington you never stop hearing about the details of policy but you rarely see its effects.” This is only true if you rarely bother to examine the effects.

There may not have been much Change, but there were plenty of speeches about it. The economic situation of the average Black family may have been catastrophic under Obama, but he did give “the historic race speech.” The United States may have bombed an Afghan hospital, burning dozens of patients alive in their beds (their families each received $6,000 in compensation), but Obama gave a very powerful Nobel Peace Prize speech about how the pacifism of Martin Luther King needed to be balanced with a recognition that using force can be morally necessary.

…My colleague Luke Savage has analyzed how pernicious the influence of The West Wing was on a generation of young Democratic politicos, and sure enough Litt says that “like nearly every Democrat under the age of thirty-five, I was raised, in part, by Aaron Sorkin.” (More accurately, of course, is “nearly every wealthy white male Democrat who worked in Washington.” The near total absence of women and people of color in top positions on The West Wing may give more viewing pleasure to a certain audience demographic over others.) Litt says in college he “watched West WingDVDs on an endless loop,” and Pfeiffer too describes “watching The West Wing on a loop.”

Luke describes the kind of mentality this leads to: a belief that “doing politics” means that smart, virtuous people in charge make good decisions for the people, who themselves are rarely seen. Social movements don’t exist, even voters don’t exist. Instead, the political ideal is a PhD economist president (Jed Bartlet) consulting with a crack team of Ivy League underlings and challenging the ill-informed (but well-intended) Republicans with superior logic and wit. During the West Wing’s seven seasons, the Bartlet administration has very few substantive political accomplishments, though as Luke points out it “warmly embraces the military-industrial complex, cuts Social Security, and puts a hard-right justice on the Supreme Court in the interests of bipartisan ‘balance.’” It has always struck me as funny that Sorkin’s signature West Wing shot is the “walk and talk,” in which characters strut down hallways having intense conversations but do not actually appear to be going anywhere. What better metaphor could there be for a politics that consists of looking knowledgeable and committed without any sense of what you’re aiming at or how to get there? Litt says of Obama that “he spoke like presidents in movies.” Surely we can all see the problem here: Presidents in movies do not pass and implement single-payer healthcare. (They mostly bomb nameless Middle Eastern countries.)

Their West Wing-ism meant that the Obama staffers completely lacked an understanding of how political interests operate, and were blindsided when it turned out Republicans wanted to destroy them rather than collaborate to enact Reasonable Bipartisan Compromises. Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff and reelection campaign manager, spoke to a key Republican staffer after the 2008 election and was shocked when she told him: “We’re not going to compromise with you on anything. We’re going to fight Obama on everything.” Messina replied “That’s not what we did for Bush.” Said the Republican: “We don’t care.” Rhodes and Pfeiffer, in particular, are shocked and appalled when Republicans turn out to be more interested in their own political standing than advancing the objective well-being of the country. Rhodes nearly has a breakdown when he is dragged through the conservative press over some Benghazi nonsense. He found himself in “an alternate reality that was insane,” and can’t believe Mitch McConnell turns out to be so “staggeringly partisan and unpatriotic” that he doesn’t care about Russian hacking.

The Obama Democrats, guided by the “let’s just all sit down in a room together and work out our differences” temperament of Obama himself, seemed desperate for Republican approval and shocked when the right proved unreasonable. In 2012, long after Messina had been told explicitly that Republicans were not going to be friendly under any circumstances, Obama invited congressional Republicans to the White House for a screening of Spielberg’s Lincoln, in order to show how political adversaries can cooperate for the common good. “Not one of them came,” Rhodes laments. Obama held out hope that a party willing to destroy the entire planet in order to preserve the privileges of the super-wealthy would come to his movie nights and work things out amicably.

The Obama administration bent over backwards to show that it was pragmatic and moderate and sensible, even inflicting cruel harm on families to show their toughness. Here is Tyler Moran, who was a deputy immigration policy director on Obama’s White House policy council:

There was a feeling that [the White House] needed to show the American public that you believed in enforcement, and that [we weren’t pushing for] open borders. But in hindsight I was like, what did we get for that? We deported more people than ever before. All these families separated, and Republicans didn’t give him one ounce of credit. There may as well have been open borders for five years.

We deported tons of people and separated families, and Republicans wouldn’t praise us!

This same bizarre naivete is evident in Obama’s dealings with Benjamin Netanyahu, as recounted by Ben Rhodes. Rhodes says it was obvious that “Netanyahu wasn’t going to negotiate seriously” about a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and that Netanyahu “rejected any effort at peace.” Israeli settlements continued to be constructed in brazen violation of international law. Yet, Rhodes says, “despite Netanyahu’s intransigence, [Obama] would always side with Israel when push came to shove.” In 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a UN Security Council resolution declaring the settlements illegal, even though they plainly were and Obama himself had previously acknowledged as much.** Rhodes says the Palestinians were finding “little more than rhetorical support from us.” They barely received even that. Rhodes relates a stunning anecdote in which Obama meets with a group of Palestinian youth. One nervous boy summons the courage to tell the president that his people are being treated as Black Americans were once treated. Obama does not know what to say in reply. Incapable of directly criticizing Israel, he mutters something about how he believes in opportunity for all. But moved by the boy’s testimony, he decides later to act. What does he do? He adds a line to a speech he gives to Israelis, in which he tells them that Palestinian families love their children just as much as Israelis love theirs. Does he condemn the racist Israeli state? He does not. Does he actually do anything for the boy? Of course not.

Rhodes and Obama are frustrated, then, at criticism “for not being sufficiently pro-Israel, which ignored the fact that he wasn’t doing anything tangible for the Palestinians.” They gave Israel billions of dollars in military equipment, they refrained from tangibly aiding the people Israel oppresses, and Obama went before AIPAC in 2012 to say absolutely nothing in support of Palestinian rights and instead declare:

In the United States, our support for Israel is bipartisan, and that is how it should stay…. I have kept my commitments to the state of Israel. At every crucial juncture – at every fork in the road – we have been there for Israel. Every single time. … Despite a tough budget environment, our security assistance has increased every single year… We’re providing Israel with more advanced technology – the types of products and systems that only go to our closest friends and allies. And make no mistake: We will do what it takes to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge – because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat… No American president has made such a clear statement about our support for Israel at the United Nations.

Obama swore to AIPAC that he will always fund Israeli missiles before the Detroit school system (if this isn’t “declaring allegiance to Israel”—which Ilhan Omar has been called anti-Semitic for talking about—then pray tell, what would be?) As with the Republicans, Rhodes cannot understand how Democrats can give in on everything and yet still be rejected. How do they not understand? They’re being played for suckers. Of course they’ll still call you anti-Semitic even if you would give the lives of your children to protect Israel’s right to an apartheid state. Of coursethey’re not going to stop building settlements just because you have declined to challenge them on anything. That’s how political power works: If the other party senses you’re weak and won’t do anything to pressure them, they’ll walk all over you! Throughout the Obama staffers’ books, you can hear them crying: But it’s not FAIR! We played nice and they took advantage of it! Gentlemen, that’s how this game works!

…The left can learn a few important lessons from examining Pfeiffer, Rhodes, and Litt. First, these are not the sort of people you want in government. You need people who (1) have clear moral vision (2) have thick skins and (3) do not care about the goddamn White House Correspondents’ Dinner. You need people who understand that politics is about gaining power and then using it to make people’s lives better, not about giving uplifting but empty speeches and walking with purpose down Washington hallways. They also need to avoid accepting political reality as “fixed.” The people who defend Obama suggest that his hands were tied—power was arranged in such a way that he could not act. But the question is: How are you going to change that arrangement of power? If it’s true that “X bill will never pass this Congress,” then how are we going to get a different Congress? The Obama administration was reactive. They played the hand they were given, they had a very narrow sense of the boundaries of the “possible.” They did not understand that being uncompromisingly radical is actually more pragmatic.It’s essential to stop fetishizing credentials. Obama wanted to “hire the best qualified people no matter their politics, and send a message of unity.” That led to him hiring actual Republicans. Unless you’re a Republican, don’t do this. “No matter their politics”? No, politics matter. Your politics are the sum of your vision of what ought to be done. If a president wants to get something done, they need a team of people who also want to get that thing done. That should be elementary, but there just wasn’t that much politics to the Obama movement. Everything was about a guy.And I suppose that’s the final lesson here: Cults of personality are bad. Movements need to be about the people, not a person. The West Wing view of politics is that you just need to get the smartest, most competent, most qualified, most virtuous people into government. But that means nothing without a substantive vision for change and an understanding of how you mobilize an authentic popular movement to make it happen.

[kabane52]

The Heavenly Spheres of God’s World

this was a comment on Reddit about David Hart’s latest: https://publicorthodoxy.org/2019/05/08/hart-on-the-toll-houses/

Hart is being his usual self. There are people who have committed the unpardonable sin of daring to disagree with David Bentley Hart, and David Bentley Hart has cracked the thesaurus in order to demonstrate that they are dumb. But after reading the article, I'm not quite sure what his argument was, or if he even had an argument. He seemed to simply make statements about ancient cosmology without attempting to show how, precisely, they related to the truth or falsehood of the so-called "toll-house teaching." On the issue of the toll-houses, what is the essence of the doctrine?

The essence of the doctrine is that the demonical powers are what scripture says they are: they are accusers. The word "satan" is a title of a character known throughout the biblical story by a number of names- the dragon, Leviathan the twisting serpent, the serpent (Hebrew nachash- which means "Bright One" as well as "serpent", and the Hebrew word seraph means "Burning One" as well as "serpent"- serpentine language is used in the Hebrew Bible for angelic, heavenly beings, which is why tradition is right in identifying the serpent of Genesis 3 with satan), Baal/Bel (thus sons of Belial=seed of the serpent and Beelzebub), and so on. "Satan" refers to his role as Accuser. He brings an accusation against the sons of Adam in order to provoke God to destroy the human race and prevent the exaltation of the children of Adam over the angels as was the order of things. This is what happens on a micro-level in Numbers 25. The enemy of Israel tempts Israel into adultery (2 Corinthians 11 symbolizes Eve's sin as adultery with the serpent- idolatry in general is described as adultery), thus bringing God's judgment on Israel until Phinehas makes atonement.

Thus, when the soul is separated from the body, the accusing powers launch an attack in order to claim possession over it. The serpent is cursed to eat dust. This means that the Bright One is cast down to Sheol, the grave, the place of dust- this is described in Isaiah 14- "Day Star, Son of the Dawn" as ruler of "Babel" (BBL=Babylon) or the symbolic city of man. It is written in the past tense just like Isaiah 53 (the two texts are written in parallel- Christ humbles Himself to death and is exalted, the enemy exalts himself above the stars and is humbled to death), as a prophecy whose fulfillment is so certain as to have been fulfilled already from a literary point of view. That is why hell- the eternal actualization of hades, the grave- is for the devil and his angels. God says about our death- to dust you shall return. To be claimed by the accuser, by the demonical powers, is to have allied with them through one's acts and thus be possessed by them eternally in a relationship of consumption: "eating dust." This attack by accusation is what the toll-houses signify. The angelic powers are our defense attorneys, as it were, and the postmortem attack simply manifests our spiritual state- it does not create it. The key is trust in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. That's what carries us through. If we trust in God's grace, "who can bring any accusation against the elect of God?"

I'd make two points vis-a-vis ancient cosmology:

-Hart oversimplifies the issue of what the ancients actually took to be concretely true. Ptolemy was quite well aware that the stars, in relation to the Earth, were immensely distant- so distant, in fact, that the Earth is an essentially invisible mathematical point in relation to the size of the cosmos. C.S. Lewis was keen to emphasize the reality that this is not a modern discovery.

-I'm not sure what the point is really supposed to be about ancient views of the heavenly places. What, precisely, is preventing me from professing what is substantively equivalent to their own view? I do believe that the heavenly bodies are associated with archangelic intelligences. What have we discovered that undermines such a belief? I'm aware of nothing at all, not unless you are a materialist vis-a-vis mind, which Hart certainly is not. Hart is, rightly, a hylomorphic dualist. I think that Mars is associated with an archangel who participates in God's creative act of sustaining Mars' revolution in its orbit. C.S. Lewis develops this cosmology in his wonderful Space Trilogy.

Our souls are intrinsically linked to our bodies, forming them, giving them shape, and animating them as what they are. That power is had only from God, and God is constantly sustaining us in our capacity to sustain our bodies. This is crucial to understand, metaphysically: when we speak of a creature mediating the sustenance and life of a thing, that mediation does not constitute God as one step removed, since God creates the creature and directly upholds it with its active capacity of making God's own life present to another creature. This is crucial, as I think we can draw an analogy between the role of the planetary (I include all heavenly bodies- moons, stars, planets, etc.) archangels in relation to their planets and our souls in relation to our bodies. God upholds everything as what it is and sustains it in its activity, but freely creates persons who participate and mediate His sustenance.

[This is just speculation, not directly related to the main point- I suspect the same is true for the plant world, perhaps with non-rational but "supernatural" (in the sense of belonging to the "Heavens" rather than the "Earth" of Genesis 1:1- something like the celestial equivalent of a non-rational animal) creatures associated with them- thus the widespread traditions of sprites spread abroad in nature, spirits in the trees and flowers. Dangerous? Yes- wild beasts are dangerous too. But perhaps not genuine moral agents in the sense that humans and angels are.]

And why can I not believe in a spatial heaven? I do believe in a spatial heaven. The incarnate Word dwells there.

The precise manner in which these various sorts of space intersect, interweave, and flow into each other is not fully known. But we should know better than to assume the Newtonian-mechanical world-picture that Hart seems to assume- indeed, Hart himself has eloquently spoken in favor of the medieval world-picture where the heavenly and earthly realms are thoroughly woven and webbed into each other. This is my favorite article of his:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/11/therapeutic-superstition

Here's an excellent piece by astronomer John Byl on the necessity of integrating Heaven into a fully-formed cosmology:

http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2011/04/cosmology-and-heaven.html

The idea of heavenly spheres being an authentic feature of the world is evident in the universality of the idea of the seven planetary (Luna and Sol, the sun and moon, are included in this classical definition of a planet- it's not a "wrong" definition- just a different classification system) heavens throughout the world's cultures. They even tend to be associated with the same days of the week and interrelated in intriguing ways with the musical concept of tuning by fifths.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2012/06/tuned-cosmos/

Moreover, there are very interesting mathematical relations ordering the seven heavenly spheres (and yes, I do believe NASA is real, I am not a flat earther- I am saying that a "symbol" is an intrinsic aspect of the world and that the ancients and medievals understood this) in their classical associations. Luna and Saturn are the first and last of the seven heavenly spheres. Luna has a 29 day cycle. Saturn has a 29 year cycle in its revolution around the sun. The correspondence, day to year, is actually 99.5%. Yes, we've had a closer look at the moon, the sun, and Saturn. So? I don't think that we have discovered anything which would actually undermine the classical world-picture. It's like seeing a picture in 144k vs 4k. We see a great deal more in ultra-HD than we would in old-style SD. We notice lots of new things. But it's perfectly recognizable as what it is. For more on these mathematically ordered relations among the spheres, see this excellent book, especially the last section:

https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135

Unfortunately, most of the people talking about the beauty and symbolic craftsmanship in the Heavens are associated with the occult. But the Bible and tradition speak about these subjects. It's not magic. It's part of the world-design God made through the Logos. "The Heavens declare the Glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day to day they pour out speech, night to night they speak knowledge." (Ps. 19:1-2) For more on the reality undergirding classical and medieval cosmology, see Wolfgang Smith's excellent The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology:

He is a professional physicist and possesses immense philosophical and metaphysical skill. An excellent thinker if you want to rework your conceptual world.

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Ancient-Cosmology-Contemporary-Tradition/dp/6602883925/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wisdom+of+Ancient+cosmology&qid=1557417059&s=books&sr=1-1

[sissy-phus]

on theater and orgasms

Here is a confession: I have always had a hard time at the theater. For some hitherto inexplicable reason, my attention tends to shift and wander. I have never experienced this with cinema. Not even with difficult/”art house” productions like, say, a Tarkovsky; which is not to say that watching Tarkovsky is unchallenging to me but rather that its difficulty lies in more conventional terms (complex symbolism, auteur-ish idiosyncracies, whatever). In contrast, at the theater, I simply find myself unable to fix my focus on the narrative, on distinguishing (or caring for) characters and motives, and have to consciously direct my attention back to what is happening on stage. This has always caused me some alarm and to preserve my image of myself as an intellectual (the hallmark of which, I suppose, is being enthralled or enraged by the latest production of Hamlet), I put it down to the dubious quality of theater production in my country (which is, by the way, not entirely an unjustifable excuse; most theater is boring and uninspiring in Hungary). 

But Christian Metz may have the answer for my predicament. Building on Lacan’s conception of the mirror stage, he posits that the cinema is an imaginary signifier, “a signifier that removes the traces of its own steps”. 

This distance, combined with the imagistic nature of what the cinema presents to our senses, ultimately means that, Metz argues, ‘the screen presents to our apprehension, but absents from our grasp, more “things”’ than the other arts (61). The cinema presents and absents things from us at one and the same time. Metz’s major points of comparison are between cinema and theatre. Unlike cinema, the theatre does not engage in this act of simultaneously giving and taking away things. Rather, argues Metz, ‘the theatre really does “give” this given, or at least slightly more really: it is physically present, in the same space as the spectator’ (61). If what the theater (or music hall or opera) gives are things which are physically present, the cinema does not: ‘The cinema only gives it in effigy, inaccessible from the outset, in a primordial elsewhere, infinitely desirable ( = never possessible) on another scene which is that of absence and which nonetheless represents the absent in detail’ (61).

The cinema thus becomes, for Metz, a machine for presenting images in a mode of absence. Strangely though, this is why the cinema to some extent seems more real than does the theatre. We know while at the theatre that what we are seeing are props and actors who are performing something in this space here and now, but which gestures to an elsewhere. These are real actions and props directed towards unreal scenes (the action of the play). By contrast, in the cinema the spectator has much more of a sense of looking in on reality because what is seen there are images which are already in some sense unreal. These are unreal scenes and props and settings directed towards unreal scenes (the action of the film). The cinema’s primordial elsewhere, its grounding imaginariness, nonetheless infuses that experience with a keenly felt sense of reality. Such is Metz’s argument. ‘Thus the theatrical fiction is experienced more … as a set of real pieces of behaviour actively directed at the evocation of something unreal, whereas cinematic fiction is experienced rather as the quasi-real presence of that unreal itself’ (67).

Then the inevitable turn to Freud: 

Finally, at the end of his long essay, Metz engages in some detail with Freud’s psychoanalytic theories of fetishism in order to explain the psychical mechanisms triggered by the cinema’s imaginary signifier (Freud 1977). Fetishism, according to Freud, involves the presence of an object invoked by its absence. In the classic scenario, for the child the absence of the mother’s penis is invoked as present; an ‘imagined’, fetishized penis – the signifier of an absent object – is put in place of the absence of a penis. Metz thus claims that the cinema signifier functions in a similar way, ‘the quasi-real presence of that unreal itself’ (Metz 1982, 67). The logic of the cinema’s imaginary signifier is thus equated with the psychoanalytic theory of fetishism. Ultimately it is this kind of logic which provides an answer to Metz’s question of why a spectator goes to the cinema. It is, to a large extent, so that the spectator might undergo an experience of pleasure akin to that which is provided by fetishism.

[Richard Ruston, “Imaginary Signifier,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory, 2013]

Theater is to film then, to me, as actual sex to fantasy, and pornography. Basically, fantasy is always better. 

The other day I tried to watch porn that was affectionate and not saturated by patriarchal fantasies of violation in honor of my former anti-porn CBT-inflected therapist. (Perhaps it is an undesirable side effect of my training in feminist theory that even an enthusiastic blowjob accompanied by the occasional pushing down of the bottom’s head raises the red flag “oppression!” somewhere in my superwoke superego. It’s a flag, though, that never makes the more substantive and embodied flag that is my erection subside, as is usually the case with moral agencies. As if it was inherently oppressive to love dick. Which of course, perhaps, sadly, it might be. I don’t know.) Anyway, I was watching this older man gently and passionately massage and rim this slim twink lying on his stomach, groaning pleasurably, until the twink turned over, and he turned out to be a quite corpulent 50-year-old. Good for you! I thought, but it wasn’t the same afterwards. 

Whenever I opt for something more problematic, the indignant third-wave chant of “are we just supposed to all watch amateur vanilla porn until we dismantle patriarchy?” only animates my wrist until I come, though, intermingling with Leo Bersani’s call to celebrate dirty fag sex because the homophobia it elicits lays bare the cultural logics by which the sacrosancticity of selfhood is elevated to an ethical ideal (let’s not “redeem sex” á la Dworkin, but recognize how the “anticommunal, antiegalitarian, antinurturing and antiloving” aspects of sex inherent in its power dis/equilibriums only become oppressive when the self is introduced into the equation, inflating, as if it were, the ego; a charming idea, as has been pointed out by his critics, until you’re not a woman or of color and have less of a self to spare). 

Once I come, I just wonder about the laughable, humiliating absurdity of how, after the age of cca. 12, we’re all (or, in any case, men; I can’t speak for women’s orgasms) clinically obsessed with five seconds of warm tingling in our legs. And I also think about how, on most of the occassions my head is pushed down forcefully on a cock, all I feel is a bodily and psychic alienation akin to my slight dissociation at the theater. 

[yesthatssadirichardslove]

GOP leaders say little to condemn violent political rhetoric

NEW YORK

In the past week, Republican Rep Paul Gosar tweeted a video showing a character with his face killing a figure with Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's face. Several of the 13 House Republicans who backed a bipartisan infrastructure bill said they faced threats after their vote. In one profanity-laced voicemail, a caller labeled Rep Fred Upton a “traitor” and wished death for the Michigan Republican, his family and staff.

The response from Republican leaders? Silence.

Less than a year after former President Donald Trump's supporters staged a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in an effort to halt the peaceful transition of power, the GOP's refusal to broadly and forcefully condemn more recent examples of disturbing rhetoric and behavior suggests an unsettling shift. One of the nation's two major political parties appears increasingly tolerant of at least some persistent level of violence in American discourse, or at least willing to turn a blind eye to it.

In an interview, GOP Rep Liz Cheney, who has emerged as a top Trump critic in her party, said Gosar should be censured “for his continued indefensible activities.” And she blasted House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for his silence on the matter.

“It’s a real symbol of his lack of strength, the lack of leadership in our conference right now, and the extent to which he and other leaders seem to have lost their moral compass,” said Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership post after voting in favor of Trump’s impeachment. “In a moment where you’ve got an avowed white nationalist in Rep Gosar who has posted a video advocating the killing of another member, the idea that our leader will not stand against that but that he’s somehow going after and allowing attacks against 13 members who are conducting themselves in a serious and substantive way is really outrageous.”

Representatives for McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment.

Pressed on violent rhetoric in their own ranks, Republicans often point to protests in Portland involving left-wing antifa activists. But President Joe Biden has said those engaged in violence should be prosecuted. And in 2018, then-House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi criticized fellow California Democratic Rep Maxine Waters for calling on supporters to harass Trump administration officials.

The GOP's reluctance to crack down on — or even mildly criticize — violent rhetoric in its own ranks is part of a broader pattern in which the party tries to minimize such behavior. Gosar removed the tweet aimed at Ocasio-Cortez, but the Arizona congressman and his digital director said those offended by his tweet should “relax.” Trump, meanwhile, has attempted to divert attention from the Jan 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol by saying that last year's Election Day was the “real insurrection.”

There was no insurrection on Election Day. There was a free and fair election won by Biden.

While threats and violent political imagery are nothing new in American politics, they became increasingly normalized under Trump. The former president embraced violence as a political tactic from the earliest days of his 2016 campaign, egging on his supporters to rough up protesters who interrupted his rallies. At one point during a speech, he called on them to “knock the crap out of" potential disruptors, and even promised to pay their legal bills.

In office, Trump mulled having U.S. officials shoot at people trying to cross the border illegally and spoke of the good old days when he said police could rough up suspects without impunity. He labeled the press the “enemy of the state,” and praised as “my type” the now Montana governor who physically assaulted a reporter.

In 2017, Trump tweeted a doctored World Wrestling Entertainment video that depicted him body-slamming and pummeling wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, whose face had been replaced by a CNN logo. The video quickly became the former president’s then most-shared post on the site.

And he spent months convincing his supporters the 2020 election had been stolen, culminating in the violent storming of the Capitol building in an effort to halt the certification of Biden's win.

Trump “seems to have wanted to promote opponents as being intimidated by wielding violent rhetoric," creating a culture, especially in the Republican Party, of “violent threats as being excused as offbeat humor,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, of the precedent Trump had established.

Nonetheless, he said that having a congressman threaten somebody, “whether it's in a cartoon or words," puts a target on her back.

“Knowing that AOC is facing serious death threats and then to turn it into a meme or a dark twisted fantasy joke is reprehensible. And it’s hard to imagine that somebody in 2021 would feel that that kind of behavior was acceptable in a civil society,” he said, calling for criminal prosecution. “We cannot go around and threaten people’s lives and call it humor."

Former Democratic Rep Gabrielle Giffords, who suffered extensive brain damage during a 2011 assassination attempt, said threats against political figures “have no place in our democracy.”

“Not only do they threaten the personal safety of our public servants, their staff, and their families — they undermine the very foundation of our democracy,” she said in a statement. “All leaders must decisively condemn violent rhetoric and threats in our politics, and recognize the danger to our democratic process posed by armed threats, harassment, and intimidation.”

Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, said: “I do think GOP leadership has to step up and address issues of members who step out of line as it related to misconduct or incendiary comments. ... They should be very forceful to those who are bringing discredit to the institution.”

Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson Lauren Hitt declined to comment on the volume of threats against her, citing security advice.

Lilliana Hall Mason is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the upcoming book “Radical American Partisanship," which examines Americans' attitudes toward political violence. She said that, in general, around 10-20% of self-identified Democrats and Republicans tell researchers they support the use of violence for accomplishing political goals.

But their studies found those attitudes can be strongly influenced by messages they hear from political leaders. When politicians use pacifying rhetoric, she said, people from both parties respond by becoming less approving of violence. But when Democrats hear violent rhetoric from Republicans, and vice versa, it feeds into perceptions that the opposite party is more approving of violence than it really is, and encourages them to respond with the same.

“It seems that people respond to violence events by increasing their approval to violence," she said of their findings. “Violence begets violence" in what she described as a “vicious cycle" that make using violent rhetoric “a really dangerous game.”

“It's just so irresponsible,” she added.

[davidmann95]

why os batman great?

I tend to focus on the guy in the red cape at the expense of my second-favorite character, but let’s make something very, very clear: in terms of the sheer scale on which he and his iconography have imprinted onto the popular consciousness, the ratio of output to quality across all mediums for a character that’s experienced the kind of proliferation he has, and his ability to not only endure but remain at the forefront of the genre he practically co-founded across decades, Batman is easily the greatest superhero of all time.

Explaining why that’s the case is tricky to truly, substantively get right, because there’s a difference between what makes him great as a character, and what’s made him the most popular character in the world. Not to remotely denigrate the attention span/intellect of the average moviegoer or suggest they don't 'get it', but I have to imagine most people don’t love Batman because they've extensively thought about his complex motives and the fascinating symbolism that rules his world, but because he drives the world’s dopest car over to his job of suplexing crime into the pavement, which is valid because that rules. So we’ll start at the immediate mass-appeal stuff and work our way down, and the big one is something we’ve already touched on:

Batman’s cool as hell

There are certainly contrarian souls who would argue that Batman is not, in fact, relentlessly awesome. Think about him for a couple seconds, they might note, and he’s a silly manchild living in his parents’ underground basement who can only emotionally engage as an equal with literal children; they might drive the point home that his particular brand of macho hyper-capitalist performative Hard Man edginess is both shallow and ultimately passe. And if you’re engaging in a character-centered examination of his archetype as in The Lego Batman Movie or Morrison’s work with the character, those are fine points. But in terms of whether or not he’s surface-level cool? Pull your head out of your ass, peel open your eyes, and engage with the larger culture for a second: Batman is as close to objectively rad as it is possible for a concept to be.

Batman wears black body armor and drives awesome cars and sounds like Kevin Conroy. Batman lives in a mansion that also has a cave in it, and wears the slickest suits when he’s not being Batman, because Batman can buy anything. Batman is ripped and sexy.* Batman knows every martial art and parkour and can blend into the shadows, and he has a belt of James Bond gadgets. Batman is a genius who’s always ten steps ahead and can escape any trap. Batman has a pitch-black sense of humor. Batman is vicious even as he’s utterly cool in the face of danger. Batman fights horror movie villains of the supernatural, monstrous, fetishistically disturbing, and plain ‘ol slasher varieties, and wins (when he’s not busy dancing across the rooftops in pursuit of a leather-clad Anne Hathaway/Michelle Pfeiffer/Julie Newmar). Batman’s climbed his way back from chemically-induced psychosis, a shattered spine, and the gates of death, all by wit and sheer brutal force of will. Batman has a city that’s New York and Chicago and Vegas and Hell rolled into one, and when he’s needed it literally blasts his logo onto the sky in public acknowledgement of his supreme coolness, but he also travels the world to other cool-looking exotic locales so he can be cool there too. Batman has theme songs by Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. And crucially, in spite of all of this, Batman is tormented. You can argue the validity of those conventions on an intellectual level, but what it amounts to is that Batman is a kickass figure of the night who’s the best at everything and has the best of everything, snarling all the while even as he keeps an air of amused detachment about the whole affair, and those are archetypes that humanity’s long since given the thumbs up as constituting capital-c Cool. We like people who can kick ass, the outlaws, the capable and the mysterious, so long as they’re in good stories that let us buy it. And more than anyone in pop culture aside from maybe Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine - and that dude’s done, while the Dark Knight forever remains - he’s That, the superhero.

* Yes, his depiction is more typically centered around a straight dude perspective of male physical perfection than anything actually particularly sensual or alluring, but the intent’s clearly there, and when you’ve been played by Clooney and Affleck I figure you get to claim ‘sexy’ as a fair semi-universal descriptor.

Batman is spooky

Of course, if cool was all there was to Batman’s general persona, he wouldn’t be cool at all, he’d be Poochie in a Dracula cape (which given it will presumably last until the heat death of the universe is a premise The Simpsons will inevitably have to get around to at some point, so remember you saw it here first). But what backs it up and lets people take it seriously is that he’s spooky. Not necessarily frightening - though he can most definitely be that too - but there’s an ethereal, shadowy aspect to his world that goes beyond the fright mask. It can take many forms for many situations and versions of him and his setting: lurking on a gargoyle over an alleyway, waiting for some poor unsuspecting punk to try and stick up an innocent family only to drag him ten stories up and leave him sobbing for his mother; karate-chopping his way through deathtraps and colorful henchmen, which for all its unabashed fun still carries the air of Halloween pageantry and neuroses let loose; haunting the grimiest parts of an urban hellhole, waiting to burst through the window of a roach-infested apartment or a musty disused warehouse to break bones and spill blood; appearing from nowhere, grappling with mind-bending chemical trips and fighting to stay one step ahead of killers in the shadows, dueling mad rich perverted cultists and literal demons of the underworld, overlooking a shadow city forever in flux to reflect the horrors of the moment. Even at his most innocent, there’s something irreducibly seedy and violent and enigmatic about Batman, and that not only provides immediate distinction and character to him and his surroundings - one that distinguishes both from their contemporaries - but legitimizes the entire enterprise as something that can be taken seriously.

Batman is playful

At the same time, Batman’s fun - even at his most serious he uses Batman-shaped boomerangs, and drives a cool car even though gliding and swinging lets him better avoid traffic. He needs to be fun for the kind of ubiquitous pop appeal he has, and it’s built in on every level of the brand no matter how far away you try and veer from it, letting a character rooted in loss and declarations of bloody revenge work just as well for four-year-olds as forty-somethings. The cave, the costumes, the sidekicks and signal and colorful rogues and utility belt and trophies, they give his world a size and dimension that lets him dip his toe in nearly any genre, with his inherent seriousness backing him up to let you buy him in any of those narrative territories. At the end of the day, the people shaping Batman at least subconsciously know it’s all a game, and in letting him have that kind of fun he’s granted versatility and the ability to invigorate as well as stun audiences.

Batman is emotionally, symbolically raw

And sitting at the heart of it all, giving him the gas in the engine that propels all of the above forward, is that he comes from the most viscerally, broadly relatable place of any superhero. The only one who approaches him is Spider-Man, and even there the meaning of his tragedy is somewhat displaced - there’s loss and guilt, yes, but that’s merely the catalyst for a message of responsibility. Here, that Bruce Wayne loses a concept everyone is on some level familiar with, of the happiness and comfort and stability that family is supposed to provide, is itself the point. He grabs the emotional lever right at the animal hindbrain and pulls until it snaps off: everything has gone wrong, and someone must pay for making things this way. Then for good measure he actually does make them pay while adhering to a righteous moral code that defies all he fights against, elevating himself from spooky fun action hero into myth. He’s surrounded by a city where abstract horrors consolidate down into entirely literal figures - for instance, in Gotham the fear that we can be outfoxed, overwhelmed, and systematically taken apart in service of evil stroking its own ego because we just aren’t good enough to survive is a dick in a neon green hat who likes crossword puzzles (as opposed to Superman’s world of much more personal and basic human concerns blown up to cosmic scale) - and he in turn becomes a myth of us persevering through the worst to fight back.

Batman is genuinely a good character

I place this last because this is really the nuts-and-bolts level. It’s essential, none of the above would work for 79 years and counting without it, but it’s not something many but the hardcore (which includes the comic readers by default at this point) consciously think about. But on the ground floor beneath everything else, Batman’s not just an effective piece of branding, atmosphere, and emotional manipulation, but a good character. In his motivations, with the anger that compels him often making many miss that underneath, he far more powerfully wants to ensure that no one else goes through what he did. The childishness of his methods and mindset regarding ‘the mission’ meeting the maturity of his dedication and brilliance, and the humor that can come from that disconnect (especially when his alternating disgust and amusement with his daytime masquerade as a normal person gets involved). The tentative, essential friendships he’s built with the likes of Gordon and Superman. The fatherly connection with Alfred, and the see-saw of the latter’s feelings of guilt, responsibility, and pride in his charge. The spark of his rivalries at their best. The detective work that can be as thrilling as a good punch-out when pulled off right. The forever changing complexity of the Family, a web of Robins and Batgirls and assorted hangers-on with him at the center, their existence and growth a chart of his own emotional progress and regression. His jet-black wit and self-awareness, his ability to empathize with fellow victims, his difficulties in trusting and openly loving those around him when his world is built on the knowledge of how easily those can be stripped away and how badly it hurts. The paranoia, the compassion, the drive and endurance. Beneath all the trappings, Bruce Wayne is just plain and simple a really, really good, interesting, multi-faceted character, fine-tuned under decades of creators and by his existence facilitating the creation and development of countless *other* good characters. And that’s really all it takes underneath it all to prop up a symbol that’s built empires, redefined cultures, and changed lives: the idea of a good man who refused to give up in the face of a cruel world when it forever scarred him, and made himself something greater to fight back and help others not have to go through it alone. That’s why Batman’s great.

[villes-noires]

A matter of form (1)

Tim Portlock

Urbanity built on antiblackness keeps the expendable, the nothing, close as a constant reminder of what it is not, as something available to be operated on, lacerated, extinguished, penetrated. In doing so, racialized bodies are set at a remove, ineligible for the wanting and stabilities of that deemed normatively human.

But this calculus sets up a necessary inversion. For, what becomes removed is the spatializing of something that is not quite a world, territory, city, landscape or ecology—something else besides these things, yet close enough to being them to generate an incessant unease in our ability to secure any clear notion about what a world, a territory, a city might be. In other words, there is a modality of existence uninhabitable in any clear terms, yet which is lived in and lived with in ways that defy definitive judgement or assessments of viability. It is these zones zoned out of categorical policing that remain at a distance, the remainders of dispossession.

But then what becomes close, proximate is the harrowing unease that the supposed self-sufficiency of the human project, the white project, is insufficient in its own terms; that it is something that needs always to be propped up. After all, over there, beyond the pale, over the hill, on the outskirts is a life where work doesn’t seem necessary, where sex is plentiful, where games of chance prevail, where spells are cast, where a monstrous skill at making something out of nothing endures no matter how much it is beaten down.

So closeness entails both the certainty that bodies can be made nothing, kept in line, but also the uncertainty that there is something else besides this extinguishing that burns at the vey interior of a coherent, ordered life. And so distance also entails the certainty that nothing is something way over there, far removed from the operations of everyday normative life, but at the same time also another universe whose nothingness occludes economies of interweaving among things and spirits and sensibilities and infrastructures that can only be hinted at, apprehended with a vague sense of discernment.

Even under various forms of lock-down and containment, the insides of that which is removed continuously feed off of a body that remains hidden, indiscernible, even as individual trajectories are eminently predictable. Rodger, a detective from Brownsville’s 73rd precinct in Brooklyn once remarked in reference to trying to manage policing in the Howard, Van Dyk, and Tilden Housing Projects, “ we can count the bodies, we have a pretty good idea who belongs to what gang, we have a pretty good sense about where money is coming from, but we haven’t got a clue about the world to which any of this belongs; even as thousands come in and out of prisons and juvie, in and out of jobs; even as social workers and community workers and teachers and preachers try to keep a finger on the pulse of disputes and networks of care, it’s a life where things happen in a flash, according to their own rules, like things are connected to each other in a way that just can’t be figured out ever.”

There are, of course, attempts to close the gaps between the diffracted sense of two forms of proximities and two forms of distance.  This takes place through the pervasiveness of a culture of valuation and the indeterminacy that is at the heart of it. Here, attempts to restore the clear hierarchical sense of things, their “proper order” of distance and proximity, of what lives have to do with each other occurs through the extending of value production to the entirety of life experience. So, all life becomes financialized at its very core—flesh, genetics, language, affect, and neurophysiology.

Cities do not so much hold an army of labor in reserve, but use the reserves themselves, their lifetimes, all of their makeshift, oscillating mix of calculated and desperate, intuitive and impulsive maneuvers to tend to themselves and others as raw materials from which to derive speculative domains of value extraction. Not only, as Neferti X.M Tadiar points out, are the lifetimes of the poor harvested for economies based on internment, recycling and rehabilitation, but whatever livelihoods are eked out in the interstices of conventional labor, production and circulation is put to work in the elaboration of new commodity circuits Maintaining coherence in the operations of institutions of all kinds, given the volatilities inherent in the larger settings in which they are situated, requires adjustments of all kinds. Such adjustments entail the possibility of cheap and temporary labor, payoffs, circumvention of rules, the proliferation of all kinds of dirty and off-the-book jobs whose performances remain largely unregistered in conventional imaginations.

For those relegated to the status of nothing, excluded from normative human attainments, an entire economy is generated from leveraging what it is that such (non)humans can do. Unsettling the reserves, disrupting stabilities resets the value of existing social relations. Residents have to scurry around for new exposures and connections, as limited resources are shifted around. People are willing to do things they were unwilling to do in the past; new dependencies are created; bodies are taken in and out of circulation, as a favor to someone who then come to owe someone else, perhaps his or her life.

So accustomed to viewing life at the urban edge as either the purview of individual moral success or failure or in terms of an overarching structural condition, we often fail to see the extent to which lives, laboring or not, are the raw materials from which reputations can be marketized, through which symbolic capital can be garnered, and objects diverted from the customary protocols and circuits of exchange. The hierarchies of what is accessible or not are thus disrupted.

In cities where many livelihoods have been predicated on the capacity of individuals to become many different things for many different people, lifetimes, as Tadiar explains, become increasingly derivative and are lived as if financial derivatives. Urban renewal and development have always speculated on the extent to which certain bodies could be removed, enrolled, and deployed at affordable prices.

And so some parts of the city are converted into a slow-burning game of everyone extorting everyone else; others are treated like start-ups, continuing long histories of incremental experimentation with complementary forms of entrepreneurship; others are bastions of apparent illegality that put food on the table through a host of illicit practices that generate substantive income for police and politicians; still others exude a sense of self-sufficiency inherent in residents maintaining a wide range of low-paying jobs somewhere, who diligently keep internal disruptions to a minimum, yet can easily be picked off and relocated if necessary.  In many poor and working class districts things are constantly being rearranged, as different constellations of residents, internal and external brokers speculate on new construction for cheap rentals or clear away areas for land to be banked.

All of these practices of what we might have called autconstruction can now constitute the underlying asset for forms of managing uncertain futures that will never belong to the residents themselves—from pay as you go services, to fees for recycled materials, to the conversion of a barrio into cheap sex motels, to gentrification, to enforcing household expenditures through conditional cash transfers, to leveraging the killing of drug addicts in order to make new connections with local political bosses.

Yet significant dimensions of urban life always “steal away”, slip away into some other form of detachment, something that does not quite compute or computes dirty, something that reappears in plain sigh seemingly to obey all the rules but something is off and you can pin anything on it for sure. Religious invocations slip out of their registers, the money comes up short no matter how many accountants are brought in, and no matter how precise the design, form slips from control, for it must catch up with what it intends to hold. Displacing displacement is a matter of form, of eliciting tacit recognition, an implicit sense of things coming together without the need to show the cards, with having to declare victory from the mountaintop.

[linkspooky]

The Cult of the King

This passage right here in Tokyo Ghoul 101: The Toys always struck me as odd. I assumed from his past interactions Take had a more complex motivation than this. Perhaps it was all the foreshadowing that Take might die by Arima’s hand with a blade to the neck, perhaps it was in the past the character had been shown standing up for the sake of Irimi after being shown that she defended an old woman that his commander had ruthlessly tried to cut down as long as it meant Irimi would fall too.

He’s shown questioning the CCG’s attitude of always killing ghouls on the spot because apparently that is what will be safer for humans, when he’s presented with a superior officer who was literally willing to kill an innocent human as long as it meant a more quick and efficient kill for a ghoul.

However with all the buildup of his character, apparently when all is said and done his motivation just boils down to “I want Arima to say I did a good.” The manga deliberately sets up Take as his own character, somebody who has their own personal agency and is not just a side npc, or a satellite which reolves around Arima. However, when it comes time for Take to state his own motivation this is all he can say.

What exactly is the point of a revolution, if the only reason you’re participating is because you’re following the orders of somebody else?

Then again, this kind of self depreciating issue seems to occur in a lot of what is identified as Arima’s closest inner circle. There are two characters heavily connected to him, who seem almost completely hung up on the idea of Arima giving them praise. Not because he is continually nice to them, but there was some point in the past he acknowledged them when no one else would.

I am of course talking about both Hairu and Ui. 

[Vice- Squad Leader] Ihei Hairu (20) First Class Investigator (Batch 74) Sunlit Garden* Birthday: September 29 Female Blood type: B Size: 160cm/58kg Quinque: Aus (Rinkaku; Rate S+),  T-human (Ukaku; Rate S+) Honors: Single White Wing Award, Golden Osmanthus Award Hobby: Combat training, doodling, taking to herself, observing Arima-san What she wants right now: Arima-san’s IXA [x]

Hairu’s main motivation seems to be just getting Arima’s simple praise. To which Fura says that Arima does not praise anyone. We learn why this motivation was so powerful later, because to the Garden Children Arima was their hope. It seems that garden children are so emotionally starved that all Arima had to do was acknowledge her in the past, to earn Hairu’s full devotion.

Even to those who weren’t completely emotionally starved like Garden children though, are shown having a fixation with Arima. Ui Koori for isntance, most likely wanted to be praised the same way that Hairu did. When asked why he has such a grudge against Sasaki, he flashes back to Arima’s preferential treatment of him. 

When he thinks Sasaki is trying to upstage him, he immeidately sees pictures Arima instead.

Arima and getting praised by Arima, is a really strong motivator for Ui as well and besides being rich and possibly lonely from what we know of him he comes from a pretty standard household. 

He’s even referred to as the “Arima Devotees”. 

It seems like an effect that Arima brings out in others, either their jealousy, or their devoting their entire beings to themselves.

Of course, it’s up to Ui, Hairu and Take to evaluate their own actions and their own hangups and projected expectations they push onto other people, but it seems part of the situation was worsened by Arima’s own insistence on his passivitiy. His self loathing that led to him seeing himself unable to contribute anything good while he lived and continued to live as a killer. While I understand the motive behind it, I feel like Arima’s choosing not to put out. (That is not to say something as simple as “Good Job” to Ui and Hairu when it would have meant the absolute world to them) is a choice. One deliberated by him, and one where the result is people around him continually working, devoting themselves wholeheartedly, even worshipping him to give him praise that he is just never going to give.

Arima is empty, so it’s easy for others to just project whatever they wanted onto him. While it’s true that to an extent people projecting onto him made Arima lonelier, even more of an outcast, I believe it was Arima himself who chose not to try to fill himself with anything substantive, to do anything with himself besides sit on the throne of king.

In chapter 73: Flower we’re shown a transition between Torso mirroring Mutsuki’s abusive father, and a pan down to Arima and Kaneki. Kaneki’s issue the entire chapter with Arima has been exactly this, no matter what he tries he cannot get Arima in any way to explain himself, or even emote. He’s left confused and unable to communicate in Arima whatsoever.

Is this perhaps a foil? Something to suggest that there is something wrong on Arima’s part? That perhaps his total passivity isn’t just damaging to him, but to the others around him?

Just think about it for a moment, if Arima had been a little bit more honest with Ui, where would Ui be right now? Perhaps on Kaneki’s side fighting for the true justice he valued, instead of believing that everybody who had ever loved him would betray him or die.

If Arima had told the garden children it was okay to live their own lives outside of fighting and he would still be proud for them, would Hairu have walked so easily into her own death believing Arima would praise her if she just simply managed to exterminate the Tsukiyama ghouls even better than she had done previously.

Where exactly does the line of fault fall, is it Hairu and Ui’s for putting so much expectations onto Arima, or Arima for cultivating them and making use of them and never being physically capable of giving out praise the thing they needed the most, but still associating with them anyway. Arima was after all the previous one eyed king, even if all he did was sit on the throne as a symbol for Eto to use, he still used the zero squad at his disposal to purposefully slaughter ghouls and create a terrifying image of himself to be a villain to slaughter in the end. He needed their strength and loyalty, Hairu, Ui’s, to complete his own objective and also kept them in the dark about what they were fighting for. Doesn’t that strike of manipulation at least a little bit? 

Notice that the people behind Eto in this art all at least have masks on (she’s an author, she likes to know about the characters in her story), while all those behind Arima are completely faceless. 

Of course the point that Arima is morally ambiguous is probably not a new shock to anybody. The reason I bring this up now, is because I see a similiar kind of trait seeming to arise in people who are now surrounding themselves and devoting themselves to Kaneki.

Arima is not just a father figure to Kaneki, or a foil, he’s somebody who lived a tragic and sad life because of flaws he has in similiar in Kaneki, he’s a bad future, somebody who Kaneki should be scared of growing up into. Arima besides being able to pass on the torch to Kaneki, besides sparing a few Garden Children wasn’t able to accomplish much with his life, he succumbed to his own despair and died far away from the people who cared about him. Ui, Fura, Take and the rest of the garden children weren’t able to reach him to mourn him in time. He only had Sasaki in the end, because to Arima Sasaki was the only person he gave anything to at all. 

The point is that Kaneki should tread lightly about the way people have been treating him in the comic lately. Regardless of him bieng a leader to an organization, even before the formation of Goat he had people dedicate a weird amount of time and effort to him.

Re: was created especially for him. Touka says as long as he comes back home, it’ll be alright.

I’m not saying that Touka is devoting the entirety of her existence to Kaneki, but the question is what exactly does Kaneki have to contribute here? If all he has to do is show up and not push Touka away.

Even the way they hold each other after sex looks pretty explicitly like Kaneki being comforted by Touka. This is after she cheekily implied that she considered having sex with him as a way of stopping him from dying. 

This isn’t to imply that I find Touka and Kaneki’s relationship abusive whatsoever, just as it exists right now it seems a bit too much “give” on Touka’s side. The same thing I see happening with Hinami, who as we remember Kaneki neglected and emotionally starved in a jail cell for more than six months.

Even after all that loyalty she showed him which was met with complete neglect on Kaneki’s end, when she finally stands up for herself she only does so out of concern for Kaneki.

Kaneki never so much as offers an apology to her, but the time we see her caught up again she’s gone back to as always, simply repressing her own emotions and trying to make Kaneki happy.

There’s also the example of Tsukiyama, I’ll keep this brief because I’ve been harping on it a lot, but this is a character who fell into a three year coma because of Kaneki, who Kaneki led an entire extermination against his household. Yet the first time they meet again afterwards, he says Kaneki is already forgiven without having to apologize, and then goes back to being his most loyal servant. Even when he disagrees with the way Kaneki is running his strategy, his complaints are rejected with a reminder of his loyalty.

This is not to mention the way Mutsuki, and Saiko basically worship Kaneki and are willing to forgive him for every transgression and cutting him out of their lives without word or warning if he simply just comes back to the CCG.

We know that these urges exist in Kaneki. To be loved by everyone. That he only really is invested in fighting for the people he personally cares about, the ones who are five feet in front of him.

That what he cares about, what he fights for, what his ultimate bottom line is, is receiving love from the people that he too happens to care about. It just seems that just like Arima, Kaneki has cultivated a sort of emotional dependency of all these people on him, to the point where they’re willing to do almost anything just to keep him around. 

it’s important to remember that Kaneki despite having an abandonment complex is a serial abandonner, Hide, Touka, Hinami (twice), Banjou, Tsukiyama, The Q’s, and never once is he called out for abandoning others without a word, or warning. All of these people just want so desperately to have him back. For Arima it was praise, for Kaneki it was merely to stick around. We find people working themselves in circles to earn something from him. Forgetting that relationships aren’t about what’s earned, what’s deserved, and are give and take rather than all give. 

What Kaneki needs to learn is that other people have motivations and feelings outside of his own. It’s so strange to see a character whose basiaclly pure empathy unwilling to grasp this, but that’s what makes for a unique character conflict. 

Of course now literally being worshipped as king by starving people who have no choice but to depend upon him is meant to aggravate this problem rather than help it. 

Furuta is an active king, who bids people to worship him and promises that in return for their worship he will literally grant the impossible to them, for Ui as long as he worships Furuta he can revive the dead. This is an active manipulation on his part.

Kaneki, the black repaer is pictured on the same page that talks about worshipping the reaper because he is the only god available to them. Is Kaneki too, the foil to Furuta, manipulative in a way? Passively demanding and thriving off of the worship of others?

Either way I think to truly motivate people to fight, Kaneki will eventually have to fight for one on one connection. Rather than be worshipped, he has to be able to process and form attachments to people that are both take and give. That are fighting alongside, rather than protecting. 

Perhaps the most important decision Ken Kaneki makes for his arc is not one where he accepts and sits on the throne of King, but rather one where he destroys it. 

[proconcordialabor]

Finding Buried Treasure

From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the Moral Energy of Schatzwiederentdeckung

I was enriched last month at the Jeju Reparations Conference at the University of North Carolina Law School, when Professor Robert Westley mentioned a word that he had learned in Germany, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which he translated as “memory work.” I remembered, or thought I did, seeing “memory work” in an article that I had read some months ago, and as soon as I returned to my books and papers in Michigan in late May of 2017, I took up the task of finding that reference. I found two articles that used the phrase “memory work,” but they did not match the specific memory that I had of this term. My memory was that the term “memory work” had been coined by a woman. Neither of the articles that I found confirmed this memory. So perhaps my memory that “memory work” was coined by a woman is a false memory. Needing to better understand the history of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, I learned after some cursory research that the word means something like “working through a difficult past,” i.e., working through traumatic memories, the extreme version of which I sometimes refer to as “atrocity history.” The Wikipedia page for Vergangenheitsbewältigung explains: The German Duden lexicon defines Vergangenheitsbewältigung as "public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history—in Germany on National Socialism, in particular This fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung connotes difficult and traumatic history struck me. First, the meaning of this term resonates with Carl Jung’s notion of the ‘shadow’ and the need for every individual to “make the darkness conscious” in order to ascend to a higher level of consciousness. To be sure, it is not simply making the darkness conscious that is our task. Crucial indeed is accepting and befriending the darkness in ourselves. The clasped hands on the Pro Concordia Labor flag can remind us that in order to ascend, we must labor and partner with our own shadow in order to move forward into light. The making of the darkness conscious is one of the core values of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. We must bear witness to the depth of our darkness in order to transcend it.

But no less important is bearing witness to what the Quakers called our “inner light.” For the past few years, I have been writing and speaking about the importance of what I call “Positive History” – stories of inspiration and cooperation which are illustrative of specific virtues, including, but not limited to, the four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance). Aristotle noted that not all virtues have names, but yet:

We must try … .to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7)

Following Aristotle, when I created the course The Virtues of Untold Stories: The Peace History of the United States and Korea (which I will to teach as part of my Fulbright Grant at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyunghee University in the Fall of 2017), I named – for the first time - some of the virtues that I had noticed in my reading of Peace History. Among them, transnational fellowship and transgenerational fellowship. When Lenore Selenka of Germany worked with May Wright Sewall of the United States to harness the network of the International Council of Women to support both the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences, transnational fellowship was at work. And when we continue the work that these women started, we partake in transgenerational fellowship. Personally, I have found it useful to name the different constructive moral energies that comprise a “red thread” throughout history through which we can see the working of the inner light. I am always renewed when I bear witness to the spinning of that thread.

Observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

As you might imagine, the fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung denotes the “trauma history” of the shadow, forced in me the question of whether there exists a single German word that denotes working with the memory of the “positive history” of our “inner light”; “remembering inspiring stories,” or, thinking more metaphorically, “finding a buried treasure.” After consulting with one of my German translators, the answer was nicht! There is no such word. So, laboring together with him, we set out to create the word. After 7 or 8 rounds of back-and-forth, we settled on the word Schatzwiederentdeckung. Interestingly, google translate recognizes the English equivalent of this word, whereas it does not recognize (at least not yet) Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I now have my word, Schatzwiederentdeckung. And now I must bring it to life. I do that through ostention – by pointing to specific examples. It is a basic and primitive task. Sometimes these examples are objects which are a sort of “visual shorthand” for a longer story, for instance, that of the Pro Concordia Labor flag. Sometimes these examples are events. But now, the word needs to be brought to life through basic task of enumerating examples. Exploring the philosophical, psychological and sociological questions about Schatzwiederentdeckung are also needed to breathe life into the word. For instance, how do specific examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung affect the development of the self? Are there variations on the efficacy of Schatzwiederentdeckung depending on one’s stage of life? Do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung within one’s own culture affect the psyche differently than do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung from another? Speaking anecdotally, I can say that beholding a rich example of Schatzwiederentdeckung during mid-life had a profound effect on me. That example was my encounter with the Peace Palace in 2011. The Peace Palace opened in the Hague, The Netherlands on August 28, 1913. The building, which is home to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice and the largest international law library in the world is the symbolic foundation stone for the normative framework of International Peace and Justice that has its roots in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. When I was within this historic building, amidst so many beautiful unknowns, I felt the yearning to connect with it in a deeper way. What is this beautiful mystery that I know absolutely nothing about? So opened a Treasure Box, with a bounty of examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung: Bertha von Suttner, the work of Cora di Brazzà, The American School Peace League and the work of E.C. Warriner, the March 1, 1919 movement of Korea. There are so many, and scattered throughout the world. This “scattering” remains a worry. Bertha von Suttner noted that poets and philosophers are the “engineers, mechanicians, and technicians” of “moral forces.” Jane Addams used the term “moral energy”. Let’s combine the two insights and say that Bertha noted that “moral energy” can be engineered, harnessed, and used to propel. This, incidentally, is a substantive claim and a definite position within the debate with ancient Greek philosophy about whether virtue can be taught. Bertha von Suttner: yes. But, she notes, the engineers of moral energies – which, she says, are thoughts and ideas are “scattered through the centuries, scattered in space.” This scattering remains a worry. Although she did not have the word Schatzwiederentdeckung, I do believe Bertha would have acknowledged the moral energy of these stories, and would have issued a plea for collecting examples of them in order in order to leverage their collective moral energy. For she writes in When Thoughts Will Soar (1914, p. 65): How much more powerful their work would be if it were coordinated, if the knowledge of their doctrines, the glory of their names, the magic of their art, proceeding from one central point, should radiate in all directions. Motors and propellers have taught us that power must be concentrated and compressed, in order by explosions to drive the vehicle. Stories that illustrate virtue have moral energy. They help us to drive “our vehicle” upward and forward. This is an old idea. It was expressed by Aristotle when he reminded us that the development of virtue requires bearing witness to actual examples of virtue, i.e., role models. The idea is also expressed by Marcus Aurelius who, at the beginning of his Meditations, enumerates a cast of characters to whom he is grateful. Why? They all modeled various virtues, thereby enabling Marcus to sculpt himself into righteousness. Interestingly, related to the idea that actual examples of virtue have moral energy is something that was posted recently by Humans of New York on its Facebook page:

This young man is clearly influenced by the fortitude of Forrest Gump, who we all know is a fictitious character. Are there no actual examples of fortitude on which this young man can call on for motivation? Wouldn’t actual examples be able to better withstand the doubt that will inevitably arise when marching forward into light? If you are familiar with the opening chapter of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, imagine how almost comical that text would appear if Marcus enumerated not the virtues actual persons, but the virtues of fictitious characters. Actual examples, moreover, provide a response to the “its just a movie” counterargument that we may utter to ourselves when picking ourselves up after the nth failure. Anyway, as I am now breathing life into Schatzwiederentdeckung, let me limn its contours by stating that the story of Forrest Gump is not an example of Schatzwiederentdeckung, though it does have moral energy. Indeed, the etymology of Schatzwiederentdeckung – rooted in the notion of a ‘buried treasure’ – seems to preclude any instance of pop culture from being an instance of this term. Just as there is value in bringing to consciousness repressed traumatic memories, so too is there value in bringing to consciousness untold stories of positive history. I leave it to the readers of this post to formulate another word for stories of pop culture, which are ‘open and obvious’ rather than ‘buried,’ and which, like the story of Forrest Gump, have moral energy that propels us forward and upward.

© 2017 hope elizabeth may

[bambamramfan]

This article is great because of how awkward it is. As I’ve said, it’s with the most vagueness that we see ideology at its purest. So we can discuss the doctrine of separability, and its problems under liberal rules-based ideologies.

The author has seen a rise in performative intense emotion in his sphere of the LARPing community. The author doesn’t feel this aspect of LARPing themselves. Conflict ensues.

Except, he doesn’t describe it that way. He goes to great lengths to say that everyone’s LARP style is their own choice, and great even! He just, uh, worries that some people may feel pressured to be overly performative, and that some of the structural rules coming out of these communities may make the less hyper players feel they aren’t fully participating in the hobby. He can’t actually point out concrete examples of people enforcing their preferences on him, but he can point out people who feel just as uncomfortable as him.

The tension here is why the article is great. Under liberalism, we all feel obliged to say (and believe) that it doesn’t matter what anyone enjoys, even our friends and intimates, so long as their swinging hand doesn’t hit our proverbial face. For their to be a problem, it must always be tied to some violation of the rules.

And yet, this guy is really unhappy. Looked at without moral justification, of course he’s unhappy: it’s fun to be around people who care about the thing you care about (and who express that the way you express it.) That’s where people get a lot of their joy in life from. And when the people around you start caring about other things, and expressing this care in ways you don’t enjoy, it’s genuinely sad. We mourn that, and I really do feel sympathy for him.

But he lacks the language to say that. So instead it must be phrased in the language of “watch out or else someone might be made to feel like they have a sociopathic personality disorder! Here are some more rules we can add to debriefings and limits to make things even safer. It’s all about safety. Otherwise there is zero problem with the fact that the people I share my hobby with are experiencing it in a very different way from me.”

My sarcasm mocks him, but his central concern is entirely legitimate. It’s just the need we have to pretend the things that bother us aren’t what we are concerned about, that represses that feeling, until it can find an acceptable outlet. Zizek calls this the Real of the social antagonism: we really do have disagreements, that can’t always fit into clean categories, and they will consume us until we find the appropriate symbolic outlet for them.

You rarely see cases of this so blatant, because in mature internet ideological battles, the author always knows of some violation of the harmonious order that someone on the other side of the debate has committed. Maybe they were corrupt, or maybe they said something that sounded like a terminology violation, or maybe they haven’t denounced the bigger problems, there’s always some reason the person you have substantive problems with is actually a criminal. Maybe you can make a new rule no one else has ever heard of, but it explains why you’re upset in an acceptably rules based way.

You can never just say “they want something different than what I want, and I am losing out, and that possibility makes me anxious.” But this anxiety is so important that it will find expression within the rules we laid out.

That’s the trouble with liberal logic. You must address the social antagonism - people’s fears and worries and their desire for a welcoming hobby of people who treat it like they do - or else they will explode in a flurry of complaints about all the rules violators out there.

[lodelss]

ACLU: H.R. 40 Is Not a Symbolic Act. It’s a Path to Restorative Justice.

H.R. 40 Is Not a Symbolic Act. It’s a Path to Restorative Justice.

For nearly three decades, my former colleague Rep. John Conyers of Michigan would introduce H.R. 40, legislation seeking to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals. Though many thought it a lost cause, he believed that a day would come when our nation would need to account for the brutal mistreatment of African Americans during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the enduring structural racism endemic to our society. With the rise and normalization of white supremacist expression during the Trump administration, the discussion of H.R. 40 and the concept of restorative justice have gained more urgency, garnering the attention of mainstream commentators and illustrating the need for a national reckoning. Slavery is America’s original sin, and this country has yet to atone for the atrocities visited upon generations of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Moreover, the mythology built around the Civil War has obscured our discussions of the impact of chattel slavery and made it difficult to have a national dialogue on how to fully account for its place in American history and public policy. H.R. 40 is intended to create the framework for a national discussion on the enduring impact of slavery and its complex legacy to begin that necessary process of atonement. The designation of this legislation as H.R. 40 is intended to memorialize the promise made by Gen. William T. Sherman, in his 1865 Special Field Order No. 15, to redistribute 400,000 acres of formerly Confederate-owned coastal land in South Carolina and Florida, subdivided into 40-acre plots. In addition to the more well-known land redistribution, the order also established autonomous governance for the region and provided for protection by military authorities of the settlements. Though Southern sympathizer and former slaveholder President Andrew Johnson would later overturn the order, this plan represented the first systematic form of freedmen reparations.  With the withdrawal of Union troops from the South in 1877, the promise of Reconstruction proved short-lived, and over the next century and a half, the Black Codes would morph into Jim Crow segregation and federal redlining and the war on drugs and mass incarceration and racism in policing and underfunded schools — injuries not confined solely to the South. These historical injustices connect through a web of government policies that have ensured that the majority of African Americans have had to, in the words of President Obama, “work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by.” Black America’s unemployment rate is more than twice that of white America’s. Black families have just one-sixteenth of the wealth of white families. Nearly one million Black people — mostly young men — are incarcerated across the country. Though remote in time from the period of enslavement, these racial disparities in access to education, health care, housing, insurance, employment, and other social goods are directly attributable to the damaging legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. Since its introduction, H.R. 40 has spurred some governmental acknowledgment of the crime of slavery, but most often the response has taken the form of an apology. Even the well-intentioned commitments to examine the historical and modern-day implications of slavery by the Clinton administration, however, fell short of the mark and failed to inspire substantive public discourse. For many, it was not until The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” that the mainstream public began to reckon with, or even consider, the concept of reparations.  Though the federal government has been slow to engage on the issue of reparations, individuals, corporations, and other public institutions have engaged the discussion out of both necessity and conscience. In 1994, a group of California plaintiffs brought suit against the federal government, and by 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country by the Restitution Study Group. Though litigation has yielded only mixed success in court, a serious foundation was laid for alternative forms of restitution. For example, in 2005, J.P. Morgan & Company tried to make amends for its role in the slave trade with an apology and a $5 million, five-year scholarship fund for Black undergraduates in Louisiana. In 2008, the Episcopal Church apologized for perpetuating American slavery through its interpretation of the Bible and certain dioceses have implemented restitution programs. In 2003, Brown University created the Committee on Slavery and Justice to assess the university’s role in slavery and determine a response. Similarly, in 2016, Georgetown University apologized for its historical links to slavery and said it would give an admissions edge to descendants of slaves whose sale in the 19th century helped pay off the school’s debts. These are only a few examples of how private institutions have begun reckoning with their past records. I expect that a growing number of institutions will be forced to examine their histories of discrimination, if for no other reason than increasing public scrutiny will force their history to light.    Since my reintroduction of H.R. 40 at the beginning of this Congress, both the legislation and concept of reparations have become the focus of national debate. For many, it is apparent that the success of the Obama administration has unleashed a backlash of racism and intolerance that is an echo of America’s dark past that has yet to be exorcised from the national consciousness. Commentators have turned to H.R. 40 as a response to formally begin the process of analyzing, confronting, and atoning for these dark chapters of American history. Even conservative voices, like that of New York Times columnist David Brooks, are starting to give the reparations cause the hearing it deserves, observing that: “Reparations are a drastic policy and hard to execute, but the very act of talking and designing them heals a wound and opens a new story.” Similarly, a majority of the Democratic presidential contenders have turned to H.R 40 as a tool for reconciliation, with 17 cosponsoring or claiming they would sign the bill into law if elected.   Though critics have argued that the idea of reparations is unworkable politically or financially, their focus on money misses the point of the H.R. 40 commission’s mandate. The goal of these historical investigations is to bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African Americans and to make America a better place by helping the truly disadvantaged. Consequently, the reparations movement does not focus on payments to individuals, but to remedies that can be created in as many forms necessary to equitably address the many kinds of injuries sustained from chattel slavery and its continuing vestiges. To merely focus on finance is an empty gesture and betrays a lack of understanding of the depth of the unaddressed moral issues that continue to haunt this nation.  While it might be convenient to assume that we can address the current divisive racial and political climate in our nation through race-neutral means, experience shows that we have not escaped our history. Though the civil rights movement challenged many of the most racist practices and structures that subjugated the African-American community, it was not followed by a commitment to truth and reconciliation. For that reason, the legacy of racial inequality has persisted and left the nation vulnerable to a range of problems that continue to yield division, racial disparities, and injustice.  By passing H.R. 40, Congress can start a movement toward the national reckoning we need to bridge racial divides. Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation — and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future.

READ THE FULL REPARATIONS SERIES

Sheila Jackson Lee is a member of the Congress representing Texas’ 18th congressional district.

Published May 22, 2020 at 05:01PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2ZrhiML from Blogger https://ift.tt/2LNKIwL via IFTTT

[nancydhooper]

H.R. 40 Is Not a Symbolic Act. It’s a Path to Restorative Justice.

For nearly three decades, my former colleague Rep. John Conyers of Michigan would introduce H.R. 40, legislation seeking to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals. Though many thought it a lost cause, he believed that a day would come when our nation would need to account for the brutal mistreatment of African Americans during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the enduring structural racism endemic to our society. With the rise and normalization of white supremacist expression during the Trump administration, the discussion of H.R. 40 and the concept of restorative justice have gained more urgency, garnering the attention of mainstream commentators and illustrating the need for a national reckoning. Slavery is America’s original sin, and this country has yet to atone for the atrocities visited upon generations of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Moreover, the mythology built around the Civil War has obscured our discussions of the impact of chattel slavery and made it difficult to have a national dialogue on how to fully account for its place in American history and public policy. H.R. 40 is intended to create the framework for a national discussion on the enduring impact of slavery and its complex legacy to begin that necessary process of atonement. The designation of this legislation as H.R. 40 is intended to memorialize the promise made by Gen. William T. Sherman, in his 1865 Special Field Order No. 15, to redistribute 400,000 acres of formerly Confederate-owned coastal land in South Carolina and Florida, subdivided into 40-acre plots. In addition to the more well-known land redistribution, the order also established autonomous governance for the region and provided for protection by military authorities of the settlements. Though Southern sympathizer and former slaveholder President Andrew Johnson would later overturn the order, this plan represented the first systematic form of freedmen reparations.  With the withdrawal of Union troops from the South in 1877, the promise of Reconstruction proved short-lived, and over the next century and a half, the Black Codes would morph into Jim Crow segregation and federal redlining and the war on drugs and mass incarceration and racism in policing and underfunded schools — injuries not confined solely to the South. These historical injustices connect through a web of government policies that have ensured that the majority of African Americans have had to, in the words of President Obama, “work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by.” Black America’s unemployment rate is more than twice that of white America’s. Black families have just one-sixteenth of the wealth of white families. Nearly one million Black people — mostly young men — are incarcerated across the country. Though remote in time from the period of enslavement, these racial disparities in access to education, health care, housing, insurance, employment, and other social goods are directly attributable to the damaging legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. Since its introduction, H.R. 40 has spurred some governmental acknowledgment of the crime of slavery, but most often the response has taken the form of an apology. Even the well-intentioned commitments to examine the historical and modern-day implications of slavery by the Clinton administration, however, fell short of the mark and failed to inspire substantive public discourse. For many, it was not until The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” that the mainstream public began to reckon with, or even consider, the concept of reparations.  Though the federal government has been slow to engage on the issue of reparations, individuals, corporations, and other public institutions have engaged the discussion out of both necessity and conscience. In 1994, a group of California plaintiffs brought suit against the federal government, and by 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country by the Restitution Study Group. Though litigation has yielded only mixed success in court, a serious foundation was laid for alternative forms of restitution. For example, in 2005, J.P. Morgan & Company tried to make amends for its role in the slave trade with an apology and a $5 million, five-year scholarship fund for Black undergraduates in Louisiana. In 2008, the Episcopal Church apologized for perpetuating American slavery through its interpretation of the Bible and certain dioceses have implemented restitution programs. In 2003, Brown University created the Committee on Slavery and Justice to assess the university’s role in slavery and determine a response. Similarly, in 2016, Georgetown University apologized for its historical links to slavery and said it would give an admissions edge to descendants of slaves whose sale in the 19th century helped pay off the school’s debts. These are only a few examples of how private institutions have begun reckoning with their past records. I expect that a growing number of institutions will be forced to examine their histories of discrimination, if for no other reason than increasing public scrutiny will force their history to light.    Since my reintroduction of H.R. 40 at the beginning of this Congress, both the legislation and concept of reparations have become the focus of national debate. For many, it is apparent that the success of the Obama administration has unleashed a backlash of racism and intolerance that is an echo of America’s dark past that has yet to be exorcised from the national consciousness. Commentators have turned to H.R. 40 as a response to formally begin the process of analyzing, confronting, and atoning for these dark chapters of American history. Even conservative voices, like that of New York Times columnist David Brooks, are starting to give the reparations cause the hearing it deserves, observing that: “Reparations are a drastic policy and hard to execute, but the very act of talking and designing them heals a wound and opens a new story.” Similarly, a majority of the Democratic presidential contenders have turned to H.R 40 as a tool for reconciliation, with 17 cosponsoring or claiming they would sign the bill into law if elected.   Though critics have argued that the idea of reparations is unworkable politically or financially, their focus on money misses the point of the H.R. 40 commission’s mandate. The goal of these historical investigations is to bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African Americans and to make America a better place by helping the truly disadvantaged. Consequently, the reparations movement does not focus on payments to individuals, but to remedies that can be created in as many forms necessary to equitably address the many kinds of injuries sustained from chattel slavery and its continuing vestiges. To merely focus on finance is an empty gesture and betrays a lack of understanding of the depth of the unaddressed moral issues that continue to haunt this nation.  While it might be convenient to assume that we can address the current divisive racial and political climate in our nation through race-neutral means, experience shows that we have not escaped our history. Though the civil rights movement challenged many of the most racist practices and structures that subjugated the African-American community, it was not followed by a commitment to truth and reconciliation. For that reason, the legacy of racial inequality has persisted and left the nation vulnerable to a range of problems that continue to yield division, racial disparities, and injustice.  By passing H.R. 40, Congress can start a movement toward the national reckoning we need to bridge racial divides. Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation — and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future.

READ THE FULL REPARATIONS SERIES

Sheila Jackson Lee is a member of the Congress representing Texas’ 18th congressional district.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/h-r-40-is-not-a-symbolic-act-its-a-path-to-restorative-justice via http://www.rssmix.com/

[deniscollins]

What Reparations for Slavery Might Look Like in 2019

At the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress approved General Sherman’s proposal that  the  4 million unpaid black Americans recently freed from slavery be compensated with “40 acres and a mule.” Within months of Lincoln’s assassination, though, President Andrew Johnson rescinded the order. Should their current descendants (among the 47 million black population) be compensated for their ancestors suffering under slavery and other forms of racial injustices: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

If you’re surprised that the issue of reparations for black Americans has taken so long to resolve, blame the president. President Andrew Johnson.

As the Civil War wound down in 1865, Gen. William T. Sherman made the promise that would come to be known as “40 acres and a mule” — redistributing a huge tract of Atlantic coastline to black Americans recently freed from bondage. President Abraham Lincoln and Congress gave their approval, and soon 40,000 freedmen in the South had started to plant and build.

Within months of Lincoln’s assassination, though, President Johnson rescinded the order and returned the land to its former owners. Congress made another attempt at compensation, but Johnson vetoed it.

Now, in the early phase of the 2020 presidential campaign, the question of compensating black Americans for suffering under slavery and other forms of racial injustice has resurfaced. The current effort focuses on a congressional bill that would commission a study on reparations, a version of legislation first introduced in 1989. Several Democratic presidential hopefuls have declared their support, including Senators Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.

If this latest revival has excited supporters, it has worried some party moderates who fear that such an effort would alienate many voters. Polls have shown a big deficit in popular support. While a majority of black Americans in a 2016 Marist poll supported reparations, whites rejected it by an overwhelming margin.

The reparations issue raises profound moral, social and political considerations. Still, the economic nuts and bolts of such a program have gotten scant public attention: Who would be paid? How much? Where would the money come from?

Through the decades, a handful of scholars have taken a shot at creating a road map. Here’s what has to be reckoned with.

What’s the economic rationale?

When James Forman, a civil rights pioneer who later served briefly as the Black Panther Party’s foreign minister, demanded $500 million in reparations in his 1969 Black Manifesto, he grounded his argument in an indisputable fact: Unpaid slave labor helped build the American economy, creating vast wealth that African-Americans were barred from sharing.

The manifesto called for white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues to pay for projects like a black university and a Southern land bank. “We have helped to build the most industrial country in the world,” it declared, at the same time that “racist white America has exploited our resources, our minds, our bodies, our labor.”

Another civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, responded, “If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he’s dead and gone and nobody owes me anything.”

The question of reparations, however, extends far beyond the roughly four million people who were enslaved when the Civil War started, as Ta-Nehisi Coates explained in an influential essay published in The Atlantic in 2014. Legalized discrimination and state-sanctioned brutality, murder, dispossession and disenfranchisement continued long after the war ended. That history profoundly handicapped black Americans’ ability to create and accumulate wealth as well as to gain access to jobs, housing, education and health care.

For every dollar a typical white household holds, a black one has 10 cents. It is this cumulative effect that justifies the payment of reparations to descendants of slaves long dead, supporters say.

“Equality is not likely to be obtained without some form of reparations,” David H. Swinton, an economist and former president of Benedict College, wrote in the 1990 collection “The Wealth of Races.”

Who would be paid?

Nearly 47 million Americans identified themselves as black or African-American in the latest census. A vast majority are descended from slaves, but others are more recent migrants. So who would qualify for a payment?

William A. Darity Jr., an economist at Duke University and a leading scholar on reparations, suggests two qualifying conditions: having at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States, and having identified oneself as African-American on a legal document for at least a decade before the approval of any reparations. The 10-year rule, he said, would help screen out anyone trying to cash in on a windfall.

According to these criteria, Oprah Winfrey, who has traced her DNA to slaves captured in West Africa in the early 19th century, would qualify. Former President Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a Kenyan father, would not. Mr. Darity estimates that roughly 30 million Americans would be eligible.

Tracing genealogy back to the slave-owning era is difficult. But the search begins by comparing the 1870 census, when freed slaves were first counted by name, with the one taken in 1860, when they weren’t. Other sources include military service and pension records, slave-ship manifests, and estate and inheritance documents.

As for taking account of current wealth, a reparations program could link potential payouts to income and asset levels.

How much would recipients get?

Attaching a dollar figure to a program of reparations resembles a “Wheel of Fortune” spin, with amounts ranging from the piddling ($71.08 per recipient under Forman’s plan) to the astronomical ($17 trillion in total).

Over the decades, some economists have tried to come up with a quantifiable basis for a fair sum. Mr. Swinton, for example, estimated in 1983 that 40 to 60 percent of the difference between black and white income could be attributed to past and continuing discrimination, and put the figure at $500 billion.

Some economists evaluated labor’s share of the slave system’s profits in cotton and tobacco. Others have looked at what slaves would have earned if they had been paid wages plus interest, after subtracting housing and food costs. One study looked at 20th-century statistics, estimating how much less blacks earned because of decades of discrimination. Another examined the value of black wealth lost or destroyed after slavery ended, through practices like redlining that denied lending or insurance to African-American communities, or organized riots like the 1921 rampage that leveled the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, known as “Black Wall Street.”

A recurring theme has been to return to that first official action promising 40 acres and a mule. Sherman drew up his order after posing this directive to a group of black ministers and leaders: “State in what manner you think you can take care of yourselves.”

What would Sherman’s promise be worth today?

Mr. Darity has been mulling that question for years, and is writing a book on reparations with Kirsten Mullen, due out next year. He begins with the cost of an acre in 1865: about $10. Forty acres divided among a family of four comes to 10 acres per person, or about $100 for each of the four million former slaves. Taking account of compounding interest and inflation, Mr. Darity has put the present value at $2.6 trillion. Assuming roughly 30 million descendants of ex-slaves, he concluded it worked out to about $80,000 a person.

To get a sense of the scale, consider that the United States budget this year is $4.7 trillion.

Of course, varying any critical assumption can add or subtract billions or trillions of dollars.

Thomas Craemer, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, used the same starting point — 40 acres and a mule — but a different method in a study published last year. He used the current average price of agricultural land and figured that 40 acres of farmland and buildings would amount to roughly $123,000. If all of the four million slaves counted in the 1860 census had been able to take advantage of that offer, it would have totaled more than $486 billion today — or about $16,200 for each descendant of slaves.

What form would payment take?

Compensation programs can take many forms. In the United States, after a congressional study, people of Japanese descent who were forced into internment camps during World War II received $20,000 in 1988 and a formal apology.

Since 1952, Germany has paid more than $70 billion in reparationsthrough various programs, primarily to Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, and continues to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Payments vary from a lump sum distributed to individuals to a monthly pension based on years working in a slave labor camp. Money is also given to organizations to cover home care for older survivors or for grants. A small portion goes for research, education and documentation.

A reparations program in the United States could likewise adopt a single method or several at once. Families could get a one-time check, receive vouchers for medical insurance or college, or have access to a trust fund to finance a business or a home. Mr. Darity argues that “for both substantive and symbolic reasons, some important component must be direct payment to eligible recipients.”

Other scholars have emphasized different features. Roy L. Brooks, a law professor at the University of San Diego and the author of “Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations,” has reservations about what he calls the “settlement model,” a legalistic approach that looks backward to compensate victims for demonstrable financial losses. He prefers what he calls the “atonement model,” emphasizing longer-term investments in education, housing and businesses that build up wealth.

What would the economic impact be?

According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the median wealth of black households is $16,000, compared with $163,000 for whites. Reparations are not likely to eliminate the racial wealth gap, but could narrow it somewhat. Low-income families, with the fewest assets, would benefit the most.

The biggest economic objection is that any meaningful program would be unaffordable. Like other government spending, reparations would ultimately be paid for by some kind of tax or fee, or borrowing, say, through government bonds. Such a program would almost certainly require increasing the federal debt and be structured over time.

Those less worried about a growing deficit could argue that reparations would be a boon over the long run — lifting people out of poverty, and improving their earning potential and buying power.

[missmonroe123-blog]

Their Eyes Are Watching God- Zole Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Are Watching God- Zole Neale Hurston

Zola Neale Hurston, from the word go, appeared to make a communication point at something. However her slender novel does not provide sufficient content to pass across any of the thematic concerns that she intends to pass across.  The reason why I agree with Richard Wright on his assertion that the text lacked message is due to the excessive integration of so many issues that nothing substantive comes out. Their Eyes Were Watching God, tries to present the issue of love while at the same time trying to raise the narrative of hate. If these were the only themes, the plot development may have worked out just fine. However, the reader still comes across the weak theme of gossip, the issue of politics, the literary advancement of poetry within literature and the conflicting thematic concerns of life and death.  Indeed, its publication in 1937 ought to have majored on one strong theme such as Women Right or Black empowerment. To subtly purport to have a strong narrative when nothing stood out implies that, as Wright would put it, writing in vacuum. It is for this reason that the novel realized most of its relevance several decades after its publication.

Hurston in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, uses various formats of imagery to pass across the text’s messages. One powerful figurative component that towers over the rest is the use of a horizon. She uses this to present Janie’s yearning for equality. Initially, Hurston had applied the image to display Janie’s long search for love. When this item was found, Hurston progressed into using it to show Janie’s yearning for equality in marriage. The horizon, with its distance representation shows Janie longing for things she did not have. They were so possible yet so hard to come across. They were so near yet so far. As had been symbolized by the horizon, she did find love and got married to Logan. However, even in marriage, she feels that she is not an equal partner to Logan. The yearning for equality then begins. Hurston uses this horizon figure to figuratively show what women were going through at that period. Many were looking for love, most did not get it and those who found it missed on equality. The equality message perhaps overrides all the other factors as the early 19th century provided the hardest period for American women.

Janie Crawford, the main proponent of Hurston’s novel, was a woman keen on finding true love. That fact explains her experience going through 3 marriages. However, her journey through these engagements blends in a reality of tragic endings and painful lessons. In fact, she only manages to independently exit from only marriage set-up. Each of the marriages is all different. In her first forced marriage to one Logan, she is treated possessively. Her husband is way too old to comprehend the building factors of true love. He uses her as she pleases and ignores her soulful needs. Janie’s experience in the hands of Logan aptly replay the experiences of black women especially inter-marriages. Her next husband is Joe Starks. The guy is overly presentable, very suave and appears to be Janie’s solution to an easy marriage. However, behind the modern and corporate face, is a rough man who treats Janie in a worse way than Logan.  In short, the neat presentation was façade and Janie found out that Starks displayed empty dreams. She moves on to marry Tea Cake, a man who appears to show some sense of sensitivity. However and as Janie tragically discovers, the guy is not substantive enough to inspire any kind of sensible life. He is simply flat. The three marriages show Janie’s long search for love, and later equality. In reality Hurston was simply showing what the black women went through during that period. If one was lucky to find love, they were not assured of equality.

Joe or Jody as Hurston double-referenced Janie’s second husband had a twisted character. To one end, how was that person who presented very presentable body curriculum-vitae to the public. Inwardly, he was as cruel as currently can get. Even at this point, it is clear that Hurston was using her to pass the message of white aristocracy. To share the message of the pin-striped suit wearing gentlemen who were darling to their business associates and fellow crooks but cruel to the vulnerable. Precisely, he gained his power by extracting it from others. He felt venerable every time he muzzled Janie’s voice. Janie is looking for a space filled with equity, something which Jody cannot manage to provide. She threatens his insecurity by subtly demanding to be recognized. On Logan’s case, the guy was on old and quite ugly man. From a technical point of view, he needed Janie’s help. At one time he requests her to assist him in moving farm items. Indeed, he owned a very big farm which was evidently beyond his full control largely due to the age factor. Again, Logan had to seek the advice of Nanny when making the decision to marry Janie. That alone illustrate that he could not manage his thoughts to arrive at independent decisions implying a sense of impotence that required support.  Logan’s conception of marriage indicates that he only viewed wives as supportive structures. Additionally, his perception greatly reflected the mindset of men from the south whose possessions came first. If marriage happened, it was a game of convenience and the wife was in the same category as all the workers and possessions in their large firms. Jadie’s conception of marriage signifies the trues state of black women in the 1930’s. They were in genuine search for love, equality and soulful recognition. Sadly all the three factors were in very short supply.

Primarily, while reading Hurston book from a practical point of view and in relation to the situation in the US at the time, silence represented vulnerability. By implication, silence was sign of personal weakness, a lack of sufficient power. However, in the representation of Janie, Hourston takes a different route to portray the effect of silence. She developed the character of Janie as an internally powerful character who had a very high level of interiority. In that case, Jane used silence to reflect and create powerful thought processes in her. This fact explains why even when silence is a sign of weakness, she did move out of three marriages without seeking a single divorce. Once her inner voice told her that enough was enough, she did not hesitate to take a decision. At no single moment did she appear hopeless and helpless against all who traumatized her.  Hurston uses silence in Janie to indicate the power of conscience and consciousness. Janie did know how her husbands were treating her. However, instead of unproductive confrontations, she chose to sustain her search for true love in an environment that supported equality. Silence, in that sense trajectory, again represented what women went through. Most understood that they were powerless. However, instead of taking the route of full submission, they strengthened their characters and shored up their resilience vaults as a means of retaining a direction even when the environment was harsh.

Hurston has expressly applied dialect to share the practical perspective of the issues that Janie faced. This application makes the stories appear real and highly believable.  For example, a reader versed with the US history cab detect that most of the text setting is based on stories and life in the Southern States. From Joe Starks to Logan to Tea Café and the experiences that Janie faced, Hurston had a message from the south to all her readers. Even though Janie is a black woman, the factor of African-Americans and their unfortunate experiences is overwhelmed by ‘southern effect’. Figurative narration as applied in the book is a means of supporting Janie’s character. Janie did not bring out issues openly. Instead, she chose silence and reflection as her guide towards permeating a rough American pathway. Colloquial dialogue supports the practical narration point as highlighted above.

Phoebe takes positively all the stories and experiences that Jadie is passing through. Her character represents that reliable, everyday friend that everyone on the globe has. In fact, she admits that the only difference between her and Jadie is that the latter is more outgoing, independent and adventurous than her. Her character display is that of an average persona, of an individual who is ready to provide a supportive role to others. Hurston, through Janie presents her as highly conservative and average in life. The most significant point in that Phoebe-Janie connection is the role that Janie plays in upraising the morale of Phoebe. Phoebe admits that she became ‘10’ feet taller through the guidance of Janie. The communication point as shared by Hurston is that the society will always have two kinds of people. There will be the bold Janies’ and the conservative and average minded Phoebes’. It is however the role of the strong to guide the weak and elevate them to their levels.

Hurston had the explicit desire of making reference to God. However, from the figurative point of view Hurston was making referring to the external hands when it came to meeting to seeking for their help.  When humanity cannot assist with even the most basic of needs, you can only turn to an external hand for personal gratification. Through Janie, Hurston communicates the plight of black women who had no other source of hope and trust other than God himself. Indeed, their immediate environment did not appreciate or recognize them. Even with their search for authentic things in life, true love and equality, they did attract attention from their fellow living beings. The only solution to that human travesty was extracting hope from another source. Janie is faced white men who the brutal southern mindset. These were supposed to be her intimate soulmates but they ended up being her tormentors. To where else would her eyes watch other than Gods’ direction? Janie and Phoebe lived in psychological solitude due to the exclusion by the white community. For that reason, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

[trendingnewsb]

6 Famous TV Finales Everybody Gets Wrong

With the exception of those soap operas that will outlive our grandchildren, most TV shows eventually come to an end. Final episodes tend to be polarizing; you either love them, or you vow to spend the rest of your days destroying the bastards who created them. The thing is, if you look back at those episodes with a cool head, you might realize that the critical consensus had it all backwards. So before we all realize reality only exists within a snow globe, here are some alternate views on the most famous (and infamous) TV finales ever.

6

Breaking Bad — A Child-Poisoning Psycho Becomes A Superhero

Unless you had a relative who got half their face blown off in a senior living home explosion, chances are you loved Breaking Bad. As for the finale, the critics lapped it up like the blue stuff:

The last episode served to provide emotional closure for beloved protagonist Walter White — you know, that guy who poisons kids and casually watches women choke to death. Which raises a question: Do we want this guy to get a happy ending?

The ending works out so incredibly well for Walt that people have theorized that it’s a fantasy, or even that he’s dead and becomes a ghost (which would at least explain his ability to Patrick Swayze his way into people’s homes). The episode is basically nothing but Walt running through a checklist of shit he wants to do before he dies. It’s one wisecracking Morgan Freeman away from going full Bucket List. And we’re rooting for him the whole way, even when he scares the shit out of the ex-friends whom he (falsely) blames for his misfortunes.

Walt then visits Skyler — again, almost materializing out of thin air — and admits to her that he didn’t cook meth for his family. He did it because he “liked it.”

Which feels like a big moment, but it’s not really enough. Walt’s such a jerk that he can’t even muster an apology for years of lying and making his family the target of a murderous fried chicken restaurateur. For some reason, though, this is good enough for Skyler, who then lets Walt have a tender moment with their baby. You know, the one he once abducted. Even Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg couldn’t make this not creepy.

Then comes the show’s big moment: Walt has to save Jesse, which involves fighting Nazis. Even if you hate Walt, between him and Nazis … well, what kind of asshole would root for the Nazis? So Walt gets to be the badass hero in the end.

One reviewer at Salon points out that while the creators talked about the show as the “transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface,” Tony Montana actually got his comeuppance. Walt, on the other hand, gets to go out completely on his own terms. He’s practically smiling as he dies before the police can arrest him.

Walt martyrs himself and escapes punishment, which is a big problem if you think his transgressions were beyond the point of redemption. Of course, if you believe he then wakes up on the set of Malcolm In The Middle, a lot of these problems go away.

5

Friends — Ross Ruins Rachel’s Career, While Monica Wrecks Joey And Chandler’s Friendship

People seemingly loved the Friends finale, either because they thought it was a good capper to the beloved sitcom or because everything pre-Joey seems like goddamn Faulkner in comparison.

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The finale finds Rachel leaving New York for a dream fashion job in Paris, and Ross suddenly remembering that the only reason people ever liked him was that he was in love with her, so he asks her to stay with him. Ross never suggests he could go with her to Paris; he only wants Rachel to abandon this promising career opportunity and go back to unemployment. The finale wants us to root for Rachel to torpedo her professional life and stay with Ross, who treats her like garbage. To make matters worse, the reason they broke up in the first place was Ross’ crazed jealousy that she was working with a man. So Ross’ desire to have Rachel back romantically is also tied into his desire to have her reject her career ambitions — which, in case you didn’t realize, is fucking terrible.

In the end, she gives up the job for Ross, who’s such a piece of shit he can’t even go 30 seconds without making a joke about the time he cheated on her. Class act, that Ross.

Meanwhile, Monica and Chandler adopt twins and move away from the city … despite the fact that they both work in the city, all their friends live in the city, and they pay practically nothing in rent. In the episode’s most problematic bit of symbolism, the second half of the finale finds Chandler and Joey having to break open their Foosball table because a baby chick crawled inside. It seems the actors’ paychecks were so costly at this point that having a small bird crawl into some gaming equipment was the biggest setpiece they could afford.

They can’t break the table, because it’s a symbol of their years of friendship and youth. So Monica steps in and gleefully demolishes it.

So the message they’re sending here is that women and families will literally break apart your friendships. In the world of Friends, apparently you can’t get married, have kids, and retain your friendships from your 20s; you have to move far away and metaphorically destroy them. If they did a reunion show, it’d be Joey and Chandler awkwardly pretending they didn’t see each other at the mall.

4

Seinfeld — The Last Episode Is A Brilliant Existential Allegory

A lot of people really hated the Seinfeld finale, as evidenced by this moment from David Letterman’s own last episode in which Jerry Seinfeld’s soul seemingly breaks in half:

But unlike the rest of the series, the finale isn’t about nothing; it’s about death. They aren’t even subtle about it. The episode begins with the gang aboard a crashing plane, confronting their own mortality:

And from a meta perspective, these characters are about to die, because their show is ending. Then, at the last minute, the plane rights itself and lands in a small town straight out of The Twilight Zone. In keeping with the cosmic otherworldliness of this town, the four friends are immediately confronted with a moral quandary, a test: help a guy being mugged, or do nothing but make wise-ass comments. Being New Yorkers, they go for the latter.

The gang is then arrested and put on trial for failing to be “Good Samaritans” — meaning that the subject of the trial is the very worthiness of their souls. Interestingly, the judge’s name is Art Vandelay, George’s go-to pseudonym for his elaborate deceptions. This isn’t just a throwaway joke; it’s a sign that this trial isn’t a random bit of happenstance. It’s the Universe reflecting these characters’ moral ineptitude back at them. Their disregard for humanity has been made manifest and is here to judge them, and those who have been wronged throughout the show’s wacky adventures state their cases.

Like Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, Vandelay is judging the characters for their behavior throughout their televised lives. Aside from when How I Met Your Mother ended and caused viewers to abandon any belief in a higher power, how many sitcoms have dared to delve into existential themes like this? Some have even pointed to literary masterpieces such as Camus’ The Stranger and Kafka’s The Trial as possible influences on the ending.

But then, instead of passing peacefully into the metaphorical afterlife, the characters are found guilty and jailed in a kind of TV purgatory. In an amazingly depressing final note, the first line from the very first episode …

… becomes the (next-to) last line of the finale.

Meaning that these characters have exhausted the superficial manner by which they’ve led their lives. There’s nothing left. They will either need to begin a search for substantive meaning, or they are doomed to get caught in an endless spiral of empty repetition. And Newman’s probably the Devil or something. We’re still working on that.

3

Mad Men — The Final Scene Renders Don’s Journey Of Self-Discovery Pointless

Mad Men is undoubtedly one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and for sure the greatest TV show to feature a lawnmower running over a man’s foot at an office party. Critics loved the last episode almost as much as the Sterling Cooper gang loved guzzling whiskey and napping during work hours:

Rolling Stones

New Yorker

Chicago Sun TimesLawnmower Quarterly also gave it a glowing review, despite the “disappointing lack of lawnmowers.”

The finale finds Don Draper in the middle of an existential crisis. After conversations with his daughter, dying ex-wife, and best friend / former protegee don’t really evoke any meaningful change, Don gets dragged to a support group, where he ends up hugging it out with a random dude.

In the end, we see Don meditating on a hilltop … but then he smiles, either because he’s had a brilliant idea or he’s thinking about that time Pete Campbell fell down the stairs. It’s the former, since we then cut to the famous “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke” commercial:

The implication here is that Don took the goodwill and earnestness of the hippie movement that embraced him in a moment of need, then repackaged it as a way to sell brown sugar water — and this is supposed to be a good thing. At a speaking engagement days after the finale, the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, praised the Coke ad for its racial progressiveness, saying “it’s the best ad ever made, and it comes from a very good place.” They even handed out free Coke bottles to the audience, before presumably breaking into a singalong.

The problem is that Don’s flaws were always presented as a living embodiment of the duplicitous nature of advertising. He had all of the superficial components of a happy life, but was riddled with misery and vice. We loved watching Don Draper because he’s the victim of his own bullshit. The opening titles feature a figure helplessly plunging through an abyss of commercialism:

It always sort of seemed like if Don were to grow as a character, it would be accompanied by a rejection of the advertising industry. Instead, Don used a bunch of peace-loving hippies to help promote a corporation that would later dole out the largest settlement in a racial discrimination lawsuit, (allegedly) cause a drought in India, and get boycotted for (allegedly) hiring militias to murder people. So thanks a lot, Don Draper.

2

The Sopranos — Tony Didn’t Die, But Will Simply Be An Asshole Forever

It was one of the most talked-about endings of all time. Tony Soprano is in a diner with his family, when all of a sudden the image cuts to black. What happened? Was Tony killed? Did the cable go out? Did an extra accidentally wander in front of the camera?

But what if that final moment was about something else entirely? The black screen plays out for like ten seconds. Maybe this isn’t merely to mess with the audience. It’s communicating that Tony’s story isn’t necessarily over, but we’re not invited to watch anymore. It’s less about what happened to Tony, and more to do with why the show won’t have any audience anymore. Why is that?

Well, one of the most important structural elements people overlook when discussing the ending is Tony’s therapy. Tony’s journey with self-analysis is essentially what bookends the show. The very first scene of the first episode is Tony arriving at Dr. Melfi’s office …

… and crucially, the penultimate episode finds Tony being thrown out of the office and telling Dr. Melfi off.

This framing device underscores the reason this particular period of time in Tony’s life is the time we spend with him on the show. The Sopranos takes place within a window during which Tony had the potential for change and self-analysis. And in case you didn’t notice, Tony didn’t blossom into a beautiful flower, as evidenced by, say, the time he roughed up his suicidal son for crying. With his therapy at an end and his family’s lives ruined, Tony is going to continue being a piece of shit — or die, it doesn’t really matter. Because the show hasn’t been following Tony. It’s been following Tony’s capacity for growth. Once that has been effectively eradicated, the show is over. He will keep lying to himself and his family. Nothing to see here, folks, just another violent philanderer who lacks self-reflection. It cuts to black as if the video feed to his psyche has been severed. Or someone shot him in the head, it’s hard to say.

1

OK, Here’s A Go-For-Broke Defense Of The Lost Finale

The Lost finale has plenty of detractors. George R.R. Martin famously crapped all over it, and when Breaking Bad‘s last episode aired, jerks Tweet-bombed Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof to say “That’s how it’s done.”

The most common complaint is that the finale didn’t answer any of the show’s mysteries. But as we’ve pointed out, they did. You just had to watch the damn show. Which lots of the finale’s viewers didn’t. Based on the ratings, around a third of the final episode’s audience likely hadn’t watched Lost in years, but were curious to see if the Island would be revealed to be computer game being played by Hitler or something.

Also, despite the fact that people are still confused about this, the characters weren’t dead the whole time. Those eerie shots of the original plane crash’s empty wreckage they showed during the end credits?

Yeah, those were thrown in by the network as a “visual aid” to transition from the show into the nightly news, with no input from the actual writers. They mean nothing.

Now, the characters were dead during the final season’s “Flash Sideways” sequences, which were set in a bizarre magical purgatory that had nothing to do with the show’s established mythology … or did it? The last moment of the finale finds the characters being absorbed in a white Hallmark-y glowing light:

The same kind of light has been used throughout the show to represent the Island’s electromagnetic energy, like when Desmond blows up the Hatch. Hell, the “heart” of the Island is seemingly half urine, half white light. So what if this dimension the characters find themselves in isn’t separate from the Island’s powers? Throughout the show, a lot of stuff people wanted magically appeared on the Island, be it a horse, or food, or even a crapload of smuggled heroin. Wish fulfillment seemed to be the Island’s ultimate power.

Now, the sideways universe only appeared in the last season, after Juliet detonated a nuke from inside a pocket of that energy. She was trying desperately to create an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed.

Her last words? “It worked.” So the result of that action was a false reality created by the Island wherein Juliet and everyone else is granted their innermost desires. The finale may be sappy, but when you boil it down, it’s a pretty damn dark sci-fi story. Our beloved characters have to reject their personal fantasies and abandon a false reality to embrace their own deaths. Of course, this all played out in a church, which kind of felt like the TV equivalent of answering your doorbell and having a Jesus pamphlet shoved in your face.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter, or check out the podcast Rewatchability.

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