#think carefully: if written out would what you are saying constitute an essay?

[alexanderpearce]

the way "video essay" has just replaced the word "video" in the youtube vernacular right now...... girl your 12 minute video on a pop singer getting online cancelled is not a video essay. it is a video.

[mariacallous]

John Bolton is worried about a virus but probably not the one you’re thinking of. The former U.S. national security advisor arrives for lunch at Edgar Bar & Kitchen in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington carrying a long umbrella and a 5,000-word printout of an essay he had written over the holiday break for the National Review. The subject of his cri de coeur? The “virus of isolationism” that has gripped the fringes of his beloved Republican Party. 

Like the restaurant’s namesake—J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, who dined at the hotel on a daily basis—Bolton is a regular. The seat at the back corner, in front of a shelf of Prohibition-era liquor bottles, is his usual spot, the hostess informs me. There is a frisson of excitement among the servers, who evidently know who he is. Shortly before Bolton’s arrival, a Secret Service agent with a discreet coiled earpiece sweeps by, a reminder of the Iranian bounty on his head. “I was offended that they only offered $300,000,” Bolton says when I ask him about it later, before wondering aloud if the price had gone up now that he has a security detail.

Bolton has long served as the id of the Republican Party, happy to say the quiet part out loud on cable news and in the op-ed pages of national newspapers. He has advocated for the bombing of North Korea and Iran, joked on CNN about plotting coups, and most recently called for Turkey to be ejected from NATO.

He joined the White House in April 2018 as then-President Donald Trump’s third national security advisor, at the point when any illusions that the weight of the office would cause Trump’s better angels to prevail had been long since banished. Seventeen months later, he was out—fired or resigned, as Bolton has claimed—as the relationship soured. While much of the Republican Party continues to turn on the Trump axis, Bolton has broken with his former boss in a dramatic fashion. Many of his peers have contorted themselves to fit the MAGA mold or slunk from the limelight altogether, but Bolton has kept on Boltoning. Now, as the Republicans take the gavel in the House of Representatives and Russia’s war in Ukraine approaches its first-year anniversary, I invited Bolton to lunch to find out what one of the party’s foremost hawks makes of recent calls from Republicans to curb U.S. support to Kyiv. 

We meet in early January as Congress is on its sixth—or maybe seventh or eighth or ninth—vote for House speaker as Kevin McCarthy battles a handful of rebels from within his own party. Bolton dismisses the spectacle unfolding on the House floor with trademark alacrity. “I don’t think it’s an ideological division,” he says, “so much as it is between people who may have diverging views but are serious about governing versus people for whom politics has become performance art.”

It’s not that group’s willingness to buck consensus that seems to bother him the most but the hollowness of their position. “If one of the isolationists would stand up and make the case that assisting Ukraine is not in the strategic interest of the United States, then you could at least have a discussion, but that’s not what they do.”

Bolton refused to testify during Trump’s first impeachment hearing, but it was the former president’s declaration that the U.S. Constitution should be terminated that prompted Bolton to throw his hat into an ever-expanding ring of Republican hopefuls weighing a 2024 bid for the White House. “Donald Trump is unacceptable as a Republican nominee,” he said on NBC’s Meet The Press in December. “I had not intended to [run] until Trump came out with his comment,” Bolton tells me. 

One of the presumed 2024 candidates with whom Bolton seems most comfortable is the one who has most often been described as Trump’s heir apparent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Bolton has known since 2012. “I’ve watched him very carefully. I’d feel very comfortable with his foreign policy.”

Bolton is something of a nerd, and true to form, while we wait to order our salads, he offers a potted history of the restaurant, and we get onto the topic of the Mayflower’s cameo in many a Washington spy scandal. This leads us to one of his latest book acquisitions, Cloak and Gown by Robin Winks, about the secret history between academia and the intelligence agencies during World War II and the early years of the Cold War. 

Whether it’s just his nature or experience born out of years of talking to journalists, Bolton offers compact, to-the-point answers to my questions, distinguishing himself from many a voluble Washington denizen of his tenure. Maybe that’s why he feels the need to justify the length of his essay on isolationism. “My feeling has been that I needed to write all this out. So that’s why it’s 5,000 words long,” he says. 

It’s unclear how many Republicans who have questioned military aid to Ukraine would sit down to read such a treatise on U.S. foreign policy. But Bolton got his start in a different era. During his five decades in Washington, Bolton has served in four Republican administrations, holding positions at the Justice Department, State Department, and U.S. Agency for International Development during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Through those various stints in office, he enjoyed many wrestling matches with the bureaucrats. In an era of spicy tweets, dubious facts, and 30-second cable news sound bites, though, I can’t help but wonder if Bolton is bringing a knife to what is now a gunfight. 

It was during his tenure as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in George W. Bush’s first term that Bolton was dubbed “human scum” and a “bloodsucker” by North Korean state media. That came after he delivered a speech in which he described North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a “tyrannical dictator.” He would later describe the moniker from Pyongyang as the “highest accolade” he had received during his time in the junior Bush’s administration. 

During Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination to serve as Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, an altogether more serious series of claims were made—that Bolton had sought to cherry-pick intelligence and bullied analysts who challenged his conclusions. Bolton was a “kiss-up, kick-down” sort of guy, the former head of the State Department’s in-house intelligence bureau, Carl W. Ford Jr., told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bolton denied the allegations, but his nomination stalled, and he was ultimately sent to the United Nations as a recess appointee. 

Bolton does not seem to mind and perhaps even revels in his reputation as the enfant terrible of the Republican Party. I ask him how he would describe his role within the ecosystem of the party, but the man who has been called all sorts of things says he is not a fan of labels. “I don’t like these bumper stickers, this taxonomy of trying to put people in boxes,” he says.

In August 2022, the Justice Department revealed that it had charged an Iranian man with plotting to have Bolton assassinated. This was in apparent retaliation for the U.S. drone strike at the beginning of 2020 that killed Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani. Bolton was first alerted of the plot in early 2021. He was called into FBI Headquarters shortly before Thanksgiving that year to be warned that the threat had become more specific. 

“‘If this threat were because of my op-eds and speeches, I would be flattered, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I think it’s what I was doing in the government,’” he recalls telling the room of 15 or so investigators, before suggesting that it was perhaps incumbent on the government to therefore to do something about it. “They said, ‘Have you called the Biden White House?’ And I said, ‘Are you crazy? Of course I haven’t called the Biden White House. Why don’t you call the Biden White House?’” Shortly afterward, President Joe Biden signed an order providing Bolton with Secret Service protection. 

Although Bolton’s service in the Trump White House follows him quite literally these days—in the form of a security detail—he is eager to distance himself from the former president. In fact, in diagnosing the resurgence of isolationism within the Republican Party, Bolton points to Trump as patient zero.

Pinning down a coherent way to describe Trump’s foreign policy evaded the Washington commentariat throughout his presidency. His administration cranked the dial on U.S. competition with China, assassinated an influential Iranian general, and brokered the Abraham Accords between Israel and a number of Arab states, while also alienating allies in Europe, signing a catastrophic deal with the Taliban, and withdrawing the United States from both the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accords. 

It was an approach forged by the president’s own whims and whichever faction of the bureaucracy around him had succeeded in getting his ear. “Donald Trump didn’t have an ideology or a philosophy either, because he couldn’t think coherently enough to have one,” Bolton says flatly. 

Trump’s promises of ending the so-called forever wars tapped an anti-interventionist nerve running through both parties these days. But it is on the question of military aid to Ukraine that the isolationist streak in the Republican Party has been most pronounced. Eleven Republican senators voted against a $40 billion package for Ukraine last May, while Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Chip Roy, and Matt Gaetz are among those who have called U.S. military aid for Ukraine into question, joining Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. (Speaking at an event in Washington on Wednesday, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “amazed and horrified by how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson. … All of these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his perspective.”)

Bolton is convinced that the isolationist sentiment that has welled up around Ukraine has more to do with fealty to Trump than the result of a strategic assessment of U.S. national security priorities. The former president’s personal distaste for Ukraine has been well documented by former White House officials. It emerged during impeachment hearings in 2019 that Trump had become convinced by what his former top Russia advisor Fiona Hill described as a “fictional narrative” that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—and not in his favor. 

“It colored his whole attitude toward Ukraine and therefore colored the minds of some people in Congress,” Bolton says.

U.S. intelligence officials concluded that the narrative was likely cooked up by Russian intelligence to undermine U.S. support for Kyiv. If Bolton’s theory is correct, that would mean that elements of the current resistance to sending further military aid to Ukraine may well represent, however unwittingly, the long tail of a Russian disinformation campaign still playing out in Washington.

There is an old saying in Washington that when it comes to choosing their presidential candidates, Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line. In light of McCarthy’s humiliating road to become House speaker, I ask Bolton whether he still recognizes his party as it stands today. “Oh, sure. I still think the isolationist virus is a very small percentage of the party both in Congress and in the public at large,” he replies. 

I tell him I’m inclined to agree, but the skeptic in me is unsure whether the quiet majority will win out against the vocal minority. But Bolton is ready for the fight. 

“I don’t plan to rest on my laurels. Let’s have the debate. That’s how you find out who’s going to win and who’s going to lose. I’m ready for it.”

[phati-sari]

Hello Phati Sari. I asked the question about the suicide attempt. And I just saw the answers about Arnav’s abuse. That is what I am getting at. I feel like he reflected on his feelings for Khushi and realized her innocent or not didn’t matter because he loved her. But I’m not sure he ever reflected on how his actions drove her to the state of mind where she would carefully plan a suicide based on the reasons she gave. And jumping from a one story building could have caused multiple broken bones.

This continues my earlier ask. Couldn’t type anymore. Besides broken bones, head injuries and lacerations could occur. I am at a disadvantage because I don’t speak Hindi so depend on blogs for translation and analysis sometimes. He does say sorry on the way to remarriage but in the light of the real abuse he did I am not sure it showed effectively enough his understanding of that. I just discovered the rewinds where he reflects and I understand he does show it there sometimes but I can find no

To continue. Sorry so long. I can find no English translations for his dialogs in the rewinds. Is there a place you know where some might be available or can you throw some light on pieces of his dialog that shows some deeper understanding of how his actions were abusive and he takes ownership for that abuse aside from Khushi letting him off the hook because she knows he loves her and her tears hurt him too. Sorry that isn’t enough for understanding even in fiction. Please edit ask if need. Than

Hello!

Firstly, I have to say that I think I’ve answered your question already. I realise it was not to your satisfaction, but in my mind I’ve already given my answer. I’m going to answer using specific quotes from your ask to make this a little easier because I think you’re actually asking a different question entirely.

But I’m not sure he ever reflected on how his actions drove her to the state of mind where she would carefully plan a suicide based on the reasons she gave.

But explicitly on-screen, no.

And jumping from a one story building could have caused multiple broken bones. Besides broken bones, head injuries and lacerations could occur.

Well yeah, I wasn’t minimising what could’ve happened. Your earlier question, however, explicitly asked whether Arnav could chalk it up to drama, and I said he could. 

That you didn’t like the answer doesn’t change my outlook -- yes the outcome could’ve been serious but a man who thinks he was duped by this woman’s faux innocence, that she was always trying to entrap or confuse him, could absolutely have come to the conclusion that she was faking her attempt at suicide because she wanted something from him.

To clarify, I’ve never thought her attempt was anything but serious, and have written essays about how much I disagreed with the track being given a comedic treatment.

I just discovered the rewinds where he reflects and I understand he does show it there sometimes

Does he though? I mean, Arnav spends most of his time spouting poetry in the Rewind, not genuinely reflecting on his behaviour. I’ll admit to my bias -- both EJ and Rewind strike me as out-of-character bullshit that I enjoy if the mood strikes me, but they’re not canon in my eyes.

Is there a place you know where some might be available or can you throw some light on pieces of his dialog that shows some deeper understanding of how his actions were abusive and he takes ownership for that abuse aside from Khushi letting him off the hook because she knows he loves her and her tears hurt him too

You’re not going to find this in the canon. I’m sorry, I understand why you’re looking for it, really I do. The closest we get are vague statements in EJ and in the Rewind. 

(This turned into a bit of a live-blog on the Rewind.)

In Episode 1 of the Rewind, Arnav reflects on their first meeting. He says that he was angry at Khushi because his show was ruined. He says that he rained upon her like lava. (Lava?? That’s taken straight from fanfiction my God.)

Arnav: “Aaj yaad karta hoon toh lagta hai ki kitna bura bartaav kiya maine uske saath uss din.” -- When I think about it now, I think of how badly I behaved with her that day. 

He admits to wrongdoing but as it immediately follows a justification, I’m not convinced it’s particularly reflective or deep. He always knew he was wrong -- the countless flashbacks to this meeting showed this in the canon.

In Episode 2, when he talks about the release of the video footage, Arnav smilingly tells the camera that he didn’t realise it would ~complicate~ Khushi’s life so much. This one action invited Shyam into her life and he smiles while he recalls it???

Ugh, this is the episode with the naaaaaavvvvvvv. Naaaaaaaavvvv. Fuck me dead I hate the Rewind so much, anon you’d better send me loads of virtual potatoes for this!

Episode 3, in which Arnav reduces his abuse of the employer-employee relationship with Khushi to a video game in which one has to defeat their opponent.

At least she apparently took the raksha bandhan seriously.

OH MY GOD THE MUG I’D FORGOTTEN THE MUG, BLISSFULLY WIPED IT FROM MY MEMORY. MY EYES. MY EEYYYEEESSS.

In Episode 6, Arnav admits he feels guilty when he thinks of the things he said and made Khushi do on the night of the photoshoot. His punishment is taking his wife to eat parathas -- a punishment Arnav admits is inadequate because he made so many mistakes.

In Episode 7, Arnav admits that regrets many of his decisions in his and Khushi’s story. But he hedges, saying that his mind wasn’t listening to his heart at the time. And then tries to justify his anger by bringing up that she told everyone about Lavanya.

In Episode 8, Arnav says that he gets goosebumps when he thinks about something happening to Khushi at the guesthouse. He says he still gets tears in his eyes when he thinks about how her arm was hurt. And yet, no examination of physical abuse.

In Episode 9, he admits that he’d crossed too many lines and Khushi’s anger was justified when she resigned. He admits that he made her life miserable, that he was “torturing” her. He says that he’d never send her where her life was in danger, though, and that she was wrong in saying that.

Ahh I’d totally spaced on him saying that he’d heard his dhak-dhak for the first time on Teej. 

In Episode 14, Arnav reiterates that he regrets how he treated Khushi, and he wishes they knew what they know now: that they were falling in love.

And then Arnav disappears from the Rewind. His behaviour in the contract marriage and beyond is not reflected on.

I’m not seeing anything in the Rewind that constitutes Arnav showing a deeper understanding of his abusive behaviour and taking ownership of it and its influence on Khushi. I mean, it’s there in the edges of what he says, but it’s not actually what he says. And what he says was always in the serial -- in his monologues, in his flashbacks, in his moments of introspection. It should not be news to anyone.

When I say IPKKND is set in a fantasy world where Arnav’s behaviour is not coded as abusive, I don’t mean and so we shouldn’t examine it through that lense. I mean that the characters will not admit to it being abuse any more than Aragorn is going to comment on the lack of women in LOTR or Aslan is going to say “I’m actually Jesus.” The conclusion that his behaviour is abusive is external to the serial, internally he’s driven by the trauma of the Tragedy and has the blessing of Devi Maiyya.

And so, there is no examination -- internally -- of this behaviour. Even in Lavanya’s case, Arnav never mentions the gross power imbalance and her ready acceptance of his abuse as reasons for the breakup. The show is silent on the topic (though my recaps aren’t) and the audience is left with the genuinely absurd idea that it was about how he didn’t love her. It wasn’t -- he knew he didn’t love her when they first broke up lol. It was about their interaction at the poolside where she admitted he’d never been nice to her. Ever. And that she just accepted as it as a given in their dynamic. Even in the Rewind, Arnav emphasizes that he didn’t love Lavanya, that he only saw her as a friend, instead of admitting he was emotionally abusive.

Coming back to Arnav’s reflection -- Arnav always, always, will be able to justify his point of view. Everyone is the Hero in their own story -- the entire thrust of this blog is to show that.

Now, I don’t need Arnav to say he was abusive -- I know he was, but I also think the redemption he was offered in the serial was fine (I’m qhsahil in that exchange, but I reckon you will agree with the others). I think it was in keeping with the characters shown in the serial and I have absolutely no desire to see any come-upperance or vengeance on Khushi’s behalf.

In conclusion, I get where you’re coming from, and I even understand why you want to see him say and admit these things, but I disagree that we see (or ever will see) them in the canon, or that we even need them in general.

Thanks for asking!

[zololacan]

Marxist and bourgeois definitions of the word “party” The word “party” comes from the Latin pars, that is, a part. Today we Marxists say that a party is a part of a particular class. The representatives of the bourgeois world of course think otherwise. So for example the distinguished German conservative journalist Stahl who classified parties by the appearance of their degree of revolutionary or constitutional basis in relation to the old regime came to the conclusion that the struggle of parties is the struggle between the divine and the human order, between the precepts of divine providence and institutions created as a result of the transient needs and fancies of man, or to put it more briefly, between good and evil. And the no less distinguished Zurich political figure, Rohmer, attempts to place psychology at the basis of the definition of parties. He says approximately the following: “Human society is born, develops and dies. Consequently it can be young or old. In accordance with its age this or that political outlook holds sway. In man’s childhood the passive forces of the spirit prevail; sensibility and living fantasy develop during this stage but there is no creative force or rational criticism. Radicalism above all corresponds to this state. (Hence radical parties). In youth and maturity the creative forces of the spirit and healthy criticism move to the fore, in youth a striving for creativity plays the major role while in maturity it becomes one to conserve what has been acquired. Liberalism and conservatism correspond to these states. (According to this theory the majority of those present in this hall filled with communists ought to be either liberals or conservatives.) Finally in old age the passive forces of the spirit take the upper hand; a fear of everything new and an addiction to me old; this corresponds to absolutism. Thus in any society young, mature and senile elements are simultaneously in existence and we can see corresponding to this coexistence radical, liberal, conservative and absolutist parties out of which those which most closely match the temperament and spirit of the people predominate. The existence of all these parties is inevitable; political life must proceed through equally active forces which have developed in society and the wise politician must even when fighting against them never aim to destroy any one of them completely because such an aim is unattainable, and to accomplish it would only drive tho infection inside the organism. The temperament of a given individual will primarily determine his adherence to one or another party. Thus Alcibiades was a boy all his life, Pericles remained a youth until his grave, Scipio was a man and Augustus was born an old man. And peoples also are in just the same way distinguished by different characters: the Germans are conservative by temperament but liberal by their cast of mind; the Russians are radical but inclined towards absolutism.” (All this was of course written before 1917). Why cannot bourgeois science provide a correct definition of the word “party"? So you can see that in bourgeois science the definitions of the concept of “party” are extremely diverse. And it is a rare thing when one of its representatives decides to take the bull by the horns and says straight out that a party is the militant organisation of this or that class. This simple truth which is absolutely plain to you and me, bourgeois scientists will not and cannot admit for the same reason that they avoid calling parliamentarianism or the church by their proper names. The bourgeois system is by its very nature compelled to depict a whole number of institutions designed for the class oppression of the proletariat as organs of class harmony and reconciliation; it has to present them to public opinion and even to itself in just this form and not as organs of class struggle. To clarify even more I will give you a definition of the word “party” belonging to one of the comparatively inoffensive Russian journalists, the half-Cadet, half-Narodnik and fairly talented journalist, Vodovozov. In a particular essay devoted to the definition of the word “party” he writes “What is a party? This word refers to more or less sizeable groups of people having common political ideals and striving for one and the same political reforms and organised for the defence of these ideals or for the struggle to realise them”. This definition appears to be innocuous and close to the truth. But in fact the author consciously and carefully avoids the words “class” and “class struggle”. In his opinion a party is purely and simply an organisation of like-minded people sympathising with a specific “ideal”. To put it another way the very essence is tacking from this definition, it lacks flesh and blood, suffers from anaemia and has no real content.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/zinoviev/works/history/ch01.htm

[ruminativerabbi]

Ghost DNA

Joe Biden seems clearly to have won the election and, barring the unimaginable, will become our nation’s next president in January. But the election itself is worth considering in its own right, and particularly in terms of what it has to say about our riven nation. No matter who you personally supported, after all, not millions but scores of millions of Americans voted for the other guy. And if President-Elect Biden, with more than 76 million votes, is now the presidential candidate with the most popular votes in U.S. history, President Trump, with more than 71 million votes, is still the candidate with the second most popular votes in the history of the nation. (By way of comparison, President Obama won in 2008 with 69.5 million votes. Abraham Lincoln won with a mere 2.2 million votes in 1864, fewer than the number of people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.) So to focus solely on who won and to ignore the fact that both candidates cleared the 70 million vote barrier, something no one in the nation’s history had ever managed previously to accomplish, is really to focus on the simple part of the story and to ignore the complicated part. Yes, there are way more eligible voters now than there were in 1864. But that’s not really the point.

Both Democrats and Republicans took to referencing this election as a kind of battle for the nation’s soul. Neither side provided a clear definition of what that actually meant, however. And so, a few weeks ago, I wrote to you about a long poem by Walt Whitman in which the poet attempted clearly to say what he considered to constitute the parts of the soul of the American republic. His answers—individualism, mutual respect, friendship untied to social class or race or ethnicity, and a shared sense of national destiny—were stirring but also quaint: I doubt if many readers would have come up with those precise things, and particularly not the last one, if challenged to answer that same question. But if we reject Whitman’s answer as too rooted in nineteenth century romanticism to resonate much with Americans today, then that leaves us challenged to say what precisely we do feel is motivating the intense feelings on both sides of the ballot. Is it just the issues themselves that divide us? Or is there something else tugging at our national heartstrings and pulling us off in different directions?

As readers know, I generally grant Whitman the last word on more or less everything. But this time ’round, I found myself pondering how an entire nation can look at the same television screens and wonder, as one, how those people can feel that strongly about the candidate of their choice and his running mate. Nor did it seem to me that it was the differences of opinion about specific issues that was moving us forward to Election Day, but rather energy created by the intensity of the disrespect for the unchosen candidate and the angry, intemperate scorn directed at his supporters. It struck me almost as though there were unseen players in the room, a raft of ghostly presences just off camera influencing the demonstrators and the slogan-chanters, the disaffected and the jubilant, and also the rest of everybody sporting their pasted-on “I Voted” stickers. And that thought—that there were more people here than I could see on my screen—that thought led me off in the direction I’d like to write about this week.

When Joan and I were in Maine last summer, I read a series of truly intriguing articles about something called “ghost DNA.”

To understand the concept, you need to know that there was a time when different species and subspecies of human being wandered the earth. (This is not at all how things are today when the sole variety of human being is us, Homo sapiens.) Those different species interbred with each other too, as a result of which scientists have determined that modern Europeans—or at least the kind whose ancient ancestors lived in Europe and whose families have remained rooted to that continent ever since—that that kind of modern European has a few dollops of Neanderthal genetic heritage in their DNA, just as native Australians and Polynesians have some traces of the Denisovans, another type of ancient humanoid species. (For more on the Denisovans, click here.) And now Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman, two computational biologists at the University of Southern California, have taken the idea one step further by analyzing the DNA of four different groups of West Africans (two from Nigeria and one each from Sierra Leone and Gambia), and concluding that they almost universally carry the genetic heritage—ranging from 2% to 19% of any specific individual’s genetic code—of an unknown group of archaic human species. And since nothing is known of this subspecies, the researchers used the term “ghost population” to describe this humanoid species that appears to have to have existed but who have left behind no trace of any sort other than their “ghost DNA.” (For more about Durvasula and Sankararaman’s work, click here and here. For their own essay on the topic, written in scientific jargon that will be difficult for most to decipher, click here.)

When considered carefully, this really is a remarkable idea—that human beings have two kinds of genetic ancestry: the kind they can identify (e.g., the Finnish ancestors of the Finns and the Samoan ancestors of the Samoans, etc.) and the ghostly, spectral kind that survives today only as genetic code that had to come from somewhere but about the origins of which nothing at all is known. And that led me to the idea that the reason we are so divided—to the point at which we seem unable to develop even something as inarguably essential as a unified national approach to the pandemic—that the reason we are so riven has to do with the ghost DNA bequeathed to us by people long gone from the scene and present now only as part of the national genome. But who are these people that are present and absent in our national psyche as we try to negotiate these strange straits in which we suddenly find ourselves?

There are lots of candidates.

There are the original native peoples of North America, decimated by disease and the victims of a kind of malign colonialism that was willing to allow them some tiny piece of the pie if they would be so kind as to abandon their own native culture, forget their native languages, convert to their oppressors’ religion, and not to mind having their land stolen out from under them. (For an eye-opening expose of just how highly developed the native civilizations of North America were before the European occupation began, I recommend Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Spoiler alert: the picture fed to everyone my age in elementary school of brave and adventurous Europeans coming to an almost empty continent inhabited solely by a handful of naked savages eager to sell their land for brightly colored beads and a few flasks of whiskey is completely false. Read Mann’s book and you’ll get the picture.)

Then, of course, there are the descendants of the 388,000 slaves taken from their native lands in Africa and sold on this side of the world starting back in 1525, a group that that had burgeoned to about 3.5 million when the Civil War began in 1861. The single greatest blot on our national escutcheon, the institution itself of chattel slavery was abolished in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment. The fate of the emancipated—who were in most cases illiterate and untrained for work other than what they were used to doing on the plantations on which they lived—is its own horrific scandal. But what of the millions of slaves who didn’t live to see emancipation, who were dragged onto slavers’ ships in Africa after being purchased from people who didn’t own them, then sent across the sea to serve masters who felt they did own them because they had, after all, purchased them—what about the millions of souls who lived and died deprived of hope, of any rational sense of confidence in the future, of even the faint promise of a better future for their descendants in future generations? They too have left their imprint on the national genome. How could they not have?

And then there are the 20,000 Chinese immigrants who built the Transcontinental Railroad in the years following the Civil War, people who were exploited in every imaginable way, being paid salaries less than half of what white workers received and charged for their food in the labor camps that was provided free of charge to white workers.

All of these groups—the left-out and the left-behind, the downtrodden and the enslaved, the exploited and the oppressed—these long-gone groups are as invisible as the ones identified by Durvasula and Sankararaman but their presence in our national DNA is, I think, precisely what is dividing us so evenly into two sub-nations: those who feel threatened by the ghosts in our national genome and those who feel challenged by it, those who seek resolution and those who fear retribution, those whom history chastens and those whom history enrages.

The challenge facing the nation, therefore, is not to wrangle around endlessly about who won Georgia. It won’t change the outcome, anyway, so let it be figured out, certified, and moved past. The far greater challenge facing Americans is to encounter our own genome and to allow the ghosts we find there to make us into sensitive and caring citizens of a truly great republic. No more than that! But also no less.

[nevillelongsbottom]

Congrats again you totally deserve muuuuuuch more followers! 🎉🎉🎉 i was thinking maybe Neville x Viktor? 😍 in any way you like them

There’s a boy on his own at the end of the Gryffindor table, a clique of burgundy robes, and then him - he’s separated, a good way aways from anything that constitutes a filled chair, and poking lamely at his food with his fork; Viktor can’t help but feel attracted, like magnetism - one loner to another, and he takes a seat opposite the Gryffindor boy.

“Is it okay?” he asks, and the boy looks up from his messy tufts. 

“Oh,” he says shyly. “Yeah. It’s okay. But no-one will think you’re cool here.”

Viktor blinks. What does it matter if he’s cool? He’s not going to be accepted into the Tournament on merits of social popularity, that’s for sure, and with a grunt, he stays.

-

The boy’s name is Neville; this is information Viktor only garners when he hears the screech through the hallway, usually accompanied by a runaway toad and/or a clatter. Viktor thinks it’s rather a nice name.

Awkwardly, he crouches and picks up the toad, waiting patiently to catch sight of Neville’s curls. It’s inevitable. 

-

Viktor never exchanges words with Neville; it’s not a part of their daily exchanges of looks and thoughts, and so when it happens, it’s rare, cherishable, enough to put in the Durmstrang school paper. He’s asleep in the school library when they talk, face buried between the pages of a Herbology journal, his chest rising and falling with a gentle snore every now and then. 

He’s cute, unbelievably so: he’s got notes beside him, written in handwriting painstakingly lettered for readability, parchment in huge rolls of the stuff, and his fingers are gently blackened with ink. 

But Pince is patrolling, and the quiet has to end.

Viktor places a hand on Neville’s shoulder, squeezing. “Neville,” he whispers. “Neville.”

Neville starts, suddenly, lifting his head, eyes bleary with sleep. “Huh? What’s going on?”

“The woman,” Viktor says, and Neville almost jumps out of his seat, throwing his parchment and books with reckless abandon into his bag and hurrying, Viktor by his side, out the door; nothing good ever comes of being in the library at closing time, and Neville’s fallen asleep so many times it’s ingrained in him. “What were you doing?”

Neville’s so unused to Viktor speaking that it takes him a moment to work through the layers of his accent. 

“Oh, um, I was just looking for stuff.” Neville squeezes the strap of his backpack, nerve-wracked. “For the Task. I wondered if there was some kind of plant that could help; I really like Herbology, so I thought it could be good for homework, too… but I didn’t find anything.”

Viktor smiles; nobody’s ever done anything for him so selflessly, thoughtlessly easy. “Thank you.”

Neville flushes. “I don’t know if you should thank me. I haven’t found anything yet.”

-

(Neville doesn’t find anything; he’s almost too ashamed to turn out, but he does, Dean coaxing him out of the dorm. 

“Doesn’t matter if you didn’t find anything,” he says. “You tried. He’ll appreciate it.” 

Neville chews at his nail. “Will he, though?”)

-

Viktor’s arms are lightly scorched when he eats dinner with Neville that evening; and they spend the night in the greenhouses, rubbing mushed-up plant along the shining red burns. 

“Does it hurt?” Neville asks, frowning lightly. 

“No,” says Viktor. (It hurts; but Neville’s frown is harangued by such worry that he feel like there’s no choice but to lie - but it doesn’t hurt so much that it’s unbearable, and if it makes Neville happy, then is it a problem?) 

“Okay. But - but tell me if it does, okay?”

“Okay,” says Viktor, and suppresses a smile.

-

It’s just breakfast, lunches, and dinners until then, where neither of them exchange words, as ever; but it doesn’t really matter, not to Viktor, and Neville’s thankful for the idea that anyone would sit with him - he loves it, really. Friends are something he never feels like he gets to have - unless Viktor is there.

That’s their comfort zone, and the way they understand each other: Neville through his desperate over-reading, trying to be as on top of his classes as possible, Viktor in his stony silence, the only way to read his thoughts being where his eyes so happen to fall.

Some month or two before the Second Task, his eyes start to fall on Harry; and Neville starts to spend more time in the library.

-

“Will you go with me?” Viktor asks suddenly, out of nowhere; Neville looks up, mid-spoonful of porridge. The furrow of his brow belies his confusion, and Viktor continues, carefully. “To the Ball.”

“I-” Neville flusters, not entirely sure what to do with any part of himself as he shifts, letting his porridge drip from the spoon at dropping consistency. “I’d love to,” he mumbles. “If they’ll let you.”

“If they don’t,” Viktor says seriously, “I will complain.”

Neville has to cover his mouth to stop himself bursting into laughter, and Viktor looks at him with just a tinge of not understanding; the rest of the look is the affection with which they’ve been trading in spoonfuls throughout the year, and Neville settles down, right back into their usual comfort. 

-

Neville practises the whole way through to the Ball, waltzing with his pillow when he hopes that no-one is watching; he’s determined not to fuck this one up, because Merlin, that’s what he always does, but he wants everything to go well for Viktor, someone he can understand, an outsider just like him.

And Viktor is so handsome it just steals his breath and his rationality away; when he takes Viktor’s hand to take to the dancefloor, everything he’s learned evacuates him, and his feet just trail Viktor’s shyly as he stares up at the impassive Bulgarian. 

They sit down fairly quickly - Viktor would rather dance, of course, because he doesn’t know how to use his words the way that so many people seem to be able to, but Neville’s trodden on his feet and he’s trodden on Neville’s and it feels compulsory to have a break to let the Gryffindor stretch his weary toes.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Viktor asks, watching as teen after teen spins past him in a strange, slow-motion merry-go-round. 

“Well, I’m just not very good at dancing… I’m sorry, I’m embarrassing you in front of everybody,” Neville mumbles, eyelids fluttering as he stares down at the floor; but Viktor isn’t having this. Neville is a tripping mess of anxiety and bumbling shyness, and he just wishes that Neville knew he was worth so much more - he’s the company that Viktor doesn’t get back home, the real company to Viktor’s Triwizard fanclub, somebody who cares and falls asleep at the threat of being screamed out the library for him, somebody who puts selflessness over overdue Potions essays. 

“You are not,” Viktor says, with so much emphasis that he worries for a moment that he’s actually scared Neville - but Neville’s spent so many years being taught by Snape that he’s unflinching in the face of a raised voice, more scared by cynicism and wit than shouting. “You are important to me, or I would not have asked you here.” 

“But… I’m just clumsy, and stupid.”

Viktor reaches over, grabbing Neville’s hand. “But you are not any of those things to me! You are important, Neville. I do not care if you walk into tables, or that your writing is not neat. I care that you are kind and think of me.” 

Neville’s so red he almost matches the red of Viktor’s usual coat; but he’s lost, now, drowned in a wash of feelings that come up to swallow him whole, and he lowers his head onto Viktor’s shoulder as Viktor brushes a hand through Neville’s hair. “I treasure you,” says Viktor.

The corridor is quiet when they decide to head back to their respective rooms, a little earlier than the ending of the Yule Ball; Neville’s always been easily tired, and Viktor isn’t exactly the biggest fan of the Weird Sisters, and they step outside together, Viktor walking Neville back to the common room.

“Good night,” he says, and leans forward, touching his lips to Neville’s forehead; when he leaves, Neville is torn: he wants to leave his forehead alone, adorned just with Viktor’s lips, but he wants to touch it.

His breath catches. Dean is back, early, and he looks up; Seamus has crashed in his lap. He raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Neville breathes. “Yeah.”

-

Time passes. The feeling of Viktor’s lips on his forehead wash away, and yet the feeling of familiarity over the breakfast table never end.

-

“It’s Gillyweed,” Neville says, pressing the thing into Viktor’s hand. “It’ll mean that you can breathe underwater - but I don’t know how long it lasts, so - don’t be too slow, please? I don’t want you to drown.”

Viktor stares back up at him; this is all out of nowhere, really - Neville’s run up to him in the corridor, all out of puff and red-cheeked, his eyes shining with that stupid Gryffindor earnesty that Viktor always sees from him.

“Thank you,” he says, surprised. “I will be quick.”

“Good luck,” says Neville, and disappears off down the corridor. Viktor closes his hand around the plant.

-

Viktor expects many things, but he doesn’t expect Neville paralysed at the bottom of the Lake; he bursts back through the surface of the water first, Neville’s eyes wide and terrified when they emerge, his dark hair plastered to his forehead and his pupils wide.

He looks like he wants to scream, but he doesn’t have the voice, and so instead he clings to Viktor, desperate. Viktor doesn’t let go, not even when they’re back to safety and towel-wrapped; Neville keeps close, even when his heart has calmed again, listening to the heartbeat that thrums in Viktor’s veins. 

-

The Third Task always looms, and Neville waits almost as anxiously for its arrival as the Champions do; his hand shakes slightly when he eats breakfast, and though Viktor tries not to notice, he inevitably does.

“I will be fine,” he assures Neville. “I will come back.”

“Please do,” Neville says. “I need you to come back.”

“I promise you. I will.” Viktor runs a thumb across the back of Neville’s hand, and though it almost does, it doesn’t reassure, in the end.

-

It’s never truly summer in Scotland, and Neville always finds himself bundled up a few layers too thick for English weather - and also finds himself spending ever more time with Viktor out on the grounds and during the day, from just late afternoons with little to do to wanderings between classes.

They never really say anything to each other, save to ask how the other is doing; for Neville, how his studies are; for Viktor, how is he approaching what Neville views as inevitable doom. They discuss the situation at Hogwarts and the students sometimes when they park themselves on the grass to relax, and Viktor watches the scudding of the clouds.

“If I did die in the Tournament,” he says, “it would be a good end. I have had a good year, thanks to you.”

“Please don’t die,” Neville implores, again; it’s almost become his catchphrase, one grown out of desperation and possibly giving too much credence to the wild rumours that surround Harry and Cedric. He presses his head to the warmth of Viktor’s padded shoulder, and holds on to Viktor’s arm. “I’d miss you.”

“And from death,” says Viktor, “I would miss you, too.”

-

The Third Task looms, waiting like a boggart in a cupboard, and Neville descends on the week of the task almost into hysteria; Viktor has the patience for him, well-acquainted with Neville’s nervous disposition, and the only thing he doesn’t expect is the sudden quieting of Neville’s interpersonal histrionics with him the day before the Final Task, a day that they choose to spend mostly outdoors in the slightly crisp cool of the air.

“You are quiet,” Viktor notes.

“I’m sorry,” says Neville. “I shouldn’t have been so worried. You can handle yourself. I’m such an embarrassment.”

“You are never,” Viktor insists, putting an arm around Neville; he’s more of a physical comfort, his words always seeming to lack the punch that most people do - but then that would make him just like Neville: not quite right. Neville appreciates his words, though, because even if they seem hollow to their tones, they’re well-chosen if they’ve been allowed to pass Viktor’s lips. “I hope you will still care for me if I do not win.”

“I’d love you even if you pulled out now,” Neville says unflinchingly. “Or tripped over a rock, or fell into something. I would like you if your wand backfired and turned you into a weasel, or if you were so nervous you couldn’t even cast lumos. I would care about you if you fainted from fright or got hit by a Blast-Ended Skrewt or if you did so badly you got minus points, because I like you and not just those stupid Triwizard points because yeah, I get it, it’s a marker of your skills prowess, but that’s not what I’m with you for.”

Viktor grins; it’s an expression of such fierce joy that Neville’s mouth is still a round circle when Viktor leans in to kiss it, moulding Neville’s lips back into their normal shape and then beyond, into art and sculpture. Physically, it’s terrible - but the act of their connection means the world to Neville, and he’s speechless when they pull back from each other, having tasted a little too much of the other.

“I shall come in first for you,” Viktor says. “Or third. Or any place that you like. But I shall return for you.”

Neville’s eyes soften, almost glistening. He feels like he never has before: understood, treasured, a friend (or more, now, he supposes). “I’ll be rooting you on,” he says simply, and beams.

[simpsonmayy-blog]

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[kabane52]

Hi! I was wondering where you got the Biblical timeline of the Temple of Solomon being completed a thousand years before Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD - and how the Temple of Solomon was built 3000 years after the Creation. I would love it if that were true, but as near as I can tell there are all sorts of dates based on Scripture as to when God created the world, most of them not quite matching up to the idea of perfect intervals between these times.

Hi there,

Thanks for your very good question. I highly recommend you acquire James B. Jordan’s essays on the chronology of the Bible: over 500 pages of single spaced, 10 pt. font dealing in depth with every aspect of biblical chronology. If you want a detailed treatment, with every point abundantly evidenced, get that. You can find them over at wordmp3 for a couple dollars. It’s absolutely worth it. Here’s what drives differences in chronologies:

-The text used. This is what drives the large differences. Certain chronologists use the text of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by Eastern Christians, while other chronologists use the text of the Hebrew Bible, which was the text forming the basis of the Vulgate used by Western Christians. In the ancient church, there were representatives of both: with St. Bede using a Hebrew-based chronology even as Gregory the Theologian used an LXX-based chronology. Textually, these are very complicated issues. However, there is strong evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls that these texts were sometimes checked to ensure conformance with an official Hebrew text- this is the way the Bible presents Scripture. It is written, official copies are made, and an official text is stored in the tabernacle or temple. That the DSS were being checked to conform to a Hebrew text looking very much like the Masoretic indicates that the Masoretic is a close representative of this official text. This book is also useful:

https://www.amazon.com/Numerical-Secrets-Bible-Rediscovering-Codes/dp/0941037673/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457406879&sr=8-1&keywords=Numerical+secrets+of+the+bible

The title is meant to get attention: this has nothing to do with the ridiculous “Bible Codes” propounded in the media a couple decades ago. Instead, this book pays close attention to the use of numerical symbolism as a literary device- a device known not only from the Bible (Old and New Testaments), but also from other ancient texts. Because writing space was constrained in the ancient world, ancient authors were artists, designing and crafting their works to hold as much meaning in as small a space as necessary. There are literary features in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 which only make sense in light of the numbers present in our Hebrew text.

Once one decides what text one wishes to use, adding up the numbers is very easy, and there is no disagreement about the numbers of Genesis 5 and 11 among those who use the Hebrew text.

-The length of the Israelite sojourn. This is where many chronologists trip up. Israel was in Egypt for 215 years, not 430 years. The 430 years is traced from Abram’s descent into Canaan in Genesis 12, and if one follows the biblical data carefully, one discovers that Jacob and his family descended into Egypt at the precise midpoint of this 430 year era. Egypt ruled the Near East during this period, so that in its entirety it was considered an Egyptian captivity. As an analogy, think of how the Jews of Jesus’ day (including the Lord Jesus and His apostles) considered the exile to be an ongoing reality even as they lived in their homeland. The translators of the Septuagint (it is clear that the translators included commentary and explication in the text for the sake of their Gentile readers) thus described the 430 years as constituting the time in Canaan and Egypt in Exodus 12. What seals the deal here is what St. Paul says: in Galatians 3, St. Paul writes that there were 430 years from the Abrahamic promise to the exodus. That confirms the interpretation set forth above, and we now have a link from Genesis 5 and 11 to the exodus.

-The period of the judges. Some chronologists make a sloppy error in considering the Book of Judges to be sequential, even though the book makes no such claim, instead telling the stories regionally- in rough historical sequence, but not exact, since the author has to finish one story before beginning another. In fact, there is evidence that Samson and Samuel were exact contemporaries, two Nazirites being born in the same year. I say that this error is sloppy because 1 Kings 6 informs us explicitly that there were precisely 480 years from the time Israel came out of Egypt to the time when Solomon began to build the Temple.

From there, the Temple took seven years to build- and that takes you to 3,000. I have done the calculations myself and confirmed this. For the details, see James Jordan’s series on the matter.