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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Politics vs. Art
Yesterday I linked to StrategyPage's review of Oliver Stone's Crow T. Robot's Bram Stoker's The Civil War (er, Alexander) and made a typical snide quip about it.
But some serious observations are in order, too. Oliver Stone is a talented director - good, if not great. A master of the art. There's no denying that just because one doesn't like his politics. But it is his politics, or more accurately the fervor with which he inserts them into his films, that is his Achilles Heel as a filmmaker.
The historical Alexander was a fascinating, complex person. As depicted in the film, he had an idealistic side - a dream of uniting all of humanity under one world government (under his rule), to bring about peace and enlightened rule. He was a model of multiculturalism, or multiethnic and cosmopolitan, aspiration – one not uncommon among idealistic imperialists. He was also an unstable tyrant. Yes, there were times when he would listen to the advice of subordinates. Then there were times when he would later fly into a blind, drunken rage, and murder them. A filmmaker less driven to make a political point might have explored that.
Likewise, someone who has been an anti-imperialist throughout his life, as Stone has been, might have explored whether the peoples Alexander conquered wanted to be part of his dream of a world-spanning Empire or not. Stone usually is more questioning of the benevolence of hegemonist ambitions - but I suppose not when it involves one-man, totalitarian rule.
Stone has always been as much of a propagandist as a filmmaker. He rises above the common polemicists, the Michael Moore's of the world, when he puts art ahead of politics. He fails here, and ironically, would have perhaps served his political ideals better by making a film that more fully explored all the facets of its protagonists instead of simply trying to beat home the message he wanted to convey.
StrategyPage has a review of Oliver Stone's latest movie:
The very best war movies can sometimes give the audience a sense of what it was like, and what those who fought actually experienced. Alexander comes close to this in only one respect. It may leave the viewer feeling like Alexander's veterans after many years on campaign - sick of it all, and desperately wondering when this nightmare will finally end so he can at long last go home.
There have been a lot of ups and downs over the last year. This summer my mother transitioned from academic work to getting her Real Estate license, and tried her hand at selling time shares. She found she didn't like that, and didn't have much of an aptitude for the high-pressure "push" sales the boss wanted, and she recently lost that job. Something that never used to happen in our family now seems to be a semi-annual occurance, and except for the latest it would be more accurate to say it's happened not because she was bad at her job, but because she was too good at it (creating envy and resentment), but not at academic politics combined with the new economic paradigm that includes within it a feature that jobs are less permanent-career than they were. Worst case scenario, though, is that she'll end up losing her house and everything she built in a lifetime. My sister has had her own difficulties finding her way in life, and I'm certainly a "late bloomer" myself, still working at getting on the right path (joining the Army has been a big step forward). But we're not the kind of people who will take the comfortable but ignorant route of pointing partisan fingers ("it's all Bush's fault!") But enough of that.
Life is full of tribulations for everyone. There's hardly any family that doesn't face setbacks, some far worse than we have. There remains so much to be thankful for. I'm thankful for:
My family (to include my beloved dog), which is there throughout all life's ups and downs. I wish I could be with them today.
Being born in, and living in, the United States of America, a country of "second chances" and opportunities.
The cliche of being healthy, but it can really hit you as something to be thankful for when you know people who aren't, or whose loved ones are stricken with something.
All those Americans around the world, in uniform and out of uniform, making personal sacrifices to make our lives, and the lives of others, better, often getting no thanks and indeed insulted or accused of ill-intention and malign impact, but the truth is far different. There hasn't been a place that Americans haven't left better than we found it (yes, that includes Vietnam, though it would have been much better if we had won - and hadn't cut our support for those who depended upon it). As one Canadian put it:
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French, and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971, and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous, and possibly the least-appreciated, people in all the earth.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Well who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that's who.
They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. And I was there -- I saw that. When distant cities are hit by earthquake, it is the United States that hurries into help, Managua, Nicaragua, is one of the most recent examples.
So far this spring, fifty-nine American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.
The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. And now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans. . .
You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. . .
When the railways of France, and Germany, and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both of 'em are still broke.
I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name to me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They'll come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they're entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.
And many Americans, as well. Should I be thankful for the Michael Moore's and Noam Chomsky's of the world? No, but
I'm thankful I live in a country where dissent is accepted to such a degree that people can go around freely claiming that they're dissent is being repressed, shouting it from the top of lecterns, publishing books, making movies, and where the repression they talk about is fame and wealth and global accolades. In some countries, such people might face real repression - death, torture, jail for themselves and family members. Expropriation of their property (Putin's Russia), or laws and regulations aimed at stifling dissent in the name of community values (the EU's Draft Constitution and Canada). Here such "repressed dissenters" who write about "Stupid White Men" suffer mainly from fame, while this website is BANNED IN EUROPE.
I'm thankful for my intellect. This may seem to be me patting myself on the back for being smart, but not really. Like health, intelligence can be cultivated - that is, you can do things to improve your health. But a lot of it is also accidental - not being born with an affliction, for example. I do a lot of stupid things (and have learned to my regret that, yes, "stupid is as stupid does"). I'm not the sharpest tack in the box. But I am blessed with some intelligence, and sometimes it allows me insights, "Eureka" moments, that help me advance ideas and causes that I champion. Or I hope so, and hope to continue to be able to do.
I'm thankful for friends, readers, and countless other people who have entered my life - be it long term or momentarily - extending the hand of help and comradeship. This means a lot, and is far from the last and least important thing to be thankful of. To all those out there reading this who have sent me words of comfort, advice, accolades, and support, I thank you. It has meant a lot to me and sustained me, more than you can know.
There are many other things I have to be thankful of, some which I'm sure have slipped my mind and I'll think of later. Take care and Gawd bless on this Thanksgiving day.
Unfortunately I haven't blogged about events in Ukraine (more here). I'm far from the first to observe that it reminds me of the "Velvet Revolution" that spread throughout Eastern Europe in '89, bringing an end to totalitarian despotism there. One might begin to wonder if the effectiveness of such a method of internal regime change is entirely a province of that region; remember, a similar movement to overcome one-party rule in China fizzled in Tiananmen Square.
Or perhaps what it really illustrates is that it takes a certain kind of circumstances, not a certain kind of people or place. Mass internal protest combined with an unwillingness of the regime to disrupt it by force. For the later, concern for outside opinion is really vital - the sense that they wouldn't be able to get away with it if they crushed the revolt by force.
I look at what is going on in Ukraine with admiration, and I'm emotionally moved. I dearly hope they succeed. But also with a little bit of envy, driven by a wish that the same thing could work as well in Iran - or that the Sunni people of Iraq would mass-mobilize against the (minority?) of violent revanchists in the Sunni triangle. But even if the latter were inclined to take the streets and demonstrate that this is unacceptable to them, regard for international opinion would not stop the “insurrectionists” from making them pay in blood.
In Iran, the people can demonstrate all they want and proclaim their desire for a real democracy and the end of the mullahcracy, but the Ayatollahs have learned that when push comes to shove, the world community, embodied by European “dealmakers”, will blink before imposing any consequences on misbehavior. It’s a lesson learned in negotiations over their nuclear program, which is farce following farce: A repetition of the previously broken agreement, proving once again that some people refuse to learn from history because they want to repeat it. It was entirely predictable that Iran would cheat on the earlier agreement (a prediction I made here several times), and entirely predictable that they would do the same here, but that Our Friends would not want to see any consequences result.
Putin’s Russia has learned a similar lesson, and the U.S. is complicit here. Ukraine’s government is trying to emulate a “campaign strategy” pioneered by Putin, but they aren’t important enough to get away with it. We talk to Putin about how we dislike his anti-democratic maneuvers, but he knows that there will be no real consequences in our relationship for such behavior, so he has no disincentive to continue it. “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind” on the part of the regime, as it was put in our Declaration of Independence, is actually critical for the success of internal regime-change efforts. With out it, the movement can be stamped out. But such respect will only exist when world opinion has bite to it; consequences rather than just platitudes. Now more than ever these events, and such things as the UN’s Oil-for-Blood scandal (UNSCAM) illustrate that we need a Commonwealth of Democracies, one willing to use teeth. But for anything along those lines to be successful, there will have to be a change in mindset among those who are always ready to offer another deal along the same lines as the one they’ve already violated to rulers like the Ayatollahs of Iran and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. In other words, they’ll have to be willing to open their eyes to the lessons of history, not keep them closed so they can repeat the same mistakes endlessly.
[I h]ad a regimental CO state that the barracks are 'a staging area for war'
which he expected to be kept in a spartanlike condition. No reports on
injuries sustained when he tried to pull this one on his wife.
Heh, I doubt that would have gone over well. . .
My situation isn't that spare. But it does illustrate the dichotomy between those who live in the barracks and those who are normal human beings, with homes and lives and such - and perhaps even a dog.
Your comment about scientists keeping better track of who's theories yield
more consistently correct predictions is both true and false. In theory
this is true. In practice I suggest that this is not as accurate as one
would wish. If you get some spare time, get James Hogan's "Kicking the
Sacred Cow" from Baen Books. It is both entertaining and enlightening.
There are also several books written over the years, the names of which escape me at the moment, that explored how scientific theories are adopted and become accepted. Not written from an anti-science standpoint, mind you, but more from an anti-institution standpoint. Vested interests, even in scientific communities, often resist new ideas and resist accepting evidence that can shake up preconceived notions that people have invested a lot of time and effort into. This is true with paradigm-shaking scientific theories. A lot of scientists were naturally reluctant (to put it mildly) to accept as true theories that overturned the basis of their life's work. A lot of the scientists who are famous today are examples of more than just the "brave scientist overcoming popular ignorance" - the story that's typically told. What's left out (because it's embarrassing, rather than favorable, to the scientific community) is that their bravery often consisted not so much in overcoming resistance to their theories from the philistines in the non-scientific community, but resistance from within the scientific community, people whose careers were built upon theoretical models that were going to be overturned by paradigm-shifting theories that had the unfortunate quality of describing reality better. At times the scientific community can be as resistant to new evidence as the humanities community, or at least it has been. It’s just that they’ve gotten better, and it doesn’t happen as often.
(For some reason Richard Feynman comes to mind in this context, though I'm not sure he wrote on this topic).
