The Power of Intransigence

A historian, on the political landscape of Europe, in 1913:

The power of ‘public opinion’ had increased, and the ‘driving force of the noisiest elements of it  tended  in excited times  to consist, not of majorities, but of minorities.’

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. I. (1997), p. 284

This passage leapt out at me as I reread that book, since I had just finished reading the excellent profile of Ted Cruz, by Jeffrey Toobin, in the current New Yorker.   It is titled “The Absolutist”, and that turns out to be a key point.

(Note:  Ted Cruz does not figure on my list of favorite persons;  for a satirical image, click here. But this portrait really does show The New Yorker at its traditional best.  That magazine does not specialize in takedowns (nor in puff pieces), and I wound up with a considerably deepened appreciation of this unexpectedly complex politician.  As a bonus -- like his politics or dislike them -- Cruz came up with the best one-line retort to the absurd manufactured controversy over the term “Washington Redskins”:  “There’s an easy fix to that:  you can just drop the word Washington.”)

Cruz turns out to be much more intelligent than his shenanigans for popular consumption would suggest.   And suddenly that fact shone forth with a significance beyond one individual biography.   A number of the Tea-Party leaders, who spout nonsense from cock-crow to when the cows go back to the barn, may not be nearly as stupid as they sound:  they may simply be canny, and unscrupulous.

Thus Toobin, using a term that John McCain once applied to Cruz, writes that “by one reckoning, the twenty-one-hour speech Cruz mounted against Obamacare last September  was his consummate wacko-bird moment.”  At the time, I paid no attention to it; it struck me as clownish.  Well, the Corn Belt loves a clown.  They loved Jimmy Stewart’s senatorial filibuster in “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”.   It is not reasoned argument -- but its practitioners know that.  It’s political theatre.  Their base wants panem et circenses;  any actual logic or evidence brought to bear upon the inflammatory issues of the day, would merely be caviary to the general.   The hyperconservatives’ public rhetoric may in many cases be simply ad usum minus habentium. 

(In the case of some of them, like Donald Trump, I instinctively feel that his vulgar nescience goes right down to the core of the man.  But now I’m less sure about John Boehner.)

~

Ted Cruz began his political career as a real long-shot; in another of his witty phrasings, “I was at two per cent in the polls, and the margin of error was three percent.”  Whereas now he has a real shot at the Presidency.  It is unclear  from whence he would derive his mass appeal among Texas conservatives.   He’s personable enough, I suppose, if you like that sort of snake-oil-salesman style;  he’s foreign-born, not a plus for these folks (and he only recently, opportunistically, renounced his Canadian citizenship);  he is legally extraordinarily astute, particularly in Constitutional matters, but that all goes straight over the head of the average voter. (It certainly didn't buy Professor Obama any slack.)  So what is his trump card?  Quite possibly, his sheer intransigence.

Let us consider some further examples from history …

[TBC…]

[Later] [Ach!  There is not world enough, nor time.   Should reader interest warrant -- a remote possibility -- I might flesh this section out.  In the meantime, it is left as an exercise for the reader.  Stepping-stones/data-points: ginger groups, “Tesnyaki”; NSDAP;  ISIL, Tea Party. Plus “asymmetric warfare”, and its bilan over the past fifty-some-odd years.  Connect the dots. ]

[Footnote]  That business of hedging your bets by harboring dual citizenship, enjoying the benefits now of the one  now of the other  as circumstances permit, is actually one of the bugaboos of the Right.  Here is the latest from France:

Algérie : Marine Le Pen veut mettre «fin à la double nationalité»

And here is the standpoint of that two-fisted, red-blooded private detective, Mr Michael Murphy:

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2011/05/murphy-on-dual-citizenship.html

It will indeed be an irony, savored by Clio, the muse of History, should the movement of ornery American nationalism (like that of German, which somehow fell into the hands of a certain Austrian-born gentleman) come to be led by a born Canadian.   But the Birthers no doubt will suddenly forget their former, invented scruples, and fall into line.

Κλειώ η μούσα, wryly amused by all this

 

[Sub-footnote]  The readers of this blog include a certain number of retired gentlemen, of sedentary habits and scholarly tastes, who habitually spend the Lord’s Day paging through their Bibles, and savoring the Greek and Latin classics.   Yet even they enjoy the old surge in the old blood.  For their benefit then (schoolchildren, avert your gaze), this more nearly undraped version of the illustrious Muse:

“… nice swan … “

[Updates]  A useful column on the current Republican mood of ill-timed frugality:

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-infrastructure-building-20140627-column.html#navtype=barker&barkername=Barker%2002%20-%20Featured%20Columist

Where were the Teabaggers when the Bush administration was building the Bridge to Nowhere -- specifically, to Sarah Palin’s state?

That state is, incidentally, for all its rhetoric, still busily sucking on the government dugs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-postal-service-losing-tens-of-millions-annually-subsidizing-shipments-to-alaska/2014/06/28/3d007fd6-e51a-11e3-afc6-a1dd9407abcf_story.html

Actually, at this point, both parties are pandering to narrow interests in Alaska.  Cf. the front-page article in this morning’s New York Times (somewhat buried on the Web site -- amazing how often that happens):

Tiny villages that could determine who controls the Senate

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/us/past-roads-end-democrats-dig-for-native-votes.html?_r=0

And:  Cruz is not the only Texas politician who realizes the street-theatre value of the legislatively impotent filibuster:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/us/for-davis-filibuster-goes-only-so-far-in-race-to-be-governor-of-texas.html

.

[Update 19 September 2014]  Further historical background on Intransigence.

Hitler was a master of diplomatic intransigence. 

In the run-up to Munich, Neville Chamberlain scurried around Europe trying to put together a package of Czech surrender that would satisfy the dictator, and finally managed one -- or so he thought.   He went back with his sacrificial offering, beaming.

Once in the company of the ferocious Fuehrer … Chamberlain’s euphoria quickly evaporated.

“I am terribly sorry,” Hitler said, “but after the events of the last few days, this plan is no longer any use.”

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 369

Later, at Munich on bended knee, Daladier cautiously suggested that a Czech representative be present as their doom was pronounced.

But Hitler was adamant.  He was “not interested”, he said, “in an assurance from the Czech government.”  He would not suffer the presence of any Czechs.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 399

Stalin, by contrast, was sweet reason in public towards his adversaries -- “Comrades, please!  Let Comrade Trotsky have his say! -- while plotting their murder in private.

Al-Baghdadi is more of the Hitler school (much as Saddam modeled himself on Stalin  -- witness his pre-invasion interview with Dan Rather).  He  has gone with a maximalist, Mad-Max, never-retreat-an-inch total heads-off gonzo image, which gives erections to those who might otherwise never become erect.

Al-Qaeda, by contrast, punked out.   After ISIL’s predecessor in Iraq, ISI, alienated the Sunni tribes with their brutality, the Awakening movement was formed as a tribal counterpunch, just like the later Popular Committees in Yemen.  So AQSL publically said, Chill;  and AQAP created a “kinder, gentler” front-group.   Which has mostly gone nowhere.  And AAZ is off somewhere trying to get anyone to pay the least attention to him.

[Update 15 Oct 2014]  A chilling subpoena.
I'm with him on this.  Might even vote for the guy ...

http://www.cruxnow.com/life/2014/10/16/sen-cruz-criticizes-houston-over-sermon-subpoenas/’

Ted Cruz told congregants of his home church Thursday that the city of Houston abused power by subpoenaing sermons and other documents from pastors who publicly opposed a local ordinance banning discrimination against gay and transgender residents.

Cruz, standing among more than a dozen clergy at First Baptist Church in Houston, described the subpoenas as an “abuse of government power” and another illustration of the “indefensible assault by the government on religious liberties.”

“Caesar has no jurisdiction over the pulpit,”

[Update April 2015 ]  Apparently Rafael Cruz -- Cruz père -- is quite a piece of work all by himself.   A cogent sauce-for-the-goose argument for the relevance of this appears here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/12/indoctrination-at-the-dinner-table-rand-paul-and-ted-cruz-have-serious-daddy-issues.html

[Update VI 2020]

On the fall of the Hapsburg dynasty:

Inevitably, any concession  came too late  and was too little;  and equally inevitably, every concession produced more violent discontent.

-- A.J.P. Taylor,  The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 (1948), p. 7

Or, as someone once observed,  L’appetit vient en mangeant.

Portraiture and Point-of-view

Dickens deftly sketches eye-service, and two-facedness of character, via subtle shifts in the narrative point of view, particularly in the depiction of physical gestures.   By leaving the interpretation to the reader, he skewers his character with a very thin blade.

Thus, in Martin Chuzzlewit, the chapter where we make the acquaintance of Mr. Pecksniff, surrounded by his adoring daughters,  we read:

‘But what of that!’ said Mr Pecksniff, still smiling at the fire. ‘There is disinterestedness in the world, I hope?’

We have not yet sufficiently made the acquaintance of this gentleman, to assess that latter apophthegm as hypocritical;  but the physical detail of “still smiling at the fire”, is very telling.   It is small, but every particle counts.    Someone gazing, into a fire, is alone with his thoughts;  someone smiling, at a fire, has conjured up an imaginary (and admiring) companion.   The “still” adds a further twist to the image, almost too subtle to assess.  Roughly, it gives us a glimpse into his habit and character, no mere passing mood; his complacency, and inaptitude to change.

This surmise on our part is ratified a page later:

… Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and more, and looking at the fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it.

Here it is clear, that he is simply quite pleased with himself.   Or rather, not simply;  for there is a layer of pathos here, that will become clearer as the novel goes on.  His doting daughters are without wit, he cannot share a joke with them.  And his only other constant companions are the young prentices he condescends to.

~

Let us compare another case of a character communing with an inanimate object (though not quite inanimate, perhaps;  both mirrors and fires have their own liveliness).  In William Dean Howells’ A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), the Boston-based (and Boston-centered) protagonist, whose career has never flourished, has just received an exciting job-offer, but which would require moving to New York.   That prospect dismays his wife (among other things, “I shouldn’t know how to shop”), who initially nixes the idea.  But then:

“I can’t help feeling,” she grieved into the mirror, “that it’s I who keep you from accepting that offer.”

This is less subtle, less artful than Dickens, since it tells you, omnisciently, exactly what she is feeling.   She is not simply staring or frowning into the mirror, nor looking at it with a sad expression (which is what the author would need to have said, were he to attempt the Dickensian indirection), but, explicitly, “grieving”.   Nonetheless, it is a vigorous phrase, much better than (say) “gazing into the mirror with an expression of grief”.  It is, so to say, transitive;  we see her projecting her words (and with them, her thoughts) towards the mirror.

Now, if this were all we had to go on, we might picture an actor mouthing lines, and mimicking emotions, with the mirror as audience:  then we would be back in Pecksniff territory.  But all the rest of the context makes it plain that she is a good person and a caring wife, who is simply troubled at the prospect of so great a change (for well-brought-up Bostonians of that era, all that was outside Boston  was off the cliff of the world).   And now the point -- and the pulse, and the thrust of that transitive preposition into, reveals its full force.  She was not grieving at the mirror, nor before the mirror, but right… into it.  And, mirrors being what they are, the force of her projected feeling returns on her -- only, mirror-reversed.  Some interior soul-work is here happening;  and by the next morning she has come round, announcing at breakfast to her husband (“silent over his fish-balls and baked beans”):  “We will go to New York.  I’ve decided it.”

~

But back to our fireside philosopher.  His reveries are interrupted by a knock at the door.

‘Come in!’ cried Mr Pecksniff -- not severely;  only virtuously.  ‘Come in!’

This is delicious, and deftly done.  A great lot of thought  is packed into those few and unassuming syllables.

For: when you are comfortably “at home” to visitors, and somebody knocks at your door, you say “Come in.”   That is what one says;  it is the done thing, and scarcely requires comment.  Yet here the reader is solicitously assured that the command -- excuse us, the invitation -- was not issued “severely”.   From the unspoken presuppositions that would necessitate such assurance, we can surmise that Mr Pecksniff is often quite “at home” issuing imperatives;  and that, at times, on a peremptory tone.

Now, severely is an external word, refering to the observable manner of utterance.  An actor could speak severely, or sweetly, without entertaining any correspondingly severe or sweet frame of mind.  Well and good.  But now our author slyly slips in another adverb, virtuously, in conjunction, as though it too were an observational detail.  Yet its ostensible externality is, so to say, endogenous:  it is Mr Pecksniff imagining how he will appear to the visitor, when speaking in that wise.  Further:  whether a thing is virtuous or not, is a matter, not of any particular lilt of delivery, but of the speaker’s frame of mind or morals, together with an ethical judgment (societal or transcendental) about intent. By yoking this more complex word with the simple severely, Dickens has afforded us a deep-drilling and twisting glimpse into the recesses of Pecksniff’s character.    That gentleman is here pleased to pose as the prosperous man of the house -- a good host --  door open to anyone at any time -- nothing to hide here;  Come in, come in, by all means!;  ‘tis I myself who invite thee.

Caveat:  Dickens is no minimalist;  in subsequent pages -- dozens of them -- he works variations on the theme of Pecksniff’s duplicity, many of which would be plain to any schoolchild.   What I mean to show above is that he can, when he wishes, convey much with small means.

[Flash update]  Mister Pecksniff  and Ted Cruz -- separated at birth?

~

The standard thumbnail of Mr. Pecksniff is as simply a hypocrite (“a canting hypocrite”, is the summary of The Reader’s Encyclopedia). Chesterton, with more insight, calls him  not so much a hypocrite  as a rhetorician.   We can see the peculiar flavor of his hypocrisy, in the following passage.  Upon being denounced as a “hypocrite” by a relative, he makes no reply, but only remarks to his daughter, in this edifying scene:

‘Charity, my dear,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘when I take my chamber candlestick tonight, remind me to be more than usually particular in praying for Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done me an injustice.’

This was said in a very bland voice, and aside, as being addresssed to his daughter’s private ear.

Having laid the groundwork for the character of Pecksniff, in passages like those quoted above (and if the reader’s mind closes at that moment, he is left with a serviceable shorthand “canting hypocrite”), Dickens then gives us glimpses like this:

‘Who is with him now,’ ruminated Mr Pecksniff, warming his back (as he had warmed his hands) as it it were a widow’s back or an orphan’s back, or an enemy's back, or a back that any less excellent man  would have suffered to be cold.

What is Dickens up to with this?  It expresses a thought, of some sort;  but it seems to be the sort of thought one meets in dreams, and which are difficult to explain, even to oneself, as one awakes and the day wears on.

Dickens is telling a story -- that’s his job, after all -- but there are other things in his head as he explores along, which he isn’t necessarily sharing with us.  

(Starkest example of that: the Analytical Chemist in Our Mutual Friend.  --- Flash update!   A manuscript recently unearthed reveals more about that setting:

A Lost Fragment of “Our Mutual Friend”.)

 

~

The understanding gained from these early passages, fine-tunes our interpretation of later ones.

Thus, consider a sentence,

He meekly signed to her to lead the way.

(Nice dignified pentameter, that.) 

The natural interpretation of that is, of course, that his physical signaling was undemonstrative, and that his internal state of mind  was meek.  We might further suspect or surmise, that the fellow is given to meekness.  These assumptions fit well  with the adverb’s modificand:  namely, being led.

But now consider the actual passage, shortly after the one quoted immediately before:

With that, he took off his great-coat,  and having run his fingers through his hair, thrust one hand gently in the bosom of his waistcoat, and meekly signed to her to lead the way.

Ah-ha!  By now, we are old hands at this.

(1) The reference to “great-coat”, unobtrusive in itself, is by no means accidental.

(2) “having run his fingers through his hair”

This is a bit of dreamy autoerotic narcissism, which will be familiar to those of my antiquated generation from the 1950’s hit song, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend me Your Comb” (concerning a very self-involved and vain young male), or even that classic ad,

     Bryl - Cream!  a little dab’ll do ya!

     Use -- more -- only if you dare.

     But watch -- out -- the gals’ll all pursue yaaaaaaa…..

     They love to run their fingers through your hair.

(3) That bit about gently placing his hand in the “bosom” of his waistcoat, is a continuation of the idea in the passage about so-carefully warming his back.

The fact is, Pecksniff is always onstage to himself, playing out a private drama  for his own self-reassurance.  This is not the same thing as hypocrisy (Chesterton’s point), nor even of rhetoric, since both of those are directed outwards, to fool one’s fellows:  whereas Pecksniff’s histrionics are intended (or at least, fated) principally to fool himself -- nay, to create himself in the image he desires.   That currently key notion of  “narcissism” certainly applies, but is not, perhaps, the whole story;  at least, there exist simpler, garden-variety narcissisms, that do no require such sedulous cultivation (Flibbertigibbets at the Mall).

No mere feuilletoniste

Characteristic of Dickens is his use of gestures to delineate character.  At its simplest, as with the urchin boy in Hard Times with little depth to him  but fixed in memory by his habit of knuckling his forehead, it functions simply like the motif that introduces this or that character in opera: it shows us, not character necessarily, but a character.  More tellingly, it can reveal character, and not just label it.

Here is an example rather more layered than usual.  Pecksniff is attempting to toady up to a wealthy old invalid, hoping for a bequest, but that curmudgeon admits none into his confidence but a certain girl who attends on him.  The elderly gentleman fixes Pecksniff with a penetrating gaze:

“The young girl whom you just now saw -- what!  your eye lightens when I talk of her!  You hate her already, do you?”

“Upon my word, sir!” said Mr Pecksniff, laying his hand upon his breast, and dropping his eyelids.

For the moment, let us focus only on the gesture, and not on the details of what provoked it, apart from the fact that his disinterestedness had been called into question.

Even at that level, there are two layers, which by now we are in a position to parse.  Overtly, the eyelid-dropping is of a piece with the breast-touching, as pantomiming his pretense of innocent humility.  At a layer beneath that, it is a fluttery, feminine gesture, consonant with Pecksniff’s peculiarly unmanly style of self-pleasing. 

In context, there is yet a third.   The wealthy gentleman, with uncanny insight, has seen the greed and hatred suddenly flash in Pecksniff’s eyes upon hearing mention of the girl who stands between him and his hoped-for fortune.  Oddly, the eye is described as “lightening”; the only similar image I can evoke, is that of the eyes of the demon children in the movie “Village of the Damned”.   And at this quite literal (if almost supernatural) level, his lowering his eyelids is not connotative of anything, but is a purely practical matter of lowering the blinds to shield his evil inner truth from the inspection of his inquisitor.

~

It is interesting to observe other authors exploiting this unconsciously semiotic nature of gesture.

Now, Agatha Christie  is not a patch on any part of Dickens;  but give credit where credit is due.  Here we see a Dickensian (even a Pecksniffian) touch, parodying a rich worldly couple:

“What is money, after all?” murmured Mrs Widburn.

“Ah!” said Mr. Widburn thoughtfully, and rattled some coins absentmindedly in his trouser pocket.

“Charles,” said Mrs Widburn reproachfully.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Widburn, and stopped.

-- Agatha Christie, Thirteen at Dinner [a.k.a. Lord Edgware Dies], 1933

In this matter of “fiddling”:  cf. Pecksniff fiddling with his spectacles; ctr. Chuzzlewit père  fiddling with the ash of his burnt will (a memento mori twice over).

[Note:  This is the first of my thoughts about Dickens  to have been worked up into  presentable form.   To see a mass of raw notes (which, if I am spared, may someday be worked up into essays), click: http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-dickens.html ]

[Update:  For a more concentrated essay-on-progress on the subject of two other characters in Martin Chuzzlewit, try this:   Semantics, local and global. ]

Economic Sit-in Strike (prolonged)

There is a curious parallel between the anti-war movement of late-60’s youth (in which I played a part), and the Teabagger antics in the House.

This is not a palinode.  About the Vietnam War, we were right.  Time and retrospection have only deepened the details of that fiasco, which indeed (as most of us somehow did not realize at the time) was just a re-run (cum napalm) of the fiasco begun by the French.  It was -- to use the technical term favored by my current servicemen friends -- a classic cluster-fuck. 

We ourselves, however, by and large had no idea of any way forward, apart from a vague and lazy all-you-need-is-love (bzw. socialism) utopianism.   A tight Marxist core actually thought strategically and programmatically,  but unfortunately, by the late 60’s -- post-Kronstadt ’21, post Hamburg ’23, post purges and show-trials ‘37ff, post Hitler-Stalin ’39, post Hungary ’56, post Czechoslovakia ’68 -- you pretty much had to close your eyes to what had happened in actual History, to retain an optimistic faith in the wise workings of Historical Materialism.

And so we fell back upon obstruction, sit-ins, passive-aggressive resistance.  For this, we do not collectively apologize, any more than we apologize for having soiled our diapers as infants, or sprouted pimples as a teen.  On Vietnam, I repeat:   We were right.  We simply had no clue what to do about it.  So we lay down in front of military vehicles, chained ourselves to army-base fences, occupied buildings, and (the fun part) made love-not-war.

~

So now the poor Republicans -- and this is spoken with some genuine empathy -- under the crushing pressure of inexorable advances of the juggernaut of History, which has robbed them of their reason, have backed themselves into a corner, and worked themselves into a dissociative state.  Emotionally, intrapsychically, their quandary is not that different from what we suffered from.  That we were, with hindsight, right, is psychodynamically irrelevant:  we could not have known that at the time.

That said, the Tea-types have chosen a very strange issue to raise atop their battle-standards:  bitter opposition to the Affordable Care Act -- something that, in some form, both parties have been working towards for decades, an evolutionary combination of Medicare, Romneycare, and Social Security (the latter, as regards the young earners subsidizing the old and sick), and which was passed by this very Congress, was found sound by the Supreme Court, and has weathered dozens of lost-cause challenges in the House.  It is as though hordes of hippies and SDS activists had been flooding the streets in protest against, I don’t know, Radio Free Europe, or General Foods.  

[The French observer Tocqueville noticed this kind of disconnect  already over a century ago:

Pour un étranger, presque toutes les querelles domestiques des Américains  paraissent, au premier abord, incompréhensibles ou puériles.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (1835), p. 260 ]

But again:  That does not matter within the cleidoic pressure-cooker that the Teabaggers now crouch in;   they do not see themselves as others see them;  and with that, they are subject to the evolutionary dynamics of any fringe sect, such as the Trostskyist or Mao-oid splinter-groups on the left:  though the nosological particulars for this cohort  more likely will resemble those of the Branch Davidians, Jonestown/People’s Temple, or the Heaven’s-Gate doomsday group.

If the psycho-ideological parallels with Marxist sectarianism here posited, have any validity, then we may expect to witness (and here, in making a testable prediction, I am giving empirical hostages to fortune) a spectacular implosion, with fractures and splits along unpredictable microscopic socio-ideological fault-lines:  defections, recriminations, and general bewilderment.  

Not a pretty sight.  The lads & lasses in The Weathermen had at least their youth to excuse them.  But what is the excuse for Michelle Bachmann and Ted Cruz?

Mark Rudd & Bernadine Dohrn, redivivi

~

For a selection of individual detective stories,

available for your Nook or Kindle,

visit this site:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

[Update 3 October 2013] Another historical parallel:

The President spoke of the absurdity of the nation’s being held hostage by a minority of one party in one house of one branch of government.  This morning, this Tea Party hard-core is being referred to as “The Thirty”, based on their numbers.  But to anyone steeped in history, the phrase amusingly echoes the name of those appointed by Sparta to rule over Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War -- the “Thirty Tyrants”.

~

In the annals of Communist sectarian, my favorite among the party-names is the

Tesnyaki

These were Bulgarians.   (Bulgarians are sort of like Russians without the Old World charm.)  Their turn upon the stage of history was brief and inglorious, but the name is worth examining.

Beginning with the Bolsheviks -- the word means “majoritarians”, though that was objectively an overestimate at the time -- Communist and Socialist parties, and even groupuscules,  have usually tried to name themselves in ways that made them sound substantial.  (E.g. the grandly and fancifully named sect “National Causus of Labor Committees”).   In America, especially during the Popular Front, CPUSA front groups often had broad bland big-tent titles -- “Workers Party”, “American League for Peace and Democracy” --  sometimes almost comically so: “Mother’s Day Peace Council”, “League of Women Shoppers”.

But Tesnyaki means …. “the Narrow Ones”.   And for a group that at least nominally aimed at rule by the majority -- the workers and peasants -- the choice of name was odd indeed.

It pointed, however, to a key consideration, whose often underestimated importance would be ratified by time.  The implication was:  tightly knit.  (As Greta Garbo said in “Ninotcha”, defending the Stalinist purges, “There will be fewer but better Russians.”)  And indeed, by being tightly knit, following orders without question though it meant turning on a dime, the parties of the Comintern achieved influence well out of proportion to their numbers.    In America, the CPUSA never amounted to anything numerically,  yet by the 1930’s they managed to control many union front organizations bureaucratically -- packing the leadership, and always showing up in force for votes.   The surprising extent of their behind-the-scenes success, especially during the period of the Popular Front, can only be explained by such discipline.  After all, there have been many movements of or for workers in this country, from the Knights of Labor and the Wobblies on;  the CP had no monopoly on that.   And unlike any of their rival groups, the CP labored under the incredible burden of (in the 1920s) geographically insensitive dictation from Moscow, and (in the ‘30s) increasingly insane activity, noxious from a Left perspective especially:  the purges, the show trials, the gutting of the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War, and finally (can’t make this stuff up) the Hitler-Stalin pact that gave the green light for WWII.

We are currently witnessing something similar in the House.

The hard core of Republican freshman fanatics, mostly hailing from the boondocks that God forgot,  have nevertheless somehow managed to stymie the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House, and bring much of the nation’s business to a halt, even threatening a Samson-gambit on the debt ceiling that could really pull the temple down.   (Cf. Howe & Coser on the CPUSA: “the damage wrought by the party in its passion to conquer, or to destroy what it could not conquer”.)

The Teabaggers’ ‘Moscow’ in this case consists of behind-the-scenes manipulators like the billionaire Koch brothers and (gawd, is he still not dead?) the ineffable Edwin Meese:

   A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning

And the lesson of history here is:  No matter how scatterbrained their ideology, how reckless their actions, if they keep tight and hang tough, they might just get away with it.

~

The rather far-fetched parallel with which we began this post,  was offered in a ludic spirit, largely to tweak the Tea Party’s nose.  But if someone had the time and the inclination, it would be worth pursuing further.

For:  To any student of labor history, the remarkable thing about the Stalinoids’ role is how utterly remote it was from the everyday interests of workers.   Many is the strike they subtly sabotaged, since a labor victory (in the Third Period view) would only foster illusions of reformism.   But more:  As the years progressed, you could not make sense of the actions by the CPUSA (and other sections of the Comintern) in terms of labor vs. capital at all.   Nor was the truth behind the façade always just self-interested Soviet raison d’état:  sometimes even the basic welfare of Russians and other Soviet bloc citizens -- even the security of the state itself, as in the Red Army purge on the eve of World War II -- was sacrificed to obscure factional infighting within the ruling clique.

Thus, consider the possibly yawning disconnect, between the aims at the level of the Koch brothers, and the vein-popping hayseeds who are their public face.  The sort of emotional issues that move the latter to fury, such as abortion, are unlikely to be hot buttons chez the Kochs.   The key coup for them is not Roe v. Wade, but Citizens United.  In fact, my hunch is that the Kochs and their henchmen would just as soon that Roe v. Wade remained in effect, so as to keep the yokels in ebullition, distracting attention from structurally more crucial matters such as the upcoming double-tap sequel to Citizens United, re recess appointments, soon to appear before the Supreme Court.

We really don’t know what their game is.  Possibly something as simple (and semi-publically acknowledged) as rolling back the Great Society and the New Deal.  (The minimum wage in particular  seems to stick in their craw.)   Or possibly something a bit more esoteric …

The Death of Satire

Question (and this will be on the test, for those applying for American citizenship):

What do Sheldon Adelson -- the human enema-bag -- and Donald Trump -- the World’s Worst Human Being -- have in common, besides being casino scum?

Answer:  They are the heaviest high-rollers in the Romney campaign.

(Murmuring at the swearing-in ceremony.  “We’ve changed our minds;  we want to be citizens of Norway.”)

So now the latest:  Romney plans a romp with Trump, not merely in the fetid backrooms of fundraising from fellow millionaires, but live on television, before millions of witnesses:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-romneys-risky-ties-to-trump/2012/08/20/30fb4d5a-eaef-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_print.html

Excerpt:

It has been reported that Donald Trump is likely to play a “surprise” part on the first day of the Republican National Convention next week in Tampa — perhaps, some speculate, in a comedy bit involving the firing of a Barack Obama impersonator. “The role, like Mr. Trump,” says a Trump spokesman, “is unique and will be memorable for all those in attendance at the convention and those watching around the country. Stay tuned.”

The appearance is further evidence of one of the oddest flirtations in American politics. Trump and Mitt Romney appeared together at a Las Vegas fundraiser in May. The Romney campaign raffled off a meal with the pair as a reward for campaign donors.

Romney supporters tend to be perplexed by his ties to Trump but dismissive of their importance. No one is likely to confuse the members of a couple this odd. On the plus side, this connection may help unbutton Romney’s public image. Add a little pop culture sizzle. Bring in some extra cash.

All of these justifications would make sense if we were talking about Kim Kardashian, who is famous merely for her fame. But Trump is also famous for spreading conspiracy theories. He is the nation’s highest-profile “birther,” who sent investigators to Hawaii to uncover proof of Obama’s duplicity. Finding none, he moved on to the sinister mystery of the president’s unreleased college transcripts. Turning his attention from politics to medicine, he has asserted that multiple vaccinations cause babies to be “different,” based on this evidence: “I’ve known cases.” When informed that most physicians disagree, he responded: “I know they do. . . . I couldn’t care less.”

Set aside that vaccine skepticism is the medical equivalent of encouraging children to play in traffic. Trump represents not merely wealth and brashness but an attitude toward authority and knowledge. He has developed a standing among some populist conservatives by arguing that mainstream information is fundamentally biased, that public officials are engaged in elaborate deceptions, and that only a courageous few can understand and uncover the alarming reality. Politics, in this view, is not the contest of ideas; it is the exposure of a plot. It matters little if hard evidence is nonexistent; that is taken as further evidence of the plotters’ diabolical sophistication.

This isn’t new in American history, but that doesn’t make it less damaging. In “Voodoo Histories,” an entertaining demolition of modern conspiracy theories, David Aaronovitch argues that tolerance for conspiracy thinking amounts to a kind of “relativism,” which “doesn’t care to distinguish between the scholarly and the slapdash, the committed researcher and the careless loudmouth, the scrupulous and the demagogic.” Everyone becomes entitled to their own “alternative narratives,” at the expense of rationality, earned authority and objectivity. And conspiratorial narratives are often divisive and disturbing.

That is certainly true of presidential conspiracy theories — that Bill Clinton ordered a series of murders, or that George W. Bush was complicit in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or that Obama illegally holds the presidency through deception. These charges are designed to delegitimize presidents. Instead of being opponents with different views, they become aliens or oppressors, unworthy of power and respect.

…

A few official campaign appearances by Trump do not imply a full embrace of birtherism by Romney or the Republican Party. But it is not healthy to take even a little bit of this hemlock. Trump’s appearance at the Republican convention represents a disturbing tolerance for disturbing ideas. What does it say about the modern GOP that the leading advocate of the theory that Obama is Kenyan is on the convention schedule, while the leading advocate of , say, mainstream climate science would risk being booed off the stage?

…

Until now, in the face of a deluge of emetic news from the ranks of the Tea-Baggers et ilk, I have attempted to turn lemons into giggle-juice, in various merry parables.  But this stuff beggars satire -- there is just no room to embellish anymore, no space to jape, when the reality is this bad.

(Gotta check if they have space left in the monastery …)

-- Oh, and now this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/opinion/new-frontiers-of-extremism-from-the-gop.html?src=me&ref=general

Ted Cruz, who won the Senate primary in Texas and is all but certain to be elected, favors the closure of the Departments of Energy, Commerce and Education, along with the Transportation Security Administration and, naturally, the I.R.S. He says he is very worried that the United Nations is trying to ban golf courses and paved roads.

I … truly … can think of nothing funny to say.

[Update 22 August 2012]  Oh, and now this.

Lubbock, Texas, is voting an increase in taxes !!!  Man bites dog!

Only…  the reason they need to raise taxes is to pay for the militias that will be needed to fight the UN troops (! Not National Guard: UN troops) that Obama is expected to dispatch to Texas in the event he is reelected.  (What the mission of these troops might be, was not specified -- possibly to tear up the golf courses and paved roads.)
[Update!  For the inside scoop on this dastardly Papistical-Democratico plot click here quick --
before the Illuminati  take down the site !!
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/obamapope-invasion-plot-unmasked.html ]

You cannot satirize this stuff -- it comes pre-satirized.  Humorists world-wide are facing starvation.  Please be generous!  Contribute here to the Fund to Buy Dr Justice a Nice Yacht! --

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/02/we-interrupt-this-blogcast.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/01/help-dr-justice-get-his-yacht.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/01/poor-dr-justice.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/woeful-word-from-front.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/winter-fund-drive.html

-->

[Update 28 Sept 2012]    

Satire can die for two reasons:

  (1) As noted above, because the absurdity of reality outdoes lampoon.

  (2) As noted below, because a lot of folks  just ….  don’t ……..    get it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/iranian-news-service-cites-faux-onion-story-on-poll-finding-ahmadinejad-more-popular-than-obama/2012/09/28/df07e492-0987-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html?hpid=z4

Some people just don’t get satire.

Fars News Agency, described as “Iran’s leading independent news agency,” apparently was the latest in a proud tradition to mistake an Onion story for the real deal. The Onion’s signature deadpan description of a poll finding that the “overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. President Barack Obama” was lost on the Iranian news service, which ran a story of its own about the poll.

Interestingly, the Fars story is a word-for-word reprint of the Onion piece, so it seems that the agency might be guilty of ... unoriginality as well as gullibility.

The line between total absurdity and outrageous-but-true can be a fine one, but most savvy readers would have been tipped off by the Onion’s over-the-top treatment: the poll identified “77 percent of rural Caucasian voters … would much rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Ahmadinejad, a man who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and has had numerous political prisoners executed, than spend time with Obama.”

And if that hadn’t sent up flags, this line should have been a dead giveaway: “According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s Muslim.”

Oh and -- almost forgot -- Buy My Books.

---

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

~

[Antedating update]

It’s not only in our own day that satirists have tossed aside their acid-inked pens,  at the hopeless task of depicting a reality that has outstripped their art.   This, from Bismarckian Germany in 1866:

Ein Berliner Witzblatt erklärte, sein Erscheinen  einstellen zu müssen, denn bessere Witze als Herr von Bismarck könne es nicht machen.

-- Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (1958; 1992), p. 352