Thucydides

Gee, I hope that title, "Thucydides," doesn't frighten people off......

I'm guessing the name is familiar to most of you.  He should be, rightly, called "The Father of History."  He's not, of course, because we often don't get it right.  Instead, that sobriquet (C'mon, when we get a chance to use words like that, seize it.) has been given to Herodotus.

I don't lose sleep over it, well, not too much sleep, but Herodotus was a fraud.  Oh, he wrote history.  But if he didn't know things, couldn't find facts, he just made them up.  (Hey, that's what Karen tells people I do in class, just make up things.  I refuse to answer on the grounds it may tend to incriminate me.)  If things couldn't be explained, that is the hows and whys of history, he might well just say something like, "The gods made them do it."  (Maybe some of you will remember the Flip Wilson character, "Geraldine," who frequently excused her bad behavior with "The devil made me do it.")

Thucydides, on the other hand, tried to dig up facts and deal with them.  That included interpretation, the stuff of history--the hows and whys, not merely the whos, whats, wheres, and whens.  If not "The Father of History," he has been called "The First Scientific Historian."  His  thoughts from 2400 years ago provide some needed insight on our present condition, here in the US.

In describing a civil war which had broken out on one of the Hellenic islands (There was no country Greece, but a confederation or empire of individual city-states, often ferociously independent.), Thucydides wrote of the vengeful passion exhibited against the ruling classes "by those who had in the past been arrogantly oppressed instead of wisely governed."  The revolt was by those who were trying to escape their plight of poverty, of being the down-trodden.  (Dare I say of being the "deplorables?")

I've written about this before that the overwhelming majority of Trump voters are not racists, are not bigots.  Like Thucydides' rebels, they were sick and tired of being the downtrodden.  Real or not, their perception was that the US government was not working for them; they saw it working for others, rich (corporations) and poor alike, but not for them.  Although they were not the poorest of the poor, many of them saw that the American Dream, as they understood it, was being denied them--and their government was complicit.

Now we are engaged in what has been called "a cold civil war" between factions in the US.  Each side has engaged in a fanatical zeal, one in which an attack on the other side is legitimized as an act of self-defense or even self-preservation.  Despicable, even illegal behavior is not just excused, but lauded.

To Thucydides, ethics and morality were key components of society.  But in his civil war, such were taken out of play.  Changing events to change society was required, civil war then, cold civil war now.  He cited, too, that to rationalize/legitimize changing events, words had to take on new meanings.  Think of Orwell's Animal Farm and how language took on new meanings used to justify changes, often immoral and unethical changes in favor of those in power.  If the meanings of words are changed cleverly enough, the concepts of morality and ethics can be maintained, if dishonestly.  Think of today's euphemisms for abortion, "reproductive rights" among them.

Cheating, lying, and worse are held up as clever, not shameful, both then and now, while honesty is belittled as simple.  BAMN!  "By Any Means Necessary!"  Rather than being used to improve the society of the people, to make it more just and fair-minded, strategies and tactics are used for the benefits of the parties.  (I'm not singling out one party or the other, but indict both Democrats and Establishment Republicans.)  Today, each sides seeks arguments, reasonable or otherwise thanks to social media and a compliant Lamestream media, to justify despicable actions.  Opponents, often seekers of the truth, are destroyed by both parties.  It is they, rather than the political leadership, who are portrayed as displaying deteriorating ethical and moral behavior and, I suppose, character.

No wonder, as Thucydides noted so long ago of the sides in his civil war, our parties and their adherents view each other with suspicion.

Is there a solution?  Hmmm......  Thucydides might suggest a return to authentic moral lives, an ethical society.  At least that was his recommendation to the Greeks/Hellenes. That didn't seem to work out so well.  And, after a pretty long run themselves, the Romans ran into the same trap.  (That's not to be confused with "Thucydides' Trap," a somewhat different, if related, concept.)  Can we?  I don't know.  My innate cynicism and pessimism (a slight difference) leads me to doubt.  From what I witness in our moral decline--in politics, entertainment, etc.--compounds that doubt.  I hope I am wrong.

Modern Society

Here's something to ponder.  What are the things you remember most fondly in your life?  These can include moments with family and friends.  What memories do you treasure most?  Of what are you most proud?  On your death bed, what will you remember?

I'm sure there are going to be different answers to this.  I would likely bet on one thing, though.  None of anyone's choices would include electronics--computers, video games, or even television or the movies.

Just before the priest comes in for last rites, I doubt I'll say, "Boy, I really remember that one episode of Charlie's Angels!"  How many will recall "I really crushed everyone in Grand Theft Auto!"  (No, that's not a typo.  It's not really a question.)  The list of things that won't be among what we'll remember from our lives is lengthy.

So, then, why do so many, particularly those younger folks, but not exclusively them, spend so much time watching television and movies, playing video games, etc.?  If it were only the younger crowd, such might be chalked up to youthful indiscretions, that they haven't yet realized what is really important in life.  (No, scoring high in Fortnight--?--is not a major accomplishment.  If someone believes that......  No, nobody, deep down, really thinks that, do they?)

Similarly, what events have had major significance in your life?  What, for better or worse, factors changed your life, pushing you in one direction or another?  My guess is that video games, television shows, movies weren't among your candidates.  Perhaps, if you were inspired by (or even won!) something like American Idol, maybe......  Did anyone ever watch The Andy Griffith Show and say, "When I grow up, I want to be just like Barney Fife or Gomer Pyle?"

Although I watch very, very little television (Karen can go on an out-of-town weekend shopping trip, leaving on Thur eve ad returning late Sun and she'll more often than not find the boob tube on the same station she left it three days earlier.), I understand the diversion movies, television, and even video games can provide.  In our times of often complete lunacy?  Yes, I understand the diversion factor.  But why do so many folks let these activities dominate their lives?

And, perhaps I am mistaken.  Maybe some people, on their death beds, will recall, "Remember how I dominated withe Mario Brothers?" or "Boy, watching Survivor was a highlight of my life."  I don't think so, but, again, in our times of often complete lunacy, I could be wrong.

Joseph Ellis

Joseph Ellis is one of my favorite historians.  He taught at Mt. Holyoke, but arrived after I graduated from Amherst.  (MHC is about 10 miles south, on Rte. 116, from AC.  Rte. 116 borders both campuses.)  He has written brilliant biographies/histories of the Founding Fathers:  Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and some general, but period specific books.  I've read most of his books and enjoyed each of them, learning a lot.  If you've not read anything by Ellis, try Founding Brothers to start.  I suspect you won't stop at that one.

I also remember a lesson I learned from him, not directly, some years ago.  He was sitting on a panel of historians.  One of the others made a point and Ellis stopped, thought a few seconds, and said, "I didn't know that."  What a lesson that was for me!  Joseph Ellis admitting he didn't know something about early US history--and he knows everything about early US history.  I have remembered that or at least tried to remember it.

Ellis has a new book out, which I'll have to buy.  (Maybe that will be on my very short Christmas or birthday list!)  It's an attempt to examine what Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison (all Founders and Superstars!) would think of the divisive  issues of today.  (Please pronounce divisive's second syllable with a long, not a short i, as in "duh vy siv."  I know, I know......)  It's an interesting concept and use of history, one that helps to explain why it is important to study.  Yet, the high regard I have for Ellis hasn't precluded me from taking exception to or at least questioning some of the ideas in his book, ones he presented in an interview.

He claimed our current problem/issue with divisiveness stems from how the US has grown.  "It's a size problem."  He cited the original population of the US (three to four million) vs that of today (325 million) and trying to do something original, something that has never been done (or even attempted) before, to "create a fully and genuinely multiracial society in a huge nation."  Well, maybe.  I'm not sure what he meant by "multi-racial" and, besides, I thought we were aiming for a post-racial society.  That is, shouldn't the goal be to get beyond race, where it doesn't matter any more?  Perhaps that is what he meant and I misinterpreted his comment--perhaps.  

I think he left out something, an important factor in our current divisiveness--technology.  It has exacerbated (I had to use that word; how often do I get to use it?) the problem.  Without a long treatise on it, think "social media" and how it has opened many forums for even the most dreadful of ideas, often ones that, because they are in print/online, are taken as legitimate by millions of people.  "I saw it online" or "I found it on the Internet."

In discussing the Founders, he cited that "We the People" didn't refer to blacks, Native Americans, and women.  Of course he is right.  But then he added that is going to "disappoint" Americans.  Maybe not.  The Founders were brilliant.  Look what they created, with no model from which to work, to emulate!  Of course, they weren't "our better angels."  They were humans and, despite their foresight, products of their times.  Also, they were compelled to compromise to achieve much of what they did.  Maybe today we are sophisticated to recognize that.

"The Electoral College has got to go," Ellis said.  He noted that the Founders would want us to see our Constitutional system as something organic, that we "have to make adaptations."  Of course we do.  How very different the late 18th Century was from today!  Could the most brilliant and far-sighted of the Founders, say Franklin, Jefferson, or Dickinson, have contemplated automobiles, jet airplanes, the Internet, etc.?  Surely not.  The Electrical College [sic] was created for a purpose and I think that it still serves that purpose.  One might disagree with it, but care must really be taken before we might make it "go," with a Constitutional amendment.  Methinks Ellis's problem with the Electrical College is that his candidates lost in 2000 and 2016.

He missed a point, a big one, in claiming reasons for Americans' distrust in their government.  In the '60s, 80% of us "trusted" our government, namely the federal government.  That changed within a couple of decades, a distrust still holding today, perhaps as great as ever.  Fewer than 20% of us now trust our government to do the right thing(s).  Correctly, I think, Ellis cited the deviousness and lies surrounding the Vietnam War.  But then he also claimed that the civil rights movement "alienated whites in the Confederacy" (a poor choice of words) and that Roe v Wade "alienates all evangelicals."  NO!  NO!  NO!  He omits an important factor or two.  

First, he didn't make the connection between the falling degree of trust  and the growing size of government.  "Big Government," the one that ordered, deliberately, the poisoning of American citizens during Prohibition, is seen as an enemy by many Americans, especially those in the middle and lower middle classes.  Second, if the civil rights movement "alienated" people, it wasn't just Southerners in "the Confederacy."  And it wasn't the civil rights movement, per se, not in the long run.  (The civil rights movement was a great episode in US history.  People like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks--"Rosa, you know they'll kill you," pleaded her husband--and others showed remarkable courage.)  It was what emanated from the movement.  One example is affirmative action, necessary to some, but resentful to many, especially white males.  

I think Ellis, in his answers to the interview questions, revealed a little of the arrogance of liberal academics described by David Gelernter.  Note his use of "the Confederacy" and "the evangelicals," deplorables all.  Such use sure seems a derogation.

I'd love to have a discussion with Ellis about this.  First though, I should read his book, which I plan do do.  I'm very certain I would learn a lot from him.

Hold on to your seats!  I'm going to take a hard left (or right, it doesn't matter; it's not political) turn now.  Late last week, I think as an introduction to one radio talk show or another, I don't recall which one, I heard something really, really cool.  It was a symphonic version of Eric Clapton's Layla.  I was very impressed.  It sounded great!  Then a few days later there was the Stones' Paint It Black, symphony-style, with strings and horns and all!  I'll have to look online to see if there are CDs of such hits played by symphonies.  There must be.  Remember Procol Harem and Conquistador with the Edmonton (Canada) Symphony?

Why They Hate Trump?

I was sent an online article, "The Real Reason They Hate Trump."  The author, David Gelernter is a computer science professor at Yale.  That he's quite the conservative makes me wonder how he's still at Yale?  (Remember the law school there canceled classes so students could protest Brett Kavanaugh.  Whatever happened to students protesting on their own time?)   I've heard him on the radio and read some other things by him.  He's one intelligent man, very smart.

I agreed with much of his article, but not all of it.  In fact, maybe my dissents aren't really disagreements at all.  He points to the arrogance of those to "hate Trump," citing many "leftists," "Democrats," the lamestream media, most academics, etc.  It's not hard to guess those he singles out.

And he points to their arrogant elitism, that they, more than any others in the US, know what's best for everyone.  Surely they know what's best for the "unwashed masses," the "deplorables," far better than they know themselves.  Gelernter then makes a case that Trump is detested by all of these arrogant elitists because he's one of them, one of the "unwashed masses."  Trump is one of them, a "deplorable," only an exaggerated one due to his wealth.  He has "no constraints to cramp his style" because "he is filthy rich."  But Trump is not, as Gelernter asserts, "a typical American," not by a long shot.  If he is, I think we are doomed, rather sooner than later.

In large part, I think Gelernter is right.  But I think the elitists of the left (and for that matter many Establishment Republicans who exhibit their own brand of arrogance) "hate Trump" not because he's Trump per se, but because the "deplorables," the "great unwashed" elected him instead of their hand-picked candidate.  Had, say, Mitt Romney been nominated again to run against H. Clinton and won, does anyone think there would be such opprobrium against Romney--or any other Establishment Republican?  Oh, they wouldn't have liked the outcome, but the vituperation would have been absent.

Taking a theme I was writing two years ago, right after Trump was elected, I don't think the hatred is really about him.  Oh, he's an easy person to dislike, even hate.  He's crude and coarse.  He treats many people, especially women, shamefully.  He's never learned that humility is a good quality to possess.  I've said in the past that I don't like Trump, would never vote for him, although I guess I can tolerate him.  Let's put it this way:  I won't give back my tax cut.  (As I wrote two years ago, I don't know if I would have been equally or more distressed and dispirited had Hillary Clinton won.)  But I understand why so many people did and it's not, as the self-anointed American intelligentsia claim.  The elitists still, apparently, don't recognize the reason(s).  The "average Americans" that Gelernter cites (and Trump is not one of them) finally were sick and tired of being dumped on or, at the very least, their perceptions that they were being dumped on.  The government, in their views, helped the poor and, if needed, the rich (or at least gave them breaks in the game).  But those in the middle, the "average Americans," perceived that their government was there for everyone but them.  They were sick and tired of it and of the Establishment candidates who were always presented to them--candidates who didn't speak for them, didn't represent them, and didn't do anything for them.  We might argue whether this perception was, in fact, true, but perception is reality and that's what the Average Joe believed.

Regardless if Trump is one the "deplorables," the elitists resent Trump because of who elected him.  And as I noted above, maybe this is a difference without a distinction.

Gelernter also raises other insightful points.  I'd certainly agree that, if the Democrats are "intellectually bankrupt," (which is different, I think than "intellectually dishonest"), so are the Establishment Republicans.  That I think so is hardly a ringing endorsement of Republicans.  He writes , "Americans, left and right, are ashamed of [Trump]" for his treatment of women, adding "as they are of JFK and Bill Clinton."  Are Americans really ashamed of "St. John?"  I hardly think so.  Most "average Americans" still think Kennedy was a great President, despite a preponderance of  evidence to the contrary.  (In discussing this, "great Presidents," with my classes, I address this.  Kennedy has his admirers.  In the end, when I ask for evidence to support "great," I get little, if any.  "So," I ask them without trying to be morbid, "Kennedy is 'great' because he was assassinated?"  Sometimes I ask further, "Does that also make Garfield and McKinley 'great?'"  OK, that's not a fair question as many/most students, college students, never heard of either.)  Ashamed of JFK?  I don't think so.  And are they ashamed of Clinton?  That's laughable.  Although he might not be "St. Bill," even in the midst of the Lewinski affair, Americans were overwhelmingly in his corner.  "Leave him alone," one Average American told me, "the economy is good."  Do Americans give people they are ashamed of hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak?  Do they invite him to endorse candidates?  (Shouldn't the endorsement of such a shameful person be reason enough not to vote for a candidate?)

One other point Gelernter makes that I think is well worth considering.  Many people who hate Trump are proud of it.  Yes, it's a point of pride to hate!  It seems that, in many circles, to be accepted, to be cool, one must hate Trump.  Think about that for a while.  I'm not sure that. as Gelernter claims, the typical "Trump-hater truly does hate the Average American...[and] America, too."  But those elitists do believe they are smarter and believe that in an arrogant manner.  They certainly would take exception with Gerlernter's last important insight, that "this country was intended to be run by amateurs after all--by plain citizens."  Tell that one to an elitist!  "...amateurs" and "plain citizens," indeed!  Don't you mean "the great unwashed" and "the deplorables?"

Forgive any typos and other errors.  I'm too tired (lazy?) tonight to proofread.