Month: October 2014

La Cara de la Guerra (1940) Salvador Dalí

Institutional breakdown in a time of Ebola

So, how is everybody feeling about Ebola today?

If exponential projections are to be believed (and the mealy-mouthed afterthoughts of our lizard authorities are not), then it looks like things could be shaping up to get pretty real. Or did you already know that?

Personally, I vacillate between mindblind social scientific absorption and horrified disbelief. As a good libertarian, I try to balance my sometimes-myopic trust in market coordination and social resiliency against a healthy awareness of black swan events and radical uncertainty—all underpinned, of course, by an awesome appreciation for those devilish cognitive biases that can make a lone summer shark attack look like a spree of sharknados. But I gotta admit that this Ebola thing is starting to bug me in a way that other spectacles don’t.

I first got the feeling that something might be amiss when I noticed the Vox set trying so hard to convince me otherwise. Then things got a little too close to the demonpit for comfort, so I summarily paid tribute to the Amazon gods for provisions. Having recently received my 2-day deliveries of the basic rations on the cheap—DuPont elastic waist hooded coverall suits (plus booties!) (2); Uvex stealth safety goggles; disposable latex gloves (100); plenty o’ Purell®; a 3M P100 respirator mask and particulate filter packs (3)—assuredly all very highly recommended by the buzzing prepper forums that I briefly browsed in a wild moment of womanly panic, I’m now feeling like I’m sitting a tiny bit more pretty in this gaping biotarget that is our nation’s capital. All that I really need now is the appropriate safety equipment for my sweet pugdog (hit a sister up if you’ve got the goods) and my superstitious Spanish soul will be that much more at ease.

You can think me a scaredy cat, but I could say I’m “building robustness.” Best case scenario, I get a last-minute tasteless Halloween costume at the reasonable cost of one brunch foregone and a couple of yucks at my morbid imagination. Worst case scenario, I get a few more worry-free days of life in an airborne Ebola situation.

Ok, so maybe I have more legitimate reasons to fear a fluke transmission from ordinary hospital errors than from airborne mutation or a 4GW surprise. Whatever, it made perfect sense at the time.

Clearly, my ritualistic and meager stockpiling does not indicate a real fear that a blood-letting global pandemic lurks in our near future. What truly worries me is the revealed massive failure of governance and series of pathetically botched responses that have allowed the epidemic to grow beyond control.

Those tin foil hatters over at the New York Times saw fit to print this grim diagnosis: “What is not getting said publicly, despite briefings and discussions in the inner circles of the world’s public health agencies, is that we are in totally uncharted waters and that Mother Nature is the only force in charge of the crisis at this time.” And Mother Nature is a bitch.

I can’t tell whether I should take comfort or despair in this shared realization. Looking around, I’m getting the hint that I can’t expect the relevant leaders and institutions to do an adequate job to protect me from the nasties they were created to monitor. A quick jog down memory lane might show you what I mean.

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American Beauty and false liberation

I am pretty sure that behind American Beauty’s is an exercise in the Buddhist understanding of liberation. Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, is a jaded middle-aged suburban man, unhappy with his job and his marriage. At this point, the viewer might be led into thinking that American Beauty is typical Hollywood fare where the protagonist has to discover himself to defy lame old suburbia. This, thankfully, is not the case.

Lester does try to pursue his desire and experience all the novelty the world has to offer. Is he going to find truth and love and all that? He thinks so, and it seems like that. In that iconic scene, Lester fantasizes about Angela (Mina Suvari) with falling red rose petals falling. We see the color red used similarly throughout the film as a symbol for defiant passion. The Real Estate King, Buddy has red advertisements, and he is having an affair with Lester’s wife, who is defying the repression of suburban expectations. The free, directionless spirit of red is highlighted with the scene where the plastic bag is dancing on the wind in front of a red wall. Red is perhaps the color of the energy that defies civilization itself, in all of its beautiful and irrational glory.

When Lester is presented with the opportunity to have sex with Angela, she reveals that she is a virgin, despite her pretenses. Angela represents the insatiability of desire – even when she is totally his, Lester remains unsatisfied. He doesn’t even want her now, thinking of her as an innocent child. His fantasy of satisfaction set the bar far higher than could be reached.

The attempts to engage passion lead to bad results. This is ultimately expressed by the neighbor, Frank, in a homoerotic-turned-violent moment with Lester. Rather than the repression imposed by his environment, Frank’s repression derives from his futile attempt to control that which cannot be controlled, whether it be his son, society, or his neighbors. Lester is shot dead and achieves some sort of analog to Nirvana. He is free from the meaningless context that he existed in and also free from the consequences of destructive passion, yet can appreciate beauty without attachment. Before credits role Lester sees past his delusional fantasy of this young girl, with the music playing with its lyrics “castles burning” alluding to Lester’s false expectations of the “American Beauty” burning away to reveal the unglamorous interior.

The suburban grind is a prison, but so is bohemianism. They are competing systems of trying to sate insatiable material appetites. Breaking out of routine and expressing yourself by dancing on a table, or something, doesn’t save you. Hollywood was wrong. Liberation isn’t a carefree journey of self-fulfillment

Liberation hurts.

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Secession lagniappe

Don Devine on the secession trend:

American hegemony properly controlled thus assists world peace, and secession could threaten international and domestic liberty. Still, secession in its tamed form of federalism and decentralization presents the secret to domestic liberty, especially in larger states. The ability to devolve power to the lowest levels possible—first to the individual, then to the family, to free associations and businesses, to the community, to local and regional government, and only to the national state when no other institution can perform the function—allows freedom to adjust to community differences and make individuals more satisfied with their national state.

Clark Bianco on the persistence of the English Civil War in our red state-blue state divide:

If you visit a red state you will notice higher than average levels of tobacco use, Evangelical Christianity, Ford F-150s, and so on.

If you visit a blue state you will notice higher than average levels of organic foods,evangelical Brightism, Priuses, and so forth.

To a first approximation, these two bags of cultural signifiers have absolutely nothing to do with King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell and the cultures around them.

In fact, though, if you dig a bit deeper you’ll see that there are very solid strands connecting them. The Parliamentarian Roundheads were made up of Diggers (agrarian socialists – who’d think that farmers would be socially liberal?),Levellers (who were into “popular sovereignty”, which is a fancy political science term for a drum circle, I think) and a bunch of near heretics who’s spiritual descendants believe in Crystal Power and Chakras (or perhaps having their female priests and rabbis perform gay marriages in an inclusive church), and always voting Democrat. In short, you’ve got a pretty similar culture alliance in 1614 as you do in 2014.

WRM on a world in flames:

Obama, Merkel, Cameron and Hollande have made plenty of mistakes on their own; words like “Libya” and “Syria” come to mind. But the rip currents through which they must swim are not entirely of their making. They, and we, are reaping the consequences of bad decisions taken two decades ago, when the skies were still bright and the world was full of hope. For a quarter century now, Western policymakers have assumed that history held no more great challenges on the scale of the colossal crises of the 20th century. They have acted as if we had reached some kind of post-historical utopia, and as if our security and prosperity had become so absolute and so embedded that we no longer needed to concern ourselves with the foundations of the world order.

This was foolishly and tragically wrong. We are not yet back in the worst of the bad old days. We have passed from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. A shadow is stirring in Mirkwood, the orcs are roaming the forests, but the Dark Lord hasn’t returned to his Tower.  The historical clock that seemed to slow in the 1990s is ticking faster now. We can no longer afford to live carelessly and large. The days are getting darker, and if we are to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the last century, there is no time to waste and little to spare.

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‘You should have listened’: Ayn Rand, Left Behind, Doom Paul, and the politics of futility

Hunter Baker wants Christians to get over their “deep ambivalence” about Ayn Rand and stop being so mean to her:

Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.

Personally, I’m not ambivalent at all about her, if anything she deserves the Cromwell treatment. But that’s just me.

Perhaps it’s fair for Baker to regret that the most prominent politician to publicly embrace Rand at one time now has to disavow it nearly every time he gives an extended interview. “I completely reject the philosophy of objectivism” is what Paul Ryan said to Jim Rutenberg recently. Is there any comparable ideology that prompts this kind of categorical condemnation from public figures? You get the sense that a politician would have an easier time if it came out that they had dabbled in Scientology or Thelema.

But this isn’t true:

Rand did have disdain for some people, but her lack of respect was not based on physical weakness, class, or color so much as it was aimed at those she thought lacked virtue. Contempt may have its place if it aims at a form of evil.

Characterizing the people of Palestine as “almost totally primitive savages” is disdain based on something other than virtue. I suppose that’s a matter of interpretation. But her war ethics, such as they were, are extremely troubling, and clearly leave the door open to genocide.

In Roy Childs’ letter trying to convert her to anarchism, he links some of these conclusions with the claim that she misunderstands the Constitution and the Cold War. Rand may have been anti-government but she was not an anarchist. Most colorfully, she supported state violence in the sense of being opposed to rules of engagement to mitigate civilian casualties during wartime. She also saw abortion as a “moral right,” which seems to me a lack of respect based on physical weakness.

So, Ayn Rand had pretty destructive views about war, the state, and human solidarity. That’s more than enough to turn me off, but maybe I don’t make enough money. More to the point, should we take it as a sign of defective character when a public figure professes admiration for a person that espouses these views? Perhaps Paul Ryan should not make us as nervous as he seems to make liberal reporters, but it’s not unreasonable, generally speaking, to think so.

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Scenes from the Fourth Rome

Canaanland Apartments near 7th and N, right around the corner from my parish, St. Luke’s at Immaculate Conception. They were built by the pentecostal United House of Prayer, which owns a significant amount of property in DC, and has occasionally been the subject of scandal. The sign reminds me of some sort of space-homestead though.

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