Navarro, Wells, and Acting with Impunity

By Robin Bates | Published: September 13, 2023

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Thursday

Of all the Trump associates who are in legal trouble, I’ve been particularly fascinated by Peter Navarro, the former Trump advisor who was just convicted of defying a Congressional subpoena. Maybe it’s because he’s a former professor and I recognize in him some of the arrogance characteristic of certain academics, especially at research universities. Be that as it may, applying H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man to Navarro provides some insight into why Trump has been able to attract into his circle some supposedly intelligent people.

The above Joseph Farris cartoon also helps. In case you are reading this without the illustration, it features a well-dressed and supremely confident man informing a skeptical judge, “It really wasn’t my fault, your honor. I was led to believe I was above the law.”

Navarro is noteworthy for having proudly revealed “the Green Bay Sweep” on Ari Melber’s MSNBC show The Beat. The plan called for members of Congress to disrupt the counting of electoral votes so as to cause a historic delay. This, the plotters hoped, would get media attention and allow public pressure to build for then-Vice President Mike Pence to send electoral votes back to the six contested states. To which Melber responded, “Do you realize you are describing a coup?”

While Navarro may yet be held responsible for working to overturn the election, his recent conviction was for defying a subpoena from the Congressional committee investigating the coup. Arguing that Trump had granted him “executive privilege” (even though Trump has never confirmed this), Navarro declined to offer any defense or to call any witnesses. A jury quickly found him guilty, and he could face a year in jail and a $100,000 fine for each of the two counts against him.

Navarro has complained bitterly that the court costs and the fines are impoverishing him, but he could have avoided it all by simply showing up to the Congressional hearing. If he had decline to answer their questions, he would have faced no penalty (on the grounds of self-incrimination).

But to have done so would have meant acknowledging that he was answerable to another authority. I suspect the fantasy of thumbing one’s nose at the law with impunity may explain much of Trump’s popularity. Of course, the way that Trump articulates deep racial, ethnic, and sexual grievances is also part of his allure. But that’s a feeling that churns in the gut whereas defying rules and regulations gives one the sense that one can soar above earthly accountability.

Which brings me to Invisible Man, a work I’ve applied multiple times to Trump and other authoritarian figures. To revisit some of those ideas here, I’ve noted that Griffin describes a “feeling of extraordinary elation” when he realizes that people can’t see him. Confiding his history to his college friend Kemp, he says he immediately burned down the house where he made his discoveries so that others wouldn’t discover his secrets:

“You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp.
“Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail—and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do.

He uses the word “impunity” again further on:

Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me.

In the past, I’ve compared Griffin’s behavior to that of bad cops who bang suspects’ heads against car door frames (as Trump recommended), severely beat suspects, and sometimes shoot unarmed men. Griffin undergoes a similar trajectory, beginning with minor social infractions:

My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage.

With each action, Griffin becomes hungry for more, confirming the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When Kent asks about “the common conventions of humanity,” Griffin replies that they are “all very well for common people.”

Griffin’s dark ambitions grow with his madness. Thinking he has successfully enlisted Kemp, he plots ways to wield total power:

“And it is killing we must do, Kemp.”
“It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp. “I’m listening to your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?”
“Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they know there is an Invisible Man—as well as we know there is an Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it’s startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways—scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them.”

Note that he uses one of Trump’s favorite words here: “dominate.” He’s prepared to use violence if necessary.

While I don’t know if I can attribute Griffin’s sadism to Navarro, some Trump followers feel as though he’s given them permission to act out their dark impulses. The thrill that comes with asserting your dominance over others is a sensation familiar to rapists.

But putting that aside, Navarro may have felt so exhilarated at thumbing his nose at Congress—something his idol has done regularly—that the rush overwhelmed common sense. What a sensation for someone who, all his life, has had to follow the rules.

To be sure, there’s another explanation for his behavior, something slightly more rational than an emotional Trumpian high. As John Stoehr of Editorial Board points out, Navarro may have just been making a calculated gamble, one that came perilously close to succeeding:

[Navarro] is where he is, because the plan failed. If it had succeeded, there’d be a Trump White House and a Trump Department of Justice. There’d be no accountability, “because I’m a Trump guy!” 

Indeed, Navarro’s throw of the dice may still be rewarded if Trump is reelected, pardons him, and awards him a high position. Many Trumpists are convinced that their man will wipe the floor with “senile” Joe Biden.

Such gambles have succeeded in the past, as Steve Bannon well knows. Bannon, the Trump whisperer who will also be going to jail for defying a Congressional subpoena, points to figures like Lenin, Mao and Castro, who risked everything and came out on top. And they got satisfying payback as well.

This is why the court cases against Trump and his confederates are so important. Sometimes applying justice to a rich and powerful man can itself feel like a gamble, but the arrogance of Trump and his lawbreaking associates can only be stemmed if they are brought to justice. As it is, Trump is desperately attempting to taint the jury pool and to regain the pardon power that comes with the presidency. Wrestling with him can feel like wrestling with someone who is everywhere at once–that’s what it’s like to fight the Invisible Man at the end of Wells’s novel–but in the end the forces of good prevail.

Pray that our own story ends similarly.

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Ted Lasso, Not Larkin, for Child Advice

By Robin Bates | Published: September 12, 2023
Sudeikis as Ted Lasso

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Wednesday

Literary Hub had a fascinating article this past week looking at trauma through the eyes of (1) Ted Larkin’s most quoted (and infamous) poem and (2) the television series Ted Lasso. As Catherine Buni points out, the poem actually gets quoted in one of the series’ last episodes.

First of all, here’s the poem, which you may know already (at least the first line). Reader discretion advised:

This Be the Verse
By Phil Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

After observing that Larkin’s parents were problematic (his father was a Hitler admirer and emotionally abusive husband, his mother a depressive) and that he himself could be “an asshole” (a racist, sexist, alcoholic recluse), Buni goes on to assess whether what the poem says is true. If it’s not is it good, she asks, applying Elizabeth Bishop’s observation that accuracy is one of poetry’s best qualities (along with spontaneity and mystery).

Larkin, Buni says, gets certain things wrong about both inherited trauma and coastal shelf geology. Apparently coastal shelves, which consist of “bedded layers, discrete and discernible when extracted for view,” don’t build up the way Larkin thinks they do, with one layer of silt after another drifting down and hardening. Rather, they are the product of underwater sediment routing systems which sometimes add and sometimes take away.

Likewise, childhood trauma is more dynamic than Larkin lets on. Although it’s true that adverse childhood experiences can lead to chronic physical and mental health conditions, it’s also the case that a number of these conditions can be reversed. Checking with several child trauma experts, Buni quotes former California surgeon general on how the cycle can be broken:

 She has identified seven granular, research-based strategies that prevent the human-to-human hand-off of misery: sleep, exercise, time in nature, nutrition, mindfulness, mental health care, and healthy relationships. The tool she uses most? “Walk and talk. Exercise combined with talking with someone.”

Now to Ted Lasso, a show that provide a regular workshop in healthy intervention:

The show’s communities are cooperative and inclusive, with characters who step up against bullies and bigots, who do not tolerate abuse and harm, of anybody, regardless of identity or position. There’s a men’s group that aims to nurture healthy relationships, she observed, the juxtaposition of one dad who is verbally abusive to his son with another dad who lifts his son up, and all sorts of people who decide to try therapy, including Ted. “It feels so different than what we would have seen even ten years ago,” Burke Harris said. “It’s beautiful.”

And then the poem makes its entrance, quoted by Ted’s mother as she visits her son:

Hugging serving tray to chest, Mae approaches Ted, her nimbus of white hair glowing.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad./…,” Mae begins, no introduction, no title. “They may not mean to, but they do…/.” Her voice dusk-low, the poem unfolds. “But they were fucked up in their turn/ By fools in old-style hats and coats,/…” Mae lands Larkin’s final lines as clear as a crack to the head. “Get out as early as you can,/And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Buni observes,

But, as anyone who’s watched the show knows, it’s too late for Ted. Ted was fucked up in his turn, he knows. He drank up all the faults they had, those fucked up fucks, his mum and dad. And he might fuck up his son, too. He lives an ocean away, and Ted anguishes over the question of whether to return. It won’t be until the last episode that Ted tells his Mom to fuck off, for burying the facts of his father’s death, and then suggests that she, too, might find therapy helpful.

Quoting Ted Lasso’s Peabody Award citation, Buni says that it provides

the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity, both on-screen and off, in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness.

She adds that, while the show may not represent a tectonic shift, nevertheless

it has in its own small way pushed towards a new conversation, one aimed at slowly dissolving America’s bedrock violence and banding us together instead. In light of ascendent white nationalist ideologies and communities, increasingly mainstreamed threats of political violence, an unprecedented mental health crisis for kids, and growing partisan hostility, why not create more templates for change? Together, we bear misery, shifting and roiling, riverine.

All of which is to say that we have tools for saving our kids from our misery so that they will not be inevitably doomed by our hang-ups. Indeed they are (I speak from experience here) the greatest gift imaginable and an enduring sign of hope.

So don’t take Larkin’s poem as the last word. Sure, it’s a fun poem to quote when one is feeling frustrated. But if it convinces people not to have kids, then it does more harm than good.

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The Light Brigade’s Charge & Wagner’s

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2023
Woodville, The Charge of the Light Brigade

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Tuesday

Greg Olear, who writes regular Substack essays on political issues, devotes each Sunday column to a favorite poem. In his last two, he has applied the poems to current events in a way that I embrace. Two Sundays ago, he compared Donald Trump to Kubla Khan in Coleridge’s famous poem, and this past Sunday he sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.”

To be sure, the shoe is on the other foot. Instead of the Russians rushing suicidally towards Kyiv or Bakhmut, at the Battle of Balaclava it was they who were playing the part of the Ukrainians, picking off members of the Light Brigade as it charged “into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell.” Here’s the poem:

I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
   All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
   Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
   Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
   Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
   All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
   Noble six hundred!

People debate whether the poem praises or condemns war. I’ve worried that it glorifies senseless sacrifice and in doing so may have played a destructive role in World War I. Yes, I know it’s only a poem, but it may have inspired “children ardent for some desperate glory” (to quote Wilfred Owen) to surrender their lives unthinkingly. Many would have known the poem by heart and may well have repeated to themselves “cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered” as they went over the top to charge German positions.

Olear, however, counter argues that the poem captures the senselessness of the war:

But I would argue that “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die,” quite the best lines in the poem, can also be read not as praise for valor but as condemnation of the whole sordid enterprise. Can we not “honour the Light Brigade” by learning its dread lesson and not sending our soldiers off to certain death for no good reason? The Crimean War is basically shorthand for “no good reason.”

While World War I was a stupid war, Olear writes in his column that the Crimean War was even stupider. Basically, it was Russia taking advantage of a dying Ottoman Empire to make a land grab while the Turks, French and British resisted. And if that sounds familiar, wait till you hear what the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica (quoted by Olear) says about the war’s impact on Russia at the time:

Thus Nicholas, the pillar of the European alliance, found himself isolated and at war, or potentially at war, with all of Europe. The invasion of Crimea followed, and with it a fresh revelation of the corruption and demoralization of the Russian system. At the outset Nicholas had grimly remarked that “Generals January and February” would prove his best allies. These acted, however, impartially; and if thousands of British and French soldiers perished of cold and disease in the trenches before Sevastopol, the tracks leading from the centre of Russia into the Crimea were marked by the bones of Russian dead.

I’d like to say, with Marx, that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Marx was comparing Napoleon I with Napoleon III and we could say that Putin is a wannabe Tsar Nicholas I, who actually succeeded in expanding Russia’s borders. But like Putin, Nicholas got his butt kicked in Ukraine (or at least Crimea) and may have committed passive suicide as a result. (He refused to get medical help for his pneumonia.)

Would the Light Brigade have been honored had Tennyson not written his poem? Or would it have been regarded the way that we see the Wagner mercenary group’s attacks on Bakhmut, a mission costing Russia 20,000 casualties in order to give Putin a short-term victory. I suspect the latter.

Poetry, as Plato complained, can be dangerous in that way, bamboozling through beauty. In the Republic he calls poets “deceivers” who deck out their illusions with meter, harmony, and rhythm. If we were to strip away their poetic aids, he contends, poets would make “a poor appearance” and we would see poetry for the fraud it really is.

Normally I disagree with Plato when it comes to poetry. But in this case, he may be right.

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Trump as Frankenstein’s Creature

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2023
Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s creature

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Monday

One of the most satisfying takedowns of Donald Trump I’ve ever seen comes from one Nate White. It’s in answer to the Quora question, “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

Perhaps I like it because of my own Bates-Fulcher-Jackson British lineage. In any event, I’m indulging myself—and hopefully you—by running it in its entirety.

I promise you a literary angle as well, however. At the end, White alludes to Frankenstein, and I have a few things to say about the novel’s applicability. First, however, here’s White’s explaining the reasons for British dislike:

A few things spring to mind…

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

–Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
–You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form. He is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

Whew!

Now to that Frankenstein allusion, which may be to the movie but applies equally well to the book. Here’s the creator’s description of his “creature.” He happens to be yellow rather than orange and his hair isn’t blond. Still…

 How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.

And here’s Dr. Frankenstein’s reaction, which even who outwardly support Trump secretly share::

[B]reathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavoring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. 

While the allusion to Mary Shelley’s classic–that the GOP has created an uncontrollable monster–is so commonplace that it has become a cliché, returning to the original text provides a few added insights. NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of our foremost academic authorities on fascism, notes that moneyed interests often believe that they can control authoritarian bullies, only to find that the bullies are calling the shots in the end. Along with tax cuts and labor suppression, the business community gets a trashed country. A lust for power trumps ethical considerations, which is the case as well with Dr. Frankenstein. Although he, at least, has some early reservations:

When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. 

Ultimately, however, he commits himself utterly and as a result finds himself making horrific compromises. I think of Gary Cohn, the president and COO of Goldman Sachs who became Trump’s chief economic advisor and who, despite being Jewish, was willing (in exchange for tax cuts) to overlook the president’s coddling of anti-Semitic fascists chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” (It was only one of many Faustian bargains that Republicans have made with Trump.) Dr. Frankenstein’s work is just as grubby:

Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit…. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

And what is the result? The creature, released into the world, turns Dr. Frankenstein’s life into a living hell by killing what is most dear to him, his lovely fiancé.

Unlike the GOP, however, the scientist spends the rest of his life seeking to destroy the blight he has released upon the world. He doesn’t think the monster can be appeased or will just go away and he doesn’t count on someone else dealings with the problem. (At least he doesn’t think this after his fiancé is killed.) In this way, Dr. Frankenstein is more like those NeverTrump Republicans who now seek to undo the force they once enabled. Contrast them with those who, whether out of conviction, self-interest or fear, remain loyal to the former president.

I’ve noticed one other parallel that may hold out a little hope for us: Frankenstein’s creature ceases to be a problem once his creator dies. At that point, the monster no longer sees a reason for existing and departs into the unknown.

A narcissist’s greatest fear is that he is nothing. To be ignored confirms the insecurity that propels him.  Trump becoming irrelevant—whether because of imprisonment, electoral defeat, or other means–is the consummation we should all devoutly wish for.

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Poems for Judaism’s High Holy Days

By Robin Bates | Published: September 9, 2023
Chagall, The Shofar

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Sunday

Rosh Hashanah, when Jews do a spiritual self-assessment and take upon themselves responsibility for the sins of the world, begins this Thursday. I am reposting this essay from 13 years ago on three Alicia Ostriker poems that reflect upon Judaism’s High Holy Days.

Ostriker is one who believes that poetry can make things happen. W. H. Auden has written (in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”) that “poetry makes nothing happen,” to which Ostriker has responded that poetry “can tear at the heart with its claws, make the neural nets shiver, flood us with hope, despair, longing, ecstasy, love, anger, terror . . .”

(Incidentally, I don’t think Auden would disagree. He was just feeling gloomy about Yeats’s death and the state of the world in 1939 and Yeats’s apparent inability to change the course of Irish history.)

Ostriker sees the high holy days—the month of preparatory repentance (Elul), the Day of Judgment (Rosh Hashanah), and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)—in a similar way. We have a chance, during this holiday, to be renewed.

True, renewal means facing up to our sins and those of others, which we take collective responsibility for. As Ostriker puts it, “we destroy we break we are broken.” True, “our cells secrete anger, our minds propagate envy.” True, we are like a foolish old woman, living in a ramshackle house during a hurricane that is being struck by “guilt waves and fear waves.” Otsriker calls it right when she says we have the sense that “the walls could collapse any time.”

Longing to open up like an egg, we instead feel like the large stones that “people place on graves to make them a little heavier.” And yet. . .

And yet, against all logic we find renewal. We are Hagar and Ishmael finding water in the desert. (The exile of the two is another thing that Jews may feel the need to atone for.)

Particularly striking is the image of image of drops of rain on the windshield. Going through life can be like driving through a storm, with violent points of contact occurring regularly. Yet the water, defying gravity, flies upward, like prayers. What is our knowledge, what is our strength?” Ostriker asks, invoking ritual language, and then answers her own question with ritual reassurance: “repentance prayer and good deeds avert the stern decree.”

Like that foolish old woman, we don’t leave the house. We face the storm, not like solid and heavy grave markers, but like vulnerable and open eggs.

Here’s the poem:

Days of Awe
By Alicia Ostriker

elul: psalm 27

we are told to say the following
every day for a month
in preparation for the days of awe:

you are my light my help
when I’m with you I’m not afraid
I want to live in your house

the enemies that chew my heart
the enemies that break my spine
I’m not afraid of them when I’m with you

all my life I have truly trusted you
save me from the liars
let me live in your house

*****

rosh hashanah

the birthday of adam
the innocent earthling
and the day hagar and ishmael
found water in the desert

in memory of whom
mud staining our shoes
water flowing in handfuls
we sniff the smell of living dying things

reach into our pockets
for the bread that represents
our sins, toss it in, praying release
us, help us, forgive us

the river answers
by swallowing our crumbs

do our prayers travel upward
do they defy gravity
like rain splashed on the windshield
of a car speeding through storm

in ten days we will go hungrier
pray harder

*****

yom kippur

we destroy we break we are broken
and this is the fast you have chosen
on rosh hashana it is written
on yom kippur it is sealed

who shall live and who shall die
which goat will have his throat cut
like an unlucky Isaac

spitting a red thread and which goat
will be sent alive to the pit where the crazies are
thread lightly tied around its neck

who will possess diamonds and pearls
and who will be killed
by an addicted lover

who shall voyage the web of the world
like an eagle, and who shall curl to sleep
over a steam grate like a worm

who shall be photographed and whose
face will disappear like smoke

this is the fast you have chosen, turn return
how to turn    like leaves   like a page   like a corner
what is our knowledge, what is our strength

I am like the stones people place on graves to make them a little heavier
such a stone says, in its oracular way, don’t come back or return only as grass
but it is tired of being a stone, it wishes to be open, it would like to be an egg

honeybees manufacture honey, a power station generates electricity
cotton plants extrude smooth fibre, and my cells secrete anger
my mind propagates envy, but repentance, prayer and good deeds

avert the stern decree, I am like a ramshackle house during a hurricane
struck by guilt waves and fear waves, the walls could collapse any time
but the foolish old woman who lives there refuses to leave

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MAGA “Justice” and the Queen of Hearts

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2023
Tenniel, illus. from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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Friday

The MAGA members of the House appear to be suffering from indictment envy and impeachment envy, so much so that they may shut down the government if Speaker McCarthy doesn’t start proceedings against President Biden. Think of them as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, who at one point declares, “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

Of course, they’ve been like this for a while. We all remember the 2016 election, when “Lock her up!” was their rallying cry. As political scientist John Stoehr points out,

Most people understand the difference between evidence of wrongdoing and claims of wrongdoing – most people, anyway, if they have ever watched a television courtroom drama in which evidence is independent of the interests of those who enter it into the record. The accused is not guilty because the accuser says he is. He is guilty because the evidence points overwhelmingly toward guilt.

“Most people,” however, doesn’t include either the Queen of Hearts or MAGA Republicans. Stoehr points out that the latter

begin with a verdict and then work backwards, no matter how objectively cynical it may appear. They took control of the House “knowing” that Biden was guilty of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors. They have since then worked very hard to uncover reasonsreasonsreasons for why they’re right.

The crime in Alice in Wonderland is the theft of tarts, as described in the nursery rhyme that Lewis Carroll draws on:

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
    All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
    And took them quite away!”

Of course the knave, unlike Biden, is actually guilty. Still, evidence is needed to determine guilt. In Alice in Wonderland the King of Hearts, as judge, keeps trying to move past the evidence stage:

Consider your verdict,” the King said to the jury.
“Not yet, not yet!” the Rabbit hastily interrupted. “There’s a great deal to come before that!”

And:

Consider your verdict,” he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.
“There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,” said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; “this paper has just been picked up.”

The paper proves to be a set of verses, but the subsequent conversation about them shows a looseness of legal reasoning that would do MAGA House members proud:

“Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?” asked another of the jurymen.
“No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.)
“He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)
“Please your Majesty,” said the Knave, “I didn’t write it, and they can’t prove I did: there’s no name signed at the end.”
“If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.”
There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.
“That proves his guilt,” said the Queen.

In this crazy world of upside-down logic, there’s only one who calls BS, and that’s Alice. And while the nonsense world doesn’t collapse like a house of cards, she exposes it for what it is:

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
“I won’t!” said Alice.
“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
“Who cares for you?” said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her…

It is at this point in the book that Alice awakens from what has become a nightmare:

…she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
“Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister; “Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!”

It would be nice to think that unhinged MAGA Republicans are no more substantial than pieces of cardboard. I recently read an article by NeverTrumper Steve Schmidt who, interviewing Trump supporters around the country, has been discovering that many regard him, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and the others as performance artists—which, it so happens, is how the Lewis Carroll’s Gryphon sees the Queen of Hearts:

The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. “What fun!” said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.
“What is the fun?” said Alice.
“Why, she,” said the Gryphon. “It’s all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know. Come on!”

When I was a child, the sight of the cards flying at Alice used to terrify me but now they seem harmless enough. Unfortunately, performance artists who get hold of power can do actual damage. The question is whether these Americans will grow out of their wonderland before someone gets hurt.

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Lit’s Neurological Benefits

By Robin Bates | Published: September 6, 2023
Angus Fletcher, author of Wonderworks

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Thursday

Friend and former colleague Lois Stover alerted me to this Smithsonian article about the psychological impact of different literary elements. According to Angus Fletcher, who is a “professor of story science” at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, fictional techniques like plot twists, secret disclosures, and empathy generators can

alleviate grief, improve your problem-solving skills, dispense the anti-depressant effects of LSD, boost your creativity, provide therapy for trauma (including both kinds of PTSD), spark joy, dole out a better energy kick than caffeine, lower your odds of dying alone, and (as impossible as it sounds) increase the chance that your dreams will come true. They can even make you a more loving spouse and generous friend.

Fletcher sets forth his ideas in Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, which I have yet to read. I’m intrigued by his characterization of story elements as “inventions” and report here on the effect he believes they have.

I first like what he says about Aristo how he discusses Aristotle.  In Poetics, the Greek philosopher proposed that literature was

many inventions, each constructed from an innovative use of story. Story includes the countless varieties of plot and character—and it also includes the equally various narrators that give each literary work its distinct style or voice. Those story elements, Aristotle hypothesized, could plug into our imagination, our emotions, and other parts of our psyche, troubleshooting and even improving our mental function.

In my own work with Aristotle, I look into how he saw tragedy as a way to train Greek youth in citizenship responsibilities. For his part, Fletcher singles out Aristotle’s focus on the Plot Twist, which he says can have potent psychological effects:

Who hasn’t felt a burst of wonder—or as Aristotle called it, thaumazein—when a story pivots unexpectedly? And as modern research has revealed, that wonder can be more than a heart-exciting sensation. It can stimulate what psychologists term a self-transcendent experience (or what “father of American psychology” William James more vividly termed a “spiritual” experience), increasing our overall sense of life purpose.

The other literary inventions that Fletcher mentions in his Smithsonian article are:

–The Hurt Delay

A work foreshadowing hurt to come (as in Oedipus) can “stimulate catharsis, alleviating the symptoms of post-traumatic fear.” Fletcher says he has witnessed the effect upon war veterans:

[B]y stimulating an ironic experience of foreknowledge in our brain’s perspective-taking network, the Hurt Delay can increase our self-efficacy, a kind of mental strength that makes us better able to recover from experiences of trauma.

–the Tale Told from Our Future

We are well familiar with this technique, which as Fletcher notes is the foundation of the modern thriller (think of those stories that open with a flash forward). Fletcher says that this “can have a potent neural effect: by activating the brain’s primal information-gathering network, it boosts curiosity, immediately elevating your levels of enthusiasm and energy.”

–the Secret Discloser

The “narrative revelation of an intimate character detail,” Fletcher says,

activates dopamine neurons in the brain to convey the hedonic benefits of loving and being loved, boosting your positive affect and making you more cheerful and generally glad to be alive.

He mentions Charlotte Bronte so perhaps he has in mind Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe both coming to acknowledge their love for the male protagonists (Rochester and Paul Emanuel).

 –the Serenity Elevator

The storytelling element, Fletcher says, involves “a turning around of satire’s tools (including insinuation, parody and irony) so that instead of laughing at someone else, you smile at yourself.” (He cites Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as an example.)  The Serenity Elevator “can have analgesic effects—and more importantly, …it can convey your brain into the serene state of feeling like it’s floating above mortal cares.”

–the Empathy Generator

This insight that we are given into “a character’s private feeling of self-critique,” Fletcher says, “stimulates empathy in our brain’s perspective-taking network,” helping nurture kindness towards others. (He gives the example of Jo March’s having regrets over accidentally burning Meg’s hair.) Fletcher traces this fictional element back to the Book of Job, which he “may have reflected the poet’s effort to promote peace in the wake of the Judah-Babylonian-Persian wars.”

–the Almighty Heart

Omniscient narration is “a story told by someone with a human heart and a god’s all-seeing eye.” Fletcher credits Homer with its invention and mentions as a more recent example the opening lines of Tale of Two Cities, which I wrote about on Tuesday (including “it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”). He observes,

The invention works by tricking your brain into feeling like you’re chanting along with a greater human voice. And that feeling—which is also triggered by war songs and battle marches—activates the brain’s pituitary gland, stimulating an endocrine response that’s linked to psychological bravery. So, even in the winter of despair, you feel a fortifying spring of hope.

–the Anarchy Rhymer

This is “a rule-breaking element inside a larger formal structure.” To my mind, Fletcher doesn’t describe it very well, but it seems to be what all great authors do. (To do otherwise is to be formulaic and predictable.) According to Fletcher, the Anarchic Rymer activates a brain region known as the Default Mode Network, which is the region of the brain that is most active during REM sleep, daydreaming, and reading stories. The result of encountering the Rhymer is increased creativity.

I see that Sewanee’s library has a copy of the book so I’ll be checking it out and reporting on more of what Fletcher has to say.

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The Joys of September Threshing

By Robin Bates | Published: September 5, 2023
Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters

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Wednesday

One of the best things to come out of our trip to Ireland last spring was being introduced to the poetry of Patrick Kavanaugh. Here’s a joyous September poem he wrote as he nostalgically recalls working with neighboring farms during harvest season.

I showed the poem to my wife, who was raised on a small farm in southeast Iowa, and she said it captures the experience perfectly. In her case, her own family would combine efforts with her two uncles, along with a couple of other farm families. They would move from farm to farm, and Julia recalls taking on different tasks at different ages, from driving the tractor that lifted the hay bales to collecting the hay bales in the field to receiving and stacking the bales in the barn.

When Kavanagh talks about how “we owed them a day at the threshing since last year” and how “it was a delight to be paying bills of laughter and chaffy gossip in kind,” Julia says he is spot on. She remembers the men making slightly off-color jokes, which the children barely understood. “Chaffy gossip” is a wonderful way to describe the dialogue—almost light as air and filling the atmosphere.

And then there was the “work thrown in to ballast the fantasy-soaring mind.” The work made it real, giving substance to the communal good feelings.

Julia tells me that Kavanagh’s sense that he was entering heaven’s (haggard) gate to a kind of paradise –“no earthly estate”–is no exaggeration. Being an integral part of a family and communal enterprise gave her a strong sense of being important. “Lost in unthinking joy” was what it felt like.

On an Apple-Ripe September Morning
By Patrick Kavanagh

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy’s haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shoveling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I’ll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round…
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

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Best of Times or Worst of Times?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2023

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Tuesday

I suspect I’m not the only American thoroughly confused by the present political climate. On the one hand, this country is doing remarkably well, not only economically but in many other realms, especially with regard to technological advances and medical breakthroughs. We also have a remarkable university system which educates those who go on to make possible many of societal and life style benefits we have come to take for granted. Millions around the world would love to emigrate here.

Yet at the same time, we regularly hear open calls for civil war from various quarters, and while an authoritarian ignoramus like Donald Trump may have lost the last election, he still commands a following in the tens of millions. At his instigation, some of these stormed the Capitol while others carry out lone wolf programs of mass shootings.

We have such a strong military that we fear no invasion—think how few countries have been able to say that in world history—and yet we never know when lethal violence will break out in this school or that church/synagogue/ mosque. Meanwhile, the same technology that allows us unprecedented mobility and comfort at contributing to extreme weather events that overwhelm us.

If ever there were a time to cite the opening lines to Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, this is it:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Maybe I’ll just leave it there, adding only that—in the course of the novel—the human heart ultimately shines brighter than human evil and human ignorance. For all the damage caused by the “worst of times,” Dickens assures us that the destroyers don’t get the last word.

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