v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Dumb and Dumber in Florida

From  Paul Krugman in the NYT today:

Let’s talk, in particular, about the attack on education, especially but not only in Florida, which has become one of America’s leading laboratories of democratic erosion.

Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most voters have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.

I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”

Anyone tempted to place an innocuous interpretation on this provision — maybe it’s just about not assigning collective guilt? — should read the text of the bill. Among other things, it cites as its two prime examples of things that must not happen in schools “denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of critical race theory” — because suggesting that “racism is embedded in American society” (the bill’s definition of the theory) is just the same as denying that Hitler killed six million Jews.

What’s really striking, however, is the idea that schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that causes “discomfort” among students and their parents. If you imagine that the effects of applying this principle would be limited to teaching about race relations, you’re being utterly naïve.

For one thing, racism is far from being the only disturbing topic in American history. I’m sure that some students will find that the story of how we came to invade Iraq — or for that matter how we got involved in Vietnam — makes them uncomfortable. Ban those topics from the curriculum!

Then there’s the teaching of science. Most high schools do teach the theory of evolution, but leading Republican politicians are either evasive or actively deny the scientific consensus, presumably reflecting the G.O.P. base’s discomfort with the concept. Once the Florida standard takes hold, how long will teaching of evolution survive?

Illusions are Gone

Jonathan Cook from his blog, a post here ona topic that lately I've really not posted on:

Thomas Friedman’s recent column in the New York Times reflecting on Israel’s 11-day destruction of Gaza is a showcase for the delusions of liberal Zionism: a constellation of thought that has never looked so threadbare. It seems that every liberal newspaper needs a Thomas Friedman – the UK’s Guardian has Jonathan Freedland – whose role is to keep readers from considering realistic strategies for Israel-Palestine, however often and catastrophically the established ones have failed. In this case, Friedman’s plea for Joe Biden to preserve the ‘potential of a two-state solution’ barely conceals his real goal: resuscitating the discourse of an illusory ‘peace process’ from which everyone except liberal Zionists has moved on. His fear is that the debate is quietly shifting outside this framework – towards the recognition that Israel is a belligerent apartheid regime, and the conclusion that one democratic state for Palestinians and Jews is now the only viable solution.

For more than five decades, the two-state solution – of a large, ultra-militarized state for Israel, and a much smaller, demilitarized one for Palestinians – has been the sole paradigm of the Western political and media class. During these years, a Palestinian state failed to materialize despite (or more likely because of) various US-backed ‘peace processes’. While Americans and Europeans have consoled themselves with such fantasies, Israel has only paid them lip-service, enforcing a de facto one-state solution premised on Jewish supremacy over Palestinians, and consolidating its control over the entire territory.

But in recent years, Israel’s naked settler-colonial actions have imperiled that Western paradigm. It has become increasingly evident that Israel is incapable of making peace with the Palestinians because its state ideology – Zionism – is based on their removal or eradication. What history has taught us is that the only just and lasting way to end a ‘conflict’ between a native population and a settler-colonial movement is decolonization, plus the establishment of a single, shared, democratic state. Otherwise, the settlers continue to pursue their replacement strategies – which invariably include ethnic cleansing, communal segregation and genocide. These were precisely the tactics adopted by European colonists in the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Friedman’s function in the Western media – conscious or not – is to obfuscate these historical lessons, tapping into a long legacy of unthinking colonial racism.

One of the central pillars of that legacy is an abiding fear of the native and his supposedly natural savagery. This has always been the unspoken assumption behind the interminable two-state ‘peace process’. A civilized and civilizing West tries to broker a ‘peace deal’ to protect Israel from the Palestinian hordes next door. But the Palestinians continuously ‘reject’ these peace overtures because of their savage nature – which is in turn presented as the reason why Israel must ethnically cleanse them and herd them into reservations, or Bantustans, away from Jewish settlers. Occasionally, Israel is forced to ‘retaliate’ – or defend itself from this savagery – in what becomes an endless ‘cycle of violence’. The West supports Israel with military aid and preferential trade, while watching with exasperation as the Palestinian leadership fails to discipline its people.

Friedman is an expert at exploiting this colonial mentality. He often avoids taking direct responsibility for his racist assumptions, attributing them to ‘centrist Democrats’ or other right-minded observers. Coded language is his stock in trade, serving to heighten the unease felt by western audiences as the natives try to regain a measure of control over their future. In some cases the prejudicial framing is overt, as with his concern about the threat of an ascendant Hamas to women’s and LGBTQ rights, couched in an identity politics he knows will resonate with NYT readers. But more often his framing is insidious, with terms like ‘decimate’ and ‘blow up’ deployed to cast Palestinians’ desire for self-determination as violent and menacing.  

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Non-violence activism is largely ignored

 

Always useful to elucidate causes of violence in a colonial structured situation, from Shadi Hamid at The Atlantic, let's face it facts and rationality aren't a strong suit of the US inhabitants:

In the case of the current situation in Gaza, the objective is not to carefully assess Hamas’s “grievances.” The group’s behavior is not particularly mysterious. Hamas leaders see anger against Israel building among ordinary Palestinians, and they see an opportunity to weaponize it. They send rockets across the border and invite destruction because they wish to project relevance and rally domestic support after years of diminished popularity. Hamas is not a bunch of crazed lunatics. Selfish, self-serving, and cavalier toward Palestinian life, its leaders are acting according to a traditional rational-actor model. Whether or not we like it, they believe they will benefit from the crisis—and they may, in reality, find themselves in a stronger position when this is over.

This is one step in the analysis, but it still doesn’t tell us much about why Palestinian anger had been rising in the first place. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party tends to emphasize the original “source” of the current violence. This source isn’t exactly a secret either. As The New York Times reported: “The trouble started on Monday, when a heavy-handed police raid at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque—the third-holiest site in Islam, located atop a site also revered by Jews—set off an instant backlash.” Yet while the police raid was actually unfolding—during the final days of Ramadan and at such a sensitive site—I found only minimal coverage in mainstream outlets. I relied instead on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts that were covering the raid and its aftermath in real time, although many were censored for “sensitive content.” The tragedy, upon other tragedies, is that the world seems to pay attention to Palestinians only when they use violence. Nonviolent activism goes largely ignored.  

Tensions had, in fact, been building for months, with the threatened eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Smaller protests in the area, taking place at a steady clip for some time, grew larger. But even these details don’t capture the broader context. What is so important about Sheikh Jarrah, and why are Palestinian families being faced with eviction in the first place? As NBC News reported: “The expansion of Jewish settlements in Sheikh Jarrah, which is on land that helps form the final link in a settlement circle surrounding east Jerusalem—an area that Palestinians hope will be the capital of a future state.”

That aspiration matters, but seemingly not much to those who see Israel’s right to self-defense as the only truly salient issue. They don’t see the occupation itself—and what has flowed from it—as the original sin. And because they don’t recognize the centrality of the occupation, they don’t acknowledge what is so obvious to the other side: the basic fact of a lopsided power dynamic, in which Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians are the aggressed. This imbalance ought to matter—and not just for moral reasons. American policy makers, regardless of whether they see Palestinians as fully deserving of rights and dignity, should understand that wildly unequal power and capabilities make peace all but impossible. Absent international pressure, the more powerful actor has few incentives to offer substantive compromises and concessions to the weaker party.

The Biden administration is acting as if the past several years (or decades) have not happened. It is repeating the same mistakes as its predecessors, while hoping that a cease-fire can bring an end to hostilities and a return to calm. But until fundamental injustices—and Palestinian national aspirations—are addressed by ending an occupation that has lasted longer than my own existence, the calm will prove uneasy. Maybe that’s good enough for Biden. But it shouldn’t be.

Teachings

Here are some interesting rules to create writing or photography or painting or film, though at the site they are credited to John Cage they actually are from Corita Kent:

John Cage was an avant-garde composer whose work has left a lasting influence on contemporary music. (Thom York of Radiohead calls Cage one of his all-time heroes.) Cage's work included such experimentation as using a prepared piano (meaning objects are placed inside the piano to alter the sound) and a composition called 433, in which the musicians make no sounds at all for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a studentpull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacherpull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Dont try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everythingit might come in handy later.

From Corita Kent's book Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit.

In What Reality?

Charles Blow has to bring things back to reality-from the NY Times yesterday:

In what reality has tremendous progress been made on universal equality under the Trump administration? We have seen the largest racial protests in American history under the Trump administration. Trump has used massive force against these protesters. He has demonized them.

Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, an Indian-American woman, went even broader with her revisionism, saying, “In much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country.” She says this was personal to her as a “brown girl in a Black and white world.”

“Not a racist country?” What precisely does that mean? Was its founding caught up with enslavement? Yes. Were many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence enslavers? Yes. Were some of our presidents enslavers? Yes. Were many of them white supremacists? Yes. Was lynching allowed, sometimes by law enforcement itself? Yes. Was Jim Crow legal in this country? Yes. Was mass incarceration a thing that the country engaged in? Yes. Are Black people still the recipients of worse treatment than white people on a broad range of metrics? Yes.

Now, is everyone in the country openly, consciously, maliciously racist? No. But, do they have to be? No. Has the country, and does the country, operate in a way that disadvantages Black people and advantages white ones? Absolutely.

These Black and brown people at the Republican convention know this, but they have a job to do: the erasure of racism, the clouding of it so that one way reasons it away.

This show had two audiences: educated suburbanites who don’t want to be labeled racist and to a lesser degree Black men who have been slipping a bit away from Democrats in recent elections.

The Collaborators

From Anne Applebaum's article on The Collaborators:

The three most important members of Trump’s Cabinet—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr—are all profoundly shaped by Vichyite apocalyptic thinking. All three are clever enough to understand what Trumpism really means, that it has nothing to do with God or faith, that it is self-serving, greedy, and unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a former member of the administration (one of the few who did decide to resign) told me that both Pence and Pompeo “have convinced themselves that they are in a biblical moment.” All of the things they care about—outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and (though this is never said out loud) maintaining a white majority in America—are under threat. Time is growing short. They believe that “we are approaching the Rapture, and this is a moment of deep religious significance.” Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, has also described his belief that “militant secularists” are destroying America, that “irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.” Whatever evil Trump does, whatever he damages or destroys, at least he enables Barr, Pence, and Pompeo to save America from a far worse fate. If you are convinced we are living in the End Times, then anything the president does can be forgiven.

Iris Murdoch Quote

"The best thing about being God would be making the heads”
— Iris Murdoch

Science Deniers

From Paul Krugman in the NYTimes:

About denial: Epidemiologists trying to get a handle on the coronavirus threat appear to have been caught off guard by the immediate politicization of their work, the claims that they were perpetrating a hoax designed to hurt Trump, or promote socialism, or something. But they should have expected that reaction, since climate scientists have faced the same accusations for years.

And while climate-change denial is a worldwide phenomenon, its epicenter is clearly here in America: Republicans are the world’s only major climate-denialist party.

Nor is climate science the only thing they reject; not one of the candidates contending for the G.O.P.’s 2016 nomination was willing to endorse the theory of evolution.

What lies behind Republican science denial? The answer seems to be a combination of fealty to special interests and fealty to evangelical Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., who dismissed the coronavirus as a plot against Trump, then reopened his university despite health officials’ warnings, and seems to have created his own personal viral hot spot.

The point, in any case, is that decades of science denial on multiple fronts set the stage for the virus denial that paralyzed U.S. policy during the crucial early weeks of the current pandemic.

About death: I still sometimes encounter people convinced that America has the world’s highest life expectancy. After all, aren’t we the world’s greatest nation? In fact, we have the lowest life expectancy among advanced countries, and the gap has been steadily widening for decades.

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Warding of the Trumpian Virus

From the NYRB, Spencer Traub writes about illness and crisis in medieval times:

Medieval scholars thought the plague arose from causes both universal (unfortunate astrological conjunctions) and particular (corrupted airs and humoral imbalances). One can’t control the stars, but one can control what Greek medicine called the six non-naturals, the mutable things like exercise and emotion that were thought to affect health. Across both the Islamic and Christian medical worlds, writers warned against sex and baths and commended sour food and strong smells. In a 1348 report, the Paris Medical Faculty warned that certain populations were more susceptible to the disease: those “bunged up with evil hu­mors”; “those following a bad life style, with too much exercise, sex and bathing”; “persistent worriers”; “corpulent people with a ruddy complexion.” Lifestyle changes might therefore improve one’s chances. Others tried to offer suggestions for the care of the sick. De Chauliac prescribed an ointment of figs, onions, butter, and fermented dough for the buboes; the polymath Ibn al-Wardi recorded the doctors of Aleppo anointing his compatriots with Armenian clay.

Much of this advice was meant for home use. Many early plague treatises were written in local vernaculars rather than Latin, as d’Agramont put it, “for the benefit of the people and not for the instruction of the physician.” After the plague returned, in 1360–1361, the audience for plague advice grew even larger. John of Burgundy’s De epidemia, a post-1361 bestseller in multiple languages, instructed readers to take dietary supplements—“a dose of good theriac the size of a bean”—and to sniff aromatics in cold weather, with shopping suggestions broken out by budget level: “ambergris, musk, rosemary and similar things if you are rich; zedoary, cloves, nutmeg, mace and similar things if you are poor.” Sometimes the plague sufferer was allowed a cheat day: in lieu of wine, a patient should drink vinegar in water, but “occasionally, however, he can be given, to cheer him up, white wine diluted with plenty of water.” By the fifteenth century, the English poet John Lydgate could sum up such advice with a cheerful jingle: “Drynk good wyn, & holsom meetis take, / smelle swote thynges,” he wrote, “walke in cleene heir, eschewe mystis blake.”

Such instructions provided a way to wrest agency back from a traumatic experience of collective vulnerability. The past few weeks have seen similar efforts on social media, which has begun to feel like a live-updating plague tract. Reminders to stay in, to wash our hands, to “#flattenthecurve” mark earnest attempts to conform individual behavior to the needs of collective well-being. But they do little to remedy our sense of powerlessness. They certainly don’t allay the chief concern of the young and asymptomatic, which is the risk of infecting the vulnerable people around them. Harvard, where I teach, shut down classes and evicted undergraduates from the dorms. (When plague hit medieval Oxford, the scholars scattered into the countryside, too.) During our last meeting in person, my students worried that they might unknowingly carry Covid-19 home to their parents and grandparents. I could think of no real reassurance to offer them.

So we search for everyday commodities to assuage our anxiety: rice, cleaning supplies, toilet paper. As I’ve been writing this piece, I’ve found myself besieged by scammy Internet ads for masks, which our government begs us not to buy. Before the pandemic was widespread in the United States, an email purportedly written by a distinguished scholar of coronaviruses was widely shared on Facebook. It said the usual things—wash your hands and sneeze into a tissue, etc.—but also suggested that zinc might impede the infection. Zinc lozenges suddenly became the theriac to cure all ills; masks and hand-sanitizer, the ambergris and zedoary to ward off infection.Of course, putting faith in the efficacy of our actions is also meant to stave off despair. Even as Covid-19 took hold, doctors, nurses, and quarantined patients recorded music videos and dance-offs to raise people’s spirits. As the pandemic has spread, people under lockdown in Italy have taken to their balconies to sing. As d’Agramont put it, “in such times, joyfulness and gaiety are most profitable.” 

Wat Pho-Recling Buddha Temple in Bangkok

Our good fortunes took us to Thailand in 2009 and we were able to visit various Buddhist Temples including the large Wat Pho where one of the largest statues of the Buddha resides. Here is a description of the history of this temple from Wikipedia:

Wat Pho is one of Bangkok's oldest temples. It existed before Bangkok was established as the capital by King Rama I. It was originally named Wat Photaram or Podharam, from which the name Wat Pho is derived.^[4][9] The name refers to the monastery of the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India where Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.^[6][10] The date of the construction of the old temple and its founder are unknown, but it is thought to have been built or expanded during the reign of King Phetracha (1688–1703).^[6][11] The southern section of Wat Pho used to be occupied by part of a French Star fort that was demolished by King Phetracha after the 1688 Siege of Bangkok.^[12]

After the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to the Burmese, King Taksin moved the capital to Thonburi where he located his palace beside Wat Arun on the opposite side of the Chao Phraya River from Wat Pho. The proximity of Wat Pho to this royal palace elevated it to the status of a wat luang ('royal monastery').^[6]

In 1782, King Rama I moved the capital from Thonburi across the river to Bangkok and built the Grand Palace adjacent to Wat Pho. In 1788, he ordered the construction and renovation at the old temple site of Wat Pho, which had by then become dilapidated.^[1] The site, which was marshy and uneven, was drained and filled in before construction began. During its construction, Rama I also initiated a project to remove Buddha images from abandoned temples in Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, as well other sites in Thailand, and many of these retrieved Buddha images were kept at Wat Pho.^[13] These include the remnants of an enormous Buddha image from Ayuthaya's Wat Phra Si Sanphet destroyed by the Burmese in 1767, and these were incorporated into a chedi in the complex.^[14] The rebuilding took over seven years to complete. In 1801, twelve years after work began, the new temple complex was renamed Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklavas in reference to the vihara of Jetavana, and it became the main temple for Rama I.^[15][16]

The complex underwent significant changes over the next 260 years, particularly during the reign of Rama III (1824-1851 CE). In 1832, King Rama III began renovating and enlarging the temple complex, a process that took 16 years and seven months to complete. The ground of the temple complex was expanded to 56 rai (22 acres), and most of the structures now present in Wat Pho were either built or rebuilt during this period, including the Chapel of the Reclining Buddha. He also turned the temple complex into a public center of learning by decorating the walls of the buildings with diagrams and inscriptions on various subjects.^[9]:90 On 21 February 2008, these marble illustrations and inscriptions was registered in the Memory of the World Programme launched by UNESCO to promote, preserve

and propagate the wisdom of the world heritage.^[17][18] Wat Pho is regarded as Thailand’s first university and a center for traditional Thai massage. It served as a medical teaching center in the mid-19th century before the advent of modern medicine, and the temple remains a center for traditional  medicine today where a private school for Thai medicine founded in 1957 still operates.^[19][20]

The name of the complex was changed again to Wat Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklararm during the reign of King Rama IV.^[1] Apart from the construction of a fourth great chedi and minor modifications by Rama IV, there had been no significant changes to Wat Pho since. Repair work, however, is a continuing process, often funded by devotees of the temple. The temple was restored again in 1982 before the Bangkok Bicentennial Celebration.^[21]