On the Night We Held the Moon for Ransom

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the beach,... now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. 

- Sir Isaac Newton

As we arose in bedroom clothes and toed along the beach
And casting out past dark and doubt, past stones in common reach
A net we threw of gold and dew returned us something rare
A thing long known, cold and alone, above--we thought--all care.

And homeward bound through hilltops crowned with silence and with snow
The way was high, the way was steep, the way was far to go;
And riding down through sundark town, the captive moon our guide,
I laughed until I could not laugh, and, sick from laughing, cried.

We called our feat from street to street, as lamp to lamp caught fire;
'Till some crank called out "Mountebank!" and others echoed, "liar!"
And casting off the swaddling cloth, to show old friend new prize--
We found the stone we'd found was only water and God's lies.

And all we knew we were, could be, or someday might become
Melted like that ice and left us naked in that sun;
And all we knew we were, had been, or someday still might be
Fell back and fell away, like foam, stone-broken, to the sea.

-- Stephen K. Roney

You Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time

Vote for me! Presents for everyone!

Politicians are prone to solemnly intone, especially after an election loss, that “the people are always right.”

This is of course a humbug. Unfortunately, some people believe it. It is the ad populam fallacy. The people possess no special wisdom; you should not ask someone standing on a street corner how to balance the federal budget, or which doctoral program to take. Taken together, all men are, on average, only of average intelligence.

Keeping it strictly with politics: Adolf Hitler was popularly elected. So were all those Jim Crow governors of the pre-civil rights US South.

This is not why we have democracy. It is for two reasons: first, because, smart or stupid, every man has the God-given right to manage his own affairs. When this is not directly possible, when there must be a government, it is only decent to regularly seek his consent. Second, democracy is an objective check on a government deciding for itself how good it is, and how long it ought to stay in power. The government itself has an obvious conflict of interest.

But there is no magic to it. One can often see electorates making bad mistakes. Their worst tendency is to look for a man on a white horse, who will solve all their problems.

I think, for example, of Jimmy Carter. Granted that, after Watergate, it was a good idea to remove the Republicans from the presidency. Still, there were probably a half-dozen candidates on the Democratic side who had a better claim to be on the ticket: Scoop Jackson, Lloyd Bentsen, Jerry Brown, Frank Church, Birch Bayh, Terry Sanford. Jimmy Carter, a virtual unknown, won on a cloying smile and a pledge that “I will never lie to you.” There were posters saying “J.C. will save America.”

The antichrist.

Barack Obama was another “fairy tale,” in the words of Bill Clinton. We even know the name of the fairy tale: it is “the magic negro.” A lot of people got caught up in the fantasy of rainbows and unicorns, seeing Obama as a “lightworker” who would “heal the nation.” “Hope and change.” “This was the moment the oceans stopped rising.” What a waste—we could have had John McCain or Mitt Romney.

Sadly, I fear Donald Trump falls into the same category. He’s a travelling salesman. It will all be “huge” and “fantastic.” You won’t believe how good it’s going to be.

Don’t do it, America. Two in a row may be the end of you.

Once Kingston in a Fog of Time

Something I wrote way back when I was an undergrad at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, living in what was then Elrond College. My daughter calls Kingston "the abandoned grey city of ghosts."

"Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. North America, and all the ships at sea."

--Walter Winchell

The church bells toll like waves of sleep,
First sound in the smoky dawn;
The newsboys weave their way upstreet;
The greystone day goes on.

The radio plays a scratchy tune
So soft--and like a sigh it's gone;
Reflections in a coffee spoon,
The limestone days wind on and on,
The greystone day goes on.

And as the sleep falls from my eyes,
The dreams drop from my soul.
I jam and butter newborn lies,
And find a cigarette to roll.

And as the smoke rolls heavenward,
It orchestrates a ceiling song:
The newborn days die on and on;
The greystone day goes on.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Camelittle

 

JFK with his first cabinet.

It’s not just that the Republicans have more candidates running for president. Democratic presidential candidates seem to have thinner resumes. Bernie Sanders is a senator from a small blue state—the second smallest in the nation. Nor is Rhode Island all that big. Lincoln Chafee seemed to base his entire campaign on having once voted against the Iraq War. Then there’s Martin O’Malley, former mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland. Baltimore is now a very public basket case. Maryland is about the most reliably Democratic state in the nation. Even so, O’Malley’s two terms were so impressive locally that the state’s electors followed him with only their second Republican governor since the 1960s.

Baltimore on Homecoming Weekend.

Then there’s Mrs. Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s only obvious life accomplishment is to have married well. Thanks to name recognition and her husband’s connections, in the noble tradition of Lurleen Wallace and Isabel Peron, she has served her time in suitable office chairs behind big desks, in the Senate and at State. But while there, did she actually score any worthwhile accomplishments? It looks more like a record of failure. Given the brief to push through universal health coverage, she failed. In the senate, no important initiative or legislation bore her name. The most memorable thing she did was to vote for the Iraq War. At State, the reset with Russia, leading from behind in Libya, the Iraq pullout, the Mubarak sellout, the pivot to Asia, the red line in Syria, and whatever happened in Benghazi, all policy failures. It is hard to say how much was her boss’s fault, but there is nothing to inspire confidence. If it weren’t for the good work of Clare Danes, things would probably be far worse. 

Damascus on Homecoming Weekend.

The one guy in the race on the Democratic side who had any claim to distinction was Jim Webb. At least he was a war hero. And they mocked him for it.

On the Republican side, for comparison, let’s not use this year’s crop of candidates. Let’s assume the field this time is unusually good. Instead, let’s look at 2012, when the Republican field was, everyone said, weak. Even so, a weak Republican field included Rick Santorum, a two-term senator from a large, important, blue state, who had managed during his two terms to rise to number three in the Republican hierarchy. It included Rick Perry, the first man ever to have won three tenures as governor of Texas, the second-largest state, and who had a staggering record of job creation. It included Newt Gingrich, the acknowledged mastermind of the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, for the first time in forty years. We had Jon Huntsman, who had served in five different presidential administrations, negotiated the Doha round, left the governorship of Utah with an 80% approval rating, and spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese. And, of course, we had Mitt Romney. Two Harvard graduate degrees, incredibly wealthy as a corporate turnaround expert, savior of the Salt Lake City Olympics, and someone who managed to win the governorship of the bluest state in the union. Where he eliminated the deficit while introducing universal health care. 

Romney at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Seriously, guys, the Democrats are in trouble. Nobody seems to be noticing—I keep hearing that demographics are moving entirely in their favour—but in reality, it looks as though they are living on fumes.

Partly, there are a lot more Republican politicians to choose from. Back in the sixties and seventies, when I was young, it was a given that, while Republicans might win now and then at the Presidential level, the Democrats were the majority party. They held the state legislatures. They held both houses of Congress. They held the solid South. They used to call them "yellow dog Democrats": they would vote for a yellow dog, so long as it ran as the Democrat. It all seemed baked in, inevitable.

The old Democratic solid South.

Since then, there has been a steady trend in the opposite direction. The Republicans now control the state houses. The control both houses of Congress. They hold the South. It may not look solid or inevitable, but that is the clear trend. Demographics be damned.

But there is, I think, a second factor: a comparison of the crop of candidates suggests that Democrats right up to the very top level are now, on the whole, unimaginative, intellectually unimpressive, and lacking in initiative. There are no more Daniel Patrick Moynihans or John Kenneth Galbraiths among them; the best and the brightest all gravitate to the other side of the aisle.

This is not the mark of a party of the future. These are the characteristics one expects for a conservative party whose raison d’etre was the defense of a dying privileged class. The last petty panjandrums of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the last Soviet commissars; the lace-throated tax farmers of the ancien regime.

Mark Steyn on the Future

I disagree with Mark Steyn.

October 21 was Back to the Future day: the day to which Marty McFly and Doc Brown time- travelled in the 1989 movie Back to the Future II. Steyn points out all the many ways in which the future as forecast in the movie is more advanced than the reality we live with, and concludes that Western Civilization is running out of steam. The future, it seems, isn't what it used to be.

Wrong. First off, predictions, expecially by experts, are almost always wrong. This is because the most likely thing is always continuity, but nobody will listen to you or pay you as an expert if you do not predict major change. So the future is always more futuristic in the telescope than through the window. Remember monorails? Flying cars? Personal jet packs?

Given that the experts are wrong, it seems silly indeed to take your predictions from a popular movie. The purpose of this movie is to entertain, not to make accurate predictions. “Jaws 19”—very funny. Making the future as different as possible from the present is obviously the best option for entertainment value. How could anyone take the predictions as serious?

Steyn goes on to argue that, if someone were taken by a time machine from 1890 to 1950, they would be stunned by all the changes. Cars, planes, electricity, telephones, indoor plumbing, radio, maybe TV. But jump them another 60 years to 2010, and thinks would still look pretty much the same as they did in 1950. Cars, planes, electricity, telephones, indoor plumbing, TV.

He's right, but I'd say looks here are deceiving. Historically, the first things we tackled were the big machines, large engines such as are needed for transportation or manufacturing, because those were the easiest things to build. They did not require as much precision. But, being big, they were and remain the most visible.

Since about the 1940s, we have moved on to the small things: printed circuits, transistors, lasers, computers, software, nanotechnology, DNA sequencing, GMOs, and so forth. These are less immediately visible, being small, but they are probably more important. The green revolution is close to eliminating starvation worldwide. GMOs will go further. There is serious talk, at least, of extending lifespans indefinitely. That would be a big change, surely? The Internet and the accessibility of multimedia to everyone will probably be more significant than the invention of the printing press; quite possibly than the invention of writing. 

Videophone, as predicted in France circa 1900.

Last week I went to buy a new phone, and was surprised to discover that I no longer had the option to buy an “ordinary cell phone” of the old Nokia variety. All the phones on offer were smart phones, with touch screens, cameras, massive memories, Internet connections, and apps available of all sorts. But they cost less than the cell phone I bought two years ago. And when I was teaching IT just five years ago, “smart phones” were not even predicted by the text we used. It talked instead of “Personal Digital Assistants.”

When I went to put in my old SIM card, I found it no longer fit. For the new phone, I needed either a micro SIM or a nano SIM. When I brought my old SIM card to the connectivity provider, the clerk laughed to see something so old fashioned. But I was using it in a phone I bought only two years ago!

I agree with Steyn that there are bad signs for the future of Western Civilization. But I don't think technology is where the problem is manifesting.

Krauthammer on the Canadian Election

I think he has it right.

Reflections on the Loss of an Election

The parade passes on to another town.
I hum the bass line, fool among casual shoppers.
Lately interlaced and locked in beauty,
We are now, again, our lonely selves.

The parade passes on to another town.
Yet this is no time for sorrow.
This is time to find random sweets
Scattered about the dirty streets.
This is the time to plan
For another, bigger, parade,
Passing through the Benjamin gate
Next year, in Jerusalem.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Cheer Up, Conservatives

Governments ought to change at regular intervals, just to keep things honest. After ten years, an administration tends to run out of ideas and energy. A time out of power is a time to recharge the batteries.

Trudeau may be unqualified, inexperineced, and not very bright, but he has some experienced and qualified people around him. With luck, he will be wise enough to listen to their counsel.

In the meantime, look at the bigger picture. In the Anglosphere as a whole, here is who is in power. right of centre in blue, left-of centre in red.

Liberal Win

But they didn't really beat the Conservativs in this election. They beat the NDP.

The Canadian Unity Party

Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Out of idle curiosity, I recently had a look at what lesser parties are still in operation in Canada. I was a bit surprised to see the Communists still there, and still with leader Miguel Figueroa. I wonder that they still have sufficient constituency. Of course, they only ever got a few hundred votes anyway, but it is remarkable they have the volunteers and organizers to keep a party in some sort of operation. I guess they get enough poli sci grad students.

There are not many good excuses for a political party. You need some new and fairly comprehensive political ideology. There are, to be sure, single issue parties, like the Greens, the Pirates, or the Native People's Party. But such groups have no staying power. All the established parties have to do is co-opt your issue the moment it looks like drawing significant support. Up in smoke, as the Marijuana Party might say.

So you have room for one right-wing party, and one left-wing party. Canada anomalously has two on the left, because there used to be a clear distinction between liberalism and socialism. Leaving, as a historical artifact, two parties with a claim to being the true voice of the left, until one can finally bury the other. Then there is space left for a Libertarian option—this is the ideology that used to be called liberalism. Theoretically, there is also room for a Christian Heritage Party, which emphasizes social conservatism. Such parties are familiar in Europe.  In Canada, this tendency has tangled itself up with the economic theory of Social Credit. This was useful for a time, but probably has not helped it maintain credibility over the long term.

The three mousketeers. They immediately split into two parties.

I see room—indeed a need—for another party in Canada. I’d like to call it “Canada First,” but that historical term has been unfortunately tarred, fairly or unfairly, with the brush of anti-Catholicism and anti-Francophone sentiments. Perhaps we could call it the Canadian Unity Party, because that too summarizes its ideology. Its purpose would be to promote Canadian unity against the tendencies that divide us.

It would be, put simply, a nationalist party. Nationalism is not generally a good thing; it is an easy idolatry, and has caused much harm in recent centuries. However, Canada has a special need here. Because we are so large, with such a dispersed population, it is easy to lack any feeling of family. Eastern bastards can be cursed to freeze in the dark. This is made worse by the specifics of our geography: Newfoundland is cut off geographically from the Maritimes, which are cut off geographically from the St. Lawrence Valley, which is cut of geographically from the Prairies, which are cut off geographically from the BC interior, which is cut off geographically from the coast. Being relatively young as a country doesn’t help. We are also, politically, one of the most decentralized nations on earth.

So a push or two in the other direction is probably a good thing.

Our spiritual founder is Thomas D’Arcy McGee. He was the first to call for a new and unique Canadian nationality and culture. He saw that the alternative was simply indefinitely remaining a branch plant of England, a second-class existence in a second-class place. Today, the issue is almost the same: it is remaining a branch plant of the US.

An important caution: to avoid becoming toxic, any Canadian nationalism must not be a nationalism framed as against any outside group. This includes Americans.

Platform:

1. Moratorium on immigration on all but compassionate grounds for ten years, while a commission studies real costs and benefits.

This is important for maintaining Canada as we know it. It is a unique culture, with a unique respect for law and order, politeness, common decency, honesty, and good neighbourliness. Do we risk losing all this by letting in people faster than they can be assimilated?

The current parties will not go near the issue with a ten-foot Ukrainian. On the one hand, they will be accused of racism. On the other, it is in the vested interests of big donors to have access to the pool of cheap labour rapid immigration provides. For this reason, there is a real possibility the interests of Canada are not being served here.

That leaves a niche needing to be filled, as UKIP, for example, has done elsewhere. At a minimum, it is time for an open, honest debate.

2. End to all funding for multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism expresses a death wish. The goal should be to assimilate immigrants, not to alienate them. Multiculturalism is also divisive, implies two levels of Canadians, and is offensive to most immigrants. We decry the “human zoos” of yesteryear. Do you see any difference?

Lucy Maud Montgomery. Put her on the ten?

3. Increased support for Canadian culture.

It may go against liberal/libertarian principles, but government support for the arts has been successful in Canada. Look, for example, at the health of the Canadian pop music world since Canadian content rules were imposed. In fact, the arts are one thing that has always and everywhere been subsidized by governments. The arts are the very bricks and mortar of a culture, the very stuff that holds us all together.

One proposal: fund the CBC, but require it to run 100 percent Canadian content. Same for Radio-Canada. This way, it will not be competing directly against the private sector with an unfair government subsidy. The CBC can be used, in turn, to promote awareness of Canadian novels, poetry, music, painting, and so forth. Culture should be its main focus.

Tax breaks for artists are also a reasonable idea. Besides being good for the country, such a policy would probably be good for the success of the party. As Shelley said, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the nation. Get them on your side, and much can be accomplished.

Another proposal: designating important Canadian cultural properties. Asian governments commonly do this: they declare a work or an artist important to the national culture, drawing attention to it. This is good for raising awareness, for tourism, and for the business side of the arts. In the case of an artist, the designation should come with a permanent government stipend, allowing them to continue their work. In the case of a work, this might involve funding for restoration or preservation if needed.

Also: artists on the currency. Nobody else puts political leaders on notes except dictatorships and the United States. The US at least has the excuse that their leader is also head of state.

4. Senate elected proportionally by an electorate of the whole.

If each senator represented all Canadians, the upper house would become a voice for Canadian unity, while the lower house, the ”House of the Regions,” protects local interests. We need such a body.

5. Increased funding to the military: to the 2% of GDP required by our treaty commitments.

This might not appear to be about national unity, but it is. At present, our low level of military spending is based on the tacit assumption that, if trouble erupts, the US will take care of us. This makes us a colony; just as it did when we left our defense needs to England.

At the same time, the military is a national institution, and service in the military, with its moves from base to base, tends to give one a national perspective.

6. Every high school graduate given, as a graduation gift from the nation, a voucher good for travel by train or bus to any point in Canada, return, and a voucher for two weeks’ stay in hostels.

This would be a good way to impress awareness of the rest of Canada on young people just starting out in life. It would cost, but I think the cost could be justified. It would encourage kids to finish high school, boosting their earnings over the long term, and so boosting their tax contribution later. Studies suggest that material incentives work pretty well at keeping kids in school.

7. End to all equalization payments, and all incentives to industry to locate in poorer regions of the country.

These are opportunities for graft, porkbarrelling, and corruption in general. They distort the market. They are unfair. They are often money going from the poor to the rich. And they send the wrong message, reinforcing allegiance to the region rather than the country. If a Canadian cannot find a good job in his home town, he should be encouraged to move. He should see the whole country as his home. He should not be encouraged to see no further than his home province.

8. Require all immigrants to renounce any previous citizenships.

Yes, we are also talking about a moratorium, but there will still be compassionate cases, and larger-scale immigration will probably resume after ten years. Requiring this would do something at least to ensure that newcomers are sincere in their commitment to Canada. This is a good measure of their determination to assimilate instead of retaining or even imposing their previous culture.

9. Revoke the citizenship of any dual citizen who commits a felony.

After release from imprisonment, that is. This is admittedly just an extension of the current Conservative policy. Thanks for the idea, Mr. Harper.

When Canadians take another citizenship, they are creating two classes of Canadians—those who are 100% Canadians, and those who have divided loyalties. If they are not fully committed to Canada, Canada should not be fully committed to them. It just evens the balance.

10. On the same principle, that all Canadians should be treated equally, an end to all “affirmative action” programs; indeed, a prohibition.

Affirmative action is based on the idea of hyphenated Canadians with varying rights. One’s commitment should be to Canada, not to one’s African or Native ancestry. By the same token, the government of Canada’s commitment to you should be as a Canadian, not an African or a Native. Or a member of any other special interest group.

11. On the same principle, a general understanding that aboriginal rights are treaty trights, no more and no less.

When we are bound by treaty, it is a matter of national honour to keep to the terms. But otherwise, we want no first class and second class Canadians. There are no "First Nations." All Canadians should be treated by their government as equals. 

Taking the civil service exam.

12. Objective blind tests to qualify for all jobs salaried by government.

If you go in to a Canadian Employment office, you will see lots of government jobs advertised. But if you try to apply for any of them, the clerks will discourage you. They will explain that the jobs are only posted to fulfill legal requirements, but the government almost certainly already has a candidate In mind.

This is corruption. Canadians should expect that they all have an equal and fair chance at government work. Otherwise, the government is not being run for Canadians, but for small cliques.

All government-funded jobs should be put out to open competition, and the competition must be both truly open and truly blind. A written test thrown over a wall was how they did it in imperial China. Worked well for two thousand years.

13. Recall for public servants.

To prevent the civil service from becoming, or remaining, a ruling class with their own special interests, it ought to be possible for the employer, the public, to fire functionaries if they do not perform their job sufficiently well.

A given number of complaints about the performance of a public servant, or a petition with a given number of signatures, ought to legally force their dismissal.

Of course, the relevant public would have to be determined carefully for each job. For teachers, no problem: the parents. For college teachers, the students. For judges, it obviously could not be criminals appearing at the bar, nor could prisoners pass judgment on prison guards. In all cases, however, it cannot be, as usually at present, peers within the public service. Nor can it properly be nominal superiors. It must be the public.

14. On foreign affairs, general support for free trade on a reciprocal basis, for international cooperation agreements, and for collective security.  A good (world) citizen policy.

It is vital that nationalism not devolve into anti-outsider attitudes. Being an international good neighbor is the surest way to fight against this tendency. Besides, the logical extension of "Canada first" principles into foreign affairs is "mankind first."

15. On taxation, as a general principle, no special tax breaks or incentives. 

These may at times be useful, but in general, they are another case of not treating Canadians equally, and of giving advantages to special interest groups. this argues broadly for a flat tax.

So, who’s in? 

The Finish Line

This just in: this is Justin.

Tomorrow morning we will know. All the polls show a Liberal win in the Canadian federal election. Probably a minority, but that makes little difference. The NDP will not join a coalition, but they will support Trudeau’s government for now. Given the ideological similarities between the two parties, it should be fairly easy or the Liberals to stay in power beyond that.

I think this outcome was rather improbable when the writ was dropped. It came about, firstly, because the NDP chose the wrong campaign strategy in trying to cleave to the centre. That set up the Liberals as the natural alternative. The emergence of a clear alternative was always going to be trouble for the Conservatives, because their natural constituency is only about a third of the electorate.

I thought that, if a clear alternative were to emerge, it was most likely to be the NDP. I thought that because Trudeau seemed to be gaffe-prone. But that calculation was always playing the odds. AS it turned out, Trudeau avoided saying anything transparently dumb for the duration.

I expect the NDP to stick with Tom Mulcair. They really don’t have a better option handy, and Mulcair was not the problem this time. He deserves another chance. Harper, on the other hand, is not going to want to stay on, even if he could. The next bit of excitement will be a Conservative leadership race.

It's a Gas!

Anyone else remember?

A Song of Night and Roads that Do Not End

The dogging catrain on the windscreen
In the hollow yawn of night
As the narrow of the highway
Spins a hill and out of sight;

And the beating of my heartfist
On the ribcage of my cell,
And my hand around the gearshift;
And the rest can go to hell;

Past the thrown net of a roadmap,
Tracing patterns I can't see:
Fleeing puzzles made for children,
Joining point A to point C;

Through the CB's wicked crackle,
Crypted chatter from some star;
Hauling cargo lashed to nightmare,
Lashed to sinew, lashed to car;

Through the gothic vault of evening,
Pending chimed ecliptic clock;
As the darkness falls in cinders--
Past each flame-red hex-formed "Stop";

Through the scattered shards of daybreak;
Through cascades of starling song;
Past the backdrafts of grass longing
As the nights and roads are long;

I've seen glories in the margins
Of sun-wet dissolving road;
But a teamster hates to use his brake--
It feels like growing old. 

I've known reveries of lying down
In lilies by the road;
But a teamster hates to use his brake--
It feels like growing old.

-- Stephen K. Roney

In a Black Mood

Baron Black of Crossharbour's mug shot.

In his latest piece, Conrad Black is shockingly severe on Stephen Harper, calling him a “sociopath” and a “sadist.” Lord Black calls for the election of Trudeau.

Where is this coming from? Black is ideologically on the right; he was the founder of the National Post, and he founded it to be Canada’s conservative voice.

It sounds like a personal animus against Harper.

I’m guessing that’s what it is. It was under Stephen Harper’s authority that Black was thrown off the Privy Council. His Order of Canada was revoked on the same day. In 2012, Black told Peter Mansbridge that he intended to reapply for his Canadian citizenship “in a year or two.” This has not happened. Black, as a convicted felon, would have needed his application to be approved by the federal cabinet. Presumably he expected this to happen, and was turned down. By Harper.

One can understand, then, why Black would feel personally ill-treated. He, after all, had a lot to do, as he points out in the present column, with the resurrection and reunification of the Conservative Party of Canada, and with creating the media climate for its success.

Black might also be looking wistfully at Donald Trump’s signal success in the US Republican stakes right now. If there were a Canadian figure who could pull the same trick north of 49, Black is the name that naturally comes up. And it is just the sort of thing he might be interested in. He is a political animal. He has already made his mark in finance, in journalism, and in scholarship. Isn’t this the very new world to conquer? Win or lose—most likely lose, according to the last polls—Harper is likely to step down soon. It could have been Black’s moment.

Except that, as a non-citizen, he is a non-starter.

The frustration must be immense.

But here’s a thought: run Barbara Amiel. Think Carly Fiorina.

Choyang and the Plague Demon

Traditional Korean mask depicting a leper.

a Korean folk lyric

Having drained the fine rice wine
Down to milky dregs,
I dance a moonbeam home and in
My bed I count four legs.
These hairy two were mine, I knew--
Now second thoughts awaken:
These tender two I took for true,
These other two have taken.

-- Stephen K. Roney

What Men Want

Wow! Nice books!

One of the common complaints women, especially feminists, have about men is that they do not like intelligent women: “men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” Dorothy Parker once observed. Men, they say, are only interested in looks.

Another common complaint is that men these days are only interested in East Asian women.

These two observations are incompatible. Thanks to over two thousand years of Confucianism, which values intellect and education far more than Europe does, the average IQ among Far Easterners is higher than than that among Europeans (aka Caucasians). If European men are seeking East Asian women, they are showing a preference for smarter women.

The probable problem here is that European/Caucasian women are raised to believe they are much smarter than they really are. They are praised for everything from girlhood. They are used to being told they are wonderful, not least by men seeking their sexual favours, and so many of them come to believe that they are the intellectual equal or superior of any man.

Statistically, this is necessarily almost never so.

This can make such women, if they are not intelligent in reality, excruciatingly unpleasant for any very smart man to have to deal with for any great length of time. Unfortunately, the dumber they are, the more likely they are to believe this is the reality.

What the men crave is not a dumber woman, but a woman who is genuinely smart.

This is more or less necessarily so, if you believe in Darwin's idea of natural selection. An intelligent woman means intelligent offspring, and so a better shot at passing on the genes. THis, of course, is why a well-bred Victorian woman strove to appear "accomplished."

A woman of sufficient intelligence would realize that.

Nabati

Ramadan lantern, Egypt.

 After Sulaiman Bin Shraim

Pity yourself, son
If time treats you as it has me
Like a lantern, lit at dusk
Then snuffed and put away at dawn.
You cannot trust your uncle or your brother.
Or your father.

-- Stephen K. Roney



(Nabati is a traditional folk form of poetry from the Arabian Gulf.)

Depression as Spiritual Birth

I do not know Sarah Silverman. She is apparently a comedian. She has recently gone public with her struggle with depression. She has a very interesting description of the experience: “It feels like I'm desperately homesick, but I'm home.”

But that's it. We are not home. This world is not our home. Some people realize this, and depression is the natural first response. A lousy immediate environment, a trauma, is probably commonly needed to trigger this awareness, but there is a larger existential truth behind it. We would not experience depression were we not half conscious of a profound discord between is and ought. We would just accept what is for what is, as a frog accepts his slime. The clearer our perception of ought, the greater our depression. You cannot know you are in a valley without sight of a mountain.

Mount Carmel.

This is the hopeful side of depression. We have sighted the mountain. The challenge then is to begin to climb.

Mount Sinai

Silverman also speaks of the experience of panic attacks. “Every breath is laboured. You are dying. You are going to die.”

You are, one might say, a fish out of water. Interesting that the New Testament and the early church chose the fish as an image for the soul. A fish, or a bird, both alien to terra firma, where we live in a physical sense. Conversely, the church was early imagined as a ship—hence the term “nave” for the place where the congregation congregates. It was Noah's ark: everything outside the church is a watery chaos in which souls drown.

Early Christian symbol of a fish and anchor.

There is, as the New Testament says, a physical death, and a spiritual death. It is the spiritual death, no doubt, that is feared in a panic attack; to suppose it is a fear of physical death makes it nonsensical. That fear of spiritual death is real, and reasonable.

Image of a bird with an olive branch from the Roman catacombs.

Symbolically, breath is spirit. Hence we “respire.” If you feel you cannot breathe, the proper refuge is a church.

The nave of Bristol Cathedral. You are looking at a ships hull turned upside down.

Li Bai in Exile

Brown Crane Tower, Wuhan, 1871.

Another exile honors echoing Changsha
Looking west, not seeing my Xi'an
Instead, a jade-fine air from Brown Crane Tower:
Jiang Cheng's streets lie deep in May-blown plums.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Li Bai.

Clinton vs. Sanders

Reaction to the Democratic candidates’ debate has now split into two definite camps. The political pros and commentators all believe Clinton won hands down, probably clinching the Democratic nomination in the process. All over but for sweeping up the confetti. On the other hand, a focus group of ordinary Democrats hosted by Fox News, and Drudge Report’s online poll, both think Bernie Sanders won by a wide margin.

I think they are both right, in different ways. The policy wonks think Clinton won, because she won in terms of a formal debate. She had the strongest answers, she had the best command of the facts, she was never stumped or put onto the back foot. Sanders won the likability contest. As I have argued before, the likability contest is what really matters in terms of votes. So I give the win to Sanders.

At first glance, Sanders was doing it all wrong. His manner reminded me of Queen Victoria’s complaint about Gladstone: that when he addressed her, he addressed her as though he were speaking to a public meeting. Sanders had no notion that he had to tone down the voice and the gestures for TV. On the other hand, perversely, that might have helped him on likability. Lack of slickness can be a plus.

In declaring their winners, both sides focus on the same moment, the moment that will live in history. It was when Sanders volunteered that he and the voters are sick of hearing about Hillary’s “damned emails.”

To the politicos, this was, as Sanders himself called it, a political blunder. He threw away his best card against Hillary, as they see it. They ask if he really wants the nomination.

But didn’t it make him look like a good guy--refusing the chance to calumniate against an opponent? No dirty politics. Not acting like a politician at all, in a cycle when everyone seems to be fed up with politicians. Why wouldn’t you love him for it?

At the same time, it also made him look like a grown up, and everyone else, including Clinton, like children. At that moment, he owned Clinton. He was the kindly father or grandfather coming to the aid of a little girl. So who looks presidential now?

There was also a certain shrewdness to it. Sanders said everyone is tired of hearing about the emails, and wants to talk issues. Now, what is really the best way to put the email issue behind us? Who is talking issues in this campaign? Answer: a) don’t nominate Clinton, and b) Bernie Sanders.

In any case, Sanders does not need to talk about the emails. Everyone else is. In fact, by refusing to, he ensured that the emails were the lead-off story coming from the debate. Crazy like an old grey fox.

Some say Sanders also stumbled in refusing to agree to tougher gun control. Again, these would be people who think his main appeal is ideological—that his constituency is the left wing of the Democrats. No, I think his appeal is that he is prepared to say right out, for example, that he is a socialist, as he did again during the debate, when this is understood to be a suicidal move politically. This marks him as honest and principled, not a cynical politician. By the same token, diverging now and then from the far-left line reinforces this perception, that Bernie Sanders is in politics for principle, and not for power.

Many of those pros who think Hillary won also believe that the other contenders were weak, that they would have been buried in the Republican debates. That may well be so. Those on the left are less often challenged on their beliefs, notably by the press, and so they do not learn to think about them closely and are not that well-equipped to defend them if they ever are challenged.

But I think Sanders would be formidable.

Danse Macabre

The ghost of a wind raises last fall’s leaves
And they wheel as if alive.
But, brittle and thin, lie still again
As we, all trapped in that fifties dance
That hopeless groping, sweet and slow
The night too young to decently go,
But too dead wasted to jive.


Youth is brief and age is long
And then you're a long time gone.

Waxworks wane in the guttering air
And long shadows heel in time.
Old hearts may flame
To remembered refrain
But it’s only reflections on opposite walls
All just new pins in old voodoo dolls
Just ritual pantomime.


Youth is brief and age is long
And then you're a long time gone.

-- Stephen K. Roney