Venus at the car wash…

March 12, 2022 - by Heather Cox Richardson

In our history, the United States has gone through turning points when we have had to adjust our democratic principles to new circumstances. The alternative is to lose those principles to a small group of people who insist that democracy is outdated and must be replaced by a government run by a few leaders or, now, by a single man.

… we have been here before… each time the tide has changed and we averted oligarchic rule… what will happen this time?…

I have been struggling with depression for much of the past week and probably for much longer than that if I am honest with myself. It’s not a debilitating depression. I can get out of bed. I can pursue my routines of reading, writing, walking, picture making, picture editing, and more. Still it’s a bit like I am moving through a viscous solution as I try to do these things.

Relative to Ukrainians, I have little to be depressed or anxious about, except, I feel deeply that their existential struggle is mine too. The loss of freedom they are threatened with is a loss I am being threatened with.

One of my prime thoughts this week is that the last seven years has been a firehose-shit-stream of angering, worrisome and depressing news. The most salient feature of this news has been the steady decline of Liberalism and Democracy and the steady rise of illiberal Authoritarian tendencies within the United States and around the globe. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it put an exclamation point on this trend towards Authoritarianism.

A vast struggle has broken out into the open in a dramatic way. There is no guarantee of the outcome, though, if we can avoid World War III, I am hopeful that Putin’s aggression will end with his loss of power and serve as a rebuke to Authoritarianism everywhere.

Among the many other thoughts revolving in my head these days:

• Will it ever be possible to have a world free of nuclear sticks?
• Is it possible to construct a world in which bullies don’t exist or can never acquire big sticks?

In The Greeks, H. D. F. Kitto describes the golden age of the Greek Polis, the pinnacle of which occurred in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BCE and lasted for a little more than 100 years. The Polis was a reasonably well balanced democratic organization of society where everyman’s opinion mattered, everyman’s participation was expected and status depended on the “excellence” of a man, not as determined by his wealth, but as determined by his character. One cannot overlook that there was slavery, limitations on the rights of foreign citizens and that women had no rights. But among the male citizens there was a relatively small (by today’s standards) distance between the wealthiest and poorest citizen, a common education around the principles of good character as illuminated by the Homeric epics and decision making by consensus. This is the foundational example of democracy, a more inclusive form of which Liberalism pursues today.

H. D. F. Kitto writes this in The Greeks:

It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved – that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty. The Greeks were fortunate in possessing Homer, and wise in using him as they did.¹

The truth is that humans get enough right about how to arrange and conduct themselves such that golden ages happen now and again, but, so far, only for brief periods of time. We seem only ever to glimpse utopia, never fully achieve it.

Heraclitus came closest to an accurate description of humankind’s condition, proclaiming fire to be the foundational element of the universe and that flux is the norm. He thought wars (fire) inevitable and even necessary as a change agent. History is a churning beast and nothing lasts for very long. What is good eventually becomes bad which eventually becomes good again.

I don’t know what Heraclitus would have though if nuclear weapons existed in his day. Would he still champion fire? What do we do with a bully carrying a nuclear stick? My deepest fear and sadness at the moment is that it is conceivable to me that the nuclear stick will get used. If not this time, then sooner or later.

Bertrand Russell² points out in The History of Western Philosophy that since the time of the pre-socratic philosophers a main endeavor of religion and philosophy in the western world has been to establish something, anything, eternal and relevant to the condition of humankind. The nuclear stick is a definitive refutation that anything eternal for humankind exists.

Enter my sadness.

Recent photos…

I am about to inherit one of these babies… apparently one of the better 35 mm film cameras ever made. 📷

Ukrainian Artists Are Building Anti-Tank Obstacles

The couple settled at a friend’s house in Lviv, waiting for other members of their families to arrive from Kyiv. It’s there that they heard about a group of local men, among them several artists, using an old metal workshop to construct anti-tank obstacles (also known as “hedgehogs.”). Bevza immediately decided to join the effort and Pidust took a camera to document the men’s work.

Shaken, not stirred…

International Women’s Day you all!

https://laurietobyedison.com/body-impolitic-blog/2022/03/international-womens-day-2022-honoring-yelena-osipova/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=international-womens-day-2022-honoring-yelena-osipova

Osipova is a survivor of the gruesome siege of Leningrad during World War II. She was born when people around her and her parents were dying of starvation. As an adult, she became an artist, painting both fine art and later political poster art (which of course can also be fine art).

What the Ukrainians Are Fighting For - The Bulwark

There are some who have commented that Putin has reinvigorated NATO, caused a revolution in German foreign and defense policy, and brought the democratic world together like never before. That is all true and good, but the slaughter of Ukrainians continues apace. Some would have us all “relax” because Russia’s military is “stalled out in Ukraine.” The Ukrainians cannot relax. Others argue that focusing on Russia and Ukraine distracts us from where we should be focusing—China. Without taking anything away from the serious challenge China poses, perhaps these commentators need reminders that Europe is the continent where two world wars began.

… the question the article does not answer is what would increased help look like?… is the author arguing up to the line of risking nuclear confrontation?… stepping over it?… what?… … and then, the problem with a bully with nuclear weapons is that the bully has nuclear weapons… how does one contain them without risking the planet?… at present, the right steps are being taken with appropriate restraint…

From Bacchus to Orpheus to Pythagoras to Plato to…Christianity

From this morning’s walk…

The Building Blocks of Peace: Pioneering X-Ray Crystallographer and Activist Kathleen Lonsdale’s Quiet Masterpiece on Moral Courage and Our Personal Power – The Marginalian

This is a point of great subtlety and great import, for it speaks not only to the constant threat of war looming over the world but to the ecological apocalypse looming with even greater certainty unless we re-educate ourselves. In the near-century since Lonsdale’s time, we have cannibalized our climate for the exact same reason we have failed, as a civilization and a species, to eradicate war: Most people, whatever their loftiest moral standards may be, are simply too unwilling to inconvenience themselves with the not terribly demanding readjustments of habit that a personal stance against fossil fuel or the tendrils of the military industrial complex would demand of their daily lives. We weigh political candidates by how their tax policy would impact our personal finances and not by their intended military spending. We toss our soda cans — made of the same metal as the military aircraft of WWII — into the recycling bin when we remember, and we continue to fly across the increasingly carbonic sky we share. (emphasis mine)

… i said to my wife the other day, if we get through the Ukraine conflict without the world blowing itself up, we must find a way that all nations renounce nuclear weapons and destroy them… … i know this is a futile thought with little future… but, it is the only thought and future that entails the continued existence of humankind… … how could it be possible?… aggression and the suspicion of other’s potential to become aggressive seems baked in to the human species… how does one get the point across to humanity that it isn’t worth the consequences of tomorrow whatever you think the gains may be today… … i think the idea of refusing to aid and abet war… of offering moral support to those who engage in it, would only lead to would be dictators running the show to the general misery of humanity… i don’t believe all humans can resist the temptation of power… what is, what could be the answer to this?… i don’t have it, but if we are not to destroy ourselves, it must be found…

… listening to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion… love choral music almost more than anything…

The past week has been horrid. I can barely watch the news it’s so upsetting.

My wife, on the other hand, is a news junkie. She keeps it running all day long. I suspect it is the ICU nurse in her. She is used to monitoring situations that could easily go sideways in minutes. She is used to knowing what to do if they do. I don’t think she would know what to do if the US, Nato and Russia started shooting at each other. Back in the day, when I was a kid, the advice was to duck and cover.

My wife is kindly wearing earphones during the day so I don’t have to overhear the news. At 4 PM, I emerge from my studio and we watch Nicole Wallace together on MSNBC. I can handle the news if Nicole delivers it and I have a martini in my hand.

I am very frightened. Some part of me believes it is quite possible I am going to die soon.

While on Block Island, during the first few days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I was taking sunrise walks along a stretch of beach that looked out over the Atlantic to the east. I couldn’t keep myself from imagining cruise missiles streaking past on their way to annihilating my country. So much for soothing ocean vibes.

The older I get, the more afraid of dying I am. I try not to be. I tell myself to live the moments as they come; enjoy them; revel in them. It is the better way to think of things, but of course, that is not easy.

Every night I watch interviews with brave, confident, terrified, and/or desperate Ukrainians. Some of them have been on TV successive nights. Each time I see them, I wonder, will I see them tomorrow? Or will the Russians have caught up with them? It is traumatizing to watch, even from such a distance, the horrors being inflicted on the Ukrainian people. More than a million refuges. Cities being reduced to rubble. How many dead?

A great part of my despair comes from not knowing how the world exits this situation without blowing itself up. The US and NATO have been clear and consistent in saying they will not put troops on the ground or planes in the air to help Ukraine. Everyone understands that direct combat with Russia is World War III and nobody imagines that would end well for either side or humanity in general.

But, if one arms one country against another; if one organizes the collapse of that other country’s economy; if one supplies intelligence, even if it stops short of targeting that other country’s assets; if one is doing everything one can to bring that other country to its knees; isn’t one at war with them?

Nightly, the punditry asks, what is the end game? Where is the off ramp? To date, none of them has been able to give me hope there is one.

I go on being afraid.

A wartime diary by Yevgenia Belorusets - Artforum International

In the morning, when I was still in bed, I saw a video clip of a Russian soldier operating a Grad system: a multiple-rocket launcher that the Russian army has been using to attack peaceful districts in Ukrainian cities. The soldier in the video was crying. He said he wanted to apologize to his young daughter because he may be guilty of killing children in Ukraine.

The essence of liberalism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary, for the preservation of the community. Whether this attempt can succeed only the future can determine.

A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell. Loc 290.

… and we are still trying to find out, though liberalism is severely strained at the present moment…

March 3, 2022 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Tonight, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham crossed that line when, on Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s television show, he called for someone to assassinate Putin. He then repeated his comment on Twitter. This was an astonishing propaganda coup for Putin, enabling him to argue that he is indeed in a war with America, rather than engaging in an unprovoked attack on neighboring Ukraine. This is exactly what the Biden administration has gone out of its way to avoid.

It was an astonishing moment… and also an interesting one. It undermines the position of the U.S. and our partners and allies, but in whose service? After initially opposing Trump’s reach for the presidency, Graham threw in his lot utterly with the former president, who has many possible reasons both to undermine Biden and to keep Putin in power. Perhaps Graham’s comment was intended to help Trump. Or perhaps Graham might have simply made a colossally stupid mistake. Whatever the case, the enormous implications of his statement make it one that would be a mistake to ignore.

The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death – The Marginalian

And so, when a loved one dies, this deepest part of us grows wild with rage at the universe — a rage skinned of sensemaking, irrational and raw, unsalved by our knowledge that the entropic destiny of everything alive is to die and of everything that exists to eventually not, even the universe itself; unsalved by the the immense cosmic poetry hidden in this fact; unsalved by the luckiness of having lived at all against the staggering cosmic odds otherwise; unsalved by remembering that only because ancient archaebacteria were capable of dying, as was every organism that evolved in their wake, we and the people we love and the people we lose came to exist at all.

… it occurs to me that the line is thin between what is perceived to perish and what is not perceived to perish… yet… at the present moment we believe all things everywhere will perish… how can that possibly be true?…

… i am looking through the photography posts i have been unable to look at while on Block Island because of the miserable internet connection out there… it is, given the moment, a guilty pleasure… but, it is soothing… something about it helps me deal with the moment… especially as i gaze at images of the feminine in all its glorious and varietal forms… my feminine is drawn out… i believe in the feminine, Marjorie Taylor Green and other women like her aside… i suppose i believe in the feminine being feminine… i hope for the nurturing side of the feminine… not the bellicose side… i prefer that Mars stay with the men and Venus with the women… but of course, it is not like that… the feminine morphs into the masculine and the masculine morphs into the feminine… we are all capable of war and nurture…

The 2/22/22 Exhibition: Pairs and Diptychs - LENSCRATCH

Today’s post celebrates this unusual day in history when the twos line up to create a “Twosday”.  In numerology, the number 2 is associated with heightened intuition and sensitivity, as well as the strength and power that comes from connection and collaboration. The U.S. will also see its first-ever Pluto return on Feb. 22, 2022, which could mean big things for your career, so start manifesting! … an exhibition centered on twos… a remarkable number of provocative images of women in twos, either two by two or in the mirror…

Wish i could reach this level of relaxation…

A New Book on Niki de Saint Phalle Presents the Artist In Her Own Words

In Drug Journey, an unpublished manuscript written in 1995, Niki de Saint Phalle wonders, “Does one have to go through catastrophe to arrive at vision?”

… if the world of this day is any indication… perhaps…

What Volodymyr Zelensky’s Courage Says About the West - The Atlantic

There can be something a little distasteful about Western onlookers (myself included) cheering on Ukrainians for a cause that our countries are not willing to join, a stance that risks raising the price of a peace that will be paid only with Ukrainian blood. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize this, to be inspired by what Zelensky represents, and then to be shamed by his example.

Here is a nation and a leader willing to sacrifice so much for the principle of independence and the right to join the Western world. And yet, much of the West is jaded and cynical, apparently devoid of any such mission, cause, or sense of idealism anymore. What is it that the West believes in now? When you think of the great liberal heroes of our age, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, say, they are actually deeply pragmatic conservatives, constantly hedging, calculating, and balancing interests with little grand vision or cause to pull their policies together. There is much to be said for this type of governance: As Helmut Schmidt, the former chancellor of West Germany, once quipped, “Whoever has visions should go to the doctor.” Visions led to the Iraq War, for example. Yet conservative pragmatism is also deeply limited, allowing adversaries like Vladimir Putin to take advantage, exploiting caution and shortsighted selfishness.

What Changed Germany’s Mind - The Bulwark

Putin’s blatant and unprovoked assault on Ukraine changed that calculus. Now, no one in their right mind could possibly blame Germany, so it is finally safe to act. Germany can play a key role as a supporter of Ukraine, both by sending arms to help the poor people in Kyiv and throughout the country and by rearming itself, as Scholz has promised to do, to meet the obvious threat from Russia.