Anabasis XVI

Out of the snowy mountains, the Greek army finds pleasant villages for a while; but then they come into a hard country where their provisions fail. In this country, the land of the Taochians, men have seen enough raiding armies that they have no pleasant villages. In the manner that would later become true of the Scottish Borders, where English raiders were constantly riding in -- or the English borders, where Scottish reivers were constantly riding in! -- the people of this land had fortified their homes, and were in the habit of keeping their provisions behind stone walls. The Army finds nothing to purchase or plunder, and soon are out of food. 

I have circled in blue the land of the Taochians.

Finally Cheirisophus, commanding the vanguard, just attacks one of the fortified places because he needs the food. The Greeks are driven back by a hail of stones, until at last the whole army has come up before the walls. Once Xenophon and the rear guard are there, the two generals consult and determine that the stones are survivable in the heavy armor, and once they are expended there are too few behind the walls to put up any effective further defense. Therefore, they begin passing an area to draw the fire with the clear plan of making their enemies run out of ammunition. 

It turns out to be a fun game.

Callimachus hit upon a pretty contrivance--he ran forward from the tree under which he was posted two or three paces, and as soon as the stones came whizzing, he retired easily, but at each excursion more than ten wagon-loads of rocks were expended. Agasias, seeing how Callimachus was amusing himself, and the whole army looking on as spectators, was seized with the fear that he might miss his chance of being first to run the gauntlet of the enemy's fire and get into the place. So, without a word of summons to his neighbour, Aristonymous, or to Eurylochus of Lusia, both comrades of his, or to any one else, off he set on his own account, and passed the whole detachment. But Callimachus, seeing him tearing past, caught hold of his shield by the rim, and in the meantime Aristonymous the Methydrian ran past both, and after him Eurylochus of Lusia; for they were one and all aspirants to valour, and in that high pursuit, each was the eager rival of the rest. So in this strife of honour, the three of them took the fortress, and when they had once rushed in, not a stone more was hurled from overhead.

The fun stops when they gain the fortress, however. Expecting the severe treatment that has caused them to adopt such a hard way of life, the women atop the fortress hurl their infants to their deaths, and then leap to their own. The men of the fortress follow suit. One Greek officer, Aeneas the Stymphalian, tries to grab one of the men to keep him from suicide, but the man wraps him up and carries him off the cliff down to the crags below, killing them both. 

They recover a large flock of sheep from this endeavor, as well as cattle and asses. This is helpfully mobile food for an army, and the prize that it turns out the people were defending with their lives. 

The army has come through the worst of the mountains now, as you can see from the map. They gain a guide at the next city, who promises them that he can lead them to the sea. The land he takes them through is undergoing a war of its own, and they end up having some skirmishes with forces arrayed to fight another set of invades. 

Yet on the fifth day, when Xenophon and the rearguard hear shouting before them as the army climbs atop a mountain, it is not as he first thinks the sound of combat. The Greeks are shouting with joy. 

"THE SEA! THE SEA!"

[W]hen they had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another--generals and officers and all--and the tears trickled down their cheeks. And on a sudden, some one, whoever it was, having passed down the order, the soldiers began bringing stones and erecting a great cairn, whereon they dedicated a host of untanned skins, and staves, and captured wicker shields, and with his own hand the guide hacked the shields to pieces, inviting the rest to follow his example. After this the Hellenes dismissed the guide with a present raised from the common store, to wit, a horse, a silver bowl, a Persian dress, and ten darics; but what he most begged to have were their rings, and of these he got several from the soldiers.

The sight of the sea is one of the most memorable parts of the Anabasis. These men, hardened now by difficulty, war, and the terror of seeing true horrors, are filled with joy to tears. They have not reached the sea, but they can for a moment see it, and they know for certain now how much further they have to go until they can hope to find ships for home. 

Anabasis XV

The army continues quickly after its success of the last chapter, but finds it is pushing through very deep snow in the Armenian mountains. This is a new peril -- very different from the sands of Arabia, or the dry mountains of Kurdistan. They lose quite a few men and beasts in the snow, and have to abandon others who are snowblind or who lose their toes to frostbite. They learn that the shoes they have been making not of leather but the rawhide of recently slain animals, to replace their good shoes now worn, are partly to blame; and that they must remove the shoes at night to avoid having the rawhide freeze to their feet.

Eventually they come to a set of mountain villages that have adapted to the snow in interesting ways. They have built homes that are underground, with entrances like wells that broaden out as you descend. They also dig passages for their animals, who live underground in these homes with them. And they have great bowls filled with all manner of edible grains, floated in barleywine that has become quite strong. They pull out the grains to eat, and drink the strong beer, to keep themselves through the winter. They are not delighted by the arrival of the Greeks, but do not resist them and indeed make them welcome for a short time. 

Xenophon takes the headman* of one of the villages as a guide, promising that his family will not be troubled in return for his good service. Yet the Greeks also take his young son along, a babe, clearly as a hostage for his good behavior even though Xenophon never uses the term. In fact, during the next passage through the snow another of the Greek generals grows cross because the headman has not lead them to more villages, and strikes him. The headman flees, abandoning his son. The Greeks at least proved fond of the boy, and took care of him.

They come then upon a contested mountain pass, and seize it by a clever maneuver. They have some other local guides they have captured, and those young men help them find goat and sheep paths to grounds above the enemy army. They light fires once they have seized the high ground, so that the enemy below knows they have been outflanked. When the main army pushes up against them, and the flankers push down, the enemy -- now unnamed, because the Greeks no longer really know whom they are fighting -- readily gives way in the face of disciplined attack. 

* If you want to hear what "headman" sounds like in Greek, there's a great scene in The Thirteenth Warrior (1999) in which the Arabic-speaking characters try various languages in order to identify who is in charge of the Viking encampment. One of them is ἡγεμών, "hēgemṓn," or 'headman.' This is not actually the word Xenophon uses; he gives άρχοντας, which is usually translated as "archon" or ‘ruler’. But at least you can get a sense of what it might be like to try to sort out who is in charge in various languages, one of which is Greek.

The one that works in the movie is Latin, “noster Rex,” or ‘our King.’

Ambiguities of Language

I notice that there is a significant usage of ambiguous terms going on in this NYT story about the resignation of the Social Security head in protest of DOGE. There is a very careful construction at work in deploying these terms in this way.

The resignation of Michelle King, the acting commissioner, is the latest abrupt departure of a senior federal official who refused to provide Mr. Musk’s lieutenants with access to closely held data. Mr. Musk’s team has been embedding with agencies across the federal government and seeking access to private data as part of what it has said is an effort to root out fraud and waste. [Emphasis added.]

"Private" data? It's clearly not private, because it is owned by the government. It is thus, to use another ambiguous term that is at least as just, public information. 

But it isn't really public-public, just as it isn't really private-private. It's akin to the copies of your emails that Google or Yahoo owns, and which they can freely choose to share with the FBI if they are asked. They don't need your permission, and you have no legal expectation of privacy. Here, the government owns this copy of the information, which DOGE has lawful authority to access. 

Which brings us to "breach."

“S.S.A. has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a group that promotes the expansion of Social Security. “It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more.”

Warning about the risks of Mr. Musk's team accessing the data, Ms. Altman added, “There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is.” [Emphasis added.]

It's not a "breach" in any normal sense of the term; it's just a government agency with oversight powers accessing the records of another agency over which it has oversight responsibilities. They're not stealing the information. They're not 'breaching security.' They are part of the security; this is their job.

Now the use of 'private' was in the Times' own voice; here they are simply quoting someone who said something they liked even better. It's misleading and without context, which makes it even better for them because the point of the article is to lead the reader in a particular direction.

Class Warfare in the USA

I don't quite buy this argument, but there is something to be said for doing a class-based analysis of the present moment. I think he has the classes wrong. His opening statement is to the effect that it's a war between factions of the elite, in which the working class is powerless. 

It might strike some as odd: The new president of the United States won the election by rallying the working class against the establishment swamp, yet he has placed at the helm of his assault on the elite-controlled Deep State none other than the richest man in the world. But this is only a paradox if you grant a couple of assumptions that the above description presupposes: that the “working class” is actually represented at all in our political system, and that anyone but the “elite” is involved in the power struggles within it. Understanding what’s really happening in the second Trump administration requires disabusing ourselves of both of these notions. What we’re seeing is the latest battle in a long war between two factions of the American elite. The working class are just extras on the set—moral props in a struggle that has nothing to do with them. 

It's definitely true that neither Trump nor Musk are nor ever have been 'working class.' However, they are both outliers from their economic class, and in any case individuals and not classes. The story the author wants to tell is about an elite that is divided into two factions by whether they possess more cultural or more economic capital.

Generally speaking, members of the elite are relatively affluent in both economic and cultural capital. But the composition of one’s portfolio matters. Within the ruling class, Bourdieu regards those who are far richer in cultural capital than economic capital as structurally subordinate—in his words, “the dominated fractions of the dominant class.” Those with the inverse mix—who are rich in money but don’t necessarily boast the most illustrious educational credentials—are the dominant fraction of the dominant class. 

So the story is that Trump represents the dominant fraction of the dominant class, as does Musk; and they are striving to further subordinate the faction that is defined by its cultural capital, e.g. education and cultural knowledge. These are the two classes, the rich wanting more freedom from regulation, and the educated wanting comfortable government jobs programs. 

The problem for me is Weber's insight that the bureaucracy constitutes its own class with its own class interests that diverge from the rest of the citizenry -- even from the 'class' they were drawn from. And it has its own power, too: far from being subordinate, that Administrative class functionally deposed the last President and governed without him exactly as they wished. They ran the police, they ran the military, they ran the government from stem to stern. Even though the government includes many 'working class' men -- soldiers and police officers usually are, for example -- they were led by a class whose interests did not align with theirs, or indeed with any other citizens'. 

It's true that we are finding out that USAID and other mechanisms established something like a 'jobs program' that itself pursued political ends from outside the government. Wealthy networked NGOs and activist groups molded politics in the precise interests of the Administrative class. Because it paid their comfortable salaries, the Administrative class aligned that part of 'those far richer in cultural capital than economic capital' with itself. There is no doubt, however, that the Administrative class was dominant: it set their agenda in its own interest. DOGE is effectively severing that tie, which may in time lead to those two factions drifting apart.

Meanwhile, the rich part of that class seems often to align itself with the Administrative class, just because they end up subject to its powers. Facebook was all about joining in on unconstitutional Administrative efforts towards backdoor censorship, as was Twitter until Musk bought it. All the big corporations were lining up in favor of Wokeness until Bud Light crossed -- well, it crossed the working class. That was really the first blow, Bud Light's loss of its majestic stature and wealth brought about by working people refusing to drink the stuff any more. They too are why Trump got elected in numbers to big to 'fortify.' 

So I don't think this analysis is quite right, but I do think it's a useful exercise to examine what classes there are and try to sort out how they are trying to influence the game. The working class has not proven powerless, and the elite isn't quite divided up the way the author thinks. It is worth thinking about, though.

Two Charts on US Population

Sourced from Wikipedia.

Sourced from the Social Security Administration, according to Elon Musk.

Some reconciliation of these numbers needs to occur. The obvious place to start is verifying Musk's figures are accurate, and the Social Security Administration does in fact have these figures. If that's right, then there's a significant delta that needs to be figured out.

Review: Knightriders

So I don't know how I never heard of this movie before last week, because it seems like the kind of thing that somebody should have suggested to me before now. Knightriders is a 1981 film about a group of medieval re-enactors who joust on motorcycles instead of horses, which is as close as you could easily come to the way I spent the 1990s-2010s aside from the trips abroad. We did Scottish Highland Games instead of Renaissance Fairs, but it was just a big bunch of bikers teaching people how to use historic weaponry on the weekends in our spare time. The movie should have come up.

It never did. It took the algorithm to find it for me, giving me an AI-generated review of the thing. It stars Ed Harris, who is a great actor and wasn't bad here. The plot is less Excalibur than Roger Corman, although Excalibur is probably why this movie didn't become very famous. It was also 1981, and swallowed up all the attention for Arthurian-themed moviegoers.

There's a connection, though: the sword from the more famous movie ended up in the hands of an outlaw biker who changed his name legally to Arthur Pendragon. That's exactly the sort of thing the hero of Knightriders would have done.

In the end he walks into a schoolhouse and surrenders his sword to a boy who'd come to him earlier in the film, right in front of the teacher and everything. Nobody says anything against it. 

I think it's an interesting meditation on what would have happened in Le Morte Darthur if Arthur had just accepted events instead of contesting them: surrendering his throne to Mordred, his wife to Lancelot, his sword to the next heir. If Arthur had simply accepted that his time had come and let go, wouldn't it all have been better?

Maybe. That's the hard part, though, isn't it? 

 “There likewise I beheld Excalibur

  Before him at his crowning borne, the sword

  That rose from out the bosom of the lake,

  And Arthur rowed across and took it—rich

  With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,

  Bewildering heart and eye—the blade so bright

  That men are blinded by it—on one side,

  Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,

  ‘Take me,’ but turn the blade and ye shall see,

  And written in the speech ye speak yourself,

  ‘Cast me away!’  And sad was Arthur’s face

  Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him,

  ‘Take thou and strike! the time to cast away

  Is yet far-off.’  So this great brand the king

  Took, and by this will beat his foemen down.”

Anabasis XIV

The Greeks find the broad river between the land of the Kurds and Armenia to be too deep to cross while it is contested. They stay for more than a day, the Kurds having taken over their better camp behind them, trapped between two enemy forces with a river to cross. 

Xenophon has a dream of being held in iron fetters that fall away. He relates this the next morning, and just about the time he finishes some young men come up all excited. They tell him that they've seen some old women washing clothes further down the river, and that they thought the river therefore must be safe to cross at that location. They stripped naked and crossed with only their daggers, and found that at no point was the river so deep as their crotch. Xenophon and his companions are delighted and pour libations, and determine to cross the river in two divisions, the vanguard taking the opposing shore, the baggage train passing between, and the rearguard -- commanded by Xenophon -- crossing at the end to hold off the Kurdish assault.

This works more or less well, as the enemies on the opposing side once again don't really want to fight. The Kurds really do and do their best to kill as many Greeks as possible on their way out, but the strategy is sound and it brings the Greeks out of Kurdistan at last.

On the far side of the river they march for a few days until they are confronted by a large army. The army's commander, a local grandee, says he wants to let them march through if they will do so without burning the land -- although they may take supplies if needed. The Greeks agree to this, but once again it turns out that keeping your word is not a virtue much respected by these denizens of the Near East. The Greeks are used to this by now, and keep careful watch for betrayal; when it happens, they storm and capture the camp of the grandee, plundering it for its goods. 

Armored MMA

What fun! I enjoyed historical European martial arts among several other kinds, and was our university co-president for ARMA for some years. I would have liked doing this even a few years ago. 

Imagination Time

Al Sharpton has a hypothetical for you.

UPDATE: More imagination. 

The most generous interpretation of her remarks is that she thinks the Nazis were allowed free speech by Weimar and that’s how they got into power. That isn’t true either, however. The Weimar Republic censored hate speech and particularly anti-Semitic speech. The Nazis came to power in spite of censorship, not because of a lack of it. 

Shane vs. High Noon

Althouse has an amusing reply to a Maureen Dowd column that notes, in passing, that the headline writers don't know the difference between Shane and High Noon. We do here! Both of those films have featured regularly in commentary for the decades that the Hall has been in action.

Here are a few relevant pieces for old time's sake. 

And here's a celebration of Jack Palance, the anti-hero of Shane, on the occasion of his passing.

Wild World of Sports

Donald Trump became the first sitting President to attend a Super Bowl in person, and apparently did a flyover of the Daytona 500 as well. Both the football and the NASCAR crowds seemed to appreciate him.

Meanwhile in Canada, Justin Trudeau attended the USA/Canada match of the "4 Nations Tournament" (the other two are Finland and Sweden). The crowd booed the US National Anthem, and perhaps consequently there were three fistfights between opposing hockey players in the first nine seconds of the game. The USA won 3-1, and will play the winner of the other two nations in the final.

It's not that weird for big sporting spectacles to end up tying in with politics, in the manner of Roman emperors attending the games at the Coliseum. Is it a healthy way to let off some of the stress and steam? Maybe.