The Sentimental and the Homicidal

This is from Commentary, so you won't be surprised by the pro-Israel language; but that's not what I want to talk about. I'm interested in the critique of sentimentalism, and how it dovetails with the embrace of homicidal impulses.

The poshlost* comes in the form of poetry, too. One Palestinian poet writes:

With clean hands,

he gently sifts the flour,

and adds a handful of yeast.

He pours the warm water

for the yeast particles to live,

then rolls and kneads and rolls

and kneads the dough. 

He lets the soft mass rest.

With firm but gentle hands,

he rounds it into balls,

flattens them into shape,

and handles each one

delicately into the oven.

 Soon, perhaps in half an hour,

the bread rolls are born fresh,

healthy and browned.

The newborn breads breathe,

yet dust chokes the air,

searing gases penetrate

their thin, fragile crusts.

 On the day of their birth, a missile,

a bakery, a scattering

of zaatar, flesh, and blood.

The sentimentalism here portrays the baker as gentle and loving, nurturing: "He pours the warm water for the yeast particles to live," the poet says. He lets it rest. He is delicate in his handling. Well, yes; I make bread too. I also feed the yeast, usually with honey but sometimes with blackstrap molasses. 

A poet is allowed license, but it strikes me -- as a frequent baker -- that it would be just as legitimate to describe the act as monstrous. The yeast's whole life is enslaved to the production of gases to make the bread rise; all the nurturing is just to get the yeast to eat and excrete so that the dough will be fluffy. Meanwhile, not the missile but the oven killed the yeast: the 'newborn breads' are actually newly killed, the yeast slaughtered in its millions in the bald service of the baker's naked interest in eating leavened bread. 

Because the frame chosen is the loving, nurturing one, it masks the horror done by the same hands.

The novelist Milan Kundera, who well knew the horrors of totalitarian rule, has nicely skewered false sentimentality: “Two tears flow in quick succession. The first tear says: how nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: how nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.” Put another way, “sentimentality is that peculiarly human vice which consists in directing your emotions toward your own emotions, so as to be the subject of a story told by yourself,” as the English philosopher Roger Scruton noted in his autobiography.

The sentimentalists are playing a double game: They are dispensing, and attracting, warm feelings and approbation for themselves and their kind, while at the same time providing cover for totalitarians and terrorists.

That is correct, as far as it goes, and we see it again and again. I have grown sadly accustomed to seeing the endorsement of murder and assassination -- against that healthcare CEO by "Luigi," against Musk, against Trump or his supporters -- by the very people I know most inclined to sentimentalist broadcasts. They would never go so far as to say "I wish someone would kill him," but they will definitely go as far as to say that it would be just, that it would be deserved, that it would be understandable. After all, those men provoke such bad feelings in their sentimental hearts. 

* Poshlost is explained in the article's beginning, and is an interesting Russian word. Zaatar is a spice/herb mix that is common in the Levant.  

News from 1948

In a remarkable top-of-the-front-page article, the New York Times somehow cites an irrelevant 1967 case and ignores the actually-relevant 1948 Supreme Court Ruling.

The issue is the deportation of the Venezuelan gangbangers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Times quotes many people who are very upset that the district judge who issued an order wasn't obeyed. The Supreme Court, however, has already issued a ruling on this very subject. It begins: 

1. The Alien Enemies Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.

So that's it. 

I admit to not liking that the Salvadoran prison these people were sent to apparently exists to do things that would violate the Eighth Amendment. I don't think the US Government should ever be allowed to violate the Constitution by getting someone else to do it for them, neither a private company nor a foreign government. This holds especially for violations of the Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence states definitely, and correctly, that the sole justification for establishing this or any government is to protect the natural rights of the people. They should never be in the business of looking for work-arounds to that.

That said, these aren't members of 'the people,' weren't here in accord with our laws, and have no claim to belong here. They aren't refugees, but the people that refugees were fleeing who followed them here to continue to dominate and exploit them. Their claim to the protection of the laws is only as good as the Devil's in the famous quote from A Man for All Seasons: just because we have to set strong guards against the government getting out of hand.

In any case, the highest court in the land has already ruled on this issue. You can challenge whether there is a real state of war or invasion in court; you can't review the removal order.

Honor & The Quiet Man

A useful essay on the great and most worthy subject of honor, from The Art of Manliness. 

We usually watch The Quiet Man on St. Patrick’s Day. This year we didn’t happen to do, but we did last year. I agree with the basic argument of the piece that the movie is about an American learning how to deal with the ancient sense of honor. There was quite a lot of that in Iraq, too. 

There’s an advantage to the American honor: it’s closer to Aristotle’s virtue of magnanimity. Because it is true to its own sense of what conduct is most worthy of honor, it shapes a character that pursues the best things for themselves. That ends up earning quite a bit of respect, which is the honor in the ancient sense that the article discusses. American Magnanimity is ultimately what carries the day in the movie. 

More Spam Comments

Google continues to mark perfectly good comments by welcome regulars as spam. I just restored a bunch of them.

Welcome Home, Wayfarers

I have reflected frequently over the last nine months on how difficult it must have been for our stranded astronauts. Now they are home, thanks to SpaceX. 

PFC Ira Hayes, USMC

In their rush to comply with the order to eliminate all DEI materials, the Pentagon apparently deleted references to Ira Hayes on their website. 

No matter. We remember him, and honor him, regardless of what the government does. Johnny Cash made sure he'll never be forgotten.

St Patrick Cartoons

Steak & Guinness Pie

A traditional St. Patrick’s Day treat. 

Reagan’s St. Patrick’s Day Joke

A little humor from the former President. 

The Feast of St. Patrick

Giving Unto Caesar

There is an interesting question buried beneath this dispute. It hails from Mark 12:17.

It's worth putting into context.

Later, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to catch Jesus in His words. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that You are honest and seek favor from no one. Indeed, You are impartial and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or not?”

But Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and said, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to inspect.” So they brought it, and He asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they answered.

Then Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

And they marveled at Him.

That last line is important. It's translated sometimes as them being "amazed," or that they "greatly marveled." The answer in other words is not meant to be simple, but amazing or marvelous. Which, by the way, refutes the quip made by one side to the Twitter discussion: "Whenever someone writes five paragraphs to try to avoid the very plain meaning of a verse I know I've won the argument." Hardly. You haven't even begun to understand the argument. 

The discussion is among Jews of a particularly philosophical and religious bent. In that context, what does it mean to say "whose image is this?" 

One answer is the one they give: It's Caesar's image, so perhaps it belongs to Caesar.

Another answer in the tradition, however, is that all men are made in God's image. So whose image is it really? 

It's possible to go further than that. Because this object is currency, its value is partially (sub)created by Rome. Like Job's brave horse, men did something to bring out or perfect a quality that was only potential in the natural. The denarius was a silver coin, but because it was stamped by Rome it could be traded freely without anyone bothering to measure its weight. That convenience made it more valuable than, say, Viking hacksilver. 

The silver was not made by Rome, though. Its nature and value arise from God's work: all its properties, but also all of our properties that make silver's properties valuable to us, those are things we did not make. 

Ultimately the only part of the coin that Caesar might reasonably claim is this idea that the coin is worth something. That's the thing that you should give back to Rome, maybe. Give them back the idea that they've added anything, or that their money or the order they represent is worth something to you. The rest belongs to God.

To God, and not to you: certainly not to the state. Jesus' quite challenging teaching is that you should give up all these physical things. They aren't important, he says over and over. A man might even leave his dead father unburied, give away all his family wealth, and instead devote his life to God. That teaching is far more challenging than "Pay your taxes." 

Three-hour tour

SpaceX could have rescued these guys a while back, but for the spite of the Biden administration. They were awfully happy to see their rescuers arrive at last.

Back to Hank

Readying for Better Weather

During the spring oil changes, I swapped out the timing cover...

...and the Derby cover, since I had to remove it anyway to do the primary fluid.

Very soon now those dawns will be right.

Georgia Warhorse

Canadian Freedom

Courtesy of the USA, of course. Their government wasn't going to loosen regulations if left to its own devices.

Berry Diversity in North America

A pretty neat series of maps. 

Anabasis XXV: Conclusion

There's only one more adventure related to us by Xenophon in his account of his time with the Ten Thousand -- which, by the way, is estimated to have shrunk to just over half that size by this point. It's a relatively small-scale battle involving only a few hundred men, which occurred while they were awaiting their new Spartan commander Thibron and his larger force of which they were to become a quasi-independent subordinate command.

Following a sacrifice to Zeus in his aspect as the giver of wealth, which an oracle tells Xenophon he has been neglecting, the nearly-broke Xenophon finally receives some rewards for his efforts. Friends even buy back the horse he had to sell, which is good because his campaigns are not finished. They then go to Pergamon in what is now Turkey, where their hostess Hellas suggests they capture a Persian warlord and his household while they wait for the main army. Omens suggest that this will be the source of further rewards. 

Xenophon takes about three hundred men on the raid. He encounters an enemy that turns out to be fortified in a tower that is described as eight brick-layers thick. In an overnight assault, Xenophon's men break through the tower but are unable to seize the occupants who are well-armed and defended. Fearing themselves near rout due to injury and exhaustion, they form up into the hollow-square formation they used on a much larger scale in Persia and retreat with captured cattle and members of the household who were caught outside (mostly slaves I gather). 

However, this assault provoked the warlord and his family to decamp from the fortification. Intending to evacuate the area, they were instead captured by the main army of Thibron now arriving. Xenophon is awarded his choice of the captured wealth of this man and his family given that his raid was the proximate cause of the easy capture. Xenophon takes his choice and generously distributes it among his friends and supporters who have fought with him for so long. 

The book closes with Xenophon's yielding of command to Thibron, who takes the whole force to battle their old enemy Tissaphernes.

That is the last thing we learn from Xenophon about his time with the Myriad. There are a few other sources for what happened during that period, and for what happened afterwards, but for the next five years we really don't know what Xenophon was doing. Many assume he spent the whole period in Spartan service given what we know of his success, life, and position afterwards. He may have stayed with his old companions for a long time; he may have been one of the last of them still in service when he gained a new friend the Spartan King Agesilaus with whom Xenophon shared mutual admiration and support.

Despite the traditional secrecy fostered by the Spartiates, the reign of Agesilaus is particularly well-known thanks to the works of his friend Xenophon, who wrote a large history of Greece (the Hellenica) covering the years 411 to 362 BC, therefore extensively dealing with Agesilaus' rule. Xenophon furthermore composed a panegyric biography of his friend, perhaps to clean his memory from the criticisms voiced against him. Another historical tradition—much more hostile to Agesilaus than Xenophon's writings—has been preserved in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, and later continued by Diodorus of Sicily. Moreover, Plutarch wrote a biography of Agesilaus in his Parallel Lives, which contains many elements deliberately omitted by Xenophon.

It was Agesilaus who established Xenophon with the estate near Scillus that he mentioned earlier in the Anabasis as a pleasant place with all sorts of game. With the goodwill of the Spartans who, for the moment, controlled this region, he can enjoy the good life and have time to become the prolific writer that he did. In the introduction to the Warner edition I have been reading, George Cawkwell writes:

Like the typical Peloponnesian gentleman, he looked to Sparta as the inspiration of the good life, and sent his sons there for the best education that he deemed Greece could offer; he visited the city at its chief festivals; he was entertained by Agesilaus, meeting in his company along with other aristocratic clients.... At the Olympic festival, he was well placed to return hospitality, and we may picture him and his guests nodding sage approval of the Panhellenic speeches.... Altogether it was a time of happiness, and of leisure to reflect and to begin to write. [Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. Rex Wagner (London & New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 15.]

The Anabasis was not his most famous book anywhere near his lifetime. His works pertaining to Agesilaus had more interest to his contemporaries, as did his work on horsemanship. His Education of Cyrus was far more famous during the Roman period; Caesar was said to keep a copy with him. His accounts of Socrates have been of more interest to philosophers throughout the times during which we have had access to them. The Anabasis' fame may chiefly arise, in fact, from the period when every educated man had to learn to read Classical Greek: it is fairly straightforward grammatically, and contains an interesting story to which young men could be relied upon to devote their attention. It was thus ideal for students, generations of whom followed the Ten Thousand to "The Sea! The Sea!"

I hope you've enjoyed working through this book with me. As the winter ends and the spring brings better weather for new adventures, let us bring this series to a close.

UPDATE: For those who requested that I add the series to the sidebar, this has been done.

Blood Moon

We rose last night at two-thirty to go out and witness the totality of the Blood Moon eclipse. It was a clear night here in the mountains, with both the moon and the stars sharp in the sky. 

Free Speech Arguments

I've always believed in free speech, even very nasty speech that I personally wouldn't say or enjoy hearing. There are strong arguments for protecting even jerks who say terrible things, for example, so you'll know who the jerks who think terrible things are. It's always the jerks you are supporting in this game, in fact, because they're the ones who are going to run afoul of limits. 

Thus I appreciate this thoughtful critique of some actions that the present administration is taking that arguably are unconstitutional transgressions of the First Amendment. These are not the usual suspects for whom that administration can do no right but ever wrong; rather, they're supporters more or less who are pointing out that some of this is over the line. Not all of it, though, and they try to draw out where the lines really are or ought to be.