Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Category

Politics

Perspective

A plume of smoke, visible at a distance
In which people burn.—George Oppen

Plumes

Love, can I call you that, you called me that the other night, Love, I couldn’t move today, or only sank, fell, falling. Today I slept until I couldn’t and looked for your call. Your message woke me. I replied. Twice, worried you hadn’t gotten the first. And you replied, and I thought, What folly. I cleared and fell asleep again. I looked for you online. Friends post pictures of Gaza in pieces, people in bits. The skyline in plumes. Plume, a pretty word, but who can afford it? I click through the OED, arranged in pixels on my screen. Regarding the souls of poets, Plato said, “Arrayed as they are in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak truth.” Beholding the Angels Life and Death, Longfellow wrote of “somber houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.” In “The Exile,” Ibrahim Nasrallah, an exile, writes, “Poets surround me like the fruit of regret.” If we began as light, we became flesh and have become information. Light unto sensor into bytes. Digits, pixels. Our daily bread. The news feed: Omar al-Masharawi, eleven months, dead of burns, wrapped in white, borne upon his father’s arms, whose fingers splay across the shroud, steady and soft. More photos. In Gaza City, Jabaliya, more shrouds. Charred blocks in Khan Younis, Beit Lahiya. The dead, the dying. Rubble, stalks of rebar, ash and limbs. Columns of smoke gore the air, choking daylight. Missiles from a distance. And from a distance, plumes.

by Arash Saedinia
from Rattle #54, Winter 2016

The poem about Gaza was written by an Iranian-American artist and educator in 2016.

Here are some 2018 facts from Amnesty International:

As of October, 150 Palestinians had been killed, 10,000 had been injured, “including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition.” The death toll rose by early December to 175 and by the end of the year to an alleged 220, and those shot in the legs are by now at least 6,392.

One Israeli soldier has been killed and one injured.

Any argument in favor of self-defense has to be abandoned here:https://www.juancole.com/2019/01/against-humanity-protesters.html

The Human Rights and Gender Justice Law Clinic (HRGJ) at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law just submitted a human rights abuse report to the UN about 45 children being killed during the Right of Return Marches since last March. The report notes that of the 56 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the OPT during 2018, a total of 45 children were killed in the Gaza Strip since March 30, according to evidence collected by DCIP. In the overwhelming majority of cases, DCIP was able to confirm children did not present any imminent, mortal threat or threat of serious injury when killed by Israeli forces.

Photographs today are industrial plumes, not the plumes of war and occupation. Music here:

1 Comments

Point of View

Last week I visited a traveling exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry which displayed, quite beautifully, a replica of the burial chamber of an Egyptian pharaoh, King Tut. When the glare of all that gold subsided, and the wonder, that so many things had survived millennia intact, found by relentless searching of a passionate amateur archeologist, what was left?

Thoughts on looting and attention. The riches of the pharaohs, the sagas of finding their tombs, the mythology around the curses befalling the grave diggers all have been in the spotlight of public attention for more than a century. Academia was fascinated with deciphering the hieroglyphs. Scientists to this day use every tool in the box to determine modes of living and cause of death (as well as consequences of severe incestuous marriage practices) on various mummies. Exhibits of the real thing, as well as of the replicas of the artifacts and relics found, attract literally more visitors than any other exhibitions on earth.

What is the fascination? I remember as a child being dragged to see queen Nefertiti’s bust in Berlin, flying into the city which was walled off by the Iron Curtain in the 60s, my first flight ever. Stumped by my mother’s awe, unmoved by anything I saw and uncomfortable about the fact that I seemingly didn’t get it. Is it the thought that at least some remain unforgotten after death? Admiration of successful sleuthing? Awe at the riches devoted to select individuals?

Pleasure at the object evidence that some ancestral “deities” also had musical instruments, played board games and scratched their backs just as we do? These are not rhetorical questions, I truly wonder.

Here is a reflection from 1818 by romantic poet Percy Bisshe Shelley, about another pharaoh and the vagaries of civilizations.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Certainly the Egyptian people have been looted. I am not talking about artifacts being dragged to European museums, either. I am thinking about what it would have taken to accumulate the riches displayed in the tombs, the building of the pyramids, the exploitations of the fellahs, or the victims of internecine conflicts among the families of the anointed in c. 1332–1323 BC when Tutankhaten lived his short life.

More recently, think what the Ottoman Empire, the French, starting with Napoleon and then the British did to the country. The latter occupied Egypt by 1882, stopping short of full annexation because of rival French interests, with endless empty promises that troops would be removed soon. Ostensibly to secure access to the Suez canal, the colonial move was much about marauding the country’s ability to grow lucrative crops.

By 1922, when Tut’s tomb was discovered, the British had eroded the country’s ability to feed itself by installing a mono crop approach on over 80% of all agricultural land: king cotton. Other than growing it and providing the unhealthy work of cleaning the fibers, the cotton processing industry was solely placed in England, depriving the Egyptian people of much needed work and industrial investment, making them dependent on expensive food imports, and prohibited any tariff or tax income from the cotton exports. And don’t get me even started on the Suez Canal…..that requires another full blog.

The people started to revolt in 1919 and by 1922 the British declared a limited independence – it took another 30 years to achieve full independence of the occupying forces – until they bombed the country in 1956 over the ownership of the canal. A great summary of the history can be found here: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/egyptian-independence-1919-22/

Despite life under colonial occupation, the intellectual life flourished – here is one of my favorite examples: surrealism found its local expression around George Henein and his followers .

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/surrealism-egypt-art-et-liberte-1938-1948/exhibition-guide

3 Comments

Consider Defiance!

If Portland, Oregon ever wanted something like an idol it would have elected Ursula LeGuin. Never mind that she would have been the first to scoff at such a notion. The author’s death last year caused true grieving across the city, not just the “let’s write clever obits for a celebrity” kind, but the “find yourself crying spontaneously” kind.

And then there were terrific reminiscences: http://www.orartswatch.org/a-lioness-of-the-mind/#more-59051

I photographed the street where she lived on a walk yesterday – picking views that in my imagination would have perhaps given her inspiration for the next quip. She was known not just for her breadth of writing, from science fiction to poetry, but also for her barbed wit.

Yuppie lingo prevails….

Independent of LeGuin’s prolific literary output and her political activism, she did much for the community in other ways, and, as it turns out, for individuals as well. I was reminded of that by a singular case of reminiscence by a young writer who found her footing through LeGuin’s advice.

Literary Hub Tin House is closing Tin House Magazine come June. Another loss.
A writer is to make revolution irresistible (unless s/he gets erased on the blackboard…)

As a young, misfit college student’s Alison Smith spent a week as driver and guide to LeGuin during the latter’s visit in Rochester, NY. She was empowered by LeGuin’s books, politics and, importantly, her personal advice. She went on to be a fine writer in her own right, evidence of which can be seen in this moving essay, attached below:

https://granta.com/her-left-hand-the-darkness///

The Thurman St Library current center display – science fiction, anyone?
Zombies next?

Encounters matter. Encounters with role models matter. Encounters with role models who don’t look down but lift you up matter.

See, not everything is bleak, even though I have been writing about a few depressing issues this week (why should this week be different from any other…) With guarded optimism, I am particularly thrilled to add Katha Pollitt’s assessment of women’s increasing defiance in her latest bit on likability politics: https://www.thenation.com/article/aoc-tlaib-warren-womens-march/

She talks about the new crop of female politicians who refuse to be cowed.

Not changed – the oldest coop food store. Probably got her food here.


Fat Tire Farm goes bucolic


The Peculiarium’s windows, forever unchanged

LeGuin wrote in The Wave in the Mind : “All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people.” She clearly modeled for many of us how to do that, and the young female politicians around us are now modeling defiance for the next generations.

There is hope! Let’s toast to that and strong role models in general!

For music it shall be Carmen for the simple reason that Florence’s Opera House, to focus attention on violence against women, decided to rewrite the ending last year so that Carmen was no longer a victim of Don José but took her fate inherited own hands https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/02/italy-gives-world-famous-opera-carmen-defiant-new-ending-stand/ 

Spoiler alert: the opera world was NOT happy. But here is the ultimate Carmen, singing about love as a rebellious bird – as shall be women!

To get an in depth view of Thurman St through the eyes of my esteemed colleague Roger Dormand with LeGuin’s text, go here:

http://www.newsagepress.com/bluemoon.html

Here are some miscellaneous Thurman St items that wanted documentation:

Harsh reality next to the floating flowers of a bridal store
A bit late

3 Comments

Consider the Tears

“Children are uniquely vulnerable to physiological effects of chemical agents. A child’s smaller size, more frequent number of breaths per minute and limited cardiovascular stress response compared to adults magnifies the harm of agents such as tear gas.” This from the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 67.000 pediatricians, in response to the Trump administration’s teargassing of children at the southern border. The images that floated in the news after the events at San Ysidro did not need doctors to explain to you how bad things are.

What do you do when someone you know is involved in these kinds of unjustifiable actions? What do you do, further more, if that someone happens to provide you with a lot of money that is essential to your organization? This is the question being asked right now (by some) at the Whitney Museum for Modern Art in NYC.

Benefactors and Malefactors

Long exposition in link attached above. My summary below:

It had been generally known that multiple trustees of this museum (and for that matter many others) had links to the weapons and oil extraction industry. It took the singular case of images of these teargassed children and spent teargas canisters bearing the brand name Safariland to stir action and be outraged about Warren B. Kander, Vice Chair of the Whitney’s Board of Trustees. He is CEO of the company that is linked to the manufacture and distribution of these substances used at the border. (Safariland? Does the name point to crocodile tears, or to the chase of brown-skinned living beings on southern continents? Who comes up with these names??? But I digress.)

More than 100 staff members signed a protest letter, urging the museum to no longer accept donations from controversial donors. One of the first responses? “It seems unfair to single out a specific Board member...” Right. One should look at all of them.

The notion that people involved in weapons profiteering could whitewash their position through philanthropy disturbed as well. Activists from Decolonize This Place organized a protest on December 9th, and are now preparing for a town hall on January 26th to explore further action. Adam Weinberg, the director of the museum, responded with an appeal to accept one’s place in the hierarchy: “As members of the Whitney community, we each have our critical and complementary roles: trustees do not hire staff, select exhibitions, organize programs or make acquisitions, and staff does not appoint or remove board members.“

https://www.artforum.com/news/activists-call-for-town-hall-to-address-controversy-over-whitney-museum-vice-chair-s-ties-to-defense-company-78249

He might as well have reused what he wrote, in the catalogue introduction to their current blockbuster retrospective Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, about Andy Warhol’s art. “It is about currency, in every sense of the word.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/theres-still-no-escaping-andy-warhol

Photographs today are from my last visit to the Whitney in 2017;

And since it’s past time for insurrection: here is 2018 John Zorn, who used to work with the Whitney. I know, it’s an acquired taste, but he writes truly smart music!




0 Comments

Consider the Thumbscrews

“If I were a man, this wouldn’t have happened to me.” These words are found in one of the 400 pages of transcription of a rape trial. Probably heard in court rooms across the world, across time. Except these are from 1612, during proceedings in Rome where an 18-year old Artemisia Gentileschi tried to find justice for having been raped by fellow painter Agostino Tassi. 4 months of trial transcripts are preserved in full, telling us it was she who was tortured with thumbscrews to tell the truth, while he sat by. It was he who, despite his eventual conviction, did not receive any punishment, since he was in the good graces of an equally vile Pope.

My example of a singular case of failed justice and misogyny does not stop here. Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most gifted painters of the 17th century, was determined and able to convert specific gendered experience into art. Influenced by Carravagio and her own father Orazio, a successful painter as well, she made her own way – and history – by expressing female victimization as well as female rage on the canvas. Her paintings of Susannah in the Bath has two creepy lechers staring at her without shame. Her depictions of Judith killing Holofernes are a self portrait for Judith’s face, and Tassi’s face as Holofernes’. (She painted it twice, in one garbed in blue, in the other in a yellow dress.)

Furthermore, they show a servant actively involved in keeping Holofernes restrained – alluding to the power that women have if they combine forces in solidarity rather than having to go it alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/oct/05/artemisia-gentileshi-painter-beyond-caravaggio

She was married off to someone available, had multiple affairs, and tried to paint irregardless of how gossip, denouncements and malice of a baroque society, tried to make her life unbearable. Paint she did and brilliantly so. That is, in any case, what feminist art historians taught us, until there was some serious backlash.

A male curator at the Met argued in the context of a 2002 exhibition that her reputation was inflated by all that salacious stuff around her sexual experiences (!), dragged up by feminists who were biased in favor of preferred role models. She, he insisted, was a mediocre painter, while her father had not received the recognition he deserved. The catalogue, clearly trying to contain the dangerous power of Gentileschi’s art, portrayed her in two ways: as just another working artist, who must be assessed apart from her sensational biography, as if separating her from her specific history would somehow be more objective – or as her being a marvel.

A thoughtful description of how a strong woman is made small even after centuries can be found in the link below: “Look at Artemisia’s reception of today to understand what she went through in her own time. Once more, she is put on display, ostensibly to celebrate her artistic significance, but with the barely concealed covert purpose of trivializing her actual achievement by conforming her to conventional gender stereotypes.” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/2002/03/31/artemisias-critics-painting-with-crude-strokes/c780b5d3-5cf2-4e4b-9bfb-d1c2b565c0c3/?utm_term=.0e31ca328139

That was written in 2002. Last year, there were at least some individual voices and some serious purchasing power that elevated her reputation as artist, when the National Gallery purchased one of her works.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jul/06/national-gallery-buys-artemisia-gentileschi-masterpiece-for-36m

Little, quite late. For some reason I keep thinking I wish Dr. Christine Blasey Ford would pick up a paintbrush….. Kavanaugh as Sisera, herself as Jael? Gentileschi did that one too….

Photographs today are the yellows and blues of Italy, so prominent in Gentileschi’s work..

And here is Vivaldi’s triumphant Judith…..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kFPc-lIrkI

1 Comments

Resentment

A lot of people want change. That is true for the Left and also applies to the Right. If you think about it, the two are really on opposing trajectories – the Left fights, among other things, for structurally disadvantaged people’s rights to access, for them to be able to rise to a place of equal opportunity in society, to ascend to equality from their place at the bottom of the heap. They want a future filled with justice.

The Right is, to large parts, constituted of people who fear a descent, a decline in their status, a loss of privileges, a replacement by others they deem non-legitimate. They want a return to a past they perceive to be their birthright. Opposing trajectories, as I said, both with regard to the experienced direction of change, up or down, and the respective times, future or past, under consideration.

What both movements share, though, is some kind of resentment (no clue why they call it the fancier ressentiment, but they often do.) It’s not about an individual’s desire simply to have what others have (that would be envy. ) It is about generally and collectively questioning the legitimacy of the principles of distribution of goods and rights: who is justified to own/have access/call the shots and who is not. And, in the case of the Right, it’s often about seeing one’s own displacement or descent as directly caused by the ascent of specific others – women who work, migrants who come into the country, etc.

Resentment grows when there is a discrepancy between what you consider your right and what your actual life provides. And it becomes particularly strong if you feel you’ve played by the rules, and those are changed mid-game, or the other team is cheating.

.https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/whats-ressentiment-got-do-it.

Unfortunately, these emotions are often stirred by easily manipulated beliefs rather than facts: if your job is gone, it is easier to blame the women who you see working all around you for displacing you, than questioning an economic system that relies on automation and outsourcing to continue to reap profits. If you believe that South American migrants will deprive you of your share of limited resources you don’t even look at the facts that show this to be untrue. And those emotions mobilize: You see yourself attacked as a class, no longer as a failing individual, and that unites you with the many who share your view. Rather than apportioning blame to yourself as not being competitive, you can blame a shared out-group enemy – making for these dangerous movements that are now sprouting across the US, movements that are willing to consider even violence to defend what they believe is ripped from them.

I’m musing on this because I promised to report on my readings and because I think it is essential that we understand the psychological underpinnings of what leads to populist movements. If we want to have a chance to reach these people we must convey, among other things, that we are not playing a zero-sum game, where you either win or lose.

Source, alas, in German (and I only reported on a smidgen of the entire argument….https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/der-blick-nach-unten

Photographs today from NYC’s streets in honor of our new congressional members who will hopefully shake things up and seem to have a sense of humor.

Music is self explanatory…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ

1 Comments

The Last Day of 2018

On the first day of 2018 I wrote here about racism, having just returned from Charleston, SC, my head filled with echoes of slavery and the Civil War. Little did I know – although I should have anticipated it – how much contemporary racism would unfold in this year. On top of misogyny, xenophobia, nationalism and a general decay of all things ethical, mind you.

As a counterbalance, on this last day of the year, I want to focus on the strength that women bring to the fight against racism (and misogyny.) I picked three examples, one from the (recent) past, one that will hopefully shine a light into the future and one that appears in today’s photographs taken at Frida Kahlo’s house in CDMX. She was another strong woman fighting for change, equality and justice, a woman who also marched to the beat of her own drummer.

Meet Hazel Scott. Born in Trinidad, she was a piano prodigy at age 3. After she moved to NYC, her talent, personality and sheer willpower opened many doors for her. Trained at Julliard starting at age 8, she eventually became a renowned jazz musician, singer and, for a short time, movie star. “Short time” because she was blacklisted after having forced the Hollywood studio to change the wardrobe of her Black female colleagues in the movies from dirty aprons to nice dresses by going on strike during filming.

She married Adam Clayton Powell, the first African-American Congressman elected in NY, had the first ever TV show of a Black woman, only to be dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the McCarthy era. It effectively killed her career, and eventually she moved to Europe, only to return after the Civil Rights Act was installed. She died in NYC of cancer at age 61.

I picked her because even though the political system was able to deliver destructive blows to her, she was a fighter who never backed down. Even as a still unknown musician she refused to appear on stage in segregated venues. She fought for civil liberties at work and at home, successfully suing restaurants that refused to serve her, for example. Her TV show focused on civil rights as well, so it’s no wonder it was rapidly canceled…She was political throughout her life, unafraid and sharing her material resources with the cause.

The link below (with cool historical footage) gives you a quick glance at her life and musical performance. Jazzing up the Classics was her trade mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=79&v=o_WJ4PpxWaE 

My contemporary example is Stacey Abrams, who gave a quick TED talk shortly after she lost in the 2018 midterm elections, due in large part to lingering, at times explicit racism, as I see it. In the talk she points to three questions that guide her decision making and keep her going: What do I want? Why do I want it? And how do I get it?  She answers these questions for herself, (change and justice topping her with list) and also addresses the common obstacles that tend to get in our way.

How to pursue a goal and become an agent of change seems a lesson worth learning to be prepared for 2019. Happy New Year!


4 Comments

A Journey in Sound

If you are like me your household chores have suffered across the holidays. (Not the holidays’ fault but my indulgence in an extra dose of Netflix – I am here to report that I have progressed from November’s Chinese Soap Opera, via -terrific- Korean historic fiction, Turkish fantasy -forgettable except for the footage on Istanbul which recalled wonderful memories- to a German horror movie. Yes, keep your reaction to yourself. I already live with enough raised eyebrows around here…. )

That said, the pile of ironing is waiting, and what better than to tackle it while listening to the sounds of another country that I will never see, but want to know more about.

The BBC has this terrific series called Documentary, and in one segment Alastair Leithead, the BBC’s Africa Correspondent, takes you on an epic adventure in sound across the Democratic Republic of Congo. He basically narrates his trip (I assume only possible because they plunged mega bucks on guards and guides and audio crew, quite frankly) but also records all the sounds during his journey. It is fascinating.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06vm1jd 

Congo has, of course been in the news – if certain US government officials watched anything other than FOX they might even get ideas: another way to suppress voting by undesirable constituencies? Claim it is too dangerous for public health! Details here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-congo-election/vote-delayed-in-three-congo-opposition-districts-wont-count-toward-presidential-result-idUSKCN1OP0J9

I am not kidding, either. The second worst outbreak in history of the dreaded Ebola disease has been used as justification by outgoing President Kabila and his cronies to decree that three opposition strongholds will not be allowed to vote until March – when swearing in of the newly elected president – the elections are this Sunday – will take place in January.

If you have not yet read or long forgotten (unlikely) Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, it is your best introduction to the history of the Congo, in a novel that has some of the strongest character development in recent memory. It is a beautiful and deeply moving book that also makes you aware of struggles that have not appeared in our history books. Or at least not mine.

.http://mentalfloss.com/article/62832/13-things-you-may-not-know-about-poisonwood-bible

For music today it will be Grand Maitre Franco singing Attention Na Sida (he died of complications from Aids in the late 80s, 2 years after he recorded this). The origin of the epidemic was in 1920s Kinshasa, now Democratic Republic of Congo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=156&v=OkfYs2_r1y8

My photographs are of flamingos, my approximation of visiting the tropics…. The Democratic Republic of Congo houses 4 species of those strange birds.

0 Comments

Truth telling

The University Library in Hamburg, Germany

My initial goal for today was to link you to the ultimate best book list of the year. The author went through 50 some end-of-year compilations and culled the books among the more than 800 reviewed on the lists. You read about a few of them on this blog throughout 2018, but most of them I’ve never heard of. To my surprise (and disappointment,) Circe – which is fine –  appeared on many, many lists, Silence of the Girls, – which is brilliant – and one of my favorites, on none. I think I’ve mentioned them both at one point or another.

https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2018-list/

View of the harbor, and the subway tracks that go above ground in places


Despite being novels, the books I loved throughout the year told the truth, many truths, in ever disguised forms and approaches.

Deichtor Hallen, former market halls now used as exhibition spaces for contemporary art

In the meantime, a huge scandal broke in the last few days in one of Germany’s most established and revered publishing houses, DER SPIEGEL. A young reporter, who had a meteoric rise through the ranks to become editor, who had won multiple renowned prizes and rewards, turned out to be making his stories up out of whole cloth. For years, he managed to escape the quality control net of fact checkers and other editorial control to spread his lies. A colleague of his who had gotten suspicious endured disbelief, disdain, threats when he tried to unravel the misdeeds. Luckily he was as tenacious as they come and in the end succeeded.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/21/german-reporters-dispatch-trump-country-featured-mexicans-keep-out-sign-he-made-it-all-up/?utm_term=.eb4198a06226

City Hall

Some of the liar’s stories focused on this country, as you can read in the link above, but I think lies like these coming from a journalistic source increase danger for all of us around the world. In an age were the claim of fake news has become a weapon in the fight for public opinion and manipulation, the revelation of “fake news” plays into the hand of those who have sinister goals. And to reap glory for your “creative” writing while your colleagues are imprisoned or dying for their craft in unheard-of numbers makes it doubly disgusting.

Binnen Alster

In the context of the persecution of journalists around the world, Margaret Atwood’s warning about the dangers to a free press should be required reading for this young man, who has probably destroyed his own life as a writer for good.

https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-if-we-lose-the-free-press-we-cease-to-be-a-democracy/

Rathaus Brücke

Photographs are montages of my city of Hamburg, where DER SPIEGEL is located and going through a phase of ripping hair out, walking in sack cloth and desperately trying to figure out how to change the fact checking system. They have sustained – and inflicted – enormous damage and they know it.

Elb Philharmonic

0 Comments

Persuading

In the mid 1980s I worked as an RA for Leon Festinger, one of the giants in the field of social psychology, and as demanding a boss as they come. Chain smoking through our occasional lunches, he would grow irritated if I tried to pin him down with requests to hear more about the times he studied cults by pretending to be a member, building his theory of cognitive dissonance.

He had at my time turned his back on his earlier bodies of work as an experimental psychologist and was exploring completely new domaines.  He studied archeological sites and data collections which led him to speculate about the nature of early man and the structure of primitive societies, summarized in The Human Legacy in 1983.

Eventually he became passionate about the history of religion and its implication for the development and acceptance of technology. Comparing two societies, alternatively dominated by the Eastern and the Roman church, he analyzed material technology and what it meant for political and national development, in particular warfare. Consider the adoption of the stirrup, for example, the foothold that allows a rider to be safely and in balance positioned on horseback. If you don’t have to cling with your arms to the horse’s neck, why, you could use them for all kinds of belligerent actions, holding swords, throwing spears, you name it, giving you a distinct advantage on the battle field. (The stirrup, by the way, was invented in China and made its way to the West in the early 8th century, something we know both from archeological data and medieval art.) These kinds of technological inventions and adaptations are fostered in forwards looking societies, leaving others, quite literally, in the dust, as we can see with the decline of the Byzantium.

Here is an old obituary by his friend Stan Schachter – Leon died in 1989. https://motherjones.com/files/lfestinger.pdf

All this came back to me when I read the article linked below about cult membership, Trump and the Republican party, which introduces Festinger’s earlier research, to get eventually to the bigger question of how one gets people out of these cults, persuading them to change their views and question their identity.

I am not sure I agree with the approach the author offers in consultation with renowned scholars of peace and conflict resolution. Many of them recommend a community-based approach (after modeling of the Irish initiatives that laid the groundwork for peace in that divided country: “Important work to overcome divides is done at the grassroots level—through NGOs, religious initiatives, social service programs, schools, at the workplace, etc.,” …. “Civil society organizations that cut across identity borders can promote reconciliation and reduce conflict.”

That I can see as a requirement for success, and I can see how it works when the feuding parties are on somewhat equal footing. What, though, when one party has been oppressed to the point of being dehumanized, and is now expected to reach out a hand to the oppressor who deems himself a victim these days? I don’t know how to reconcile that with the racism and anti-Semitism that is the basis for the identity formations for the 25% of our population that adheres to the White Supremacy cult. Would you have asked Jews to start reconciliation groups in Germany after the war, or Blacks in SouthAfrica, reaching out a hand to those who approved of their murder?  Hard reading below:

https://newrepublic.com/article/152638/escape-trump-cult

Photographs todays are of sandhill cranes seen last week on their long, long journeys to the South. Maybe we can also travel some distances in this country bridging the canyons that divide us. 

1 Comments
© 2026