The Carpentariat

From my own crooked timber of humanity

When middle aged, the magnificent literary critic Harold Bloom plunged into a major depression. He has since written that reading Emerson — especially his Conduct of Life — helped to elevate him back to sanity. I have read and enjoyed The Conduct of Life, but never found it as inspirational or uplifting as Bloom did. (Indeed I find Bloom more inspirational than Emerson.) In pursuit of fleeing my own mental abyss of late, I instead turned to Isaiah Berlin.

This may seem an odd choice. While Emerson (for want of a better phrase) speaks to the soul — that rather dubious superior element of humanity by which we climb to otherwise unattainable heights of self-contentment — Berlin speaks to the intellect, but in ways I find enormously inspirational. His cardinal aim in lectures, essays and books — many of which were conceived during the Cold War — was to ascertain how humanity could live with itself; that is, how the irreconcilabilities between ideologies, nations, cultures, societies and groups could somehow reconcile, or at least get along.

That was an intellectual problem to be solved, and I have reconsidered — re-treated — Berlin's works as a kind of microcosm of the self-contained intellect at work, toward a resolution. By that I mean how could my scrambled, severely depressed mind reconcile its irrational irreconcilabilities? (A regular reader and good friend recently emailed this deeply insightful comment on such irrationality: "I learned about depression when a close friend fell into that hole. I asked her, 'What's wrong — why so unhappy?' And her reply told me what depression is: 'Nothing, that's the whole problem.'")

I have for some time taken an anti-depressant for dysthymia (chronic, low-grade depression), which, when compared to my current clinical depression, is but a bedbug to a tarantula. I will not, however, use a blunderbuss to kill this monstrous pest, as I have done in the past. Such weapons require an agonizing lag in effectiveness, only to then find the side effects … well, depressing. I have decided instead to think — and exercise — my way out of this hellhole, much as Berlin pondered his way through the gruesome Cold War.

"If," wrote Berlin, "like Tolstoy, [some ideologues] sometimes thought that man was not truly free but determined by factors outside his control, they knew well enough, as he did, that if freedom was an illusion it was one without which one could not live or think." Thus it is similarly possible, I reckon, to fool myself (if necessary) into self-contentment, from which comes the indispensable freedom to live and think.

Berlin's free-will speculation comes from one of his collected essays, which draws its title from a 1784 Kantian observation: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made." It seems I was made with a few more crooks, twists and turns than are normal, but I shall never cease trying to straighten myself as best I can.

I can read and think and exercise my way out of this mental sinkhole. In fact, I'm already on my way. Excuse any lapses of logic or poor writing above, for I'm not all the way there yet. Some scrambling has yet to be unscrambled. But I'll get there. Soon. Till then, you take care as well.

The ultimate reason for my AWOL, which took me days to confess (embarrassment?)

A critical, and previously omitted, comment on my temporary absence, which no one synopsized more brilliantly than the novelist William Styron, in his Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

Of the many dreadful manifestations of the disease [depression], both physical and psychological, a sense of self-hatred … is one of the most universally experienced symptoms, and I had suffered more and more from a general feeling of worthlessness as the malady had progressed….

The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.

Thank you, Mr. Styron, on behalf of all of us who suffer from this debilitating disease. I felt my most recent episode coming on for months. Each week, the episodes intensified, until by a week or so ago I could n0t eat, sleep, think clearly, confer politely, or even get out of bed.

My only difference with Styron is this:

"In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul."

My severe depressions are episodic. I will get better and I'll stay better, perhaps for years. So, again, I shall return.

Damn good idea from readers

Open posts, till I return. Discuss whatever you like — an open thread kind of thing.

I'm done

I am forthwith banning all personal comments, namely mine. This was my fault. I take full responsibility. A year or so ago I introduced you to a lady friend. I bragged and strutted and then when things went south in the romance, I became, as a recent commenter noted, childish. He was being kind. I was brutish, inconsiderate, and ungentlemanly — which is the worst crime for a man.

It is for that reason that I am cancelling this site for the foreseeable future. When I began to bring my personal life into my political commentary, I was done — toast. That's why, for years, I remained just a political voice. I've learned my lesson.

My health is another reason for canceling. I can't seem to recover from severe fatigue, nor stop crapping all over myself at night because of lingering ulcerative colitis. Three years of doing bed-sheet laundry at 2 in the morning are enough. The doctors can't help, and I can't help myself.

I am cancelling at the worst possible time, for me. This is the eve of my biannual fundraiser, which keeps this site going. But this site has deteriorated into personal invective, and that I will not allow any longer.

Best wishes, and good health.

I shall return, Someday. 

A simple tale of comparative justice

When I was a teen, one of my many unsavory friends was an ex-convict. He shot a cop. He didn't kill him. He just shot him. This foul deed was done in the course of a warehouse burglary. By the time I knew him, he was late to one of my many unsavory friends' poker games, because, as was explained in due course at said game, he was busy robbing another warehouse. But as soon as his rehabilitated work was done, he'd be there.

He was a friend. Not a close friend, but a friend. My close friend at that time was his brother Joe. They were both soon dead. My friend, a passenger victim of his drunk driver; my close friend, Joe, a gun victim. (He felt his sister had been insulted in a bar, whereupon, poetically, he retrieved his .38 from his car. The bartender was waiting with his own. Kaboom. End of close friend.)

But I digress. My friend, the cop shooter, received and served a sentence of four years at the state penitentiary. His dearest advice to me was that if I ever found myself in that hellhole, I should 1) excuse my being raped as a testing system — would I rat? — and 2) always stuff some magazines inside my tucked shirt, as a defense against any provoked, or unprovoked, stabbing.

Four years. He didn't defraud the citizens of the United States. He didn't cheat them out of millions in taxes. He didn't help elect a corrupt, ignorant POTUS. And he didn't spend years flowering up a bunch of corrupt, foreign dictators.

"Judge Ellis told a packed courtroom in Alexandria, Va. that anyone who didn’t think [his Manafort] punishment was tough enough should 'go and spend a day, a week in jail or in the federal penitentiary.'"

True enough. But who believes Mr. Manafort will spend one day in a maximum security penitentiary, rather than a minimum security resort? In fact, who believes Mr. Manafort will spend any time serving his sentences?

Pardon?

And who did the worse harm to the people of the U.S.? My friend? Or Mr. Manafort?

Man-oh-man-what-a-farce

Less than four years, plus time served.

Equal justice under the law, my ass.

What else needs to be said? 

Thus far.

***

Even worse, "Doc Martin" is a repeat tonight.

Turned out, I couldn't be here today. But I'll see you tomorrow.

Another heartfelt message from the president of the United States

More tomorrow, but for now, this from the man who said there were "very fine people" among the Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, as well as "very, very violent" people among the counter-protesters.

It is shameful that House Democrats won’t take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference. Anti-Semitism has fueled atrocities throughout history and it’s inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2019

What, at long last, can one say about a sociopathic creature like Trump, who wouldn't know shame from Shinola. Most everything I know about the study of sociopathic behavior I learned from "The Sopranos." Tony's psychiatrist, played by bad-boy-attracted Lorraine Bracco, is informed by professional colleagues at a dinner party one night that treating a sociopath is an utter waste of time for both patient and psychiatrist; the former's condition is incurable.

A layman's glance at sociopathic symptoms puts Trump squarely in its grip. "Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises" — nor their stated concerns. Thus Trump can say without so much as a chortle that "It is shameful that House Democrats won’t take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism" and that "it’s inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!" (with feigned emphasis).

Impeachment and removal are now too late, too unrealistic, and politically inadvisable. Nevertheless, in the centuries to come, political historians will wonder why the American body politic did not demand the removal of a certifiable sociopath from the White House.

Biden takes another step

Politico reports, "In the latest sign that Joe Biden will run for president, his team has brought on Cristóbal Alex, the head of the influential Latino Victory Fund." The article then adds, "It's not clear what role Alex would fill in a Biden presidential campaign."

Let's take a wild and exceptionally clueless stab in the dark. Head of Latino outreach?

But as for basics — again …

I have still to witness a candidate preferable to Joe Biden — against Trump. If Republicans were running a much younger candidate, or even a Kasich, then a Dem of Biden's age might be reasonably objectionable. But against Trump, Joe's age is conveniently ruled out as a downside.

And since Trump is destined to go down in 2020 — just a mere, four years late — it would also be preferable to have a Democrat in the White House who knows his teammates. It was said of FDR that you could slap a chalkline anywhere across a wall map of the United States, and he could name the party's chairman in each chalk-delineated county, coast to coast. That in itself isn't a sign of an imminently "great" president, but arduous learning curves for political outsiders are as time-wasting as they are time-consuming. Biden knows politics, he knows policy and government, and he knows where the WH light switches are.

Once Biden gets in the race — this time, that seems a safe wager — it will be interesting to see where the money goes. If he can lock down establishment boodle early on, that could swiftly lock out a few other hopefuls. And the field needs to be culled as soon as possible, so the party can speak with one voice.

It's all coming together now

NBC News:

A book that pushes the conspiracy theory Qanon climbed within the top 75 of all books sold on Amazon in recent days....

"QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening," which has no stated author, ranked at No. 56 at press time, was featured in the algorithmically generated "Hot new releases" section on Amazon’s books landing page. The book claims without evidence a variety of outlandish claims including that prominent Democrats murder and eat children and that the U.S. government created both AIDS and the movie Monsters Inc….

Adherents of the Qanon conspiracy theory falsely [?] believe that the world is run by a Satanic cabal helmed by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are secretly working in tandem to eliminate the cabal.

Well for heaven's sake, I blew the lid off this story roughly 24 hours ago.

Progressives and the perilous lure of demagoguery

Former treasury secretary Larry Summers calls it "grotesque" and "the supply-side economics of our time." It brings to mind other "free lunches" — as Summers also labels it — conceived by fringe thinkers and demagogic politicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Henry George's Single Tax; Huey Long's "Share Our Wealth" program; the Townsend Plan, in which all U.S. citizens at least sixty years of age would receive monthly government checks of up to $200 (financed by a national sales tax), every dime of which had to be spent by the next month; this, in turn, would stimulate and revitalize the depressed, 1930s economy.

The right's supply-side, trickle-down, Laffer-curve, voodoo economics has outlived them all, however; the concept still contaminates the minds of otherwise relatively normal people. At its most familiar level of economic incoherence, supply-side theory reasons that if some tax cuts can actually increase government revenue, then massive tax cuts, repeatedly applied, could raise massive amounts of revenue (or, at minimum, pay for themselves). From there, the lure of reductio ad absurdum seductively lulls not far away: eliminate all taxes and the federal government would be positively rolling in cash.

Aggrieved that it lacks its own grandiose economic absurdity, some progressive pols are being drawn to what's known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) — or, as Summers dubs it, the "grotesque," "supply-side economics of our time." From Yahoo! Finance: "The policy has been gaining traction on Capitol Hill as the likes of New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders fit the MMT framework with ambitious fiscal policies like the Green New Deal and universal healthcare."

In brief, MMT is attractive to those who wish to embrace hugely expensive government programs because government debt, as MMT sees it, is no longer an insurmountable inhibitor (much as supply-siding Republicans can overlook stifling debt whenever yet another round of tax cuts is due). Modern monetary theorists contend that "a country borrowing in its own currency can finance fiscal stimulus by printing money." Now you may suspect this would be hyperinflationary, and you would be correct. MMTers, however, counter that their theory "would allow the government to control inflation through tax policy. Instead of asking the Fed to stabilize prices through monetary policy, the government could raise taxes when prices get too high and cut taxes when prices get too low."

In actual practice? MMT hasn't worked out all that smoothly. Summers notes that among other problems — e.g., the government must pay "interest on any new money it creates" — in many developing countries ruinous hyperinflation was indeed the outcome (still is in, say, Venezuela). And the modern economies of France, Germany, Britain and Italy all experimented with "excessive reliance on inflationary finance," only to "reverse course" once unsustainability ensued.

Still, what I find most troubling about MMT and its progressive adherents isn't the bad economics. Rather, it's the abominable politics. The theory is the hallucinatory humbug of supply-sided thinking; it's designed to attract votes — not serious analysis or academic scrutiny.

Modern Monetary Theory is a way to bamboozle that segment of the electorate that very much wants, for instance, a Green New Deal, but does not want to ponder how it's to be paid for. The litany of Sandersesque free stuff would grow (in fact it already has) well past the Greenery: free healthcare, free preschool, free college, free child care, free whatever your progressive mind can conjure on the road to Utopia. Its promises would be a sham — a political swindle every bit as shameful, as cynical, as the right's promise of a virtually untaxed society with, nonetheless, all the goodies.

Do we really want both major parties steeped in the goof juice of rank demagoguery?

OK, how do I have this wrong?

In a NY Times op-ed written by a professor of mathematics disgruntled with the reigning misuse of the word "exponential," the author writes that "the first edition [late 1800s] of the Oxford English Dictionary got [the definition] right. 'Involving the unknown quantity or variable as an exponent' refers to formulas such as '2 to the power x' (2ˣ) for doubling or '3 to the power x' (3ˣ) for tripling."

I'm no mathematician, but does not the professor only further confuse readers in pronouncing the dictionary's definition "right"? — when, it seems to me, it is rather misleading to use the term "tripling." 3 x 3 is 9; 3 to the power of 3 is 27 ("cubing"). I understand what the professor is saying, but in his manner of saying it, does it not only add to readers' possible confusion? Or am I just an idiot who's overlooking something otherwise quite simple? Help me out here, you math people. 

Trump: A decided divider - and 2020 loser

The narrow division intrigues: 49 percent would definitely or probably vote for Trump versus 51 percent who would definitely or probably vote for "someone else." More intriguing, however, is that the narrowness is taking place in the Lone Star State, according to a March, University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (margin of error, roughly 3 percent).

"President 'Else' is doing pretty well," said the poll's co-director and University of Texas professor of government, Daron Shaw. The extreme partisan divisions are to be expected in this age of half-sane polarization — 88 percent of Republicans are pro-diabolism; 93 percent of Democrats are decidedly not — but it's independents who account for Mr. or Ms. Else's slight, overall lead: 48 percent, loosely speaking, of self-described independents are for Trump, while 53 percent would opt for the mystery pol. (Unmask the ready assortment of mystery candidates, though, and results will vary.)

It is here — the independent vote, not only in Texas — that Trump will pay the price for his intense partisan "leadership," if such generally favorable terminology can be used on behalf of a determined, malicious divider. His 2016 election was a flukish clusterfuck of black swans and sadistic gods, but in 2020 his unwholesome program of national disunity will be unambiguously known to all. And it will come with that aforementioned price tag — of Trump's singular appeal: his base, which is showing signs of splinters, fragmentation and internal dissent, albeit limited.

He can't adjust; he is constitutionally incapable of redefining himself, of modifying his depravities, of becoming … human. And therein lies his doom.

Well, I may have to start arguing Trump's argument

ABC News:

Ty Cobb, the veteran Washington attorney who represented the White House as special counsel Robert Mueller ramped up his investigation into Russian meddling, said he considers the man leading the probe "an American hero" and does not share President Donald Trump’s view that the Russia inquiry is a politically motivated hoax.

"I don't feel the same way about Mueller," Cobb said in an extensive interview for the latest episode of ABC News' podcast The Investigation. "I don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt."

But as Mueller prepares to convey his findings to the U.S. Attorney General, Cobb maintains a belief that his report will spare the president from any serious political harm. Cobb said he believes Mueller has already revealed the bulk of the findings that … [were] issued against a group of 34 defendants that include Russian hackers and the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

If Mueller returns a finding of Trump's innocence — or rather, a lack of sufficient evidence that Trump was culpable — I will immediately take up Trump's relentless, two-year-old argument that Mueller is the furthest thing from American heroism; that the special counsel's investigation has always been a "politically motivated hoax" — just as Trump has been arguing — designed to destroy this presidency. (Say what? Never mind. Don't try to follow the logic here. There isn't any, since we're talking Trump.)

In short, the evidence against Trump is indeed there — and it's overwhelming — but Mueller has been in cahoots with the Trump White House all along. (There's your politically motivated hoax.) The fix was in. Mueller buried the evidence.

Would that argument not be as legitimate as Trump's has been? — that is, precisely that which he has been telling his supporters? As Trump has insisted, the Mueller investigation was a scam from the get-go. Then, at least, we would have consistency in the president's tale.

(I trust every reader recognizes this for what it is: a spoof.)

Buckle up?

I believe I did an honest-to-God double take this morning when I first glanced at the graph below. In its bottom-right corner, that's not Trump's much-vaunted 3 percent (or 4, 5, or even 6 percent) estimated growth in Q1's GDP, according to the Atlanta Fed's computer modeling. No, it "shows expectations for just 0.3% growth in the first quarter of 2019. It followed a weak U.S. construction spending report that badly missed expectations."

So I suppose the boys at Goldman Sachs could be said to have been irrationally exuberant when they estimated that Q1 GDP growth "will come in at 0.9%." Analysts allowed for three prime movers: "residual seasonality, the government shutdown, and tax refund delays" — the last two of which were entirely Trump's fault.

The center must hold, because the electorate is centrist

E.J. Dionne:

"Democratic leaders — and presidential candidates — must find ways to cope with an alliance that spans not only their own long-standing left and center-left factions but also many moderate voters who despise President Trump but have not been Democrats before."

The Tea Partiers somehow managed to convince GOP voters — most of whom were moderates a decade or so ago — that the radical right was the ideological center of conservative politics. The Charlie Dents of the party were marooned on islands of what came to be known as idiosyncratic incorrigibility. Now they're selling shoes, or apples on the street. This amorphous conversion was one of American politics' great cons. GOP voters changed in ideology because they believed their party had evolved, for good or ill. Partisanship is a powerful catalyst.

The progressive faction of the 2018 elections is now pulling a similar con. Moderate Democrats, by and large, retook the House; not Sanderseque candidates. Yet congressional progressives are huckstering the concept — against the perspicacity of wiser party leaders, notably Nancy Pelosi — that the Democratic Party has taken a hard left turn. As the descriptive huckster suggests, this is palpable, statistical nonsense. The center not only held in 2018, it triumphed. The party, however, is swiftly taking a bad rap — bad in the sense of political viability. Free healthcare, free child care, free college tuition and other fiscally unrealistic promises will cut the party to shreds in 2020. Even tax-and-spend, deficit-blind Republican pols will rather easily take a knife to this political voodoo. 

Dionne recognizes the peril: "Here’s the key point: The 2018 elections did not make the Democrats a more left-wing party. It had the opposite effect: A large share of the new Democrats in the House hails from districts — many of them suburban — that in the past would have happily elected Republicans with moderate-to-progressive inclinations" — the Charlie Dents of the future. And in 2020, moderate voters will do just that: happily elect Republicans with moderate inclinations.

The sooner a moderate Democrat takes and holds a lead in the presidential carnival, the better — to speak for the party with one voice, one principal "ideology," one sober Democratic platform. Otherwise the progressive faction will smugly and misleadingly take the party on the road to electoral perdition.

The center must hold.

Yep

Old age is an unfair bitch

The NY Times:

"Late last year, the nursing home in Mobridge, S.D., that cared for Mr. Labrensz announced that it was shutting down after a rocky history of corporate buyouts, unpaid bills and financial ruin. It had become one of the many nursing homes across the country that have gone out of business in recent years as beds go empty, money troubles mount and more Americans seek to age in their own homes."

To my eternal shame, I can't take my mother in, who's diseased with dementia. She barely recognized me last time I visited. I wanted to sob. And I have, since. But what does one do? I can't take her in. My brother, who lives nearby, is no less than heroic in visiting her every day, despite his treatments for prostate cancer. (And I thought I had problems.) But what do we do? She'd burn the house down overnight, not knowing what she's doing, were she to live with one of us.

What do we do with those who raised us, loved us, cared for us?

Now for something completely different

I've been asked to give my thoughts on literary endeavors. I haven't the vaguest notion of why, but who am I to question popular demand? (I think two readers asked.)

So here we go. You may notice an alphabetical order, only because I was too lazy to record my library. I just drew the first few names.

Out of order is Cervantes' Don Quixote, the first (generally accepted) novel. It is without equal. I reread it once a year, because of its brilliance. It flips the script (Sancho is the thinker) and in doing so makes us the poorer, and richer, for it. There is no equal to Cervantes, who probably never read Shakespeare (they were contemporaries). It's astonishing that the two greatest literary giants were of the same era.

Martin Amis is good (Hitch's close friend), but Money was a bit rough for me, even though I'm no prude. 

Austen is also good if you like endless 18th-century commentary. I'm sorry, Jane, but of all your novels, I learned I haven't the patience.

E.L. Doctorow is one of my chosen few. I'll never understand why he never achieved the status of, say, John Cheever, who was my next selection. (his short stories are unmatched.) Read Doctorow's City of God. It'll blow your mind. And what's better than a blowjob?

Bellow. What can one say about Saul Bellow, other than he was nearly as great as Philip Roth? (Oops, I guess I let that slip, out of order.) But really, Herzog is a must-read. As is Augie March ("I am an American, Chicago born.'")

The Brontë sisters. Skip 'em. They're dull, no matter what Harold Bloom says.

Speaking of whom, I would recommend his Western Canon. It's the sharpest analysis of modern criticism I have yet read — because I agree with it. Literature is art for art's sake, it's not supposed to be for your political enjoyment. Nothing irates than a novel with a feminist, Marxist, historicist. or postmodern point of view. That's for philosophers, not novelists.

If you'd like to read my thoughts on other segments of my library, just let me know. Both of you. I'll go into analysis. I didn't this time because I really didn't think anyone gave a damn.

Comments

For those of you made of sturdier stuff, meaning those of you who venture into the comment section, I'm relatively sober now, which is my more common condition, notwithstanding last night's unfortunate state, I had been out with my daughter, whom I learned was 10 times smarter than I am. And she's only 19. We argued about idealism versus political pragmatism for hours, only for me to discover she was way ahead of me. She was talking over my head and I did not even realize it. This led to drink. Serious drink. Bad Papa Carpenter. ("Papa,"by the way, is my sobriquet, à la Hemingway, who also went nuts.)

The point being, many of you could do the same. Regular commenters — Peter, Max, Anne, Savage, Mary, and others — could cut me to ribbons if they only let loose of their ideological bearings, which I try to do every day. Let it rip. Don't agree, argue. That's the stuff of thought. Attack at every opportunity. I'll often disagree, but that enlivens me. Just please don't hurl ad homimens at those with whom you disagree. Address their arguments logically and rationally, It will make you think, rather than brush them off lightly. They just might be right, or "righter."

Let us have a civilized debate on matters of importance. Otherwise we diminish their importance. Deal?

**I have deleted my own mean-spirited comment, which once sat in this space. I apologize to L. Reeves. My entry was unworthy of me (I would like to think).