Hegel remarks somewhere[*] that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851[66] for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852
I’ve been listening to a great deal of insanity lately, a lot of it in my own head. The excesses of the rich are more fun to laugh at than the longings of the middle class or the nothingness of the poor. The BBC America’s show Copper which purports to be about the Irish-American experience in Civil War New York City following the draft riots flits back and forth between the three, and it is a fine show…but, the Irish are the only group who are having fun in the mess. The character of the little Irish Girl sold in marriage at 12, turned into a whore and then rescued by the hero is an excellent image – she’s now living the life of the fat cat, but hates it. Hates it – it’s confining, not fun, excessive and stupid. There are some similarities between Cooper and The Gods of Gotham, by the way, but Copper is shown largely from the side of the dispossessed – God’s is shown from the side of the aspiring, as author Lindsay Faye’s review in Good Reads describes it –“Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, saving every dollar and shilling in hopes of winning the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate…”
There’s a sort of existentialist twinge here, I think – the poor live the life of authenticity. Those striving to escape being poor either sell a bit of their souls to do so, or fail sadly and miserably. The rich are corrupt and fail because they lose themselves in their wealth, even those who try to help the poor and downtrodden. Only those at the bottom can see clearly…
What absolute bullshit. Between tears, blood, dirt and despair, the poor can't see all that well...
I’ve had a lot of fun – although not as much as some – with the Romney-Republican-Tea Party – Batshit Crazies the last couple of years. They are frustrating and have savaged the American Social Contract but, well, since the time of Reagan the American Social Contract has been shredded. I don’t care about Mitt Romney as a human being and his dancing horse. By the way, when I say I don’t care about the sewing room, it’s my wife’s sewing room, that makes sense. Saying that I don’t care about my wife’s million dollar plus investment in a horse that requires multiple trainers, special food, stalls, and a plane to get across the country as well as a plane to go to England, I’m either an incredibly rich twit – which he is – or a lying, dissembling asshole, or a fool. I’ll stipulate that Mitt Romney is a decent human being, gives a lot of money to charity, and probably doesn’t set fire to cats or torture barn animals or small children. Who cares?
My old friend and occasional confidant,
Mary E. Hunt, a reasonably well known theologian and advocate
for woman’s
issues in the Church – how’s
that for a career path? – say’s it very well, that” The pets of the rich
live better than the children of the poor.”
The problem lies not in his inability
to achieve some level of authenticity. It lies in the tax code specifically – I
agree that not taking deductions you’re entitled to is stupid. The deductions
themselves, the tax rates, the taxes are the problem; the enable this absurd
accumulation of wealth while those who work for their money as opposed to
having someone do the digital age’s equivalent of clipping coupons is the
problem. Trickle-down economics is the problem; this whole myth of the job
creators is the problem. Mitt is just a pathetic example of the symptom. The selfish, jingoistic, stupid people who
are currently running the Republican party are the problem. Louis Gomert isn’t
Davy Crockett, and Paul Ryan isn’t Johnny Appleseed. Michelle Bachman is not a
reincarnation of
Molly Pitcher. Allan West is not Jim Bowie.These people are either incredible dupres, stupid,
deranged, religious nuts or charlatans. We can elect all the trickle down fools
we want to and more besides; we can reduce taxes on the rich and raise them on
the poor; we can ignore the crumbling infrastructure; we can gut education; we
can do whatever these clowns recommend. Hell, we’ve been doing it since 1981. The
nation will not be stronger, and the people will not be better off.
We can engage in wars for gain and
glory and distraction; we can ignore the hurt, crippled and
damaged; we can
give a buck or two to a guy begging on the street; we can feel bad. The world
will continue to hate us, the hurt, crippled and damaged will continue to
suffer; the beggar will still be hungry and we will still feel bad. We feel
bad, because we are and our entire structure is dooming itself and as a nation
we’re too goddamned taken up with trivia like Snooki, dancing dressage horses
and marijuana. Marx was correct when he
said that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce. It keeps
repeating, however; the bourgeois revolution that drove the creation of the
United States was followed not so much by the French Revolution as the American
Civil War, which was largely fought about nothing.
Now, there were incredibly important issues at stake in the Civil War, no doubt; the entire meaning of the America as a concept, right, wrong, good, bad, indifferent rested on the outcome. Had the inevitable consequences of the war not occurred, everything would be radically different. Speculative, alternative historians have proposed and explored many possible scenarios. Harry Turtledove’s The Great War series has been the longest and most ambitious of them. McKinlay Kantor wrote the modern beginning of the genre, If the South Had Won the Civil War over 50 years ago. Kantor’s book is still pretty much the benchmark.
However, one type of speculative fiction I haven’t seen is what might have happened had there been no Civil War, if evolution and change might have accomplished something different. History doesn’t work that way in general; largely because history depends on human actors. And, one thing we know about human actors is that Aristotle was wrong – man is, in general, not a rational animal. We are the animal that kills for fun, and the most fun is killing other humans. We are the animal that kills for abstraction. We are a tool making animal, and the tools we make we use for killing. The downward spiral of the whole debacle from basically the age of Jackson to the Sumter siege is discussed in a new book, We Have the War Upon Us—The Onset of the Civil War by William J. Cooper. The Seattle Times review sums up the entire disaster quite well, and it’s one we should feel at home with, and by at home I mean twitching in Fear and Trembling. “The South had no real basis for complaint against the North, and no reason to fear it. The trouble was coming from Southern radicals whose real goal was destruction of the Union…Yet nobody seemed able to stop them.”
The review also cites a bit by the author that seems errily reminiscent of the last four years and seems to be a cautionary tale worth reading for us if for no other reason. Reviewer and Northwest historian Steve Raymond’s comment is right on –
"For three months this Congress had had the fate of the Union in its hands," Cooper writes. "After witnessing the secession of seven states, leaving the Union broken, [Congress] could not find the will or the way to take positive action ... The great American political tradition of compromise stemming from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had foundered." Sound familiar? (AXE emphasis added)
One insight he credits Cooper with is certainly worth considering. Lincoln didn’t understand the South; I’d say the South didn’t understand the South in much the way the Tea Party-Cans don’t understand themselves. It wasn’t about slavery, as the present debacles do not originate in the economy, or encroaching big government, or taxes; failing to understand that leads to misunderstanding the entire dynamic. Lincoln is arguably our greatest President; like Barrack Obama, he was an immigrant to Illinois. His wife was a wealthy Southerner, and that’s one disadvantage Obama has. Unlike Mary Todd Lincoln, Michelle Obama is neither crazy nor conflicted in her loyalties. But, if Lincoln couldn’t get it right with his nutcases, how can Barrack Obama get it right with his?
I believe that Cooper focuses on the period immediately preceding the war. I’m looking forward to this one, by the way. But, I think we should regard the crisis as springing up throughout the period from Jackson. Jackson understood the South; and the original issues involved tariffs, not slaves. When his Vice President, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, rose at a Jefferson Day Banquet, challenging Jackson on the issues of the union with a toast praising nullification and secession, Jackson refused to drink, and rose instead to offer his toast – “Our Sacred Union – It must and shall be preserved!” and stared Calhoun down. Of course, Jackson made remarks about hanging Calhoun. Since Jackson was something of a beserker when aroused – Jackson was a gunslinger, had been injured in duels and had killed in duels – Calhoun wisely retired to Charleston. But the secession issue arose again and again. Bourgeois revolution, first as irritant, than as tragedy and now…we’ll see.
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