THE BRUNELLUS PROBLEM Jerry Harkins 

 There is a certain kind of one-upmanship practiced by intellectuals in which the object is to demonstrate a mastery of obscure information. This differs from Trivial Pursuits in several important respects. For one thing, it is a blood sport and for another it never intrudes into anything that might remotely be confused with popular culture. A pundit who compares Pat Buchanan to the Docetist heretics is marking his intellectual turf in much the same way a dog marks a hydrant but without the dog’s sense of play. 

 The master of the form is, of course, Umberto Eco whose 1980 novel, “The Name of the Rose,” is a tour de force of arcana, so much so that three classicists published what became a best selling guide to the book for American readers. Their “Key” is almost as good as the novel. For example, a minor character, the obscure French philosopher John Buridan (c.1290-c.1360), is identified only as, “an important figure in the Nominalist debates.” You are expected to know what nominalism is, how it relates to the realist philosophy of William of Baskerville, the (fictional) hero of the novel, and his friend, the (historical) moderate nominalist William of Occam, and how it resonates in Twentieth Century logical positivism and contemporary deconstructionism. It is further understood that your interest is purely scholarly. The authors will not waste your time with gossip about one of the most interesting figures of the dark ages. Of course you are not even aware such assumptions are being made about you unless you exhausted the mystery genre at an early age, so score two points for the authors of the “Key.” 

Still, “Key” does not approach the subtlety of “The Name.” You can read the entire novel several times and never realize that the author supposes you are as familiar with the works of Jorge Luis Borges as he is. In this instance, you have lost several points without even knowing the ball was in play even if you cover Borges in the graduate seminar you teach every two or three years. 

The most irritating thing about Eco, however, is not that he knows more than you do or that he is always right but that he has a bad habit of hinting at knowledge so outré that you, dear reader, have no hope of looking it up. Such is the case with Brunellus. Early in the novel, William and his apprentice, Adso, arrive at a Benedictine monastery and are greeted by a group of monks outside its walls. Adso reports this conversation: 

“I thank you, Brother Cellarer,” my master replied politely, “and I appreciate your courtesy all the more since, in order to greet me, you have interrupted your search. But don’t worry. The horse came this way and took the path to the right. He will not get far because he will have to stop when he reaches the dungheap. He is too intelligent to plunge down that precipitous slope…” 

“When did you see him?” the Cellarer asked. 

“We haven’t seen him at all, have we Adso?... But if you are hunting for Brunellus, the horse can be only where I have said.” 

Subsequently we learn how William has deduced the nature of the Cellarer’s mission and the location of the horse. But how has he learned the animal’s name. When Adso asks, William says only, “May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind, son! What other name could he possibly have? Why even the great Buridan, who is about to become Rector in Paris, when he wants to use a horse in one of his logical examples, always calls it Brunellus.” 

And may the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind also, reader! Everybody except you knows why a monk’s horse must be named Brunellus. It is so obvious Eco will not insult you by explaining it. 

As it turns out, the present writer is not exactly chopped liver when it comes to horse arcana. For one thing, he knows the “Key” is wrong to translate Brunellus as Brownie. Naturally, he knows about Buridan’s ass Brunellus, the metaphorical intellectual who starves to death between two equidistant bales of hay. (Buridan may be obscure but his ass is famous.) And like anyone else familiar with Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale, he is aware of Nigel Wireker’s “Speculum Stultorum.” This is a fable of another Brunellus, also an ass, who desperately wants a longer tail and, not finding it through drugs or graduate study at the University of Paris, returns to England to found a new monastic order. 

So has Eco erred? Might it be that a monk would consider Brunellus a perfect name for an ass but not necessarily for a horse? To assume an error on Eco’s part would be a fool’s bet. He’s good at this. Better than you and even better than I. Maybe as good as my friend Gerry Sircus. 

I can live, I suppose, with my own ignorance. I can even live without knowing how to Google my way out of it. But it’s hard to accept that someone else besides Eco knows the answer and it is not I. 

Somewhere there is the entomologist who named a rare Hawaiian butterfly Rhyncopalpus brunellus (Little Bruno the brown nose). What other name could it possibly have? Worst of all is my certain knowledge that Eco knows about that damn butterfly and is just waiting for me to mention it casually. Einstein said that God is subtle but not malicious. Would we could say the same of Umberto Eco.

Subsequently

Fifteen years after publishing this essay, I read the brilliant book Life Is Simple:  How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe by Johnjoe McFadden, (Basic Books, 2021).  As it turns out, I need to recant my description of John Buridan as "...a minor character, [and an] obscure French philosopher."  I must have slept through Dr. Javier's class on nominalism (as I slept through most of his classes).  At least the Holy Ghost sharpened my mind enough so that I figured out that William of Baskerville is Eco's surrogate for William of Occam.

BILLY BASHING
Jerry Harkins


The Times must have run front page book reviews before June 20, 2004 but I can’t, for the life of me, recall one. [1] The publication of Bill Clinton’s memoirs, however, was too much of a temptation. The Times’ relationship with Mr. Clinton is not a simple one. It endorsed him twice but that didn’t stop it from despising him or from siding with his most rabid, red meat critics. It never said anything good about him that wasn’t damning with faint praise. It has praised George Bush unreservedly on several issues, but never Bill Clinton. Toni Morrison famously explained it as a concomitant of its perception that he had been our first black President and she was right. He fed The Times’ nightmarish vision of a southern black hoodlum: big, loud, trashy and sexually voracious. They miss the catharsis of their daily Billy bashing so they decided to enjoy the opportunity to renew old grudges. They brought out their biggest literary gun, one Michiko Kakutani, and issued her a new well of bile. Ms. Kakutani was not amused: “…numbing, self conscious garrulity,” she wrote. Long-winded and tedious. Self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull. A messy pastiche. Self-serving, often turgid. Wow! That is literary criticism. Self-conscious, self-indulgent and self-serving—all in one 1,600 word barrage. There should be a 5-day waiting period before critics are allowed to buy a thesaurus.

Now this may lead you to ask, who in hell is Michiko Kakutani? Well, according to the GoldSea Asian American web site, she is Number 10 on their list of the 60 most inspiring Asian Americans. Here’s what they have to say about her:

"Her surgical vivisections of bloated authors have made the New York Times lead literary critic the bitch-goddess of American letters and won her a Pulitzer in 1998 to boot. Browbeating America's cultured class with its own code is Kakutani's contribution to the spider-webbing crack in the stereotype of English-fracturing Asians. She did it all while keeping her inner -- or outer -- life from being limned by either the fawning or the fuming."

I have a little trouble with “surgical.” The vivisection image is not a pretty one but the writers wanted to imply the precision and finesse with which they think the critic goes about her dirty but necessary business. I associate her more with axes and sledge hammers, but that is only my opinion. And, “bitch-goddess” may be a bit harsh, but they know her better than I do. As to “browbeating America’s cultured class,” well, she is a product of Yale University whose graduates, by their own admission, tend to know everything worth knowing (William F. Buckley, Jr.), nothing much about anything (George W. Bush), or everything everyone else should and should not know (Pat Robertson). And while I’m at it, I may as well admit that Ms. Kakutani is pretty much an equal opportunity critic: she doesn’t like most of the books she reads which must make for a fairly pinched life. But she really despises the Clintons. She found Hillary’s book, Living History, “…a mishmash of pious platitudes” and “robotic asides.” And, of course, it was “self-conscious.” Self-conscious may be the whole idea of autobiography but Ms. Kakutani knows what she doesn’t like. [2] I wonder if she’s ever tried cozy mysteries or Harlequin romances. Probably not.

Given all the ignorant malcontents among its readers, The Times got a lot of nasty letters about its ongoing obsession with the Clintons. Its Public Editor Daniel Okrent [3], however, reviewed the brouhaha and found nothing objectionable about the review or the obsession. Which came as a relief to me because in football it would be called “piling on” and carry a fifteen yard penalty. In journalism, it is called indulging the editors’ neuroses and gets nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Notes

1. I am told it did run a front page review of one of the Harry Potter masterpieces. I must have been out to lunch that morning.

2. Nine days after the Kakutani review, The Times published another one in the Sunday “Book Review” (6/29/04). This was marginally more sympathetic which is surprising as its author was Maureen Dowd, the paper’s most acerbic columnist. Ms. Dowd, you may remember, was the writer who castigated Judy Dean for not standing by her man on the campaign trail. A positive review by Larry McMurty was published on July 4 and a sophomoric satire by Christopher Buckley ran in the Book Review on July 11. Fortunately Mr. Clinton is writing another book so we can look forward to another cycle of what Alexander Pope referred to as, “Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss”

3. Mr. Okrent is neither a member of the public nor an editor of the paper. He is the Complaint Department going by a puffed up name, a little like calling the garbage man a sanitation engineer which in fact is not a bad job description for Mr. O.

YANKEE GO HOME
Jerry Harkins

Life is full of mysteries and I guess I should get used to it. At the moment, I’m wondering why the United States pursues a foreign policy that may or may not be consistent with its values but sure as hell is not at all consistent with its interests. This is going to turn into a piece about Iraq but maybe we should begin with something easier. Such as Korea. A half century ago, we sent 1,789,000 soldiers to save South Korea from being swallowed up by North Korea. Of these, 33,742 were killed and 92,134 were wounded. I know it’s not polite to mention it, but that’s a big investment. Since then, we have maintained enough soldiers there—currently around 37,000—to serve as an earnest of our commitment. They couldn’t possibly stop a new invasion. They would be overrun in a matter of hours. But their mere presence is supposed to remind the North Koreans that we are willing to double down on our blood investment. To me this has always seemed a questionable strategy, even while it kept on working for fifty years. North Korea is an insane Stalinist state unlikely to conform its actions to any standard known to the civilized world, including its own survival.

Anyway, the South Koreans no longer want our protection. They have adopted what they call a “sunshine policy” the gist of which is that the North is no longer a “main enemy” but is now a “friendly neighbor.” The dear leader does his best to render Seoul more realistic and cannot be faulted if they choose to ignore him. What the South seems to want is reunification with the North, and the North says it’s willing to talk about it on the condition they throw us out first. While we’re leaving, they also want us to participate in an aid package to bail them out of the chronic economic disaster they have created by choosing guns over butter.

The Southerners are rioting in the streets and their politicians are outdoing each other screaming to anyone who will listen, “Yankee go home.” Sub rosa, some of them want us to stay because, if we go, it will make international investors nervous and that would be bad for the likes of Samsung, Hyundai and Kia. Hyundai especially is playing both sides of the street. It is making a huge investment in the North. For one thing, it paid $500 million for the right to build all the civil engineering projects the North undertakes after it gets the necessary foreign aid—which is to say after hell freezes over. It is also building a huge multi-billion dollar manufacturing facility in the North. But it’s business plan is predicated on selling a good share of the projected output in the U.S. market which, given the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, is somewhat speculative. So there is no appetite in the executive suite for making investors any more antsy than they are given that the company is pouring trillions of Won into a black hole. They prefer that we stay, hoping that investors are stupid enough to think our presence will act as a deterrent to Mr. Kim. It’s the Korean stock exchange that drives what passes for policy among the tonier classes. Most folks though just want us gone. And if you ask me, that sounds like a plan.

The South Koreans aren’t the only ones who think our North Korean policy is inconvenient or ill conceived. After considerable saber rattling, the Northerners and the Southerners forced the U.S. to sit down with them in April, 2003. The meeting ended badly so the Chinese decided to get involved in a particularly inscrutable fashion. After intense diplomacy, they convened a six-way conference in August after which they announced a vague agreement to meet again. The dancing in the streets that might ordinarily greet such momentous happenings was subdued, however, when the North Koreans announced that they had already built six nuclear weapons and were reprocessing enough plutonium to make forty more. Still, the Chinese, preferring not to contemplate whom Honorable Kim planned to bomb, said the meeting had been a great success. The North Koreans, thinking perhaps China had not gotten the memo, said they saw no reason for further meetings until the U.S. meets all its demands—which is to say caves into extortion. One of the Japanese representatives chimed in with the view that the main stumbling block was the U.S. refusal to make the necessary concessions to said extortion. He didn’t say what the concessions were because, like everybody else, he has no idea what Kim Jong Il wants besides a library of porno flicks. All this is bonkers of course but it leads to the conclusion that the countries of the region are united in believing we are the bad guys. It’s the only thing that unites them and I have no stomach for bursting their bubble. I mean if it weren’t for the common enemy in Washington, the Koreans and the Chinese might come to blows over the volatile issue of the downfall of the Kingdom of Koguryo in 668 C.E. The Japanese and the Chinese might be at each other’s throats about whether the rape of Nanking was genocide or merely an excessively enthusiastic expression of Japanese eroticism. Barbarians like us, brought up in the straightjacket of Aristotelian logic, can never hope to understand the nuances of East Asian diplomacy. So here’s the policy: we declare the Korean War over, pack up and go home.

You say we can’t trust the North Koreans. Ten minutes after we leave, they’ll issue an ultimatum and maybe drop a bomb or two on Seoul for good measure. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe. The Great Beloved Leader is hard to predict. I mean in your heart you know he’s a fruitcake. But it’s none of our business. The South Koreans are all grown up. A free, self-determining, highly successful nation. Maybe they got that way on our dime, but now they get to make these decisions all by themselves. It may be hard to see the kids fledge but there you have it. And if they fall out of the nest and die, well we tried. It’s a cruel world. Pack up, Yankee, and mustering as much dignity as possible, go home.

It seems so obvious you have to wonder what you’re missing. What are we worried about? Not Japan. What we do in Korea has absolutely no effect on Japan where we have another tripwire in place. A lot of Japanese don’t want us either so maybe they should hold a plebiscite and we agree to abide by the results. Like the Koreans, it’s sometimes hard to know just what the Japanese want us to do. At the moment, they’re working with us in an effort to develop an antimissile system that could intercept rockets fired from North Korea (or, for that matter, China). The Northerners do not approve of this and have announced that Japan’s cooperation with the United States, “would serve as a detonating fuse to turn Japan into a nuclear sea of fire.” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi says there’s nothing to worry about. “The reports I’ve had say it is nothing to make a fuss about,” he opined. The South Korean deputy reunification minister, Lee Bong Jo, agrees. If a nuclear sea of fire doesn’t faze these guys, you have to wonder what would.

Surely we don’t have to worry about Hawaii, at least not for the present. The day North Korea poses a threat to Hawaii, we simply bomb it back into the Stone Age. Al Qaeda? I don’t know but, to the extent North Korea may be a player on the terrorism stage, or on the nuclear proliferation stage, our response has got to be serious which is to say independent of South Korea. Anyway, the 37,000 troops we have in South Korea are not in a position to contribute to the war on terrorism. If anything, they are hostages limiting our flexibility.

I can get pretty worked up about this. I’m thinking I may be wrong and the South Koreans really want us to stay. I mean, I don’t speak the language and I am fully aware of my limitations when it comes to diplomatic subtleties. Moreover, I am biased. I actually agree with a lot of what I see on the placards. George Bush as a demented vampire isn’t so far from the truth. George is, at minimum, a muscular Christian who scares the hell out of me. As far as he’s concerned this is not about North Korea or South Korea. It’s about domestic politics right here in the good old US of A. The Administration does not want to get involved in Korea, at least not yet. At the same time, it does not want to be seen as turning tail. So it has adopted an amazingly cynical program of its own: we won’t even talk to the bad guys until they agree to improve their human rights record. Our President would like people to believe he gives a damn about human rights which is hard to do in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. South Korea’s response to this bit of diplomatic theater is classic. The former Foreign Minister, a Mr. Ban, says that of course human rights should be honored everywhere but the “particular situation” in North Korea must be taken into account and the issue should not “have a negative effect” on negotiations. The “particular situation” seems to be the fact that Mr. Ban knows Mr. Kim is a sadistic bloodsucker who is not overly stable and there’s not a hell of a lot he can do about it. For pure cynicism, then, Seoul and Washington seem to be in a dead heat.

The evident flaw in all this policy posturing is that North Korea is much more of a problem than Iraq ever was, even if the problems it poses are or should be more salient to their neighbors than to us. But Mr. Bush is not ready to deal with North Korea, thank God because I’d hate to see a renewal of hostilities. What’s stopping him is Iraq where the war he did want is not going so well. The American priorities are informed not by a strategic vision, not by a noble goal, not even by our self interest. They are driven by a sort of malignant neglect. The key strategic value is winning elections and that will be determined, Karl Rove thinks, by how Iraq plays on the six o’clock news. We can’t fight two wars at the same time, a fact that seems to have come as a surprise to the geniuses running the Pentagon. We’d lose them both which is worse than losing only one. So Korea takes a back seat.

Given all these uncertainties, I want to be very careful. Maybe we should stay in Korea after all. Why? How does it advance the interests of the United States to station 37,000 warriors in Korea? I have no idea but that may simply be a failure of imagination. Korea is not like the Middle East where, at least, we do have a strategic interest in the oil. Which brings us, at last, to the point of this essay.

We do need Middle Eastern oil but to think our entire misbegotten policy in the region is about oil is myopic. If it were, we would have kissed off Israel decades ago. One of the great myths is that our policy toward that woebegone country is based on some sort of high moral commitment. Sadly it is not, even though it may once have been. It would be more accurate to say that it is based on the high moral commitment of American Jews who, not incidentally, tend to vote their convictions. A lot of King George’s fundamentalist friends agree with them because they think that Armageddon cannot start until the Jews are secure in Israel. The Jews, of course, are not about to dissuade them even though they know the fundamentalists don’t have both oars in the water. I hope this isn’t news to you. A very similar calculus informs our Cuba policy which is driven by a bunch of aging refugees with grandiose ideas. But unlike Israel and Cuba, neither Iraq nor the Arabs have much of a constituency in the U.S. outside the oil companies. So our leaders were free to orchestrate the Iraqi war anyway they pleased. It was, however, a bargain with the devil. Once we invaded, there was never going to be a realistic exit strategy that would not be seen as turning tail. The worst part of that is it gives Jacques Chirac gloating rights and sets the United Nations down on the moral high ground. Damn!

Whenever the subject turns to Iraq (as you see it has), you get a lot of heated arguments. There is however one thing everybody except the Iraqis and I agree on: whatever else we do, we have to be sure to preserve the “territorial integrity” of Iraq. The thinking class believes it would be a disaster should the country descend into ethnic or regional chaos because it could spill over and destabilize or otherwise discommode the neighbors. The only problem, as it so often is, is reality: we are living in an era of religious and ethnic fragmentation. The Basques want to separate from Spain and France, the Kashmiris want to get out from under the heel of Hindu India, the Kurds want their own state carved out of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, Nigeria is coming apart at the seams, the Sudanese Muslims are slaughtering the Sudanese Christians, Bangladesh split off from Pakistan not too long ago and the Sikhs of India would like to follow suit, the Muslims of southern Thailand are fighting a nasty little rebellion against the Buddhists, there is no more Czechoslovakia, Quebec is sporadically unhappy being part of Canada, the only thing holding Syria together is a brutal dictatorship, and Central Asia is a witch’s brew of nationalities seeking nationhood. Think Chechnya. There is a word for this process. It is called Balkanization in honor of a thousand years of religious and ethnic hatreds among the brotherhood of Southern Slavs. You could just as easily call it Caucasianization in honor of the ethnic and religious fissions going on in Georgia and elsewhere. Georgia is a nation with just a hair more than five million souls—a tad smaller than Rio de Janeiro—who are waging four revolutions simultaneously (Abkhazia, Ajaria, South Ossetia and Mengrelia) requiring the attention of peacekeepers from Russia and the UN. In Africa, tribal war affects practically every country south of the Sahara and religious war is being waged in every other country. The fact that a lot of these people are starving does nothing to lessen their enthusiasm for slaughter. It must be admitted that many of the problems are the result of former colonial powers trying to impose European or, in the case of Georgia, Stalinist geopolitical logic on vast swaths of the globe that were perfectly happy with their own cultural logic which, often enough, involved mutual slaughter.

Can this teach us something about Iraq? Probably not, but the word Iraq derives from the medieval Arabic name for the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers south of Baghdad that was later called Al-Jazirah meaning The Island. From 1534 to 1918 this piece of modern Iraq was known variously as Baghdad or Mesopotamia (meaning between the rivers) and was a province (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. It was home to numerous Arabic-speaking tribes belonging mostly to the Suni branch of Islam. In 1922, the British cobbled it together with Al Basrah, the province in the south inhabited primarily by Shiite Muslims and Ma’dan or Marsh Arabs. Mosul, the adjacent province in the north populated largely by Kurds and other non-Arabs, was added by treaty with Turkey in 1926. This was a big mistake given all the oil but (a) Turkey had been on the losing side in World War I, and (b) Turkey already had enough trouble with its own Kurds. But the important thing to take from history is that the so-called Iraqis have been engaged in tribal warfare with each other and their neighbors since the beginning of recorded history. They invented war more than five thousand years ago along with cuneiform writing, banking, despotism, imperialism and many of the other accouterments of what we like to think of as civilization. During the Ottoman era, this area was the eastern frontier and there was rarely a day of peace between the Suni Arabs and the Shiite Persians.

Thus, what is shown on today’s maps as Iraq is not a nation or a state but a federation yoked together recently by outside colonialists against the will of all the native parties and their neighbors. There is not now nor has there ever been equilibrium of any sort and any notion that order can be imposed is nothing but wishful thinking. “A democratic Iraq” is a contradiction in terms; “at peace with its neighbors” is delusional. In the absence of a brutal dictatorship, the only force that could possibly hold the parties together is oil to which all three have some reasonable claim. But these are not reasonable people given to cooperation and compromise. To Iraqis, freedom means the freedom to riot, pillage and kill each other and everyone else. The vision of the United States Marine Corps—which has known and successfully dealt with fanaticism before—negotiating with what appears to be a ragtag militia that has fought it to a standstill is revealing. As a nation, the United States is simply not willing to use the overwhelming force that would be needed to subdue its tormentors. If it wouldn’t do it in Vietnam after wasting 50,000 lives, it will not do it in the deserts of Mesopotamia. Even the Soviets were not willing to do it in Afghanistan. Their half-hearted attempt to do so contributed mightily to their downfall when the comrade citizens got sick of the bloodshed. (Note to Karl Rove: you might want to fact check this.)

So where are we? Well, in a few short years, America has alienated pretty much the whole world. It wasn’t easy. The war was just the last straw and it is making everything worse every hour we spend there. Why don’t we leave? It seems to me that our mission in Iraq has, as our own beloved leader has said, been accomplished. The Great Evildoer is in our custody. Neither he nor his successors will threaten anyone with weapons of mass destruction for the foreseeable future for reasons too embarrassing to mention. The only thing left is nation building which Dear Leader denounced in his 2000 campaign.

Anyway, there is no nation. Get used to it. The good folk who live there don’t want us to build one for them. In this non-desire, they are joined by like-minded colleagues imported from Al Qaeda and Hamas. They do not want democracy. They want a dictatorship, some preferring one or another Islamic model, others a Baathist one. Anyway, it seems to me, the idea of imposing democracy is another sort of contradiction in terms. So why are we working so hard to convince ourselves that we are, in Mr. Bush’s words, “doing God’s work?” What are they saying? Is God pissed off at Iraq the way he once was at Sodom? Are smart bombs his modern version of fire and brimstone? If that’s what they think…well, that’s blasphemy. That describes a God who is either stupid or sociopathic or both.

It is basically impossible to extricate yourself from a quagmire while retaining even a shred of dignity. But if you’ve ever been trapped in one, you know that your only other option is to drown. You are already wet, filthy and invested with bugs you don’t want to know about. It is just not worth trying to preserve what little dignity you have left. Every fiber of your being is shouting, “Get the hell out of here!” But, you say, abandoning Iraq now will have dire consequences. Yes, it will. The Arabs will be very mad at us and oil futures will go through the roof in anticipation of another embargo. The right wing will be in full voice demanding to know “Who lost Iraq?” The question, of course, will be moot because Iraq will no longer exist. They wouldn’t like the answer anyway because it would mean Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush would have to fall on their swords.

Withdrawing from Iraq will be calamitous in ways we can’t begin to imagine but, even so, staying there is a fool’s game. The President is forever giving speeches in front of what Madison Avenue calls scrims that bear the motto of the day. For the forthcoming concession speech, the scrim should say, “About face.” But, given the administration’s penchant for the big lie, it will probably say, “Advancing to the rear.”

AGINCOURT, TRAFALGAR, WATERLOO AND NOW SINGAPORE
Jerry Harkins

Jacques “Iraq” Chirac has not been having an easy time this year what with the ignominious demise of the EU constitution, high unemployment, a bitter struggle with Tony Blair over France’s addiction to high agricultural supports and another with his young constituents who took to the barricades over their god-given right to employment security and six week vacations. The International Olympic Committee not only didn’t give the 2012 games to Paris, they added insult to injury by giving them to London. Think of it as the Battle of Singapore. Jock didn’t help his own cause by mouthing off about British cuisine and claiming that the only contribution the Brits have made to agriculture is mad cow disease. His own contribution, of course, is terminal foot in the mouth syndrome. I mean the man said that English food is the worst in the world except for Finland. The Finns had two votes on the IOC committee. I was not surprised by the Olympic Committee’s decision. The French play a little soccer and have produced a handful of good tennis players but generally they don’t win very much. The video of the good citizens of Paris expressing their disagreement may have been misleading. Their anger was directed less at the IOC and more at England and Tony Blair who, they announced, had cheated. Well, they said the same thing about Hank the Cinq, Wellington and Lord Nelson. The French have a lot of experience with the English, most of it embarrassing.

France, you see, is a state of mind making a sincere effort to be a nation. Since 1792, it has tried thirteen different forms of government: five republics, two empires, a Reign of Terror, a Directorate, a Consulate, a restored Monarchy, and, during World War II, two Nazi collaborationist regimes, that of Pierre Laval in Paris and Philippe Petain in Vichy. While all have been ineffective, they have produced a colorful cast of leaders beginning with Robespierre who ruled by the dictum, “Terror without virtue is powerless.” Virtuous terror is one of those uniquely French constructions that is logical only in a language with a very nuanced grammar. It is the same kind of logic that turns Napoleon into a “military genius” which, in any other language, would be an oxymoron.

In the real world, Napoleon was a military idiot. He did manage to defeat Austria, Italy and Egypt before running into major league pitching in such places as Haiti. And Russia. In less than six months in 1812, through sheer stupidity fortified by invincible arrogance, he managed to reduce an army—his own—of more than 400,000 soldiers to a mob of fewer than 10,000. In fact, military history provides the perfect capsule description of French history. Over the centuries, French soldiers have displayed courage, resolve and patriotism. French generals on the other hand have been mostly inept. The Arc de Triomphe is a monument to that ineptitude. On it are engraved the names of 801 French generals, 799 of whom you have never heard. On its sides are the names of 268 battles, 30 of which are regarded as definitive victories. The rest are ties. There was not enough space for definitive defeats.

Vive la France! When Marianne looks in her mirror, she sees a beacon to mankind, the fragile guardian of culture, art, ethics and cuisine in an undeserving world. She knows people think of her as something of a scold. The Americans especially accuse her of being haughty, arrogant and often frivolous. Well, what can one say about the Americans? Twice in the last century, the French had to rescue them from the jaws of defeat. Victory and defeat do not mean the same things in French as they do in other languages. For example, the terror alert system in Paris has five levels: take a vacation, run, hide, surrender and collaborate. Calvin and Hobbes capture this philosophy precisely. Calvin is stationed behind the wall of his snow fort proclaiming, “I’m ready for anything!” He is immediately bombarded by several dozen snowballs. Hobbes asks him, “Are you ready for unconditional surrender?” Buried in the remains of the fort, Calvin replies, “That above all else.”

The most important French hero of recent times was Charles de Gaulle who, as a young man, did everything he could to teach the British and Americans how to save his country’s butt. When this proved impossible, he single handedly invaded Normandy, liberated Paris, fought off the German counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge and reduced Berlin to ashes. He accomplished all this armed only with a butter knife while riding a white horse and wearing a bulletproof cape. Later, as President of the Republic, he put down the Algerian revolt and developed the force de frappe which is essentially an ice cream confection. He then withdrew France from military participation in NATO, confident that it could defend itself. Against the United States and Great Britain. Napoleon had already scared the hell out of the Russians so they wouldn’t dare attack France. Unfortunately, his nuclear adventure went awry when it came up against Greenpeace. He was undaunted. He once said, “When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.” He often said, “I am France.” Does that sound familiar? Charles XI’s answer to Louis XIV. L’etat c’est moi.

His distaste for the United States was total. Looking down that marvelous Gallic nose of his, he declaimed, “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.” The biggest damn fool thing the Americans did, however, was to try to bail France out of the mess it had created in its colonial satrapy, Viet Nam. Ike, who was President of the U.S. at the time, still had a soft spot for the French (remember, de Gaulle had saved Ike from ignominious defeat in Europe). He also had a weakness for the domino theory so he took over the fight against the Viet Cong thereby beginning America’s 20-year nightmare.

Chirac is a tinker’s version of de Gaulle, a tacky, plaster souvenir statue of the anointed one. How he rose to be the leader of a great nation is something of a mystery, one I don’t want to probe too deeply. I can hear my French friends asking me about how a great nation like America could elect an ignorant Yahoo like George W. Bush as its own supreme leader. Of course, the answer is we did it to restore French smugness in the wake of their defeat by Greenpeace. As it turned out we needn’t have bothered. The French merely declared the Battle of Greenpeace a great victory and engraved it on the Arc de Triomphe. Their smugness was never discommoded.

The fox knows many things. The hedgehog knows one big thing. The French know everything. For example, they know how to make the most disgusting things palatable. Do you want to eat snails? Go to Paris. Truffles anyone? Ditto. Horses? Well, you get the idea. They used to make the best wine in the world but now they’re second or third. That’s what happens when you spread culture to the heathens. That great civilizing mission often comes a-cropper which gives them a chance to bemoan the invincible barbarity of the non-French. Americans, for example, have never learned the proper use of a bidet because they have never let us observe one being used. There are instruction manuals but some things are hard to put into even French words.

Unlike any other nation in the world, France is necessary. If it didn’t exist we would have to invent it. We could call it Disneyland.

DE LAY OF DE LAND
Jerry Harkins

Ladies and gentlemen, Christianity offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer to the questions of 'Where did I come from?' 'Why am I here?' 'Where am I going?' 'Does life have any meaningful purpose?' Only Christianity offers a way to understand that physical and moral border. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world -- only Christianity.
—Tom DeLay
April 12, 2002



Regular readers know my mantra: what would Jesus do? Go on first class golfing junkets paid for by lobbyists? Gerrymander Texas congressional districts in the mad pursuit of power? Sell access and influence to political contributors? Put his wife and daughter on the payroll? Sell to the highest bidder the popcorn concession at the crucifixion? Sure he would.

Tom DeLay is toast and I, for one, will be happy to pass the jam. Much to his surprise, he has been indicted on charges of criminal conspiracy and money laundering in connection with the above-referenced Gerrymander. His defense is twofold. First, “I didn’t do it.” Well, that’s a relief! Second, the prosecutor is a partisan fanatic. So that’s the story! The fanatic in question replied, “Being called vindictive and partisan by Tom DeLay is like being call ugly by a frog.” Tom also allowed as to how this was political retribution for his successful role in the Gerrymander. “This is,” he said, “one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history.” I immediately thought of Nathan Hale, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Haymarket martyrs. I had the unworthy wish that Tom might share the fate of these victims of prosecutorial misconduct. This is, after all, Texas. He probably won’t though. His lawyers immediately went into court and asked a judge to throw out the charges on the ground that this was the weakest indictment in history (except for that of Jesus). It would take a judge with an iron stomach to do so but, hey, this is Texas and Mr. DeLay is a very big shot in the Lone Star State. Judges are not terribly expensive.

Leader DeLay poses as a former bum who was born again by the grace of Jesus. This is primo politico claptrap down in Texas. Being or at least having been a bum is taken as proof of one’s manhood and being born again is conclusive evidence that God is on our side. He got thrown out of Baylor for drinking but that is not so bad because Baylor is a heretical Baptist school which is not sufficiently fundamentalist. Contrary to the Chicago Declaration, Baylor says it, “…is founded on the belief that God's nature is made known through both revealed and discovered truth.” “Discovered truth” includes science which is blasphemous.

Tom was an exterminator before being elected to Congress representing Sugar Land, Texas. I’ve always thought he spent too much time with cockroaches. He married his high school sweetheart and they’ve been practicing family values ever since. Christine is on the payroll as is daughter, Danielle, whom he retains as a consultant. She is also a lobbyist, but with born again Christians you have to look beyond mere appearances. She avoids lobbying in Washington, working only in Texas where her father has no influence except for little courtesies like the Great Gerrymander.

Texas is a land of contradictions—big open spaces and small closed minds. Much of the state (no one really knows how much) is still dry but you can usually get a drink by becoming a “member” of the local restaurant of your choice. Admission costs a quarter and there is no IQ test. Texas has no income tax, personal or corporate. It prides itself on being the low tax state and it is always grateful to Mississippi without which it would invariably rank fiftieth in everything else too. Go to a business lunch in Dallas or Houston and look around you. Seventy-five percent of the men are carrying handguns. If it’s a club that lets women in, 50% of the girls will be packing too. We’re not talking about .22 caliber Saturday Night Specials either. In keeping with their status as citizens of the nation’s second largest state, Texans prefer the .357 Magnum and Elephant Load ammunition for their everyday shooting. It is rumored that Colt is working on just such a gun equipped with a grenade launcher and stiletto. The light weight model for ladies will omit the stiletto. In any event, since these eating clubs are the last redoubts of the three martini lunch, you are well advised to keep a low profile. When a junior executive sashays up to the salad bar, be alert. Study President Bush's body language and speech patterns and wonder if he too is armed. “Dangerous” goes without saying.

Texans all think they are cowboys. They love to dress up in ten gallon hats and high heeled boots made with the leather of exotic, preferably endangered species. These costumes are invariably accessorized with four-pound rodeo championship belt buckles measuring at least six by nine inches. In Houston eating clubs, some of these buckles will be made of solid gold and marked with what looks like a cattle brand but is really a registered logo of Neiman Marcus. It takes a tough man to break a mean bronco, brand a longhorn cow or do either to a real Texas lady.

As you might expect, Texas comes complete with its own mythology. It used to be that Texas politicians really were giants—colorful characters who were as corrupt as the devil but slick as a slaughterhouse floor and charming as a fakir working a cobra. Think of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. Every story you ever heard about either one of them is true. It all began at the Alamo where a posse of American icons—Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) and Davy Crockett (The Duke himself) among them—discovered the ultimate weapon, PR. The art of making a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Pretty much everything you’ve ever heard about the Battle of the Alamo is bullshit except that Santa Ana won. That means Texas lost but you won’t find it mentioned much. Any five year old will tell you that our 187 heroes won a moral victory in spite of a Mexican army numbering in the millions. It’s the same sort of moral victory old Tom DeLay is about to enjoy in Huntsville.

Texans have always lied a lot but today’s batch are degenerates compared to their ancestors. DeLay is a perfect example. When things go wrong he whines his lies. Can you imagine LBJ whining? When a problem arose, Landslide Lyndon would round up the malefactor, put his massive arm around the man’s shoulders and say, “Let us reason together.” It was very effective. And perfectly legal.

Subsequently

In November 2010, The Hammer was convicted and a few weeks later was given three years in jail. He blamed his problems on the liberals and told the Today Show that Travis County, Texas was the most liberal jurisdiction in America. He is out on bail pending appeal and is likely to remain so for some time. He could get off on the "merits" (remember this is Texas) but if it gets to the federal courts it would get interesting. Under the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, corporations cannot be prohibited from making political contributions. Texas law seems to do just that so Tom's best hope is to argue that he was convicted under an unconstitutional law. Makes one yearn for the good old days when we just strung up malefactors from the nearest cottonwood tree.