“Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils” by William Blake, circa 1826. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Early this morning
when you knocked upon my door
And I said “Hello, Satan
I believe it’s time to go.”
Robert Johnson, “Me and the Devil Blues”
I’ve been walking with my friend the Satan for a spell. I’d like to tell you some of what I’ve learned, if you care to listen. (more…)
ARABIAN SEA (March 6, 2012) The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and the British Royal Navy Duke-class frigate HMS Westminster (F 237) transit the Arabian Sea. Abraham Lincoln is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility conducting maritime security operations, theater security cooperation efforts and support missions as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jerine Lee/Released) 120306-N-QN361-034
We’ve all seen video clips in recent news reports showing the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group (with a B52 bomber task force) dispatched to Iran for the purpose of sending a message. It is an unsettling sight. As a worried friend said to me last Tuesday morning, “I hope Trump doesn’t get us into a war with Iran.”
Yes, this is a worrisome development, not just because a war with Iran could happen on purpose (with war hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo wielding influence within an unstable administration), but also because it could happen accidentally. The game the President is playing is commonly called Chicken. (more…)
Art by J. Thomson.
(At HUNT THE DEVIL, we focus on critiques of political myths. Occasionally, we post versions of foundational American myths that have shaped our culture. The following retells Pat Garrett’s account of the death of Billy the Kid as found in his book, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Tainted by the spirit of Sam Peckinpah’s great western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and by the fatal airs of Bob Dylan’s musical score, it narrates the story of Youth killed by Old before Old settles into a new station in life. Highlighting this theme, in Peckinpah’s film the law and order officers are played by old actors who frequently appeared in westerns (Coburn, Chill Wills, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, etc.); young rock stars from the 1960s (Kristofferson, Dylan, Rita Coolidge) play the outlaws.
The myth considers Billy a hero not because he was an outlaw, but because he was young.)
From “Stories of Gods and Heroes” (1920) by Thomas Bulfinch with color illustrations drawn by Sybil Tawse. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
I am among the apparent majority of American voters opposed to Donald Trump’s election and re-election. The majority wasn’t big enough in 2016 and may be too small in 2020 to overcome the negative effects of indirect election, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and foreign interference. As a citizen of a decidedly red state, I register my vote in full knowledge that it will not count in the final tally, since the presidential candidate with the most popular votes in Indiana, even if just a plurality, receives all eleven of the state’s electoral votes. Winner-takes-all rather than proportional allocation is the case in 48 of the 50 states, red or blue, big or small. It allows a candidate who loses the popular vote to win the office. If the electoral college was supposed to prevent the selection of a manifestly unqualified candidate, recent experience suggests that choosing the winner directly by popular vote might serve the country as well or even better. (more…)
Note: This essay first appeared in Public Seminar, April 26, 2019. Reprinted with permission.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to supporters at a rally at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, 7 March 2019. (Credit: Matt A. Johnson)
In early April, Washington Post’s adversarial columnist Dana Milibank dubbed Bernie Sanders “the Donald Trump of the left,” noting perfunctorily at the end of his column that his wife, Anna Greenberg, “works for John Hickenlooper, a Democratic presidential candidate.” One can assume that Milibank is entering the fray over whom to select to run on the Democratic Party ticket.
As the Democratic Party struggles to work through internal differences, including how far left is too far to defeat Donald Trump, a robust debate can be productive and even contribute to coalition building. Yet the chance of a constructive outcome decreases to the degree that caricature substitutes for characterization and, in the present case, populism is mistaken for demagoguery. (more…)
Creditor’s Ledger Payments Book detailing creditor payments between 1958 and 1977 by companies commissioning work from Holmes McDougall. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Like a ghost, the metaphors embedded in war talk go largely unnoticed. They are a specter haunting our speech and thought, just below the threshold of awareness. Calling attention to them can reveal an unexamined pretext for continuing to fight an interminable war.
Ghostly metaphors do not call attention to themselves as figures of speech. They operate furtively as though they are just ordinary words conveying literal meaning. With guard down, we allow them to shape the message and form our thoughts. When we draw on the literalized language of accounting to think about military matters, for example, we reason figuratively, drawing a tacit analogy between conducting business and fighting wars. (more…)
Eurasia (orthographic projection). Credit: Keepscases / Wikimedia Commons
Historian Alfred McCoy has quickened my interest in the discourse of geopolitics applied to the waning state of US empire. His book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), makes a clear case that the end of global dominance is near. The question is what kinds of disruption and what degree of violence the imperial fall will occasion. What might a post-imperial era mean for Americans and others caught up in the transition? From the perspective of geopolitics, McCoy sees a number of mostly disturbing possibilities. His observations are valuable for indicating the challenges ahead. (more…)
President Donald J. Trump is greeted by Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019, at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi, for their second summit meeting. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Donald Trump’s fizzled summit meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is yet another occasion for commentary on this president’s unfitness for office, particularly in matters of foreign affairs. The failure in Hanoi was Trump’s greatest blunder so far, according to Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs commentator for the Guardian. It was another “Trump vanity project.” His “self-reverential style of personalized, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants diplomacy” is irresponsible in nuclear talks, per se, and ineffectual more generally.
Tisdall’s summary of Trump’s failed leadership is stunning: (more…)
“Study for the Three Witches in Macbeth” by Henry Fuseli, oil on canvas. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The First Apparition (“an armed Head”) warned him to beware Macduff, Thane of Fife; the Second (“a bloody Child”) prophesied that none of woman born could harm him. The Third Apparition (“a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand”) counseled him to assume the mettle of a lion:
Take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him (4.1.90-94).
From then on, his purpose became firm and clear. He set to “crown my thoughts with acts” by seizing Macduff’s castle and the dominion of Fife. To ensure the end of Macduff’s issue, he resolved to kill “his wife, his babes and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line” (4.1.148-153).[1]
“I think nothing equals Macbeth,” wrote Abraham Lincoln. “It is wonderful.”
Lincoln’s praise has stood the test of time. Hamlet may be a better play and King Lear a greater tragedy, but a special power inhabits Macbeth, which has led superstitious theater people to talk about the great play in hushed tones and to refer to its title by euphemisms such as “the Scottish play.”
Is there any other play the name of which we fear to speak? (more…)
Jefferson Memorial at dusk, 4 October 2011. (Credit: Joe Ravi)
“It’s come to that. I tremble for my country.” These chilling, Jeffersonian words could be the refrain of an unwritten elegy on the fate of the republic.[i] They are the lament of a judicious person I know in Washington, D.C., a person who has served in previous administrations of both political parties and now works as a policy adviser. They are words to express the inchoate angst lurking inside us. Could anyone—even someone stunned by the last presidential election—have foreseen our present predicament of government unhinged and politics gone vile? Yes, it’s come to that, and I, too, tremble for my country. (more…)
