Category: Culture

American Imperialism Ain’t What It Used To Be

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, History, Politics, WarLeave a comment

Or so complains Robert Kaplan. He moans that our democracy is losing the will to fight, becoming decadent, weak in the face of the eternal struggle against the Arabian demons, and so on. Most of this is nonsense of the nastier sort, because it involves a man sincerely yearning for the good old days of unrestrained warfare upon “lesser peoples.” Herein lies, incidentally, the greatest paradox in the Western imperialist impulse: on the one hand, non-Western peoples are infidels, barbarians, who threaten to overwhelm the noble and sacred West at any moment, and therefore must be slaughtered, corralled, and ruled by their Western betters. There is hope for these inferior peoples only so long as they assimilate themselves to Western ways; indeed, as the British found in India, it was often colonials properly “trained” that gave the greatest support to the imperialist system. On the other hand, the Western imperialist- again, probably quite sincerely- wants to enlighten the non-Western savages, by bringing them Christianity, or democracy, or capitalism, or whatever the case may be. Both of these sentiments tend to exist alongside each other, often times in the same individuals; how the two conflicting sentiments are balanced and dealt with would make an interesting study. For the soldiers in the field, I suspect that the first sentiment tends to prevail; it is hard to sympathize with the benighted native and yearn for his betterment when he is trying to kill you, after all. And once the native is pacified he is often less than happy to see you in his country.

But I digress somewhat. The exterior thrust of Mr Kaplan’s argument is, briefly, that America, being a decadent democracy, has lost its will to fight wars. In fact Mr Kaplan is saying that America has lost its will to be an imperial power, and to fight the wars necessary to maintain its place as the supreme imperial power. And while Mr Kaplan skirts close but ultimately around the comparison- for obvious enough reasons- if one were to examine America’s current situation and decide upon a historical corollary, it would be hard to ignore the obvious comparison of the US’s imperial adventures with that of her former colonial master, Great Britain.

After the loss of the United States, Britain’s imperial attention gradually shifted east, with India as the epicentre and indeed rationalizing centre for the entire empire. In so doing Britain came into direct contact with not only the “oriental nationalism” that Mr Kaplan so fears, but also things we tend to imagine to be strictly contemporary problems, such as jihad directed against modern Westerners. It is generally forgotten in this country, but it was not that long ago that a Mahdi Army filled English-language headlines, only in the Sudan and not in Iraq. Even Mr Kaplan cannot avoid alluding to the persistent British struggles against unruly tribesmen in Afghanistan. And the whole history of the British in India is one of sagging public and elite morale over the whole thing; yet the conquest of India slogged on, despite repeated official sanction. The alleged flagging of patriotism, the risk of the whole imperial project toppling down in the face of public censure, the weakening of the public will to stomach “necessary evils”: all have remarkably close corallary in British history. However, Mr Kaplan does not bother us with them, for obvious enough reasons.

He does instead spend a good deal of time reporting a very real and rather troubling fact: the increasing regional exclusiveness of the military, and the caste-like nature of the modern military. As he notes, the American South is the centre of military recruitment. From the article, one might be forgiven in thinking this is a new thing; it is not, though it has probably become more accented in recent years. Partially this is because so many military bases were constructed in the South- you can hardly throw a rock without hitting a base of some sort, and some of them are very large indeed- but it also has to do with the fact that military culture has thrived here more than elsewhere. Firearms are a standard part of life in the Deep South particularly; it is not unusual, for example, to hear gunfire in the evening here at my home a few miles out from town- just someone showing off their new rifle, target shooting, or something. Memory of the Civil War is still quite strong in Anglo-American Southerners, and not a few houses in my county fly the Confederate flag underneath the Stars and Stripes. Therein lies the paradox of Southern militarism: the South is the only part of the US where the Anglo population has the distinct memory of being defeated in war by the US. Despite this, and despite the hard feelings felt to this day by some Southerners, from the official close of hostilities on the South has provided more than its share of Us military muscle. This paradox is almost perfectly mirrored by the Scottish experience of British imperialism: Scots were very often remarked to be the driving force in many a British imperial adventure. Quite of those loyal Scots were drawn from the ranks of Highlanders that had only recently suffered brutal defeat at the hands of the British government. Why would they- and Southern Americans on this side of the Atlantic- prove such ready instruments of the victorious government?

Further, Southerners tend to be fairly libertarian in their outlook on local politics and law. After all, the nanny state is hardly going to allow kids to shoot rounds off into the air for the sheer heck of it. Yet Southerners will invariably sign up for the latest American imperial adventure, even though such wars and the inherent expansion of State powers will mean a limitation of those very personal liberties Southerners so much enjoy. Why is this? Part of it I think is the simple fact many Southern men like to shoot and smash and burn things- and don’t have quite the level of inhibition about it that men in other parts of the US have. There is also a very real and very strong sense of military pride in both service and prowess, that often flows in families, and manifests itself willingly whenever the chance arises. It is perhaps not too great of a stretch to regard here the lingering Celtic sense of the American South with all the military related conotations that brings. The role of religion, which is still very viscerally strong in the South. By that I mean that while a Southerner may not go to church, may cuss and chew and all that, he will still have a strong sense of his own Christianity and his loyalty to Jesus. This sort of gut-level religion is easily employed in stimulating and rewarding military prowess. A Southerner who may never go to church or otherwise outwardly live a Christian life can join the military and feel himself a part of a larger action, an action that is given downright salvific import. He is fighting for “freedom,” and his cause is blessed by Jesus, and by the churches in the South. He knows that Southern Christianity- which is Christianity so far as he is concerned- is behind him and praying for him and otherwise giving blessing to his actions. Hence he can live the soldier’s life in complete reconcilliation with his otherwise mostly unpracticed religion. Military service for the Southerner is very much a virtually sacrosant occupation. If the reader hears echoes of the Crusade idea he is probably not mistaken- the conjunction of violent prowess and very real religious devotion is a very strong force here in the South.

However, I should also note that while Southerners may possess a greater willingness to join the military and to go to war, this does not of necessity translate into unquestioning acceptance of the government or of its imperial projects. The paradox of a militaristic yet libertarian-tinged society can swing both ways, and does, and is. Just within my circle of knowledge here in South Mississippi there is increasing dissent- this without a sacrifice of the military virtues that so often impel Southerners off to war in the first place. For- as shall be noted below- contra Mr Kaplan, dissent from imperial projects does not mean a retreat even from warlikeness and certainly not from ordinary valour and patriotism.

Mr Kaplan also strikes a mostly accurate note when he describes the increasing caste-nature of the modern military. This is not particularly true however in the South, or at least not the parts of it with which I am familiar. Here the military, nationalism, and religion are extremely close, if not inseperable. But I suspect that, the South excepted, his observations are close enough; and again the parallel that immediately springs to mind is the British imperial experience. A particular caste of people developed- often along family lines- that dealt in imperial business. However, Mr Kaplan does make an observation that raises an important difference: the British imperial machine, besides employing a sort of rought and tumble military class drawn heavily from its Celtic fringe, also had an extensive intellectual and administrative caste that was drawn from the upper ranks of society- and that did an admirable job, all things considered, so far as running a sprawling empire was concerned. The US does not have such a caste, in the same manner as the British. Certainly, American military imperialism operates alongside and sometimes on behalf of the American economic empire, but the two are not the same. Certainly American imperialism in the Middle East and Africa is rather unlikely to produce any new brilliant Orientalists or great works of literature or anything of the sort. The ineptness of US administration in Iraq is even more staggering when one considers how few British personel were required to subdue and run the entire subcontinent of India.

We must then ask why this is the case- why are intellectuals and others unwilling to join in America’s military enterprise? Is it because, as Mr Kaplan suggests, they are unpatriotic and decadent? Hardly. For as should be clear by now, it is not the ability to wage war that Mr Kaplan is worried about, but the ability to sustain an empire. If there is less desire to enter the military in many parts of society, and if the military is increasingly distant from America as a whole, it is not because the American people are “weak” or “decadent,” but that they do not- as a whole- smile upon vast imperial projects the likes of which Mr Kaplan would have them sacrifice without demure their blood and treasure. Such a dislike of imperialism is nothing new, to America’s credit: from George Washington’s farewell speech to the anti-imperialist leagues of the turn of the century to the now all but defunct pre-WWII Old Right there has been a strong and vocal anti-imperialism strain to America, coming from quarters it would be very difficult to label cowardly or unpatriotic. At present the grassroots support- including in the militaristic, conservative South- of Ron Paul is proof that anti-imperialism (even if it does not vocalize itself exactly as such) is alive and well even in the reddest of the red states. Consider that in the early Republic the idea of a standing army was considered dangerous! Were the opponents of a standing army un-patriotic? Cowardly? I doubt even Mr Kaplan would suggest that.

In sum, Mr Kaplan fails to be honest with his arguments, for good enough reason I suppose. He can hardly just come right out and declare that Americans ought to buckle down and shoulder the white man’s burden, fifty years on, and all that. America does not and probably never will have the explicit tradition of imperialism qua imperialism that Britain did. Instead, he must collapse the current American project into war qua war: to be opposed, in Mr Kaplan’s world, to imperialist war is to be opposed to all military virtue, is to be unwilling to fight for anything. And the solution offered by the militarist Right to this flagging support for military action is, insanely, more wars, as if this will increase public support for their adventures (let no one accuse them of being impeded by that satan logic). I would like to suggest that, sed contra, it is quite possible to understand the need for proper military virtues, and the possibility of armed conflict, and that some things are worth fighting and dying for- all this, without making a global imperialist project one of those things worth dying for. It is a distinction of the utmost importance.

Fundamentalists Are Brain-Damaged, But We Progressive Sorts Are Nigh Unto the Gods

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, History, Politics3 Comments

Ah, the glorious spectre of fundamentalism! If future historians were to select one piece of “knowledge” from our era to display our particular forms of laziness and intellectual stupor, they could do little better than examine the fulminations of progressive types against “fundamentalists.” Where previous ages constructed systems of imagined knowledge about Jews, Orientals, Indians, and so forth, this age has provided a body of “knowledge” that manages to encompass in great broad strokes not only Jews, but also Christians, Muslims, and maybe even Hindus and Buddhists. Dispensing with the subtle narratives and complexities of real history and human experience, the contemporary critic can simply conjur up “fundamentalism” and thus dismiss both religious arguments and persons with whom he disagrees or wishes to marginalize. Even more wonderfully, this system of constructed knowledge is not the reserve of only the Left, or only the Right! It may be drawn upon, in differing forms to be sure, by both statist Leftists and Rightists, both sides assured in their “knowledge” of “fundamentalism.”

Today I chanced across, via Arts & Letters, this marvelous gem of “fundamentalist” critiquing: Neuroscience and Fundamentalism. Therein, the authors solemnly seek to explain the destructively anti-rational behavior of “fundamenalists.” In sum, the problem: fundamentalists aren’t firing on all cylinders, neurologically. Aha! Brain-damage! Those religious crazies are simply defective human beings! Now, it would be all too easy to discuss how labeling one’s ideological enemies as brain-damaged and otherwise defective in humanity can lead in some very troubling directions. I could also talk about how, for all the talk in the article about the evils of religious certaintity, adherance to dogma, et cetera, the authors show no signs of questioning their underlying basic materialism combined with a weak pseudo-spirituality-morality of “tolerance” and “humanity.”

Rather, what I find particularly interesting and most troubling is the inability of the authors to understand religion, and particularly fundamentalism. One paragraph in particular is very illuminating:

A common thread that may weave its way through fundamentalist extremism was perhaps aptly expressed by three so-called reformed fundamentalists during the American Public Media special, “The Power of Fundamentalism.” Representing each of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, they implied they were taught to believe as they were told, and that personal interpretation and imagination were to be marginalized. Deviation and creativity were unacceptable.

This is pretty much all we are told concretely about fundamentalists. What exactly a fundamentalist is, historically, theoretically, theologically, and so on- unimportant. We know already what a fundamentalist is, the authors imply. They are religious believers who adhere to dogma that we don’t like: this is the unspoken backround. The fundamentalist is, on a certain level, simply the religious believer whose beliefs don’t correlate with a “progressive” view of the world, someone who isn’t like us progressive people: the fundamentalist is the alien Other, updated a little. They are incapable of rational thought like us, incapable of creativity, adhering to medieval dogma- from birth, apparently. Perhaps some can change, with help no doubt, but if- as the article very strongly suggests- adherence to dogma is a matter of one’s brain capacity, such ability to change must be rather limited.

Of course, the “Fundamentalism” underlying the article’s arguments is largely made-up knowledge. True fundamentalist movements in the past couple of centuries are not simply examples of rigid, uncreative adherance to dogma, nor are they monolithic from one religion to another. In the case of Islamic Salafists, for example, “fundamentalism” arose as a response to modern developments- one of the common threads in movements usually labeled “fundamentalist.” This meant a rejection of many previous traditions and “dogmas”: hence the Salafist dislike of saints, shrines, and such, as Muslims in the movement sought a sort of return to the “fundamentals,” or sunna rather, of the Prophet and his Companions. Fundamentalism, in the modern sense, in Islam was something new, something that involved new and creative thinking (which, mind you, are neutral terms themselves- there is nothing inherently good about either newness or creativity, which should go without saying…). While it is usually forgotten in the West, Salafists in the past and in the present have been very heavily involved in developing new models of government and reform in Islamic countries, as they seek to apply their interpretation of Islamic principles to the contemporary world- which has meant everything from essentially democratic models to a jihad-supported world-wide caliphate. Any way it develops, such thought involves- gasp!- creative thinking, rationality, and so on, within the contexts of a particular approach to Koran, Hadith, and established Islamic doctrine.

Likewise, Christian Protestant Fundamentalism involved innovative new ways of dealing with Scripture and contemporary situations, which often meant internal reform and new ideas. Certainly, it involved a highly literal (but by no means exclusively literal) approach to Scripture, but in order to take such an approach new thinking and rationality were required, so as to apply the sacred text to modern situations. Hence Fundamentalism in Protestant Christianity has not remained static; for example it has over the past few decades left its posture of disengagement from politics for a stance strongly encouraging political engagement- something that involved creative and indeed critical thinking.

But let us suppose that “fundamentalism” is a monolithic sort of thing across religions, and that it sprung from the earth into a static, uncritical, non-creative force. People must still be initiated into it. The authors of the article in question seem to assume that all fundamentalists were “born that way,” that they were brought up believing this way. But somewhere along the line people would have had to be converted to this manner of thinking. Perhaps in the imaginery world of constructed fundamentalisms it is assumed that it all just sort of happened, rather like evolution. In reality, fundamentalism is not static, is not monolithic, and very significantly, is composed heavily of converts.

Returning to Salafist thought: one of the things that gave the rather obscure Arabian movement so much traction was the increasing globalization of the nineteenth century, which has only accelerated since. Muslims from all over the world, from many social stations, were able to make the hajj and thus be exposed to the new movement of thought centred on the Saudi Peninsula. Responding to these new ideas of a seemingly purified Islam, they carried them home- converted. And conversion entails changing one’s mind, modifying practices, thinking differently- all the things fundamentalists are supposed to be incapable of. A similar story could be told of other forms of “fundamentalist” religion.

Finally, when the term “fundamentalist” is used, it usually includes not only such movements as those above- the ones properly considered “fundamentalist” in the historical context- but religious believers of all sorts who still adhere to doctrine and sacred scripture as integral, authoritative parts of life- traditional religion, essentially. Thus real movements that can be labeled fundamentalist come to matter less and less in the superstructure of constructed knowledge. First all fundamentalists within a given religion are collapsed into each other- so that a Salafist working for education reform and democracy in 1960’s Morocco is collapsed into an angry iman in Pakistan urging on suicide bombers. Then this single image is collapsed across religions, so that one can merge in a single breath American Fundamentalist Bible commentators of the 1920’s with the suicide-bomber preaching Salafist circa 2007. As the image of the irrational, violent, extremist fundamentalist- generic across religions and history- takes hold as the epicentre of one’s imagination and system of knowledge, whatever reality lies behind the image recedes in importance.

This whole system of false knowledge- for that is what it is- is dangerous on several levels. For one, being able to dismiss religious believers as intolerant fundamentalists enables one to ignore the logical and rational fallacies of one’s own thought. Thus the hapless materialist is unable to see himself trapped in a severly limiting system of dogma. This in itself is tragic enough. But even more tragic is the implicit and sometimes explicit idea that fundamentalism must be “fixed” by “progressive” minded people. For just like other forms of false, constructed knowledge, this one is useful for not only marginalizing people intellectually, but can have concrete implications. The authors of this article reveal such a tendency towards the conclusion of their article:

Children raised in environments which consistently reward convergent reasoning and strict adherence but punish divergent reasoning, could conceivably grow into adults who are prone to getting stuck in various beliefs or ideologies. Might our current preoccupation with strict religious fundamentalism be creating obstacles to resolving the complex dilemmas we face in the world today? If we continue to insist that children around the world unfailingly adhere to the tenets of religious fundamentalism which promote intolerance, are we doomed to repeat the past simply because we have nurtured a world of thinkers who will not diverge from what they are told?

One can almost hear a certain Presidential candidate pledging to “do something” about all those hate-filled madrassas in Pakistan. It is not a stretch to imagine such enlightened efforts in America, and elsewhere, incorporating the whole coercive apparatus of the State in the pursuit of some new enlightened crusade. We rational, creative people must “help” our lesser kin escape their shackles- whether they want us to help them or not, perhaps. Perhaps it shall take bombs and bullets- for the greater good, which we naturally know in full! The poor fundamentalists must be educated properly, or else they pose a danger to good civilized progressive people. Never mind what a given fundamentalist might actually believe, never mind what he might actually think and feel and dream- he is mentally deficient, but we, we bold brave souls steeped in creative reason, we are nigh unto the gods, we know what is best, and may our will be done.

In Review

On By JonathanIn Culture, Film, MusicLeave a comment

First, new music out of the Balkans: A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangár Ensemble, in a self-titled EP released a few weeks ago, downloadable here. A Hawk and a Hacksaw is mostly the project of Jeremy Barnes, drummer for the indie-wunderband Neutral Milk Hotel, and later sometimes drummer for Bright Eyes. These days Mr Barnes is making Balkan-inspired music, often in collaboration with folk musicians from the Balkans themselves. And that is a very good thing. On this album AHAAHS is joined by an assembly of Hungarian musicians, who draw upon both traditional sounds from the Balkan peninsula and upon more modern currents. The fusion of the various elements works beautifully, without being forced or otherwise contrived- not an easy thing to achieve in the world of international musical collaboration. Violins, bagpipes, brass, and some other strings whirl and whisper and crash over the series of eight tracks. Despite the EP’s brevity, it feels fuller and longer than those eight tracks would lead you to believe.

A couple weeks ago a friend recommended a Danish movie I had not heard of, After the Wedding, which was in the running for last year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film. In brief, the film unfolds around a Danish expatriate Jacob who runs an orphanage in India, but is summoned back to Denmark at the behest of a wealthy businessman, Jorgen, interested in financing the orphanage and Jacob’s various other projects in India. Jorgen will only give Jabob the money under the condition he comes to Denmark. While there, Jorgen invites Jacob to the wedding of his daughter, where Jacob meets Jorgen’s wife- a wife who, as the viewer quickly discovers, had a presence much earlier in Jacob’s life. The story develops and unfolds from there, and in so doing, not only turns around some stereotyped roles- Jorgen is far from being the typical greedy egotistical businessman, and Jacob is not simply an idealistic aid worker- and raises some rather difficult questions about responsibility and the possibility and morality of directing other people’s lives. But besides these issues, the film is very well done, both in terms of acting and its masterful and often very lovely cinematography. It makes a very worthy addition to anyone’s collection, particularly if yours, like mine, is rather low on Danish-language films…

On Immigration, No. 1

On By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, North & South, Politics2 Comments

As promised, here are some of my thoughts- in no particular order- on the subject of immigration, legal and illegal.

1. Scripture and Immigration: From the story of the exile from the Garden on, Scripture is filled with the images of wanderers, exiles, and immigrants. The story of the people of Israel leaving Egypt and coming into the promised land becomes the paradigm or symbol whereby God’s covenant people are instructed to treat wayfarers and aliens, as they themselves were once strangers and wanderers. This ethic of the alien is reiterated by the Prophets, as in Jeremiah, where justice to the alien- and this is, I think, particularly significant for our contemporary situation- is related to justice done to other marginalized people:

Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

Jeremiah 22:3

Again, a similar ethic appears in Isaiah:

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Isaiah 58:7

The basic message of Scripture is fairly clear: God places the alien- the wanderer, the refugee- in the category of “the poor,” those who are generally left out by wider society and thus are given special attention in God’s messages lest they be forgotten and treated unjustly. This message of the Old Testament is only amplified by the New Testament, in which the old barrier between Jew and Gentile is torn down. No longer can one argue even that the alien or refugee is necessarily without the covenant people of God, as all can be included in the covenant through Christ. Thus our relationship towards all people of all origins is fundamentally changed.

What does this mean for our stance as Christians vis-a-vis immigration? We are obliged, on the one hand, to treat the immigrant with justice and indeed love, and at a fundamental level I do not see that the distinction between legal and illegal applies to how we treat the immigrant. On the other hand, we are still obliged to respect the law and it of course makes a distinction between legal and illegal. Thus the tension for the Christian is how to reconcile those on a basic, personal level. I personally have yet to encounter a particular situation in which this tension manifests itself; but it is something well worth consideration.

It should also be added that our obligation to treat the wanderer with love and justice does not mandate a particular opinion on immigration: ie open borders or tightly guarded ones. It does mean though that we must demand that all immigrants be treated by the law and its enforcers as human beings, not as objects or abstract entities. I do not see how the average illegal immigrant, who is non-violent and is not depriving anyone of their property, can be classified as a felon; the demonization of illegal immigrants current in politics and popular discourse is simply uncalled for and reprehensible. Now, while I do not think that the Christian tradition strictly calls for one immigrant policy over another, I do think that an honest open reading of Scripture calls for the most humane and open immigration policy possible. This is particularly true when one considers the rampant poverty of much of Latin America, and the fact that is is sometimes a result or aggravated by policies issuing from the US.

2. Force and Enforcing Immigration Law: It is currently in vogue to suppose that a massive wall and perhaps a massive military presence on the US-Mexican border will end illegal immigration. The assumption here is employed elsewhere: more coercive, government force, if thrown hard enough against the problem, will solve it. It is the same logic that has governed the War on Drugs for decades now, and will probably continue to be the logic driving the “War on Immigration.” In both cases the thing under assault is an essentially market phenomemon; in the case of immigration however the motivations driving it are usually much more profound and compelling than drug use. The average immigrant isn’t merely seeking personal pleasure or a quick high; he is seeking a living, an escape from dead-end economic situations. In many cases his personal desire for self-preservation and advancement is compounded by a similar desire for his family. The US has and will probably continue to be the strongest attraction for people in such a situation. Against this powerful dynamic many in the US propose essentially only force, and lots of it, as the corrective. For the problem of illegal immigrants already here, again, force alone is offered as the solution. Yet experience should demonstrate to us that mere force is rarely a truly succesful instrument, and it usually involves unjust and downright inhuman means for its completion.

Next week: The problem of assimilation, and Christ, the Church, and multiculturalism.

Personal Dispatch: On Immigration, or, The Way We Live Now, Here

On By JonathanIn Culture, North & SouthLeave a comment

“Immigracion! Manos, alto!” We yell, laughing, and the men- Mexicans, maybe Central Americans- inside the unlit dingy room laugh and wave their hands in the air. We- my friend, a local pastor, and myself, two gringos- are on our circuit around town picking up Latino guys to go play volleyball and eat at a church gym. The county is home to a sizeable minority of Latino residents, most of whom- though not all by any means- are men, some single, many with spouses and family back home in their various countries of origin. And there are people from all over the Latin American world, belying the common- and often rather pejoratively uttered- moniker of Mexican; Guatemalans, Panamanians, Peruvians, and others live and work in this once almost exclusively black-and-white Mississippi county.

I enjoy hanging out with the varied assemblage of guys who come, once every week, to play and eat and hang out. A few other gringos come and play, but most of the people there are Latino, and only a few have a significant grasp of English. My Spanish is pretty poor, despite a couple years of Spanish in college, but it’s always met with happy acclaim from the people I try to converse with, and every week I pick up a couple new words for my vocabulary, and usually transmit a few English ones. Lately I’ve managed to move a bit beyond basic personal information and chatter and manage a little humor in Spanish. On occasion I’ll pray in Spanish before we eat, usually the same sort of formula of “Thank you God for our friends and brothers here, and thank you for Your love, and thank You for this food. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Amen, anyway, is pretty easy to get right in Spanish.

Since most of the guys do not have their own cars, we drive around for a couple hours before hand to pick them up. Most of them live in the poor neighborhoods of town, neighborhoods that interweave and abut the shrinking higher-income blocks with their impressive live-oak shaded late Victorians and neatly manicured lawns. Many share a house with several other guys, who may be connected by blood or a common place of origin, or just happenstance; in some houses the rooms have been further subdivided to accommodate more lodgers, and impromptu businesses- diminutive tiendas, corner (as in corner of the room) barbershops- show up as well. Some can afford air conditioning, others none or very little.

Few neighborhoods here are exclusively Latino (it’s not unusual to see trailer-parks that are exclusively Latino, however); instead, it’s far more common for half of the houses in a block to be Latino, and the other half African-American. Therein lies one of the smoldering tensions, one that gets relatively little attention in the press (as to why that is, I’ll leave off speculating for now), but is hard to ignore. Why the tensions? Obviously there are considerable cultural differences- differences which are exacerbated by the close proximity of the Latino and African-American poor, thrust into the same neighborhoods and labour markets; this new competition has created a great deal of simmering resentment in the older, established lower-class. Latinos often find themselves easily exploited by the already violent and exploitive sub-cultures that have been festering in poor ghettoized neighborhoods for decades; this tends to increase the sense of group-solidarity already present on both sides and further decreases possibility of cooperation or mutual understanding. But Latinos are hardly only victims- there are various predominately Latino criminal groups operating and exploiting both communities.

As the opening dialogue indicates, some Latinos here would doubtlessly prefer to avoid the INS. I’ve no idea how many of the guys I know are documented, and how many aren’t. I don’t ask- though even if I did I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t be any more knowledgeable for it. It doesn’t concern me, really- but more on that, and the ethical and political questions of immigration, in a later post. I doubt- and please indulge the cliché-ness of this statement- whether Jesus would have concerned himself with people’s documentation status; I for one do not make it a concern, if only because there’s nothing I could do about it anyway. I do know that the vast majority of immigrants’ I’ve been able to talk to are manual laborers; most left a dismal work market in their home countries seeking some sort of employment. Some have managed to do fairly well and get a factory job; far more are employed in the lower rungs of the sprawling chicken industry that dominates the local economy. These are jobs that Dickens would have found worthy of a novel: brooding chicken houses, the size of airplane hangers, filled with thousands upon thousands of steroid-packed chickens- chickens that must be constantly, manually, managed. Latino workers are usually the ones given the dirtiest tasks, cleaning the houses of chicken waste and picking up and burning the multitudes of dead chickens, trampled and suffocated by their drugged comrades.

It’s a strange world, this, I often think as I converse in my halting Spanish: here I live in my middle-class luxury, a relative few miles away from these neighborhoods, while the workers who help hold up the economy I enjoy eat and sleep in crowded compartments, cook in communal kitchens, and go to work long before the sun comes up, in an often hostile society. Globalization, immigration, culture-clash: these are all up-close, personalized, unavoidable issues, brought down from abstract argument, down into a real world that is much grittier, personal, and difficult than political arguments can make out.

*

Next week: meditations on the ethical and political questions raised by immigration. Disclaimer: I’ve no grand answers, a few mostly personal or community-based suggestions, and precious little dogma on this issue. Hopefully the above ruminations have revealed where my sympathies, anyway, lie, for better or ill.

Why Study War, Indeed

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, WarLeave a comment

Via Arts & Letters, two articles on City Journal came to my attention, both- one explicitly, one somewhat less so- extolling the virtues of war against the naysaying of ignorant and probably subversive peaceniks. I shall deal with one below, and, Lord willing, examine the other later this week.

First, Victor David Hanson describes in Why Study War? the lack of knowledge about things military amongst college students- and most other Americans for that matter. He spends a considerably amount of time detailing a percieved lack of attention in academia to war: as proof he offers the dearth of military historians in contemporary academia. Herein lies my first quibble. Being a college student, and a student of history at that, I have spent a little time in and around academia listening to peopel talk about history and reading book after book about history. My particular area of interest is things medieval: which means a great deal of war, and a great deal of religion. My library- which includes some quite contemporary titles amongst the older dustier ones- has plenty of volumes overflowing with gore and battle. My classes- albiet so far mostly at a small private, more-conservative-than-many college- have had a great bit of battle and bloodshed, and I have spent many enjoyable hours discussing long-gone military campaings with both my professors and fellow students.

Perhaps my experience is the exception; perhaps modern academia really has insulated itself from the real world of combat and warfare. However, I doubt whether this is Mr Hanson’s true concern- rather, as he reveals further into his article, it isn’t that academia ignores warfare, but it doesn’t talk about it correctly. He complains of the focus by historians on silly things like Japanese internment camps, refugee issues, and gender and race roles in war. Such things distract from the real business of military history, which should, as we gather later in the article, be concerned merely with winning wars for the right side, and encouraging the citizens of the republic in their support of war. If historians keep up the business of looking deeper into war and its consequences they will probably only discourage the war-planners. Moving into the heart of the article- where Mr Hanson lays forth what we would be learning from military history, were we to study it- we are treated to the following gem:

Affluent Western societies have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things,” observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

No examples of these affluent societies are given- perhaps we are meant to think of those degenerate Swiss in their mountain hideouts eating chocolate and eschewing taking up the White Man’s Burden? One is hard pressed to think of modern Western nations who have ever expressed a great deal of genuine reservation towards massive displays of force against their neighbors, their own people, and the rest of the world.

Hanson continues with the tired attempt at linking the current occupation of Iraq to World War II- the good war, don’t you know- and mouthing off platitudes about appeasement and such. It would seem that the only lessons we are to draw from the study of military history are militaristic ones, that we must go steady on, fight for our noble cause, and never ever give into appeasement. That there may be other lessons to draw from the study of human conflict does not show up on the campaign map. Yet I could think of a few, drawing upon conflicts and sources I do not think Mr Hanson could have any trouble with. From the story of Xenophon and his Ten Thousand- one of my favorites- we should have easily drawn the lesson that regime change in Mesopotamia isn’t as easy as the war salesmen make it, and one should always, always have a good exit strategy. Failing that, you’d best pray the gods you have a Xenophon or two on hand. Dusty old Thucydides could have told us a great deal about democracies that play at empire, and how real wars are much more ambiguous than good guys versus bad guys (sometimes so ambiguous one gets a headache trying to keep all the alliances and turn abouts straight). Herodotus, besides illuminating us on how Egyptian cats immolate themselves on occasion, has a great deal to say about pre-emptive wars of conquest, and how scrappy seemingly dissunited and even downright obscurantist peoples can be in the face of invasion and occupation. I could continue, up to the most recent conflicts. One should learn from Thucydides at the very beginning that war is hardly the moralistic force Mr Hanson seems to think of it- the reality is far messier and less romantic. One may also learn that the best course for the average citizen in dealing with war is to look carefully into the mass of propoganda and claims and fervor that accompanies any war, and try to discern the truth behind the conflict.

Mr Hanson does pen one line of exceeding veracity:

Some men will always prefer war to peace; and other men, we who have learned from the past, have a moral obligation to stop them.

Indeed. And since, as history teaches us, those amongst us who prefer war usually cloak their violence in appeals to freedom, nation-state, religion, pride, democracy, destiny, and heaven knows what else, it is our duty to see through the fog of war they weave, and stop them, if possible, before the bullets start flying. History hardly teaches us utter pacificism- but it isn’t really pacificism the war-mongerers- right and left, by the way- have issue with, as it’s hardly a major force in the world. Their issue is with people who’d rather not stage bloody revolutions, or subdue the natives, or spread democracy- or communism or whatever- at the point of the gun (for, as should be evident from the simplest perusal of their propoganda through the past hundred plus years, rightists and leftists diverge but little in their worship of the gun barrel). A proper study of history and its all too numerous wars teaches us the horror of war, and hence the advisability, from merely a pragmatic point, of eschewing all but defensive war. History also teaches us that one rarely needs to incite people to the defense of their homelands; it is rather more difficult to convince the average person that it is in his interest to fight and conquer an unknown people five thousand miles away, for what and for whom he never really knows.  

Hadji Murad

On By JonathanIn Books, Culture, East & West, History, WarLeave a comment

A decade or so before his death, Leo Tolstoy completed a novella (published posthumously however) derived in part from his experiences in the Russian military during Russia’s drive to conquer the various predominately Muslim tribesmen of the North Caucasus region. Titled Hadji Murad (available here for free if you don’t mind reading long on-line texts) after its protagonist, the story is tightly crafted and reflective of a mature novelist- for despite its brevity, Tolstoy manages to construct, a la War and Peace, a number of stories within the overall narrative, with several developed characters whose lives all, in some way or another, intersect with that of Hadji Murad. Hadji Murad himself is a Chechen warrior whose varying fortunes and clashes lead him to fight other Caucasus factions, then the Russian invaders, before aligning himself tenuously with the Russians in an ultimately tragic bid to save his family from a powerful Chechen imam.

While Tolstoy is careful to offer little interpretative commentary within the story, his sympathies quite clearly lie with Hadji Murad first, then the Chechen people, and finally the conscripted Russian soldiers sent into the war. The closest he comes to outright moral proclamation within the narrative itself lies in his subtle and not-so-subtle digs at Russian- and by extension, Western- society are quite evident as he describes the moral habits- or lack thereof- of various levels of Russian society, culminating in a deliciously scathing portrayal of Czar Nicholas:

Although the plan of a gradual advance into the enemy’s territory by means of felling forests and destroying the food supplies was Ermolov’s and Velyaminov’s plan, and was quite contrary to Nicholas’s own plan of seizing Shamil’s place of residence and destroying that nest of robbers — which was the plan on which the dargo expedition in 1845 (that cost so many lives) had been undertaken — Nicholas nevertheless attributed to himself also the plan of a slow advance and a systematic felling of forests and devastation of the country. It would seem that to believe the plan of a slow movement by felling forests and destroying food supplies to have been his own would have necessitated hiding the fact that he had insisted on quite contrary operations in 1845.

But he did not hide it and was proud of the plan of the 1845 expedition as well as of the plan of a slow advance — though the two were obviously contrary to one another. Continual brazen flattery from everybody round him in the teeth of obvious facts had brought him to such a state that he no longer saw his own inconsistencies or measured his actions and words by reality, logic, or even simple common sense; but was quite convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and mutually contradictory they might be, became reasonable, just, and mutually accordant simply because he gave them.

Tolstoy’s depiction of Islamic society is generally sympathetic and carries very little “Orientalistic” baggage; there is a sense of determinism throughout, but this is perhaps as much for Tolstoy an aspect of history in general as it is a mirror of “Oriental fatalism.” One of the strengths of the book lies in its depection of Chechnya and the war there as being complex, consisting of all sorts of cross-currents, as subject to change as the people making them up- an element that in some ways struggles with the theme of tragic determination. While it’s rather cliche to speak of contemporary relevance, it’s also hard not to notice it: the present conflicts raging in various parts of the Islamic world- including Chechnya- are multi-faceted, tragic affairs. Hadji Murad presents, on one level, a “clash” of East and West: but Tolstoy is far to insightful to imagine even a morally neutral clash of civilisations. Instead, he presents clashes within civilisations, across cultural lines, alongside bonds formed across cultures, as in the friendship formed between Murad and a Russian soldier, Butler:

With the arrival of Hadji Murad and his close acquaintance with him and his murids, Butler was even more captivated by the poetry of the peculiar, vigorous life led by the mountaineers. He got himself a jacket, cherkeska and leggings, and he felt he was a mountaineer too, living the same life as these people.

The narrative structure of the novel itself reflects the complexity of reality in the Caucasus: people, groups, and conflicts all collide, collude, and collide again. Certainly, Tolstoy rejects the Russian imperial project, but he does not pretend the Chechens are immaculate, quietist victims of imperialism, or even noble militant resistors of an unjust war against them. Instead a wide range of motives, tactics, and ideologies inhere in the various peoples making up the cast of Muslim characters. Yet despite a recognition of complexity, Hadji Murad emerges as a hero- a tragic (in the proper sense of the word) and flawed hero, but still a hero, struggling against fate in a convoluted world. And Tolstoy’s stance towards war is equally evident, as in this scene that comes in an interluding vignette describing the Russian campaign of “pacification”:

Sado and his family had left the aoul on the approach of the Russian detachment, and when he returned he found his saklya in ruins — the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy. His son, the handsome bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at Hadji Murad, was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a barka; he had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet. The dignified woman who had served Hadji Murad when he was at the house now stood over her son’s body, her smock torn in front, her withered old breasts exposed, her hair down, and she dug her hails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly.

Sado, taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined saklya cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary. The two stacks of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all the beehives and bees had been burnt. The wailing of the women and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not be used. The mosque was polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were cleaning it out.

Real Ale, Distributivism, & Ron Paul

On By JonathanIn Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

Via The Ochlophobist:

From the Campaign for Real Ale, a most worthy British organization devoted to some very distributist-amiable ends:

Second, via The ChestorBelloc Mandate, a newish (no pun intended here) distributist site: The New Distributist League.

Finally, via Arts & Letters, a pretty sympathetic look at Ron Paul: The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul : 

Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.

Last night I noticed that the Myspace page of Hattiesburg’s finest pub/music venue, and one of the few places in Mississippi where hearing klezmer or Celtic punk or other diverse musical styles is fairly common, The Thirsty Hippo has Ron Paul up on the top tier of top friends. The Hippo’s patrons probably don’t include too many card-carrying Republicans; but then that is, as the article above notes, exactly Dr Paul’s appeal.

Eros and Ideas

On By JonathanIn Culture, Philosophy, University LifeLeave a comment

If there’s one god our culture worships as piously as sex, it’s children. But sex and children, sexual intimacy and familial intimacy, have something in common — beyond the fact that one leads to the other: both belong to us as creatures of nature, not as creators in culture. After Rousseau and Darwin and Freud, and with evolutionary psychology preaching the new moral gospel, we’ve become convinced that our natural self is our truest one. To be natural, we believe, is to be healthy and free. Culture is confinement and deformation. But the Greeks thought otherwise. To them, our highest good is not what we share with the animals, but what we don’t share with them, not the nature we’re born with, but the culture we make from it — make, indeed, against it.

From Love On Campus, via Arts & Letters Daily.

Imperialism Is Destructive On Both Sides

On By JonathanIn Culture, War1 Comment

“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’… [Only when we got home] in… meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.”

Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

“I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”

Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq  

(Via Antiwar.com)

* 

“With one part of my mind I thought the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like there are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.”

George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant