Revised Gettysburg Address

Abe, the text looks ok to me, but you leave yourself open to criticism unless you really hammer home your empathy, etc. Don't assume they'll recognize you're the Good Guy here. Please consider the following revisions:


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are sadly engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are regrettably met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come, lamentably, to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave, sadly, their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether heartbreakingly fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we sadly can not dedicate -- we sadly can not consecrate -- we sadly can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and (lamentably) dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our regrettably poor power to add or, unfortunately, detract. The world will, sadly, little note, nor, regretfully, long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be mindfully dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who, sadly, fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored and regrettably dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they, sadly, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly and heartbreakingly resolve that these lamentably dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not sadly perish from the earth.

Processing Hamas Support Through the Lens of Vietnam Protest

It's 1970-ish. I'm a bright eight year old. Carried by the moment, I choose sides, aligning with the younger generation which is touchy about being sent to distant rice paddies to murder Vietnamese strangers and likely return in a coffin (as did several neighbors). The other side, with their crewcuts and cufflinks, seem morally disconnected, so I instinctually chose my side. We had Jimi Hendrix, they had Perry Como. There was never any doubt.

I had a thumbnail notion of the Cold War and I grokked the logic of domino theory. Evil tends to expand, and the cancer must be stemmed. But Republicans seemed hyperbolic in their anti-Communist paranoia. What's worse, they kept calling people like me "Commies" - an awfully disturbing association given their stated desire to mow down Communists en masse. Maybe we were next, after they'd won the rice paddies.

Then Jane Fonda went on the radio over there to spew propaganda at conscripted troops risking their lives, and I felt my first-ever pang of Centrist moderation. Same with activists who expressed solidarity with the Viet Cong. The Left had gone too far - the Viet Cong were plainly abhorrent - but I still dearly wanted us out of Vietnam.

At my tender age, I held a rather narrow view, wired into the immediate. Local kids were dying in distant jungles. Winning the war would scarcely improve my life, but merely serve the paranoid whims of creepy shitheads like Richard Nixon. It seemed simple.

Now, with the better part of a century of experience, I better understand the view of the creepy shitheads. Isolationism had been strongly debunked only three decades prior. I still would oppose intervention in Vietnam, but now I see complexity where I previously beheld simplicity. It's not an improved me, just one with more framing options.


I'm no expert on the Middle East conflict, but I know enough to firmly conclude that there is no righteous party. Each side claims righteousness by reciting a litany of atrocities committed by the Other, and both litanies are full-to-bursting. And, as I predicted, the Israelis were cynically - and quite successfully - baited into barbarism by the Hamas attack.

But that's me, with my broad, higher framing. Younger people, more narrowly framed, behold the latest barbarism in a non-contextualized freeze frame of Right Now. And they're not entirely wrong. Barbarism is barbaric, regardless of one’s litany of atrocity. If you slap a kid in public, your statement of justification will do you little good. You're now The Child Slapper. Never mind that this was the kid’s plan all along. 

I use my Vietnam memories to better relate to the Left's Middle East take, generally. Regarding extremists who've gone as far as to embrace Hamas out of rote solidarity with the enemy of perceived bad guys, I recall the somewhat milder contempt I felt for Viet Cong boosterism. At the time, I could distantly relate to the fools who chose that route. So I revive that impression in my effort to re-associate Hamas cosplayers with civilization; to at least distantly relate to fools who went that route.

Kanye's Next Move

I've never been more miserable to have been right. One month ago I wrote, re: anti-Semitism, that "my spidy sense has been peaking geometrically." Well, we've come a long way, baby...and none of it's good.


For anyone who's never read a word of history, let me tell you what happens next with Kanye, now that repercussions have finally begun to snowball and he's losing his corporate connections:

"This proves the malicious strength of the shadowy Jewish conspiracy; able to seamlessly choke and bleed the righteous for daring stand up to them with mere words!"

And here's the follow-up:

"...and such is the daunting eeeeeevil power and dark control of these inferior subhuman vermin!"

Pro tip: You know things have reached a tipping point whenever you spot this tell-tale amalgam of "feeble, weak, subhuman vermin" and "powerful, crushing, dominating cabal". They're two sides of the same anti-semitic trope, of course, but, like bagels, it's not just a Jewish thing. Whenever hatred of any sort arises, so does this odd coupling.

Was Obama an incompetent college-failing half-wit, as the Right said, or a tyrant/saboteur bending government to his dastardly radical Muslim vision, as the Right also said?

For that matter, was Trump a clownish moron, according to the Left, or the most daunting peril to the republic in its history, also according to the Left (and, admittedly, me)?

This construction is evergreen. It never doesn't appear. Whenever you notice this amalgam of subhuman/superhuman, idiot/genius taking hold in a society - with people so gripped by hatred that they can't spot their own gaping illogic - alarm bells should ring. You're approaching a bad result. It's a harbinger.


If you're flailing to justify your own buy-in to that loopy amalgam, as I am, it's time to re-frame a few things. It's perilously easy to get spun-up into an antithetical but quite symmetrical, mirror-imaged irrationality. In fact, that spin-up - into a chain reaction of reciprocol hatred - is the very problem, not a mere symptom, even if you feel certain you're on the Good Side (the other guys feel that way, too).

There is only one esacpe from this madness: stop hating and join with reasonable people - including the vast sea of somewhat reasonable people with "wrong" tribal affiliation - against extremists of both sides. I.e. pay less selective attention to the extremists on the other side, and get woke to the holistic peril of extremism, period. Also: stop wincing at "both sides". Any pain you feel from that phrase was deliberately instilled by the dangerous radicals who helped stoke this mess.

Joining at center is the only way out, whether it happens now via force of will, or later in the aftermath of tumult and trauma.

You Could See Putin Coming From at Least 1839

A quadrillion articles explain Vladimir Putin by the fact that he's KGB.

A million articles explain him in connection with the diabolically sneaky Chekists who preceded the KGB.

A thousand articles explain him in connection to pre-revolutionary Tsarist times. Once you go back that far, light starts to be shed on the Ukraine invasion, which stemmed more from Putin's bombastic Peter-the-Great aspirations than from his KGB flunky inclinations.

John Sipher (one of my favorite expert writers on Russia - don't miss his Twitter feed) connects him all the way back to 1839, when Marquis Astolphe de Custine published his authoritative account of Russian political culture. Sipher's musings were prompted by a NY Times article on the long history of brutality in the Russian military and a New Yorker discussion with historian Stephen Kotkin explaining that a certain mindset predates any actions the West has taken, predates NATO, predates just about everything. This is centuries of cultural momentum - an immense and oblivious flywheel of karmic inevitability - playing itself out.

The cutting-edge question of the moment is: does Putin drink his own lemonade? how deeply does he believe the baloney he's peddling? Sipher finds that De Custine answered this beautifully nearly 200 years ago:

“By continually endeavoring to hide truth from the eyes of others, people become at last unable to perceive it themselves.”

Note: Bill Browder says (most recently on Preet Bhahara's podcast) that Putin has no Peter-the-Great aspirations. He says that's all for show. Whenever his approval rating tanks, he invades a neighbor, hollering grandiose statements, and it's always to distract his people from the fact that he and his cronies have sucked all the wealth out of the country. The notion that Putin gives even a nano-crap about Russian standing or interests is laughable, given that he's the guy who's sucked the very life out of it.

So how do we square that with Sipher's contradictory assessment? Easy-peasy. Again: “By continually endeavoring to hide truth from the eyes of others, people become at last unable to perceive it themselves.” Stop reaching for a linear throughline of actuality. It's all lollipop kazoodles. When truth is methodically deprecated for a very long time, no one can find solid ground; not even the deprecators.

The Tradition of Dirt-Eating

I've been going through my clippings, trying to downsize, and came across a printout of this 1984 NY Times piece on the last remnants of the old practice - since largely forgotten - of dirt eating. All these years later, I recall the deep impact it originally had on me. I find it beautiful.

Click for easier readability:

This would never be published today. And that's why this practice has largely been forgotten. It's a squelched memory. And while I realize there are stupid people who'd draw nasty conclusions, to me it's very deep. I'm not ready to scarf mud, myself. But this gives me a visceral feeling of how close we still are in time to an ("earthier"?) era that's nearly unrecognizable. And the quotes even make it relatable, perhaps almost seductive to some part of me. It's wonderful all around.

White-washing (perfect term) history to obliterate cultural memory that doesn't jibe with the retconned storyline seems like the ultimate disrespect. Mrs. Glass - who understood things you and I don't and never will - is shamed by our willful looking-away from her, as if she were some awful person doing some awful thing. I want to hear more about Fannie Glass and her forebears. I reject the diversion of my attention toward higher-toned storylines better fitting the preferred narrative of superior cultural authorities.

I don't want their narrative, I want the truth. I love the truth. And I'll bet Mrs. Glass would have been right there with me on that.

Great Succinct Explanation of India's Turn From Secularism

With our media caught haplessly in loops, chasing each new bullshit tornado and agonizing over every Chauncey Gardiner-ish Twitter utterance, how'd you like to hear a genuinely smart and objective person explain something extremely clearly and fairly?

Back up. A couple weeks ago, I bemoaned the brazen anti-Moslem violence in India. Kapil Komireddi, author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, went on a podcast last week to offer the best half hour explication one could ask for of the conflict. He paints recent history clearly, soberly, and with impressive balance – it’s impossible to know which side he’s on - outlining both sides' many grievances and sins while condemning in no uncertain terms the dastardly anti-Muslim measures instituted by Modi’s government.

As with most things, the story is more complicated than you'd think. Listen to this to learn how this mess happened. Listen to be surprised by some of the background. And listen for the soothing tonic of a very bright guy whose agenda is truth and clarity, period. Remember truth and clarity? This level of clear, clean authority is like a cool glass of water in hell.

The big takeaways:

1. Modi isn't some vaguely malevolent sphinx with historical baggage. It's worse than that (listen for the chilling assessment of India's preeminent psychologist, who had a close-up look at the guy early on).

2. India is in a similar position to Yugoslavia post-Tito, ripe for the likes of a Slobodan Milosevic. In Komireddi's view, the backlash against India's proud secularism/pluralism has already crossed a point of no return, and the country is doomed to behave more and more like a Hindu version of Pakistan's paranoid theocracy.

3. There are three sides to this dilemma: Hindu nationalists (largely though not entirely Northern), Indian secularists (largely though not entirely Southern), and Moslems (who were never as happily assimilated as Indian textbooks - which blame the British for all the strife - have long held).

Handy listening link (this segment comes first, ending at 24:28).
Background on the segment

Note that I have no idea who this Komireddi guy is. I've only heard the 25 minute interview, so caveat listener. He may turn out to be horrible in some way (though his recent Twitter feed confirms my positive impression).

A Feature, Not a Bug

This dialog with a Pakistani acquaintance (who knows quite a lot about America, but, like many people I suppose, misses the key ingredient) helped me organize my thoughts about this election, and about some recent and distant history.

He wrote:

C'mon friends and acquaintances in USA. This is more than enough. Can someone stop this idiot. And I don't mean by Second Amendment, like he did. I mean can someone get him off the Republican Ticket. Assassinating a Presidential Candidate or a President? Even our nutcases in Pakistan haven't gone that far against the President, the PM or his brother in their often ridiculous speeches.

I replied:

If they could have replaced him, they would have. But there's no mechanism post-convention to remove (much less replace) a nominee. He's an extreme edge-case our election system has no tools to repel....aside from the vote itself.

And he needs to be resolutely voted down (not just administratively censured), to send the proper signal. And note that his thundering defeat might accomplish the impossible: overturn the heavily gerrymandered (and thus nearly bulletproof) Republican majority in the House...so some stuff might actually get done (though hopefully Clinton won't indulge her hawkish instincts).

Unless, that is, Julian Assange's promise of an October Surprise revealing indictable offenses by Clinton comes to be. In that case, who knows (if so, please find a jazz club for me to work in so I can come live in Pakistan).

...and he replied:

Many people are voting for Hillary because of Trump, but if Julian's emails appear and she loses, will Trump win? Will someone else take her place to fight Trump? This looks like the most amazingly stupid election in USA in my life.

...and I replied:

There's no replacing him now, there's no replacing her later. The very essence of our democracy is that there's no overarching authority to make these weighty parental decisions; no thumb on the scale. The people ARE that authority, period (a feature, not a bug).

This is why Jefferson wrote so anxiously about his hope that the people would be found to have been worthy of this experiment.

We largely have been. In nearly 250 years, we've more or less gotten the job done, which is an awfully good run (I'd have staunchly denied that after Bush's reelection, but, frankly, he's looking pretty good to lots of us right now - an honorable man we merely disagreed with).