Daily Archives: May 15, 2020

I was visiting an old friend for the past few days, and she showed me this cover of Atlas Shrugged I made for her when we lived in Ukraine:

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It was a necessary repair, but it pretty much proves I should be a cover designer._____________________________________________

Original review:

I think Francisco DAconia is absolutely a dream boat. This books like blah blah blah engineering, blah blah blah John Galt, blah blah blah no altruistic act, blah bla- HE-llo, Francisco DAconia, you growl and a half. Also, theres a pirate. So, whats everyone complaining about?

Okay, its not that I dont get what everyones complaining about. I get that Rand is kind of loony tunes of the Glenn Beck variety, and some people (maybe?) use her to justify being assholes, but I just dont like to throw the bathwater out with that baby. Warning: I think, to make my point, I have to refer to Dostoyevsky a lot, which I seem to always do because he really is some kind of touchstone to me. The point Im trying to make with all this blabbering is that the debate over Atlas Shrugged brings out something that I might hate more than anything else (more than weddings and kitty litter even). It makes people say that ideas are dangerous. People on all sides of the spectrum do this about different stuff, and whatever the argument, I dont like it. If an idea is wrong, say its wrong. But genocide doesnt happen because people put forward too many ideas. It happens because people put forward too few ideas.

Anyway, back to the book:

First, story. The third part of this book is super weird. Its definitely not the actual ending of the book, Ive decided, but more of a choose-your-own-adventure suggestion. Its kind of fun that way because any end that you, the reader, come up with will be better than the one Rand suggested. My favorite part of her ending is how John Galt gives the most boring speech possible, and it lasts for about a bazillion pages, and you have to skip it or die. Then, at the end, Rands like, The entire world was listening, ears glued to the radios, because Galts speech was the most brilliant thing they had ever heard. No. Nope. Nice try, liar. So, thats super lame, I agree, and you should just skip the third part.

But people dont get as mad about the epilogue in Crime and Punishment. Why? Thats the same situation, where it kills all fun, and you have to ignore that it happened. Is it just because its shorter, and its called Epilogue? Maybe thats enough. But, on the other hand, maybe people didnt read all the way to the end of Crime and Punishment. Maybe, because it was written by a crazy Russian man, not a crazy Russian woman, people think theyll sound deep if they say they like it.

Second, writing. People complain about Rands writing, and I always think, When was the last time you wrote a 1000 page book in a second language and pulled off a reasonably page-turning storyline? The woman spoke Russian for crying out loud! It most certainly would have been a better choice for her to have written the books in Russian and had them translated, but, I mean, most native English speakers couldnt be that entertaining. Its at least A for effort. Im not going to make excuses for the unpronounceable names she chooses for her characters, but Ill just say Dostoyevsky again and leave it at that.

I know it made a huge difference in my reading of this book that I was living in a Soviet bloc apartment in Lozovaya, Ukraine at the time and had forgotten a little bit how to speak English. Im sure a lot of weird phrasing didnt sound weird to me because it makes sense in Russian. But, also, I feel like Ive read a lot of translations of Dostoyevsky and other Russians that feel really weird in English. You know, everyones always having some kind of epileptic fit or whatever with Mr. D. But, we allow for the weirdness because we picture the stuff happening in Russia, where the weird stuff typically goes down anyway. Ill tell you right now, Atlas Shrugged takes place in Russia. No joke. She might tell you theyre flying over the Rocky Mountains, or whatever, but this book is a Russian if there ever was one. Just so its clear, I LOVE that about it. Thats no insult, only compliment.

Third, philosophy. Maybe I told you this story already, so skip it if you already know it. When I lived in Ukraine, I had the same conversation with three or four people of the older generation who grew up in the Soviet Union. They would tell me, Things were really wonderful in the Soviet Union, much better than they are now. We had free health care, free housing, and now we have nothing. I mean, every once in a while your neighbor would disappear, but it was completely worth it. This was really disturbing to me, because it gave me this picture of the people around me that they were the ones who ratted out the neighbors who wanted a different life. Sure, Rands vision is narrow and sometimes inhuman, but I think it is because she was really terrified of this equally narrow and, as far as Im concerned, inhuman vision. I want a public health care option real bad, and my neighbor has some really annoying Chihuahuas, but if forced to choose between them, Id probably still pick my neighbor.

Admittedly, the problem with this argument is that it sets up a dichotomy where our only choices are the prosperity gospel and Soilent Green. From what I know of Rand, though, she had seen her neighbors and family thrown out of Russia or killed for being rich. She was fighting something extreme by being extreme. Unfortunately, in America, this rhetoric turns into the idea that having public services = killing your neighbor. To me, this comes from people taking her arguments too seriously on both sides. Dostoyevsky has ghosts and devils coming out of every corner, and people take his stories for what theyre worth. We dont think that liking his books makes us mystics and hating them makes us inquisitors. Why is it different with Rand?

Fourth, women. Im not going to lie and tell you that there werent other badass female characters when Dagney Taggert came around. All I want to say about this is that the most valuable thing I got from this book was the idea that one person being unhappy doesnt, and shouldnt, make other people happy. I think, in this way, it was particularly important to me that the protagonist was a woman. I see a lot of women complain about their lives and families, but say its all worth it because theyve been able to devote their lives to making their husbands or children happy. Im paraphrasing, I guess. Anyway, that kind of hegemony really creeps me out.

When I read this book, I was just realizing that I had joined Peace Corps with a similarly misguided motivation. I wanted to go to the needy and unfortunate countries of the world and sacrifice myself to save them. It might sound more nasty than it really was when I say it like that, but I think it is a really arrogant attitude to have. We might have hot running water in America (for which I am forever grateful), but if somewhere doesnt have that, its probably not because of a problem a silly, 23-year-old English major is going to solve. Dont get me wrong, I loved Peace Corps, and it was maybe the best experience of my life so far. But I love it for the things that I got out of it, and if someone else benefited from my being in Ukraine, it was dumb luck.

I dont know about other women, but I was raised to believe that the more selfless (read: unhappy) I was, the better off everyone else would be. I think its a pretty typical way that women talk themselves into staying in abusive situations that their lives are worth less than the lives around them. This would be the Hank Rearden character in the novel. I love that Rand sets up characters who destroy this cycle of abuse. I love that her female protagonist lives completely outside of it.

So, not to undercut my noble feminist apologetics, but really Franciscos just hawt, and I think thats the reason I like this book. There are lots of other reasons to read Rand, but most of those get into the argument about her ideas being dangerous. I just dont think they are, or should be. I think ignorance is dangerous, but I think it should be pretty easy to fill in the gaping holes in Rands logic. Yes, she conveniently ignores the very old, very young, and disabled to make a specific and extreme point. I dont think her point is entirely without merit, though (in the sense that our lives are valuable, not in the sense of kill the weak!). I also think that if we give a danger label to every book that conveniently ignores significant portions of the population to make a point, we wouldnt be left with much.

Anyway, read, discuss, agree, disagree. Ill be making up some Team John, Team Hank, Team Francisco t-shirts later. I hear in the sequel there are werewolves.

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - Goodreads

Trilogy of American science fiction drama films

Productioncompany

The Strike Productions (Part I)

Release date

Running time

Atlas Shrugged is a trilogy of American science fiction drama films. The series, adaptations of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel of the same title, are subtitled Part I (2011), Part II (2012) and Part III (2014); the latter sometimes includes Who Is John Galt?.

The films take place in a dystopian United States, wherein many of society's most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes as the government shifts the nation towards socialism, making aggressive new regulations, taking control of industries, while picking winners and losers.

In Part I, railroad executive Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) and steel mogul Henry Rearden (Grant Bowler) form an alliance to fight the increasingly authoritarian government of the United States. In Part II, Taggart (Samantha Mathis) and Rearden (Jason Beghe) search desperately for the inventor of a revolutionary motor as the U.S. government continues to spread its control over the national economy. In Part III, Taggart (Laura Regan) and Rearden (Rob Morrow) come into contact with the man responsible for the strike whose effects is the focus of much of the series.

See Part I's production, Part II's production, Part III's production

See Part I's plot, Part II's plot, Part III's plot

The trilogy received predominantly negative critic reviews and average audience reviews[2] and the aggregate USA box office is just under $9 million (revenues do not include video and television). The first film, directed by Paul Johansson, stars Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Johansson, Graham Beckel and Jsu Garcia was released in April 2011 and had a USA box office of $4.5 million on a budget of $20 million.[3] Most of the marketing was done online. The second film, directed by John Putch, stars Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe, Patrick Fabian, D.B. Sweeney and Esai Morales, and had a USA box office of $3.3 million on a budget of $10 million.[4] The third film, directed by J. James Manera, stars Laura Regan, Rob Morrow, Greg Germann, Kristoffer Polaha, Lew Temple and Joaquim de Almeida, and had a USA box office of $1 million on a budget of under $5 million.[4]

Part I was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 8, 2011; Part II on February 19, 2013; and Part III on January 6, 2015.

See original here:

Atlas Shrugged (film series) - Wikipedia

This week I am reprising a slightly modified version of a column I wrote in this paper almost eight years ago titled Aspen shrugged (Aspen Daily News, July 19, 2012). Its substance seems more appropriate now than ever. Socialism and free market economics intersect more acutely in Aspen than perhaps any other place on earth. Without adaptation, Aspens fragile balance of unparalleled governmental subsidies for locals, and an international tourism economy playing to the jet-setting, uber-wealthy capitalist class, may be in jeopardy. Can such a system, dependent on safe and efficient air travel, and relying almost entirely on the intangibles of experiential value, survive the emerging coronavirus-triggered economic disruption?

Ayn Rands self-proclaimed magnum opus Atlas Shrugged uses as background for her philosophy of objectivism a fictional world where capitalists are denigrated by ministers of a centrally controlled economy. In this dystopian domain individuals work for the benefit of the collective. As the capitalists disappear into hiding, the worlds economy collapses.

Atlas imperfectly references the titan from Greek mythology, who in modern interpretations is forced by Zeus to hold the world on his shoulders. Rands symbolism of a shrugging Atlas represents the worlds productive capitalists shrugging off responsibility for anyone but themselves by retreating to a mountain hideaway and refusing to help rebuild an economy they did not destroy.

Theorizing an opposing world view to Karl Marxs workers paradise, Rand envisioned a world where people act out of selfish rationality to achieve their individual interests, in contrast to Marx and Friedrich Engels, who openly promoted the Communist Manifesto to portend a stateless and classless worldwide communist society where the individual was subordinate to the collective. Rands world view was seared into her consciousness through personal experience with the failed Soviet interpretation of Marxs communism. Not unlike Marx, Rands belief in the superiority of her economic and political philosophy was the definitive sign of her narcissistic intellectualism.

If Marx and Rand are foundational polar extremes of modern political and economic thought, then Aspen is the modern petri dish for the interplay of their philosophies. While few Aspenites would identify as communists or objectivists, mostly placing themselves somewhere in between, it remains true that few communities are so geographically separate and also so economically and societally segmented as Aspen.

On the valley floor reside mostly workers. The workers mostly, but not exclusively, inhabit tidy government-subsidized, garage-less homes. On the elevated surroundings reside mostly the capitalists as Rand might refer to them. The capitalists mostly reside in exquisite privately owned homes, some with garages so big, theyre larger than an average workers entire home.

The workers of Aspen are united in the sense that their livelihood relies upon consumption, which like gravity, flows from the higher elevations to the valley floor. This activity generates the taxes needed to provide the subsidized housing, transportation, child care, and recreation that make Aspens idyllic working-class life possible in one of the nations most expensive zip codes (although according to Business Insider, as of 2019 Aspen no longer even cracks the nations top 25).

Conversely, as if defying gravity, political power rises from the workers on the valley floor who exact the taxes needed to support their idyllic (it isnt really, hence the quotation marks) working-class lifestyle from the capitalist class, so long as they continue enjoying the view. Rand might not consider these as examples of objectively selfish behavior, but given the system in place, thats what it looks like to me. More importantly, there is exactly nothing requiring this systems perpetuation.

Reflecting neither Marxs utopia, nor Rands dystopia, Aspens delicately balanced, capitalistically funded socialism relies on one commonly shared notion. While the people here are real, the place defies reality. In traditional economic terms, Aspen produces almost nothing of value yet retains some of the highest property values on the planet. This understanding of value is both notional and contrived.

Aspens notional economic value lies exclusively in its ability to deliver one product, the Aspen experience. Its contrived economic value flows from the government subsidies generated by the demand for that experience, which over the past many decades has far exceeded available supply. But will future demand remain so high? All economic systems have a half-life, and Aspens monied visitors and government-subsidized, private-sector workers cannot exist without each other. It is Aspens intertwined economic values, notional and contrived, capitalist and socialist, that make Aspens economy work, and the kicker is, its a system that produces nothing that any consumer cannot live without or get at a lower cost someplace else.

In a coronavirus world, will Rands capitalists continue to willingly pay any price to parachute into Aspen to ski, listen to beautiful music and annually conjure a festival of ideas, financing the resort communitys government-subsidized locals' lifestyle? The notion seems less objectively rational than ever.

Would Marx recoil at the sight of Aspens sell-out socialism, where service to and control over capitalism have heretofore simultaneously made possible his otherwise futilely pursued workers paradise? Or would he decide its demise was a painful but necessary step for the purity of the collectives cause? My guess is the latter.

Most importantly, will Aspens delicately balanced, capitalist-funded socialist paradise (by now you know the reason for the quotations) and tourism-based economy shrug off the coronavirus pandemic and return to some adaptation of normality? Or, like after the silver boom ended a century ago, will Aspen begin a return to quieter years? I hope its the former, but only time will tell.

pmenter98388@gmail.com

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Menter: Will Aspens reopening shrug off the virus? - Aspen Daily News

(Enisaksoy/Getty Images)Lessons from human nature about writing, politics, and Donald Trump

I worked one summer as a kitchen boy in a Wisconsin summer camp. It was one of those jobs from which you fall down at night near too tired to sleep. A previous occupant of my bunk had left behind a copy of Atlas Shrugged. So I spent the summer, between work and sleep, reading the perfect companion for my teenage summer.

I dont care for short stories. I prefer the heft of the doorstop book, reassuring me that I can immerse myself in the fantasy for a good long time. Yes, yes, I think. Thank you. Take me. Anywhere but here . . .

My companion for the lockdown is The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, written by David Kahn in 1967 and updated by him in 1996. One thousand pages so interesting that my mind will not reject them even though they are informative.

My new novel, not yet released, is Forty Years at Anstett, a fictional account of one mans life at a New England prep school. In it, a young man returns from imprisonment in Japan during the RussoJapanese War. The fellow applies for the job of instructor of languages. He has no academic credentials, but a very practical one: He was forced, in prison, to learn Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and, more important, how to learn languages. He challenges the Head (my protagonist) to point out the dullest lad in the school, to name a language, to leave the applicant alone with the boy for an afternoon, and then to assess his progress in the new tongue.

Well, the Head says, Latin or Greek. Id say Latin; its simpler as it shares our alphabet. No, the applicant says, its simpler to teach Greek. A new alphabet is a code. What twelve-year-old boy has ever been able to resist a code?

Not I, certainly. It seems Ive spent my professional life fashioning them and solving them, and have found the process commutative, which is to say, the study of one is the study of the otherit works in both directions.

Heres what I mean. Raymond Chandler wrote, in his essay The Simple Art of Murder (1939), that it is near impossible to craft a good murder mystery, as it requires two otherwise unconnected skills: the ability to write beautifully and the ability to fashion a code.

He is near right in his observation. The two skillswhile not mutually exclusive per seare unlikely to be found fully developed in any practitioner, because to achieve excellence, he or she would have to devote all energy to one or the other. I know of no great contemporary instrumentalist who is also a great composer.

The intersection of cryptography and literary merit is discoverable, though, in one very particular craft, and it is my own: writing drama.

For the drama has much in common with the detective novel. The clues in each must, scene by scene, be displayed to the reader in such a way that their importance will become both clear and acceptable only when the protagonist (and, so, the reader) has finally arranged them, correctly, at the works conclusion. If a clue is omitted, the writer is cheating; if it is too apparent, he is a hack.

Oh, yes, it was there all the time is the revelation capping not only the story of Sam Spade and his Maltese falcon, but that of Oedipus.

Ive always understood my job as a playwright as crafting the code. I came to this understanding through watching the audience.

In the various storefront theaters of my youth, I was offered the opportunity to make a living superior to mine as a cabdriver, if and as I could please the audience: not the critics, not the universities, but the paying audience.

I could write sufficiently well to keep em in their seats, but I was not going to get out of the Yellow Cab Company, I saw, unless I could do something additionally, which was (and is) to lead the audience unconsciously, at the plays end, to a revelation, which is to say, to a thrill.

Most plays, and all dramas, conclude, Well, I suppose life is just like that. This is sufficient to get the audience back into their cars, but by half the drive home, the play is forgotten. It may have diverted, but it did not thrill. This is to say, it did not deliver anything that could not have been foreseen. One says of such plays, They came in humming the plot.

Well, I wanted to trade the delights of the Yellow Cab Company for those of Broadway. So I sat down to the study of a code, and the code was, and is, human behavior.

I now learn from David Kahn the same lesson I saw in the storefronts: The cipher cannot be resolved without possession of the key.

Human behavior is fairly clear. One did or did not do or say this or that; one keeps marrying the wrong guy, or forgetting ones car keys, Aunt Mae always arrives late, and so on.

The attempt to interpret these actions, to determine the underlying assumptions, and, so, possibly, arrange them for the understanding of the group, the family, or the individual, is a search for a unifying key.

Psychoanalysis is, essentially, cryptanalysis. It is the attempt to find the key that will render intelligible, that is, arranged into a cause-and-effect progression, a string of various otherwise puzzling actions. It is fairly useless as a clinical tool (for, finally, the solution is as moot as is, in most cases, the complaint). But it is a handy theoretical tool, for a dramatist/cryptanalyst. He may walk the cat both backward and forward, discovering, in his own, unconscious creative process, the hidden key, which resolves his disparate perceptions and creations (an event, a line, an interchange) into that whole that may at the plays end be revealed as a progressionthat is, as a surprise.

This key is called the plot.

The practical codebreaker differs from the psychoanalyst in this: It is not his job to evaluate and act on the decoded information, but only to strip away the code.

Applied to psychoanalysis: Rather than asking What was the repressed trauma to which cause I can assign these symptoms? we may ask What was the process that caused that particular trauma (plaintext) to be so encrypted; that is, what is the key?

For, even if the hidden trauma is correctly determined, this can mean nothing more than that it has been identified in a way sufficiently satisfying to doctor and patient as to be acceptable; and the very fact that the patient accepts a psychoanalytic solution (which, again, is merely suppositional) might argue for its falsity. Diagnostically, he leaves the analysis not having had his life changed by revelation but gratified in his assessment not only of his own reasoning but of his courage in being able to accept a (putatively) new idea.

Similarly, modern drama and entertainment, and the so-called news media that flog it, present as a cure for (inescapable) human anxiety various solutions that, in their inaccuracy and inconclusivity, induce the individual to commit to further, more-drastic (which is to say, more-macabre and more-bizarre) restatements of the original diagnosis: E.g., you are not anxious, you are legitimately appalled, and frightened, as who would not be, as the world is ending (burning up, poisoned, overpopulated, run by Monsters).

The committed liberal, leftist, or analysand is like the government establishments that have devoted so much time, energy, and treasure to the creation of a code that no evidence could convince them that it has been broken and so must be replaced.

Drama carries an acceptable, but not a transformative, solution. Only tragedy has the power to transform, its revelation shocking the hero/sufferer (who is only the representative of the audience) into an absolutely new life. This life, however different from or lesser than the previous one, has this great benefit: It can be led truthfully, without either shame or anxiety, as one no longer fears discovery. The neurotic individual or organization fears not that its code may be broken but the knowledge that it already has been.

A mass movement coalesces around previously unconnected forcesthose that, absent a catalyst, cannot combine to any effect. Its formation will be predated to account for a supernatural beginning, but this merely raises the question Why now?

Islam, Christianity, and, in the 20th century, Marxism and Fascism emerge and proliferate exponentially, creating a new polity, spreading first through the joy of novelty, then through the herd instinct, and, finally, through force directed at the unconvinced.

A doctrine that cannot be proved, and whose only benefit is membership in a herd of the similarly professing, must (like a neurosis) be vehemently defended, as its refutation would threaten the individual not only with expulsion but with shame at his complicity, which is to say, with self-knowledge. But this, again, just raises the question: Why does this or that belief or delusion emerge and metastasize at a particular time? What is the relationship between the individual and the mass movement?

Tolstoy asks the question in the epilogue to War and Peace. He observes that 5 million Frenchmen didnt march into Russia just because Napoleon told them to. There is some relationship between his and their folly, but the relationship is unclear. The question, he tells us, is What is power? For, if they did not march because of his orders (a proposition that is, on reflection, absurd), why did they march?

Why did the young of my post-war generation embrace the various doctrines of free love, anti-Americanism, dissent, and mass movement, which, here as everywhere in the West, have matured as leftism, its various doctrines as absurd and obviously destructive as Napoleons (or Hitlers) invasion of Russia: open borders, free health care and education, and a universal salary not only for our citizens but (given open borders) for the entire world.

Ive been puzzled for a while by the absence in this virulent movement not only of a handy name (for leftism defines the thing only in relation to its opposite) but of a leader.

In the upcoming election, the Left has proposed, and its adherents have accepted, no candidate onto whom can be grafted even the most basic and most provisional attributes of charisma, wisdom, or record (however factitious) of accomplishment.

Why has the Left, intent on destroying the West, put forth no leader, and why has no leader put himself forward to fill the vacuum of power? What does the Left have, in place of a Marx, a Hitler, a Lenin, or, indeed, a Roosevelt or a Churchill? One who could state and embody its principles and thereby unify a country or a party? Perhaps the Lefts inability to propose a leaderand, so, a coherent (even if loathsome) visionis not a problem but a solution.

The question, then, is: To what problem?

For four years Ive found the massteria (Professor Harold Hill, The Music Man, 1957) around Trump healthy, as energy directed thus was unavailable for the Lefts beatification of a new leader (a fhrer). How fortunate for the country, I thought.

The national emergency has given me some leisure to think and consider; it was awarded by a virus. My question of the Virus is Why now?

The virus could not have spread globally without universal air travel, the national wealth that created such travel, and the disposable incomes that allowed individuals to take trips.

The Black Death reached Europe through rats on merchant ships from the Orient, the Spanish flu was spread here largely by servicemen returning from Europe, and so on, and so on.

Each, perhaps, could be seen as occurring through, or spreading because of, some stage of progression or, say, maturity, in the economy, or, to flirt with eschatology, in the Progress of the World.

The individual lifespan lengthens, and now the elderly are faced with diseases unknown to or rare among grandparents who would have been dead at a similar age.

Traffic congestion, attendant pollution, anxiety, and so on are the result of urban success. The highways take the mass of the newly solvent to the suburbs, the commutes become intolerable, and the old cities die, or exist (all the old capitals of commerce) as tourist attractions, or amusement parks, with the super-wealthy maintaining their skyboxes above the entertainment, as in The Masque of the Red Death.

The liberal, elite cities and states raise taxes, because they must, as their tax base disappears. As the services disintegrate, the rich follow the middle class out and leave the cities to the homeless, their ranks engorged by the aliens attracted to the notion of something-for-nothing (as who is not?), which is to say the Garden of Eden before the Fall.

There it is, before our eyes, but those who call attention, like our friend Laocon, are swept back into the sea, and the wooden horse, inside which the voices of enemy soldiers are heard, is dragged inside the city.

The unabated loathing of Trump must be considered a delusion, for how could one man be responsible not only for treason, collusion, malversation, and other crimes that, though they might be practiced individually, would, in their conjoined execution, each cancel the efficacy of the other (e.g., armed robbery and embezzlement)? Consider that in addition to this endless litany of his human corruptions, he is, coincidentally, indicted as responsible for the weather and the spread (if not the inauguration) of a global pandemic.

A comparison of Trump Psychosis with adoration of Hitlerthough perhaps appropriate mechanically, that is, in terms of power exerted on the mobis inexact in terms of utility. For the apotheosis of Hitler united the Germans behind a shared vision; he personified, and gave voice to, a nationalist desire for revenge, pride, and power, in which vision, and through its supposed benefits, the individuals could participate.

But the revanchist Left is not opposed to Trump as the avatar of the Right, of capitalism, of Americanism (once called patriotism). They cannot object to his policies per se, because the policies, one by one, are demonstrably superior in practice to any the Left has employed and, in reason, to any they have suggested. Their objections are all ad hominem, alleging various isms, which epithet may be applied, given but little inventiveness, to any of his words or acts. (As they may to any of yours or mine.) To suggest it is his acts that enrage the Left would be as to understand the Islamist attacks of September 11 as architectural criticism.

The Trump resistance began in the first hours of his presidency and has continued unabated by either reason or fatigue. There are no dissentient voices on the left, for any suggesting consideration, let alone dissent, have been expelled, vilified, and canceledthey are thus no longer on the left. Perhaps in this the disease starts to proclaim itself.

Leo Marks was a British codebreaker at Bletchley Park, during the Second World War. In his book Between Silk and Cyanide (1998), he writes about the codebreakers disease: Engaged as they are in trying to break the code, it is their last thought at night, and their first on awakening. Many of them became illphysically or psychologicallyfrom the strain.

Marks was in charge of decrypting the messages sent by Allied agents parachuted into Nazi-controlled Holland. He was, he writes, driven mad by the suspicion that the Allied agents had been captured and turnedthat is, that they, and so their codes, were being manipulated by the Nazis. He could find no error in the transmissions, but his suspicions would not go away. One morning he awoke and realized that the problem (that he could find no errors) was, of course, the solution: It would have been impossible for an Allied spy in Nazi Holland to transmitin haste and in hiding, risking deathwithout errors in the transmission. The agents had been captured or turned, he concluded.

There are no errors in the unity of the Left, which may be a key to the solution of their irrational, implacable loathing. Trump is hated as the most prominent example of one whos not afraid to employ reason. He has been canceled but ridicules their verdict.

It is not his plans (the Left doesnt hear of them) or his accomplishments (they are discounted, attributed to others, glossed over, or dismissed as nefarious) that are loathed, but the man himself, as he had the temerity to hold himself superior to the zeitgeist.

The zeitgeist is the Decline of the West, which had been sweeping the world since the American apogee, victory in World War II, and the advent of the most prosperous economy in history.

Things age, mature, and die. Fascism was a 20-year-long dictatorship, expanded through murder and terror. American exceptionalism and prosperity are the overwhelming story of the 20th century; it was not spread by the sword, and it will not die by the sword. Lincoln said that all the massed armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined could not take a drink from the Ohio, but American culture has been decaying throughout my lifetime, as must any organism. Mr. Trumps presidency has lengthened the American experience by some number of years. That number will be debated by the civilizations that succeed us, who will wonder at our fall, as the educated once did at that of Nineveh and Tyre.

Tragedy, to be compelling, must address a prerational experience or unity. A Hokusai painting of a wave makes us nod in recognition, as we do at a resolution of a Bach fugue. We cannot explain or dissect our experience of understanding, but it is undeniable. True art creates in us the same feeling of fulfillment, its possible description just beyond the rational mind.

The technician might explain it technically, the musician employing the cycle of fifths, or the painter some theory of color or proportion, but this merely puts the problem at one remove. For, after the technical reduction, even the expert cannot quite answer the question of why: Why, for example, is the eye so pleased by the golden mean? Like any great truth, our understanding of art must devolve into metaphysics or an assertion merely leading to an infinite regression.

The human mind will and must assemble phenomena into cause and effect. We will intuit or ascribe a causal relationship to two events that, to another, have no possible connection: Aunt Edna did not call on my birthday because shes furious I didnt sufficiently praise her new frock; Germany is troubled because of the Jews; we are suffering a pandemic because Trump did or did not act quickly enough, and an economic disaster because he did.

Psychoanalysis (and politics) attempts to address or capitalize on our human suggestibility, particularly on our frenzied willingness to assign our disquiets to another. Solutions offered thus flatter our ability to identify a problem, suggest its cure, and remind us to come back tomorrow for another dose.

Drama acts similarly, engaging us in the assurance that the cause of all problems is evident, and that our reason will suffice to cure them. The Bad Butler did it; Deaf People are People, Too; Love Is All There Is; and so on. If we enjoy the mixture, it must (and will) be taken regularly.

Tragedy provides not reassurance but calm through the completion of a mechanical progression. Its end is probative, for it is the disposition of all the variables (the code) stipulated at its beginningmathematically, there is no remainder.

The journey of Oedipus begins because there is a plague on Thebes; it is the kings job to conquer it. Without the initiating impulse (the stated problem), the play becomes merely a drama, it cannot be a tragedy, and we take away from it not that peace from recognizing the human condition but the lesson Do not sleep with your mother.

Can our current national emergency be viewed as perhaps a classical tragedy rather than as sordid drama? We see that the various factions are fighting over a disordered kingdom; each employs (to its own degree) the universal tools of indictment, incitement, appeal, reason, conspiracy, deception, and so on (assignment of these to taste). Considering ourselves as the dramatist, we can prognosticate an end: civil war, dissolution and chaos, conquest by a foreign power, return to a new and healthier polity actually based on the Constitution . . .

But such an end, to satisfy as tragedy, must be understood as the resolution of that specific problem absent the appearance of which we would not have a play. (Hamlets father dies.)

But in our case, what brought about the plague of Thebes?

The builders of the Tower of Babel suffered from hubris. They thought that they could aspire to heaven and raise themselves above human concerns, and that the various conflicting impulses of humanity would go away if we all spoke with one tongue. This tongue, of course, would be that of the builders, and I will leave comparisons with globalism to the reader. But it is no sin to be prosperous, and even the most committed Marxist wishes only to regularize (that is, reduce) the wealth and consumption of his neighbor.

What is the precipitating event or situation whose resolution would be one of those mooted above? We know our current pandemic came from China, and from trade with China. And every schoolchild knows that April showers bring May flowers, Mayflowers bring Pilgrims, and Pilgrims bring typhus.

The demagogues of the Left have discovered anew the ancient secrets of corruption, collusion, and decay, and, like all their predecessors, delight in their discovery: indicting their opponents for their own crimes.

We had, on April Fools Day 2020, two events warring for pride of place in our reconstruction of the tragic cryptogram: the pandemic, and the election of Donald Trump. But tragedy cannot have two precipitating events. (See the childs excuse I didnt do my homework because the dog ate it, and my mother has the flu.) Two explanations are none.

We must choose one, determine how the two are, if not identical, then conjoined (My mother has the flu, she usually feeds the dog, she could not, the dog became hungry and ate my homework), or discard them both and begin our work again, remembering Tolstoys admonition that the first or most apparent manifestation of an event is not necessarily the cause: The savage seeing the puffs of smoke first might conclude that they caused the locomotive.

The Left insists that our national disruption is caused by the election of President Trump, which affront would be resolved by his removal from office.

But if the successful results of their machinations brought us to civil war or economic collapse, then the effect would be out of adjustment with the supposed cause. (See the all too common explanation of spousal murder: You would have shot her too if you saw the way she looked at me.)

That message was fictionalized in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand lived through the Russian Revolution, in St. Petersburg, and spent her working life, in fiction and nonfiction, writing about the horror.

Here is another report, by Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia, first cousin to the czar, from Once a Grand Duke (1931):

What was to be done about those princes and countesses who spent their lives going from door to door and spreading monstrous lies about the Czar and Czarina? What was to be done with that scion of the ancient family of Princes Dolgoruky who sided with enemies of the Empire? What was to be done with the president of Moscow University, Prince Troubetskoi, who turned that famous institution of learning into a radical campus? What was to be done with that brilliant Professor Milukoff, who felt it his duty to denounce the regime in foreign lands, undermining our credit abroad and gladdening the hearts of our foes? . . . What was to be done with our press who met with rousing cheers every news of our defeat on the Japanese front?

The message on Nebuchadnezzars wall was You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Trump Mania is not a message, but a key, serving to obscure an underlying message.

The key (the accusations of the Left) disguises an underlying terroroperating here just as the near-psychotic, immobilized by a terrifying, free-floating anxiety, extemporizes specific phobias in an effort to gain some control.

It is not that I am losing my mind in unnameable panic, he thinks, but that Martians, or mice, food additives, or Jews are trying to destroy me.

The Lefts loathing of Trump differs from their other attempts at constructive phobia in this: He is not an event, a phenomenon, an attitude, or a group, but an actual human being.

He has supplanted previous attempted solutions to panic, but universal and vicious loathing comes close, in its virulence, to revealing the key, and thus the presence of an underlying code.

He is a mere human being who has the temerity to disregard the taboo.

In the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, some brave soul might speak up for one accused of witchcraft; but no one would have dared to say, and few to think, There is no such thing as witchcraft.

The Lefts hatred of Trump reveals their code. They here are like the ghoul Rumpelstiltskin, whose power disappeared when the victim said his name.

Trump is loathed because he is feared, and he is feared because he named the monster.

The Monster is the zeitgeist, that is to say, the Left.

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The Code and the Key - National Review

The author, whose new novel is The Last Emperox, says, Life is short and there are many other books.

What books are on your nightstand?

I made a New Years resolution to spend more time reading than I do staring at Twitter, so as a result the turnover on the nightstand (including the books on my phone, which has a nightstand charging cradle) is pretty rapid right now. Currently there: All This Could Be Yours, by Jami Attenberg; Docile, by K. M. Szpara; Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread); and, on the phone, Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Im sooo late); Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks; and the upcoming The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), by Katie Mack, which Im reading in PDF galley form because the end of the universe is professionally relevant to me.

Whats the last great book you read?

In terms of books already generally acknowledged as great, that would be The Face of Battle, by John Keegan, which was one of the first serious books of military history to take on the history of battle from a grunts-eye view of things. The book was incredibly useful when I wrote Old Mans War, and I come back to it whenever I start researching for a military-oriented work. Im very bad at guessing which contemporary works will be seen as great books, and often I am deeply surprised which ones get the label over time.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

I bounced hard off Jane Austen growing up, but so many friends are so deeply in love with her writing and I have enjoyed her filmed adaptations enough that I thought Id give her another try. So I picked up Pride and Prejudice, and soon enough set it back down again. The problem is not her, its me: The rhythms of writing and speaking and even just how commas are used have changed enough that for me reading most pre-20th-century work feels like sitting on a lurching train, getting knocked about. Shes a great writer, without doubt, and also, not for me. I love her films, though (and much prefer the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice over the 1995 BBC mini-series, which is heresy).

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

In my office, on my chaise longue, with one of my cats on me, on a spring or fall day where the temperature is nice enough to have the windows open, and there is a nice breeze (and also Ive taken my Claritin for the day; I live in rural Ohio and we have all of the pollen). But honestly I can read just about anywhere, and have, and will again, just watch me.

Whats your favorite book no one else has heard of?

In science fiction: Raising the Stones, by Sheri S. Tepper, a quasi-sequel to her novel Grass (also exceptional, with Dune-level worldbuilding), which has very interesting things to say about masculinity and society, and is very sadly out of print. Grass, however, is in print. Get it.

What book should everybody read before the age of 21?

There is no single book everyone should read before age 21; there is, I suspect, the one right book for each person which, if they read it at a young age, makes them fall in love with reading for life. I endorse doing what we can to find that one book for each person, rather than stuffing the same book down everyones throat. With books, one size does not fit all.

What book should nobody read until the age of 40?

I mean, I grew up in a house where the rule for books was if you can reach it, you can read it, and used that same rule for my kid, so, meh, theres not one? There are books you bounce off of at 15 that speak to you at 40, and vice versa. The only way youre going to find them is to try them. Im not in love with segregating out books by age. Let books speak to readers.

Which writers novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets working today do you admire most?

Today? N. K. Jemisin (novelist), Alexandra Petri (journalist), Daniel Lavery (memoirist), Pamela Ribon (screenwriter/novelist), Roxane Gay (essayist/editor). Ask me again in a year. There are so many writers to admire, for their work and for who they are in the world.

Sci-fi writers are often writing about the present even when their books are set in the future. Who do you think gets the present (or the future!) particularly right?

Oy. Well, William Gibson seems to be doing a depressingly good job of calling out where the world is and is going; Charlie Stross gets the future of today so right that sometimes he has to rewrite his work-in-production because current events overtake his fiction; Mira Grants Newsflesh trilogy seems to be on point right about now, too, in terms of the politics and culture of this exact moment.

What do you read when youre working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?

When I write fiction, I read nonfiction and generally avoid other fiction, for the simple reason that my brain will attempt to absorb the voice of the author and then output it through my typing fingers. This is not great for anyone. Several years ago I read a book of China Mivelles and then sat down to write a new chapter; what came out was dreadful, and not the good sort of dreadful that Mr. Mivelle is so adept at. I had to write about 3,000 words just to get back to me.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?

No. If theyre not hurting anyone, why feel guilty about ones pleasures? Why condescend to your own desires and belittle yourself that way? I write in a genre that for decades people felt like they had to make excuses for reading who benefits from that? Read what you like; like what you read. If someone tries to give you crap for it, its their problem, not yours.

Any comfort reads?

I reread James Clavells Shogun a lot when I travel; I tend to think of it as epic fantasy as I am unsure of its historical and cultural accuracy. Speaking of epic fantasy, Katherine Addisons The Goblin Emperor is always a joy to reread; I leaned on it a lot when creating my own unready imperial ruler for the Interdependency series, the last book of which is out very soon now. And I always have at least one Susan Orlean book on my phone for when Im stuck in the airport and in the mood for nonfiction; the current one I have at the ready is The Library Book. She writes books that are comforting and fascinating at the same time. Thats a good skill to have.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

When I was younger I would give Mark Helprins Winters Tale to people I wanted to be better friends with (and/or I had a crush on); its a book so lovely on a sentence level that it took me six reads to focus on the story. Im still friends with most of the people I gave the book to, and married one of them, so thank you, Mr. Helprin?

Whats the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

That Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the original nice guy (used in the internet sense of the phrase, which means emphatically not), falling in love with women who werent interested in him, then turning into a creepy abusive jerk when rebuffed. (See: Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, by Andrew Shaffer.)

Which books got you hooked on speculative fiction? Are there any science fiction books you would elevate to the canon?

As a kid the three authors who served as my entryway to the genre were Madeleine LEngle (A Wrinkle in Time), Susan Cooper (The Dark Is Rising) and Robert A. Heinlein (Citizen of the Galaxy), who were writing books aimed at younger readers. Authors writing for younger readers, and the books that captivate those readers, often get dismissed as being part of the science fiction canon, which I find problematic for all sorts of reasons (the canon of speculative fiction is itself currently in for massive revision). If I were nominating for canon, Id look at Y.A.: J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games) and Scott Westerfeld (Uglies) are obvious candidates from the last couple of decades. Mind you, my vote wont count; the future of the specific canon will be decided by people younger than me.

Do you distinguish between commercial and literary fiction? Wheres that line, for you?

Theres no line between commercial and literary fiction; its a Venn diagram with considerable overlap. The best approximation I can make for literary fiction is simply fiction written (intentionally or not) for other writers, who will be paying attention to fiddly nuances other readers might not care about. But you can do that and still be massively commercial (and likewise intentionally write for a wide audience and still sell nothing). Ultimately no one knows anything and some books hit and no one can tell you why. Luck matters more than we like to admit.

How do you organize your books?

Organize?

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I would be surprised that anyone would be surprised at any book I have on my shelf. I read widely and also publicly and frequently endorse reading as many different things as one can, so it shouldnt be surprising to find lots of different books in my home. Maybe people might look at me askance for Atlas Shrugged, since Ive written about how Ayn Rand valorizes a genocidal sociopath in John Galt, and I think its a really bad sign when ostensible adults take her philosophy seriously (and even worse when theyre elected to office). But Ill tell you what, Rand could make a pot boil; theres a reason her brand of nonsense sells.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

Voracious. Would, could and did read anything I could get my hands on, which set the tone for the rest of my life. Aside from previously mentioned writers and books, probably the most important book for me growing up was The Peoples Almanac, by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, which I consumed when I was 6 and sparked a love of knowing a little about a lot of things. Learning how to find out more came later.

If you were to write something besides speculative fiction, what would you write?

When I sat down to write my first novel, I couldnt decide between writing a science fiction novel and writing a crime/mystery novel, la Gregory Mcdonald (Fletch) and Carl Hiaasen. So I flipped a coin, and it came up heads, which was the side I chose for science fiction. I frequently wonder what my life would be like now if it had landed on tails. The good news (for me, anyway) is that I like my life and the people in it. And anyway, I write science fiction crime novels now my Lock In series so I get to have my literary cake and eat it too.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didnt? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

When I was a teenager, friends swore I would identify with Holden Caulfield, so I read The Catcher in the Rye and was furious my so-called friends thought I had anything in common with that entitled jerk. And I absolutely remember the last book I put down without finishing; it was last week. I frequently put down books Im not enjoying. Life is short and there are many other books. I dont publicly say which books they are; thats rude and someone else may love that same book.

Youre organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

See above, regarding the writers I admire. With that said, I am sorely sad I did not meet and converse with Molly Ivins, Roger Ebert and Nora Ephron when they were alive. I imagine a dinner party with all three at their respective heights would be delightful in every sense of the word.

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The Science Fiction Writer John Scalzi Readily Quits Reading - The New York Times

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The NCAA isnot impressed with the Department of Educations new rules to better protect students from sexual harassment and assault under Title IX. Apparently, the organization is not convinced that limiting the number of mandatory reporters will magically make student athletes safer from sexual violence. And if the billion dollar non-profit that hoovers up cash selling athletes images while excommunicating them if they accept a free pair of sneakers is recoiling in horror, chances are the DOEs new rule is pretty bad.

As ESPNs Paula Lavigne notes, the changes finalized last week relieve coaches and athletic staff of the pesky obligation to report allegations of sexual abuse or assault the schools Title IX coordinator. Last year the Department fined Michigan State $4.5 million for systemic failure to address horrific abuse of gymnasts by Dr. Larry Nassar, and yet the new regulations seem to have been designed to create more people who can look the other way with impunity.

But Secretary DeVos has a perfectly good explanation for a rule that would have allowed Jim Jordan to (allegedly) chortle about wrestlers being molested by the Ohio State Universitys team doctor with no obligation to do anything about it, and it is AUTONOMY.

Every situation is unique, and individuals react to sexual harassment differently. Therefore, the Final Rule gives complainants control over the school-level response best meeting their needs. It respects complainants wishes and autonomy by giving them the clear choice to file a formal complaint, separate from the right to supportive measures. The Final Rule also provides a fair and impartial grievance process for complainants, and protects complainants from being coerced or threatened into participating in a grievance process.

Perish the thought that an athlete whose scholarship and athletic career are dependent on staying in the good graces of the coaching staff be coerced or threatened into participating in the grievance process by mandatory reporting requirements!

The new regs only impose the reporting obligation on staff who have authority to institute corrective measures, a power which schools can optionally confer on athletic staff. Clearly the Departments curriculum includes fantasy novels where organizations voluntarily increase the pool of staff members who can incur millions of dollars in federal fines and civil damages. Nevertheless, NCAA rules will still impose a reporting requirement on all collegiate athletic staff.

The campuses will retain the responsible employee mandatory reporter standard that they have because thats the better practice, W. Scott Lewis, co-founder of the Association of Title IX Administrators told ESPN.

The department is not under an obligation to conform these final regulations with NCAA compliance guidelines and declines to do so, sniffed the Department in its response. And then it went back to discussing a plan to protect students from sexual assault by passing out millions of copies of Atlas Shrugged, useful as a weapon to fend off an attackerand a paean to the vaunted autonomy Secretary DeVos values above all else.

New Title IX regulations change how colleges must respond to sexual misconduct complaints [ESPN] New Title IX regulations no longer require coaches to report sexual misconduct [Yahoo]

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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Betsy DeVos Prevents Future Larry Nassars By Nixing Obligation To Report Sexual Assault - Above the Law