Monthly Archives: June 2007

Monsters

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That’s plural. I called Clarence Thomas a monster the other day for his recent death penalty opinion — in which he was to the right of even this right-wing court — but these two paragraphs from a recent post at Hullabaloo capture the essence of the problem. Digby is responding to an essay by Egil Krogh (convicted Nixon dirty-trickster) in the NT Times today:

I remember after the 2000 election debacle, a rather exasperated acquaintance explained to me that Americans respect winners and it didn’t matter how Bush took office, all that mattered was that he did. Even at my advanced age I was a bit shocked by such cynicism. But as I watched the way the media and the political establishment treated Bush, I had to admit that, at least as far as the leadership class of America was concerned, he was right. But it was even worse than what he said. There was a distinct undercurrent of special respect for the fact that Bush had not only won, but that he’d done it in such a way that everybody knew he’d manipulated the system and there was nothing they could do about it. That audaciousness made people bow down. On some level he wanted people to know he cheated and he wanted them to recognize that he got away with it. That’s real power.

Of course Krogh is right about the administration. (In fairness, there are a few examples of people whose personal integrity forced them to resign, but precious few, and certainly none in the highest positions that could have made a difference at the time.) But this is a bigger problem than just this administration. It is a defining characteristic of our entire political culture. We are in an era of ruthless power politics — institutions arrayed against institutions, levers of influence and action set against each other in a battle for supremacy. Those who have the superior ability to dominate and manipulate those institutions are able to advance their goals and agenda. The Republicans have been far better at this than Democrats.

That last sentence is true about the relative guile of the two political parties in the American system, but there is something deeper that wants a more profound analysis. I tend to see the issues in moral & existential terms that focus on decency & responsibility, though I think it is impossible to understand what’s going on without recourse to the radical sociology of writers like Foucault & Bourdieu, who have mapped the public patterns of power & their effect on the individual soul. I grew up amid the soul-killing deformities of right-wing American Protestantism & was saved from madness by Albert Camus — The Stranger & The Rebel remain central to the way I see the world & in that view party politics is negligible except as parochial example. What I see & hear when I read the Times or listen to NPR — both relatively “reliable” sources of information if you know how to read & listen — is the tidal play of power. And power only works if it is felt & understood even as it conceals itself as the natural order of the world. So I remain marginally willing to participate in party politics despite the fact that such politics are inevitably diseased & debased. We live in a fallen world. (I grew up among Christians.) What seems essential, looking at the state of the world at this moment, is to discriminate among the various psychological responses to the Fall.

Later: Just ran across this anecdote via Talking Points Memo. Colin Powell, in a recent speech, is recalling his & GWB’s first meeting with Russian president Putin:

As Powell recalled it after the meeting he and Bush were reviewing events and comparing notes and seemingly they disagreed.  At one point Bush looked at his Secretary of State and said (with a suitable Texas twang) “Powell, I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw his soul” to which Powell replied: “Mr. President, I looked into President Putin’s eyes and I saw the KGB”

I am not a particular admirer of Powell’s. His speech asserting the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” at the UN leading up to the elective invasion of Iraq for partisan, narrowly ideological, & psychological purposes pretty much eliminates General Powell as a reliable moral witness. His anecdote as reported is self-serving & reveals a shallow comprehension of power. What I find fascinating is that Powell does not see the implication of his own story: When George Bush looked into Putin’s eyes he saw the same thing as the good General. He saw the KGB too. And he admired it. He identified with it. The two men saw eye to eye, one might say. They understood each other. Powell is naive: he understands neither Putin, Bush, nor himself.

Repotting

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Two bonsai pots I’d ordered from Bonsai by the Monastery came yesterday. Two of my favorite trees needed repotting — a juniper created out of nursery stock a couple of years ago & a rosemary I bought as a little herb planting about five years ago. The rosemary is the bonsai I’ve had the longest & I could tell it was root-bound even before I pulled it out of its previous pot. Technically, I should write tray rather than pot — English-speaking bonsai purists do not put their trees in mere pots, but in trays (though I notice that the link below, from Japan, uses pots to translate choukaku, explaining that it means “rectangle.” There is some logic in English to support the distinction between pot & tray, because most (but not all) bonsai containers are relatively shallow, much wider than they are deep. Both my new trays are very nice gray stoneware, neither very expensive. I paid $60 for the pair. At the other end of the price spectrum, you can pay $400 for a Tokoname container: they come from a traditional kiln in Japan & are signed by the artist. If I had a very valuable bonsai, I’d want it in a Tokoname pot, er, tray. But my bonsai are mostly small & common, so I’m happy with the mass-produced stoneware. They’re durable and have very pretty proportions.

The rosemary needed fairly immediate action, so yesterday morning I pried it out of its old container, into which I put a ficus religiosa I bought last year, already a mature, but small, tree that had been underpotted for effect by the seller. (Some people apparently think that the point of bonsai is toput the largest possible tree in the smallest possible container.) The rosemary was indeed rootbound, so I fluffed out the roots, loosened the rootball, clipped off dangling roots, prepared the new container with a layers of soil (added a bit of slow-release fertilizer), then wired the rosemary into position & filled in around the roots with more soil, tamped it down & gave it a good watering. You can buy bonsai soil from Japan and from specialty shops in the US, but I make my own by mixing store-bought potting soil half & half with local sand & small gravel that I screen myself. Seems to work pretty well. After only a few hours in its new tray, the rosemary looked brighter, with deeper green needles & a generally more contented look.

I was also more contented. I find that working with my trees gives me more pleasure & is the most meditative thing I do. More than reading or writing poetry, more than regular gardening, certainly more than working on the house, which I do purely out of the instrumental desire to have a room finished & comfortable. Bonsai is a bit like poetry in that there is no real purpose to it beyond the doing of it. (And yes I’d probably argue with that statement if I came across it in an essay on poetry!) With bonsai, one uses simple tools within a circumscribed technical and aesthetic universe in order to present the trees to their best advantage, which in my practice is to show off their “treeness.” This is a pretty common aesthetic in the West, whereas Japanese enthusiasts tend to go for more radical presentation, often foregrounding one particular aspect or quality of a tree. Here is a picture of the repotted rosemary:

Rosemary

Monster

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I would just like to state publicly & for the record that Justice Clarence Thomas is a monster. Those who joined in this opinion are, I guess, sub-monsters of a sub-human consciousness. A reminder, if any were needed, of the moral bankruptcy of American Conservatism, so-called. And the logic of the death penalty, which requires limiting appealsin the name of expeditious punishment for a fifteen year old crime.  Thomas has more in common with Ann Coulter & radical right-wing talk radio than with any notion of justice. The defining feature of American conservatism is a particularly nasty combination of self-righteousness & cowardice. To even raise the issue of compassion would be so naive as to mark oneself an idiot. The American Right loves pain, torture & death.

Terriers

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Terriers are merciless. We have three Jack Russells, one now going on thirteen years old, & the two younger dogs, after they have wolfed their dinners, try to push her off her bowl. When the succeed, the spill the bowl & then there is a snarling free-for-all. Almost never any blood, just grade-schoolers fighting by windmilling their arms. The old one eats more slowly because she’s lost a few teeth, but she still snaps at the young dogs. Still, I have taken to standing over them with a spray bottle & giving the youngsters a squirt when they get too pushy. JRTs are pretty fearless, but they do not like being squirted in the face with a bit of water. Lovely dogs — playful, loving, funny, tough — but merciless. You wouldn’t want to live in a country ruled by JRTs. It would be a lot of fun & hijinks, but no place to get old. Fortunately for the old girl Penny, I am here to enforce a little morality. Penny, by the way, would do the same thing the young dogs do to her if the roles were reversed. There may be a moral here somewhere, but this is not a beast fable, let alone a parable, both degenerate literary forms.