The Little Red Blog

Standing Athwart History Yelling, "Turn Right!" (2)

Part Two: In Their Hearts, They Know They’re Right

“It is an objective fact that we are in the middle of the largest moral and societal crisis we have had maybe in the country’s history.” (Newt Gingrich, “Contract with America” speech, 1994)

“The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.” (Blaise Pascal)

To be opposed to modernity is to be opposed to the Enlightenment and to its privileging of Reason over Faith, Authority, and Tradition. The philosophes’ claims of Reason were challenged from the outset—by Burke, by de Maistre, by Bonald, by Kierkegaard, by Nietzsche, by Dostoevsky, and, for that matter, by Marx, who insisted that History was set on a predetermined course and that Reason had no business getting in its way. The Irrationalists offered a variety of responses to Reason’s claims; those responses were in turn picked up by American conservatives and traditionalists, culminating in the slogan attached to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Like the Southern Agrarians before them, the Goldwaterites were taking their stand on sentiment and intuition.

People on the New Right are not stupid. The problem is, they feel belittled, marginalized, and misunderestimated [sic], which makes them defensive, and a defensive posture is not conducive to civil dialogue. When one is under attack, instinctive action and unquestioned loyalty are what the situation demands; and “the situation,” as the New Right understands it, is not politics as usual but ideological warfare, which means that liberals are not just partisan opponents but enemies. Those distinctions—politics vs. warfare and opponents vs. enemies—are key to understanding the New American Right.

Despite Goldwater’s electoral thrashing in 1964, his followers persevered until, in 1980, the avuncular Ronald Reagan finally brought the New Right out of the shadows and into the Oval Office. Reaganism had its day, but it was Newt Gingrich, in 1994, who defined the New American Right’s ideology and temperament and who clarified its ambitions. Prior to running for office, Gingrich had been an academic specializing in military history; entering politics, he took Clausewitz’s famous maxim, “War is politics by other means,” and reversed it to claim that “Politics is war by other means.” That shift was fundamental; for Republicans, it transformed American politics from “the art of the possible” into a struggle between Children of Light and Children of Darkness. 

The New American Right, says Shadia Drury, is fueled by a Manichaean worldview. It sees the nation “as overrun by the forces of evil (now called liberalism); it regards its political opponents as the incarnation of cosmic evil.” ¹ As Drury explains, “When political opponents are demonized, politicians are tempted to overstep the boundaries of law. When domestic politics is turned into a contest between the forces of good and the forces of evil, when political opponents are regarded as the enemies of civilization, the results are dishonest political tactics, corruption, and conflict.”

In Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” he flatly stated that ‘What is ultimately at stake is literally the future of American civilization as it has existed for the last several hundred years.’ The issue, he said, is ‘whether or not our civilization will survive’. That is a lot to put on the line in a mid-term election. The New American Right, though, goes a step further: not only do liberals imperil Western civilization, but they do so deliberately. Liberals, you see, individually and collectively, are consumed with hate, and the hate provokes them to anger and rage, which they express by mail-in voting and by following public health guidelines during a pandemic. Liberals hate America, according to the New Right, and they want to destroy it. Liberals hate families; they hate religion; they hate the military; they hate prosperity (except for themselves); and, because they are so filled with hate, they encourage anarchy while simultaneously trying to control everything you do, say, think, wear, eat, watch, read (not Dr. Seuss!), and listen to. Oh, and they also want to determine who lives and who dies.

With so much at stake, and facing such monstrous enemies, the New Right cannot afford to be reasonable.² In the modern liberal conception, “Politics is supposed to be a triumph over war. It is supposed to replace the violence and chaos of war by a rule-regulated contest for power.” The New Right, however, feels justified in using any means necessary to defeat its enemies.³ In the Gingrich model of politics as war, you take no prisoners, and you accept nothing short of unconditional surrender. You demonize your political enemies to motivate your base, but also because your enemies are demonic; they are evil and they want to destroy everything you hold dear.

Those on the New Right have an expansive view of who their enemies are, as Shadia Drury notes:

Neoconservatives blame most of the ills of our society on the liberal intellectuals. The latter are part of what Irving Kristol calls the ‘new class,’ which is to say, a new ruling class that includes journalists, educators, city planners, government bureaucrats, as well as scientists, doctors, and lawyers who work in the public sector. As Christopher Lasch points out, the preoccupation with the ‘new class’ is a hangover from Marxist habits of thought that allows neoconservatives to attack the ‘elite’ without attacking big business. Kristol regards the intellectuals as the most poisonous component of this liberal elite. The intellectuals have turned against bourgeois culture because it is too prosaic, too domestic, too ordinary, and too boring for their liking. The virtues of honesty, hard work, and thrift do not interest them. The aspirations of ordinary people for a better living do not capture their fancy. The intellectuals are bent not only on the destruction of bourgeois civilization, but on the destruction of all restraint, morality, and decency. The nihilism of the elite is boundless, and it threatens Western civilization. The nihilistic culture of the intellectuals has infected the popular culture. Robbed of its soul by the nihilism of the adversarial culture, the bourgeois order is sick. This explains rampant crime, pornography, and promiscuity.

Thanks to the pointy-headed intellectuals, ivory tower academics, effete snobs, and people who have never had to work for a living, America suffers widespread social rot: thanks, Obama! To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, “What this country needs is a good enema.” What we got, courtesy of the New American Right, was Donald Trump.

___________________________

¹ In fairness, liberals are also guilty, if less so, of using Manichaean language, e.g., Joe Biden’s cringeworthy “battle for the soul of America”. It was just an election, Joe; get over yourself.

² Barry Goldwater, 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The odds are good that those lines were written by Karl Hess, but I am too lazy to look it up.

³ No one expresses this aspect of the New Right better than Michael Anton, with his perpetual “Flight 93 Election” in which America itself is at risk: liberals (Hillary Clinton) cannot be allowed control of the plane (the government), lest they fly it (and us) straight to Venezuela and, after refueling there with communist gasoline, straight on to Hell. To avert this, we must heroically charge the cockpit (i.e., win the presidency); If, as a result, some doofus “reality TV” star takes control and crashes the plane, so be it. At least we won’t die in Venezuela.

On Standing Athwart History Yelling, "Turn Right!"

{In which, with the help of a 1999 book about Leo Strauss, I consider at some length the origins and nature of the New American Right ^© .}

Part One: The Ghosts of Weimar

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so…” (William F. Buckley Jr.)

Back in 1999, Shadia Drury, now Professor Emerita at Calgary University, wrote a book titled Leo Strauss and the American Right. Her interest was in tracing the roots of Strauss’s ideology and in linking it to the “neoconservative” movement; several of the intellectual leaders of that movement had studied under Strauss and considered him their mentor. Drury had written about Strauss several years earlier; she was clearly preoccupied with his influence on American politics.

My own interest in Leo Strauss is minimal, but I still find Drury’s book instructive and, perhaps, more relevant than ever. Like Drury, I do not believe that America today has a “conservative” movement; the Republican Party has been wholly captured by what I call the New American Right. The 1960s famously saw the rise (and immediate fall) of an American “New Left”; the 1990s, I contend, witnessed the rise of our New Right, which has since displaced old-fashioned conservatism. Without getting too much into the Straussian weeds, then, I want to use Shadia Drury’s observations from two decades ago to help understand the Trump Republicans and the hold they now have on the GOP.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Begin with this: “The American Right feels as if it is being held hostage by liberal society.” More precisely, it feels beset and besieged by the liberal “elite,” which does not represent most Americans but has somehow seized control of American culture and, from time to time, American politics. Liberal rule, for this reason and for others, as we will see, is considered illegitimate by definition; it constitutes a usurpation of the sovereignty of the “real” Americans who mostly live south of the Mason-Dixon line and in certain “flyover states” in the Midwest. If the Right is being held hostage, then legislative proposals by liberals are in essence ransom demands and negotiating with Democrats is like negotiating with hostage-takers over the size of the ransom.

To be a “hostage” is also to be a “victim,” and the New American Right bristles with accusations of being victimized by almost everything and almost everyone: by the media, academia, Big Tech, Big Science, the Deep State, RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), Hollywood, activist judges, Social Justice Warriors, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League—it is all but impossible to keep track of those who conspire against the New Right and its leaders.

We will return to this siege mentality and to the paranoia it produces, but we should first note the wider contours and characteristics of the New American Right. The movement is marked, as Drury explains, by certain “distinctive qualities: its sense of crisis, its aversion to liberalism, its rejection of pluralism, its dread of nihilism, its insistence on nationalism, its populism, its dualism, its religiosity, and more.” The “sense of crisis” is in part the result of American conservatives adopting older, European rhetoric, forged in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries by the likes of Burke and de Maistre and deployed in the wake of violent revolutions (the French revolution in particular). The constant use of such rhetoric, shorn of its original context, persuaded the American Right that revolution was always on the horizon and that every liberal was a budding Jacobin in disguise.

The flawed logic of the Right was (and is), “We are against revolution; liberals are against us; therefore, liberals are in favor of, and constantly agitating for, revolution.” The fact that liberals, for the most part, neither advocate revolutions nor condone their excesses—in reality, liberals are scoffed at by revolutionaries and are often among the first to be targeted by the Left—does not deter those on the New Right from equating, say, Hubert Humphrey with Robespierre, or Bernie Sanders with Hugo Chavez, or, for that matter, Hugo Chavez with Caesar Chavez.

There is, as I said, nothing “conservative” about the New American Right; it is, in the words of Shadia Drury, “radical and reactionary,” espousing policies that would lead to “the radical reversal of the American liberal tradition” (e.g., the dismantling of FDR’s “New Deal,” privatizing Social Security, the repeal of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the rollback of environmental regulations, etc.). “Instead of providing an atmosphere of stability and sobriety,” as classical conservatives sought to do, the New Right proudly “destabilizes American politics”; where classical conservatives counseled caution and moderation, the New Right “is eager for radical change; it bristles with a sense of urgency and crisis that is the hallmark of radicalism.” ¹ To be blunt, many on the contemporary New Right are openly spoiling for a fight.

Drury traced the intellectual origins of the New Right primarily to Leo Strauss and his followers (Irving Kristol and Allan Bloom especially), all of whom believed that “Modernity has given birth to two dangerous doctrines—nihilism and technological mastery—and, taken together, they are a lethal combination.” The New American Right has no objection to technology—in fact, it embraces the notion that man should master, dominate, and exploit nature—but it demands that its use be guided by traditional values; in other words, we can use technology to extract fossil fuels but not to “reassign” gender. 

Nihilism, though, is the specter which keeps New Right intellectuals awake at night, and liberalism is but a euphemism for nihilism: “A view of the world as a formless chaos in which God and all his moral restraints are absent. Nihilism may be passive and resign itself to the meaningless chaos of the world; but it is more likely to be active and resolve to impose order and meaning on the void.” This explains how liberals can promote anarchy, chaos, and destruction while simultaneously seeking to micromanage and control every aspect of existence.

It is important not to underestimate the depth or the intensity of the New Right’s objections to liberalism, objections lodged not against specific policies or personalities but against liberalism tout court. Liberalism is nothing short of an existential threat; it is a suicide note for Western civilization, as right-wing author (and ex-Communist) James Burnham noted decades ago (The Suicide of the West). According to such New Right spokespersons as Ann Coulter, the late Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Trump Jr., liberals are "sick" (mentally and morally) and liberalism is a “disease”; or perhaps it is a symptom of the wasting disease called “modernity”; but, in either case, liberals and liberalism can no more be reasoned with than could the bubonic plague.

The New American Right catechism declares that nihilism was introduced into society via relativism, which itself was smuggled in via the Trojan horse of “tolerance”. Relativism, say its opponents, follows inescapably from pluralism and diversity, both of which the Left encourages, promotes, and all but worships. Shadia Drury explains the danger in all this: “Leo Strauss saw liberal society as devoid of any authoritative truth. He saw it as a world in which all opinions, all preferences, and all religions were of equal worth. He felt that this creates a vacuum at the heart of liberal society; as the vacuum grows, the struggle to fill it intensifies, and the desire to have it filled becomes irresistible. Under such circumstances, the most single-minded, ruthless, and daring are bound to emerge victorious.” Thus, diversity leads to tyranny, or so the New Right believes, citing “political correctness” and “cancel culture” as evidence. ²  

In New Right analyses, “active nihilism” is at the heart of all totalitarian systems: Communism, Fascism, and, according to the New Right, modern liberalism, which is totalitarian in intent if not yet in practice. Liberals are therefore widely conflated with Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. ³ Paradoxically, right-wing thinkers and pundits also compare liberal America to Weimar Germany: i.e., a culturally decadent, economically unstable, and politically vulnerable regime whose logical outcome could only be tyranny. The New Right claims that, like the Weimar leadership, American liberalism has never truly commanded the allegiance of a national majority; instead, it has used fraud, duplicity, divisiveness, and propaganda to gain and to retain power. Worse, even when it has failed to prevail politically, it has managed to commandeer the culture, resulting in a ubiquitous “soft tyranny” in some ways worse than the more heavy-handed variety. Regardless of which political party controls the government, and despite their supposed numerical majority, right-wing Americans feel marginalized by what they perceive as hostile cultural “elites” who openly mock their old-fashioned values.

__________  

¹ For those who ask, reasonably enough, who I have in mind when I refer to “classical conservatives,” the first names that come to mind are Michael Oakeshott and Russell Kirk. 

² Both “political correctness” and “cancel culture” are myths invented by the New Right, which is not to deny that the Left is guilty of intolerance at times.   

³ Jonah Goldberg (Liberal Fascism) has taken this tack. It used to be commonplace to accuse liberals of being Communists, but once the Soviet Union disintegrated, that no longer seemed an effective line of attack; so “liberal fascism” was the new Red Scare. It is puzzling: are liberals Fascists, Communists, anarchists, Weimar ghosts, or all of the above?   

Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) made much of liberalism’s Weimar connections. Shadia Drury relates how Bloom ingeniously “uncovered reflections of Weimar in American popular culture. For example, Louis Armstrong’s ‘Mack the Knife’ is a translation of ‘Mackie Messer’ from ‘The Threepenny Opera,’ a ‘monument of Weimar Republic popular culture’. And the all-American expression ‘stay loose’ is really a translation of Heidegger’s ‘Gelassenheit’. More than anything else, America’s nihilism is a German import. Max Weber brought it to America in the innocuous form of value-free social science, and Woody Allen Americanized it by giving us nihilism without European angst. Bloom’s book is full of dark premonitions about America that reveal the extent to which he inherited the ghosts of Weimar that haunted Strauss.”

In other words, Bob Darin’s popular adaptation of “Mack the Knife” was an insidious attempt to pave the way for an American fuhrer: “Could it be our boy’s done something rash?”  

Sunday Sermon: Becoming Gods

"We are becoming gods, but not yet." (Archimandrite George)

Archimandrite George (1997):

Moral perfection is not enough for man. It is not enough for us simply to become better than before, simply to perform moral deeds. We have as our final aim to unite with holy God Himself. This is the purpose of the creation of the universe. This is what we desire. This is our joy, our happiness, and our fulfillment. The psyche of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God, yearns for God and desires union with Him. No matter how moral, how good man may be, no matter how many good deeds he may perform, if he does not find God, if he does not unite with Him, he finds no rest. For holy God placed within him this holy thirst, the divine eros, the desire for union with Him, for Theosis, so he has in himself the erotic power, which he receives from his Creator, in order to love truly, strongly, selflessly, just as his holy Creator falls in love with His world, with His creatures. This is so that with this holy erotic impetus and loving power, he falls in love with God. If man did not have the image of God in himself, he would not be able to seek its prototype. Each of us is an image of God, and God is our prototype. The image seeks the prototype, and only when it finds it does it find rest.

So long as man lives egocentrically, anthropocentrically, autonomously, he places himself at the center and purpose of his own life. He believes that he can be perfected by his own efforts; defined by his own efforts; deified by his own efforts. This is the spirit of contemporary civilization, contemporary philosophy, contemporary politics: to create an even better world, even more just, but to do this autonomously, by oneself; to create a world which will have man at its center with no reference to God; with no acknowledgement that God is the source of all good. This is the fault that Adam committed, believing that, with only his own powers, he could become God, could complete himself. The fault of Adam is one that all humanistic creeds make throughout all the ages. They do not consider that communion with God is indispensable for the completion of man. Everything Orthodox is theanthropically centerd; its center is the God-Man Christ.

Self-sufficient humanism is a socio-philosophical system which is separated from and made independent of God. It leads contemporary man to a civilization based on selfishness, and this has brought modern humanity to an impasse. As long as we are closed within ourselves –within our ego– we are individuals but not persons. Once we exit from our closed individual existence and begin, in agreement with this guidance based on Theosis, with the Grace of God, but also with our own cooperation – to love, to offer ourselves all the more to Him and to our neighbor, we become true persons. This is to say that when our ego encounters the Thou of God, and the “you” of our brother, then we begin to find our lost self.

http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis-english.pdf 

Saturday Lecture: What Hath Ford Wrought?

“The problem of production has been brilliantly solved, but we focus too much on what we do and don't think enough about why we do it. Our whole system of competition, all our creative effort, all the play of our faculties seems to be directed solely towards material production and to the wealth that is the result of it.” (Henry Ford)

“Man, who was once a living member of the body of Nature, bound by the most subtle and profound links to all the other members of Nature, has lost touch with natural things; but Henry Ford has given him a car to admire nature between 5 and 7 p.m. Really, then, he lacks nothing.” (Denis de Rougemont)

Denis de Rougemont, from “The Danger of Ford” (1928):

I take Henry Ford as a symbol of the modern world; no one has come closer than he to the ideal type of industrialist and capitalist. His unprecedented success protects him from all attacks; the organization of his factories, along with the wages and the working conditions that he offers his workers, seems to provide a definitive solution to the problems of overwork and impoverishment. This is an outcome that we must not underestimate--European Socialists have not achieved this. On the contrary, Ford solved the social question in a way that should not displease left-wing doctrinaires, who have a habit of promising their constituents a complete reorganization of the world as the only way to prevent the abuses of capitalists.  By suppressing the financial slavery of the worker, however, Ford removed the main avowed cause of class struggle, demonstrating that there is still some chance of peacefully resolving the conflict of capital and labor.

First, Henry Ford conceived this extravagant myth of the happiness of humanity through the possession of Ford automobiles; then, being intelligent, he designed the most rational system of production, enabling him to produce huge amounts of cars. However, to continue producing, one must sell; in the interest of production, consumption must be created. Advertising then takes charge; by the simple process of repetition, people are led to believe that they can no longer live happily without a car. ¹

Vicious circle: the more production increases, the more needs and leisure needs must be created. Industry can only survive by progressing, but human nature has limits and the time is approaching when they will be reached. The great mistake of the modern bourgeoisie is to believe that the status quo will last forever. They reject the possibility of catastrophe for fear of being forced to revise their values and to acknowledge the Spirit and its demands. But the "nothing new under the sun" behind which they wearily take refuge is the sign of complicity with a status quo fatal for the Spirit.

If the Spirit abandons us, it is because we first abandoned it, for an adventure we thought was free of risk. We sought happiness in material development, believing that, even if it failed, we retained all other options. To be clear, material progress is not bad in itself. But the importance it has taken in our lives diverts civilization from its true purpose: to clear a path for the Spirit and to guide people there. By diverting a large part of human energies from what is essential, material progress works against the Spirit.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. We pay for our passion to possess the material at the price of the only worthy possession, the knowledge of the Spirit.

____________________

Le péril Ford (février 1928) – Foi et Vie — Rougemont 2.0 (unige.ch)

¹ It was not just advertising that created the automobile age, of course. The lure of mobility was all but irresistible on its own; a car owner acquired a sense of control over his own destiny, even if such ownership tied him down to wage labor and monthly payments. Other factors also tilted the scales in favor of cars and drivers: decisions about urban design and public transit, government investment in building and maintaining roads, and the subsidization of suburbia, all facilitated and encouraged the trend. Moreover, American foreign policy—our kinder, gentler imperialism—helped secure vital resources (e.g., oil and rubber) for car culture.

When you consider his influence, not just on the automobile industry (with its numerous unintended consequences) but on labor-management relations and on America’s nascent, debt-driven consumer culture, as well as his role in stoking anti-Semitism (e.g., peddling the Russian-forged pamphlet, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion): it is entirely possible that Henry Ford was the most consequential American of the twentieth century. 

{NB: I have taken more liberties with Denis de Rougemont's text than is my usual practice. He wrote almost exclusively in French; not being fluent in French, I can access his work only in English translations. Alas, the available translations are sometimes atrocious; even without knowing French, I can recognize inept English translations when I encounter them. I have therefore heavily revised this essay to read more smoothly. I have also provided a link to the translation from which I worked. Any inaccuracies, infidelities, infelicities, or indignities in rendering de Rougemont's prose are entirely my responsibility.}

Lights, Camera, Libel!

{Being my third and final look at the life, times, and legacy of Grigory Rasputin.}

It should come as no surprise that Rasputin, a man whose life was filled (allegedly) with sex, violence, and palace intrigue, found his way not just from Siberia to Moscow but all the way to Hollywood—not in person, alas, but through the narrative of his life and through his larger-than-life reputation. As a result, the motion picture industry learned a valuable lesson in how to avoid charges of libel.

In 1932, having acquired film rights to Alfred Klabund’s 1927 novel Rasputin, MGM Studios signed the three Barrymores—John, Ethel, and Lionel—to star in a film titled Rasputin and the Empress. Lionel Barrymore would play Rasputin, John would play the role of his assassin, and Ethel, of course, in her first appearance in a “talking” motion picture, would play Tsarina Alexandra. Though the plot utilized the confessional memoirs of Prince Felix Yusupov, the man who claimed to have planned and executed the murder of Rasputin, the filmmakers took numerous liberties with the known facts. Most egregiously, the movie portrays Yusupov’s wife, Irina (renamed “Princess Natasha” on screen) as having met Rasputin and having been either seduced or raped by him, none of which had happened in real life. Outraged, the Yusupovs sued MGM for libel.

The ensuing trial took place in 1934, as explained here by Rod Hollier:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Limited produced a film in which a man named Rasputin brought about the destruction of Russia but was subsequently murdered by Prince Chegodieff and others. In the film, a combination of both fiction and real-life facts, Princess Natasha had sexual relations with Prince Chegodieff, one the murderers of Rasputin, but was also raped by Rasputin. In real life, Princess Irina Youssoupoff was married to Prince Youssoupoff, the man who assisted in the murder of Rasputin. The imputation is that Princess Irina Youssoupoff was raped by Rasputin. 

The jury found in favor of Youssoupoff.

The judge concurred. According to Hollier, “Lord Justice Slesser stated: ‘Not only is a matter defamatory if it brings the plaintiff into hatred, ridicule, or contempt, by reason of some moral discredit on her part, but also if it tends to make the plaintiff shunned or avoided and without any moral discredit or her behalf. One may, I think, take judicial notice of the fact that a lady of whom it has been said that she has been ravished, albeit against her will, has suffered in social reputation and opportunities of receiving respectful consideration of the world. I, for myself, cannot see that from the plaintiff's point of view it matters in the least whether this libel suggests that she has been seduced or ravished. The question whether she is or is not the more or the less moral seems to me immaterial in considering this question whether she has been defamed.’”

Back then, a woman’s reputation was still worth something; damages awarded to Princess Irina amounted to, in today’s dollars, over $25 million.

The Yusupov lawsuit did not lead to greater accuracy in Hollywood storytelling, but to the inclusion of a boilerplate “all persons fictitious” disclaimer that now accompanies all movies: something along the lines of “The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. Any resemblance of film characters to actual persons (living or deceased) is coincidental. No identification of characters with actual persons (living or deceased) is intended or should be inferred.” That disclaimer, however worded, does not serve as a “get out of libel free” card, but it does make it harder for lawsuits against filmmakers and studios to succeed.

Despite the inauspicious precedent and lasting effects of Rasputin and the Empress, Hollywood took another shot (so to speak) at Rasputin in 1966 with Hammer Films’ Rasputin the Mad Monk, starring the incomparable Christopher Lee as Rasputin. The movie focused on “Rasputin's terrifying powers both to work magic and to seduce women,” elements which cinema audiences do seem to enjoy. The writers disguised the various supporting characters sufficiently that no lawsuits were filed, and no reputations were impugned—except, of course, Rasputin’s.  

The cinematic lure of Rasputin persists. ¹ In 1996, Alan Rickman and Greta Scacchi starred in a TV movie, Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny. The two lead actors, and the show itself, won several awards (Emmys and Golden Globes); Sir Ian McKellen, in the role of Nicholas II, was praised for his performance as well. In 2014, Russian filmmakers produced an eight-part TV miniseries, Rasputin, with a narrative structured around the Russian government's investigation of Rasputin's murder. More recently, the 2019  Netflix mini-series The Last Czars re-told Nicholas and Alexandra's story in what one critic dubbed "a surreal Wikipedia entry brought to life". Rasputin was portrayed by Ben Cartwright, which no doubt came as a shock to loyal viewers of Bonanza (not to mention, to Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe).

No movies or TV shows have been made about the life of poor Khioniya Guseva.

________________________________________

¹ The Lure of Rasputin would be an excellent title for a book and/or movie!

Sources:

Rasputin and the Empress - Wikipedia

Rasputin the Mad Monk - Wikipedia

(1) Why All Films Have This Disclaimer - YouTube

Rod Hollier, Case Summary: Youssoupoff v Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Limited (1934) — The Law Project

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, both Rasputin and the Empress and Rasputin the Mad Monk can be watched in all their libelous glory: (1) rasputin the mad monk 1966 full movie - YouTube  

You can also find Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny on YouTube: (1) "Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny" - Complete 1996 TV-Movie - YouTube

The Last Czars is available on Netflix; the Russian-made Rasputin can be watched on Amazon Prime. 

 

From Pokrovskoye with Love

{As a sequel to yesterday’s “Killing the Antichrist,” I provide here some information on Rasputin’s Siberian hometown of Pokrovskoye.}

If you want to visit Rasputin’s hometown, you had best be able to tell one Pokrovskoye from another; there are (according to Wikipedia) forty towns in Russia bearing that name, albeit with some variations in spelling. Rasputin’s Pokrovskoye is in Siberia—specifically, Yarkovsky District, Tyumen Oblast—and, in Rasputin’s heyday (1912), it looked like this:

Its rustic rural charm, at least from a distance, was undeniable, despite which the population of Pokrovskoye has been declining for at least the past twenty-five years; it is now estimated at 1500 souls. The Siberian winters may be a factor in that inexorable decline.

Since his death, Rasputin has been a legend and a symbol of “old Russia”; since the fall of the Soviet Union, he has been a profitable “trade brand,” his image appearing on alcoholic beverages, tobacco, restaurants, night clubs, and more. “Books and songs are dedicated to him,” writes Natalya Lisovskaya. “Films are made about him.” Who gets the royalties from the use of Rasputin’s name or image?

The place to go for an answer to that would be the Rasputin Museum in Pokrovskoye, a private museum built in 1990. Getting there is child’s play:

The village of Pokrovskoye is located 80 kilometers from Tyumen on the road to Tobolsk. From Tyumen Bus Station, every half an hour, buses leave to Yarkovo, Vagay, or Tobolsk. They all stop at Pokrovskoye. The village has a hotel complex "Teply Stan". This is a modern complex up to the high European standards, which includes a mini-hotel, parking, cafe, and a grocery store.

The museum was built on (or near) the site of Rasputin’s family residence; it was designed to resemble it. Here are the before and after photographs:

A tour of the museum lasts about two hours, but Natalya Lisovskaya assures us it is “completely imperceptible,” which, I assume, is a good thing. According to another source, “In the museum you will see the exhibits used by Rasputin: a cracked mirror, an old forged chest, a spoon and a dish with the personal monogram of Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova, and the icon of Simeon Verkhoturye, before which Grigory prayed. All objects connected with Rasputin are said to possess mystical properties.” You will learn, if you did not know, that “Rasputin could stop Tsarevich Alexei's bleeding after he was diagnosed with hemophilia,” which is how he gained favor with the Romanov family. To this day, no one can explain Rasputin’s medical prowess: “A secret supply of pills,” perhaps? “Apple jelly? Will power?” ¹

You should not pass up the opportunity to sit in Rasputin’s famous Viennese chair, which will restore your strength on one condition: “One must think neither about money, nor about a career, but about Rasputin. They say it works. The governor of the Tyumen Region, Sergey Sobyanin, once sat on this chair and soon became the Mayor of Moscow.” ² 

In 2016, the centenary of Rasputin’s death, photo-journalist Amos Chapple traveled to Pokrovskoye and interviewed several locals, including one who claimed to be a direct descendant of Grigory Rasputin himself. The article that ensued is highly entertaining, as this excerpt should indicate:

Rasputin's repeated success where medical doctors failed [with Tsarevich Alexei] gained him the unwavering trust of the tsarina, Aleksandra, and Nicholas, the last tsar of Russia. But with his "barnyard" table manners and thirst for booze and sex, Rasputin's access to the royal family outraged Russian society. After Russia waded into World War I, the idea that Rasputin had influence over critical matters of state was further eroding the credibility of the ruling family in a country buffeted by near constant crises. Rasputin was putting the entire social order of Russia at risk. One way or another, he had to go.

Viktor Prolubshikov is open and conspiratorial as we smoke a cigarette at a corner of his old wooden table. "My great grandmother was Rasputin's maid," he says, slapping a palm against his fist to illustrate the illicit sex. "I think she sinned with him."

Locals in Pokrovskoye are split as to whether Viktor is a relative of Rasputin. At 67, Viktor is now decades older than Rasputin, who was 47 when he died. Viktor says he once had similar success with women but now has problems. "These days, the only thing rising is my blood pressure."

An older account was penned in 1995 for the Los Angeles Times by Dave Carpenter, not long after the Rasputin Museum was completed and opened to the public. Carpenter gives us a Pokrovskoye-eye view of its most famous citizen: “In the dusty Siberian village where he was born, Grigory Rasputin is still remembered fondly as one pretty great guy.” In fact, Carpenter reported, “Uncle Grigory” was a generous benefactor who helped his neighbors, gave gingerbread to children and got a bad rap from history, residents of Pokrovskoye say. “This image as an evil fool is not at all the way he was described to us,” said Raisa Zaborovets, a pensioner. “He may have been a strange person, but he was clever and he sympathized with the common people.”

“Quiet, kept to himself, and gave gingerbread to children”: let that be Rasputin’s epitaph?  

__________________

¹ I’m quoting, completely out of context, perhaps inaccurately, and for no good reason, from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which has absolutely nothing to do with Rasputin or with Russia. It's my blog and I'll digress if I want to.

² To be clear: your chair mileage will vary. We can't all be Mayor of Moscow.

Sources:

Visit the homeland of Rasputin in Pokrovskoye (itinari.com)

Excursion to the village of Pokrovskoye (visittyumen.ru)

Photographer's Notebook: Finding Rasputin (rferl.org)

Infamous Rasputin Revered as 'Uncle Grigory' in Home Town

Killing the Antichrist

{Today’s lesson in Russian history concerns the monk Rasputin, unofficial advisor to Tsarina Alexandra, and his near-death experience in 1914. I assume that readers have some familiarity with Rasputin and the basic narrative arc of his brief life (he died at age 47); if not, I have provided a Wikipedia link at the bottom of this post.}

“Death is near me. She’s crawling towards me like a whore.” (Grigory Rasputin)

Rasputin, as befits a man considered to be, if not the devil himself, a close associate of the Prince of Darkness, was notoriously difficult to kill. His assassination required the efforts of several men and involved (according to various reports) poisoning, shooting, drowning, beating, burning, and throwing down a well. The assassins should not have been surprised at the measures required; at least one previous attempt at eliminating Rasputin was known to have failed. In the wake of that attack, Rasputin had prophesied (as he was wont to do), “To the confusion of my enemies, I will live, and they will have nooses put around their necks."

The prophecy was not entirely right, but it was not entirely wrong either. Rasputin died in December 1916; within three months, Russia’s tsar had abdicated, with control of the country turned over to a hapless “provisional” government hamstrung both by its leaders’ fecklessness and by various soviets, some of them under Bolshevik control. When the Bolsheviks seized power in late 1917, the autocrats and members of the royal court who had been Rasputin’s enemies would either have nooses put around their necks or would be put up against the nearest wall and shot--the same fate that would have befallen Rasputin had he lived to see the Bolsheviks’ triumph.

If anyone could testify to the difficulty of killing Rasputin, it would have been Khioniya Guseva, the woman who, on the afternoon of July 19, 1914, viciously stabbed Rasputin in the abdomen as he was exiting the post office (some reports say he was leaving a church) in Pokrovskoye, his Siberian hometown. ¹ Rasputin was home on an informal sabbatical from St. Petersburg. Guseva, an unfortunately disfigured woman (her nose had been all but eaten away, possibly by syphilis) was a follower of the infamous Iliodor, another of Russia’s “mad monks” and, at one time, a friend of Rasputin. The two holy men, however, had quarreled; Iliodor subsequently denounced his counterpart, as he would continue to do with great enthusiasm even after Rasputin’s death. ²

“I have killed the Antichrist!” Guseva prematurely proclaimed that day in Pokrovskoye, as Rasputin staggered down the street attempting to hold in his entrails. Guseva ran after him; Rasputin grabbed a stick of some kind and hit her in the face with it, slowing her pursuit. She was then grabbed and restrained by villagers, who chanted “Kill her!” Fortunately for her, the local police arrived on the scene and took her into custody. Rasputin was placed in the care of the finest doctor in all Pokrovskoye—and, against all expectations and after several days in critical condition, he survived. Given the severity of the attack, Rasputin’s survival was deemed a miracle (as if the devil can perform miracles!); on the other hand, he was reportedly in great pain for the rest of his life, and some claimed that his behavior, hardly respectable to begin with, was subsequently “greatly altered” for the worse.

The police report of the incident listed Guseva as being thirty-three years old and “lacking a nose”. She was described as a “peasant woman” and also as a prostitute; she denied the latter charge, and she blamed her facial deformity on unspecified “medicines” she had been given as a child. She also denied that the monk Iliodor had encouraged her attack; her sole motivation, she said, was that Rasputin was “spreading temptation among the innocents.”  

Less than two weeks after Rasputin’s brush with death, Russia and Germany declared war on each other following the assassination of an Austrian duke (and his wife) by a Bosnian terrorist. The conflict was expected to be resolved quickly; instead, the Great War (World War I) lasted from August 1914 until November 11, 1918. Some twenty million people died in the war, half of them civilians. Rasputin did not live to see the end of the war (a war he had opposed); Guseva spent most of the war years in an asylum, from which she was released in 1917 after the revolution, by order of Alexander Kerensky, head of the provisional government. Guseva is said to have attempted an assassination of the Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon in 1919. The specifics of her fate, like those of her life, are unknown.

Valentin Pikul, author of “The Unclean Power,” has this to say about the failed assassin:

Hionia Guseva was forty-three years old. ‘Her face is badly disfigured by syphilitic ulcers, her nose has failed completely, her eyelids are covered with scabs’ - so wrote journalists about her. I feel very sorry for this poor woman. Guseva was a prostitute. She saw in Rasputin the main source of the evil that ruined her life. Not only that, Rasputin desecrated her daughters.³ Hionia Guseva, avenger for all women's troubles, for all the dishonor of the feminine kind: under a wide dress she hid a long knife.

Today, the Siberian town of Pokrovskoye is home to 1500 people. The last villager who had known Rasputin died in 1993. There is no record of Khioniya Guseva having lived in the town or of her having family there; she had been stalking Rasputin prior to July 1914 and her only reason for being in Pokrovskoye was to kill him. Accordingly, while the town now boasts an historical museum  dedicated to the life of its beloved “Uncle Grigory” (Rasputin), it has erected no monuments to Guseva; nor, to my knowledge, does one exist anywhere.

____________________________

¹ The actual date is uncertain; some have placed Guseva’s attack on June 29, others on July 13 or July 14. The confusion stems both from the unreliability of sources and from changes to the “old-style” Russian calendar.

² In his autobiography, Iliodor wrote, “Rasputin was the "Holy Devil" [who] represented darkness, corruption, [and] the source of the evils of Russia.” Iliodor was just getting started; he would have much more, and much worse, to say about Rasputin before he was through.

³ The source of that accusation is not provided, though it certainly matches Rasputin’s reputation: “He was worshiped by the common people and he seduced society women with his hypnotic gaze. But to his enemies, Rasputin was evil incarnate. His promiscuity was legendary, and St. Petersburg’s newspapers were bursting with letters from rape victims, crude cartoons, and articles rich with other scandalous allegations.” The claim that Rasputin “desecrated [Guseva’s] daughters” may not have been intended literally, but to suggest his generally scandalous behavior towards women.

Sources:

July, 19 in history – Russiapedia (rt.com)

Grigori Rasputin - Wikipedia

Khioniya Guseva - Wikipedia

Valentin Pikul, Действующие лица романа В.С.Пикуля "Нечистая сила". Г-К. (narod.ru)

Sunday Sermon: Whiter Shade of Pale

{Note: extensive research has proven that no one on the face of this earth, including the members of the band itself, has any idea how 'Procol Harum' got its name or what, if anything, it was supposed to mean. It was the Sixties, man; don't get all hung-up about making sense.}  

Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”:

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might have just as well have been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale Lyrics | Genius Lyrics

Listen here: PROCOL HARUM - A Whiter Shade Of Pale - promo film #2 (Official Video) - YouTube

Or this beautiful Annie Lenox cover: Annie Lennox - A Whiter Shade of Pale (Remastered) - YouTube

Saturday Lecture: Without Excuse

Jean-Paul Sartre, from "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (1946):

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. And this is what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us. But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists – that man is, before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self, nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more often than not – after we have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book or to marry – but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.

When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole.

If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man.

When we speak of “abandonment” we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to formulate a secular morality. [They say] these moral values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven--although, of course, there is no God. In other words, nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself.

The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom.

Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse: We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man.

sartre (wm.edu) 

 

Which Side (of the Pyrenees) Are You On?

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.” (Anton Chekhov)

I recently posted an excerpt from In Praise of Doubt, a 2009 book by Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld. Despite the book’s title, the authors are wary of the Cartesian tradition; rather than encouraging radical doubt, they stress the importance of traditions and institutions in preserving common social values and in relieving individuals of the sometimes intolerable burden of having to figure out everything—politics, religion, morality, sexuality, education options, marriage, global warming, the meaning of life, etc.—for themselves.

For all their explicit criticisms of relativism and postmodernism—particularly of the theoretical contributions of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Gramsci, Foucault, and Derrida—Berger and Zijderveld acknowledge that modernity itself, not philosophy, has made relativists of us all. ¹ They explicitly state that it would be “a serious misunderstanding to believe that relativism is mainly a pastime of theorists. Rather,” they continue, “relativism has massively invaded everyday life, especially in Western societies.”

Have not the theorists named above, however, paved the way for and facilitated this invasion? Not really, reply Berger and Zijderveld: “Popular relativism is the result of more and more people experiencing the far-reaching effects of plurality. History isn’t an extended theoretical seminar. It’s shaped by the living experiences of large numbers of people, without knowledge of or interest in the theories debated by intellectuals. Thus, relativism is spread, not so much by the propaganda of intellectuals, but by numerous conversations at places of work, across backyard fences, and even by children of different backgrounds meeting each other in kindergarten.”

It is modernity itself—facilitating as it does geographic mobility, global communications, demographic diversity, religious pluralism, increased access (and exposure) to ideas and information (and to misinformation)—which forces us, at a minimum, to acknowledge that different people have different ways of seeing the world, of experiencing it, and of participating in it. ² The resulting clash of existential narratives breeds distrust of “master narratives” which purport to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about history and about the world. Moreover, relativism is aided and abetted by the prevailing market mentality which promotes the idea that “good” and “bad” can be determined by the “impartial” verdict of sales, revenue, and profit. A century ago, Pragmatists like John Dewey argued that truth is what works; Madison Avenue argued, more persuasively and to much larger audiences, that truth is what sells.    

If our modern intelligentsia has gone too far in cultivating what Berger and Zijderveld call “the art of mistrust,” by which is meant that all master narratives and truth claims are to be considered self-interested “special pleading” until proven otherwise: science tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, which in this case suggests that epistemological skepticism may have the unintended consequence of provoking a rise in fundamentalisms of all sorts.  

For those who think that all this is so much ivory-tower blather, I would direct attention to a current and very lively debate about whether the government should exclude “Critical Race Theory” (and associated programs) from its funding and from inclusion in any government-sponsored training or education materials. Should schools be prohibited from using the controversial “1619 Project” to provide a different view of American history—or at least to provoke a discussion? These arguments exemplify both the unsettling nature of counter-narratives and the difficulty today of achieving consensus on a single, all-encompassing narrative. ³

Modernity, to repeat, leaves us no choice but to accept (if not necessarily to respect) the reality of differences. Defenders of the old narratives, unable to flatly deny that reality, have sought to marginalize, suppress, ridicule, caricature, and generally discredit such enterprises as, let us say, “Women’s Studies: Herstory in the Making,” “The Social Construction of Gender,” and “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being”. ⁴ Traditionalists object to the “tendentious” and “divisive” nature of such approaches, which of course is precisely what postmodernists object to about the old narratives: that, and the way the old narratives cloak themselves in the threadbare robes of a dubious “objectivity”. And on and on the argument goes, as it always has; when Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” he neither expected nor received an answer. ⁵

To his credit, Peter Berger, co-author of In Praise of Doubt, had the self-awareness to admit his role in this imbroglio. In a much earlier and influential book (the 1966 classic The Social Construction of Reality), Berger (along with co-author Thomas Luckmann) had written that “all reality is subject to socially derived interpretations.” That assertion was immediately seized upon by scholars with agendas which Berger does not support. “Perhaps,” Berger now says, “the word ‘construction’ was unfortunate,” as it lent support to nihilistic epistemologies which declared that “reality itself” was nothing but a social construction, a conclusion Berger and Luckmann never intended.

Berger protests too much. It is not “nihilistic” to observe that we live, not in an objective “reality itself,” but in an experienced and interpreted reality, one in which glasses can be simultaneously half-empty and half-full and a day can be simultaneously partly sunny and partly cloudy. The world outside our heads is objective, but we have access to it only through our senses and our cognition; our experience of the world is inescapably subjective. This is not a modern discovery; as Blaise Pascal said (a statement which Berger and Zijderveld cite), “Truth on this side of the Pyrenees is error on the other.” ⁶

That may be “relativism,” but it is also a fact, as subject to empirical verification as any other. It may be the case that many of us find the lack of “absolute truth” unsettling, but the universe, as they say, is under no obligation to remove our discomfort. Philip Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away;” competing narratives about history, gender, race, and sexuality are part of our modern reality, and they are not going away.   

___________________________

¹ I cannot explain the absence, in this lineup, of the usual suspects: Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer, the whole Frankfurt School, that is, whose “cultural Marxism” supposedly plagues us to this day. For that matter, why do Berger and Zijderveld let William of Ockham off the hook for cooking up the witches’ brew of Nominalism.

² If “accepting” differences is the minimal modern stance, “celebrating” differences would be the maximal option, which is well shy of epistemological nihilism.   

³ If you are still not convinced, try writing a narrative about the Battle of the Little Bighorn from the perspective of the 7^th Cavalry; then write one about the Battle of the Greasy Grass from the perspective of the Lakota, Arapahoe, and Northern Cheyenne tribes. Will the narratives coincide? If not, which narrative is true?

⁴ I have invented all these, though for all I know they might exist.

⁵ Pilate’s “What is truth?” was, of course, entirely rhetorical, a throwaway line dismissively uttered (as Pilate was leaving the room) in response to Jesus’ claim to “bear witness unto the truth.” For the author of the gospel, the point was to highlight Pilate’s spiritual obtuseness: Truth was literally standing right in front of him, but Pilate did not recognize it.

⁶ Note, too, the Chekhov quote above; somehow, both Pascal and Chekhov arrived at relativism and subjectivism without any help from the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism.