The Little Red Blog

Sunday Sermon

Albert Schweitzer, from The Decay and Restoration of Civilization (1923):

Civilization consists in our giving ourselves to the effort to attain the perfecting of the human race and the actualization of progress of every sort in the circumstances of humanity and of the world. This attitude involves a double predisposition: firstly, we must be prepared to act affirmatively toward the world and life; secondly, we must become ethical.

Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning to the world and to life shall we be able also to give ourselves to such action as will produce results of real value. As long as we look on our existence in the world as meaningless, there is no point whatever in desiring to effect anything in the world. We become workers for that universal spiritual and material progress which we call civilization only in so far as we affirm that the world and life possess some sort of meaning, or, which is the same thing, only in so far as we think optimistically.

Civilization originates when men become inspired by a strong and clear determination to attain progress, and consecrate themselves, as a result of this determination, to the service of life and of the world. It is only in ethics that we can find the driving force for such action, transcending, as it does, the limits of our own existence.

Nothing of real value in the world is ever accomplished without enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. But it is impossible to convince men of the truth of world- and life-affirmation and of the real value of ethics by mere declamation. The affirmative and ethical mentality which characterizes these beliefs must originate in man himself as the result of an inner spiritual relation to the world. Only then will they accompany him as strong, clear, and constant convictions, and condition his every thought and action.

To put it in another way: world- and life-affirmation must be the products of thought about the world and life. Only as the majority of individuals attain to this result of thought and continue under its influence will a true and enduring civilization make progress in the world. Should the mental disposition toward world- and life-affirmation and towards ethics begin to wane, or become dim and obscured, we should become incapable of working for true civilization, nay, more, we shall be unable even to form a correct concept of what such civilization ought to be.

And this is the fate which has befallen us. We are bereft of any worldview. Therefore, instead of being inspired by a profound and powerful spirit of affirmation of the world and of life, we allow ourselves, both as individuals and as nations, to be driven hither and thither by a type of such affirmation which is both confused and superficial. Instead of adopting a determined ethical attitude, we exist in an atmosphere of mere ethical phrases or declare ourselves ethical skeptics…

The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness which characterize the thoughts and convictions of men today, and reaching a state of fresh hope and fresh determination. We shall be capable of this, however, only when the majority of individuals discover for themselves both an ethic and a profound and steadfast attitude of world- and life-affirmation, in a worldview both convincing and based on reflection.

Without such a general spiritual experience there is no possibility of holding our world back from the ruin and disintegration towards which it is being hastened. It is our duty then to rouse ourselves to fresh reflection about the world and life.

"A Just and Well-Ordered Society"

"To work for the common good is the greatest creed." (Woodrow Wilson)

Adrian Vermeule—former law clerk for SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia and for Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals—teaches law at Harvard. In a highly controversial essay at The Atlantic, he says that we need a new “common-good” interpretation of the U.S. Constitution; fortunately, he also happens to know what the “common good” entails, so there won’t be any need for interminable debate over what it means.

In his essay, Vermeule outlines the guiding common-good principles he wants “read into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution”:

respect for the authority of rule and of rulers; respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function; solidarity within and among families, social groups, and workers’ unions, trade associations, and professions; appropriate subsidiarity, or respect for the legitimate roles of public bodies and associations at all levels of government and society; and a candid willingness to “legislate morality”—indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority. Such principles promote the common good and make for a just and well-ordered society.

Bagging two birds with one stone, Vermeule urges the rejection of moral relativism and cultural pluralism, each a longstanding bete noire of the Right:

The claim, from the notorious joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that each individual may “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” should be not only rejected but stamped as abominable, beyond the realm of the acceptable forever after. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,”  and so on—fall under the ax.

Common-good constitutionalism will favor a powerful presidency ruling over a powerful bureaucracy, the latter acting through principles of administrative law’s inner morality with a view to promoting solidarity and subsidiarity. The bureaucracy will be seen not as an enemy, but as the strong hand of legitimate rule. The state is to be entrusted with the authority to protect the populace from the vagaries and injustices of market forces, from employers who would exploit them as atomized individuals, and from corporate exploitation and destruction of the natural environment. Unions, guilds and crafts, cities and localities, and other solidaristic associations will benefit from the presumptive favor of the law, as will the traditional family; in virtue of subsidiarity, the aim of rule will be not to displace these associations, but to help them function well. Elaborating on the common-good principle that no constitutional right to refuse vaccination exists, constitutional law will define in broad terms the authority of the state to protect the public’s health and well-being, protecting the weak from pandemics and scourges of many kinds—biological, social, and economic—even when doing so requires overriding the selfish claims of individuals to private “rights.” Thus the state will enjoy authority to curb the social and economic pretensions of the urban-gentry liberals who so often place their own satisfactions (financial and sexual) and the good of their class or social milieu above the common good.

Professor Vermeule will no doubt take it as proof of the soundness of his proposal that he will receive—and is already receiving—vociferous criticism from both the political Left and the political Right. The latter will accuse him of trying to turn the government into a monstrous social-engineering enterprise, while the former will accuse him of abetting the authoritarian streak in American politics and the theocratic tendencies of the religious Right. Eric Levitz, at New York, characterizes Vermeule as wanting judges “to reinterpret the U.S. Constitution as a charter demanding the subjugation of infidels to ‘rulers’ who share all of Adrian Vermeule’s views on God and good government”; whereas conservative commentator Michael Brendan Dougherty, while not entirely at odds with Vermeule’s proposal, likens it to garden-variety Progressivism, which Dougherty dislikes, in its reliance on government to impose its views of the common good.

According to my crack research team at Wikipedia, Professor Vermeule, a convert to Catholicism, has been known as an advocate of something called “integralism,” which it explains as:

“A Roman Catholic political doctrine which calls for the abolition of the division between church and state, in order that the resulting theocratic state can promote a religiously-determined "Highest Good" in place of the personal autonomy of a liberal democracy. Their ideal is to create this new confessional Catholic regime through "strategic raillement", or transformation from within institutions and bureaucracies, rather than by winning elections. The groundwork for a full integralist regime would then be in place when liberal democracy dies. The new state would ‘exercise coercion over baptized citizens in a manner different from non-baptized citizens’.”

Such advocacy explains why Eric Levitz accuses Vermeule of trying to sneak a Catholic theocracy into America disguised as “common-good constitutionalism”. While Rod Dreher hopes to lead the Christian faithful into quasi-Benedictine exile, Vermeule wants to baptize the government, especially the presidency, and anoint it an instrument of God’s will. The fact that our current Supreme Court includes five members—a voting majority—of the Catholic faith may give Vermuele hope that his proposal can be enacted: with no constitutional amendment even required, the justices can simply apply common-good principles to arrive at godly verdicts on the cases before them.

As things stand, I don’t think Professor Vermeule’s ideas will gain much traction; but if you ever happen to see his name floated for the federal judiciary, please sound the alarm. I’m all for things like the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity; but I’d rather not have them spelled out for me and enforced by a government claiming not just popular support but divine sanction.  

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037/

"Trying To Escape the Sun"

It's time for another excursion into Russian history! Because if not us, who, and if not now, when?

“To try to escape revolution here [in 19^th-century Russia] might turn out to be as futile as trying to escape the sun.” (Marshall Berman)

In the course of his thought-provoking analysis of modernity (All That Is Solid Melts into Air), Marshall Berman discusses 19^th-century Russia, focusing on the city of St. Petersburg and on its towering literary figure, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Berman offers a summary of the events and circumstances that led to the extraordinary flourishing of literature, philosophy, theology, and political and economic thought in Russia between 1825 and 1917.  

The following is taken verbatim from the section of Berman’s book titled “The Real and the Unreal City”:

One of the crucial facts about modern Russian history is that the economy of the Russian Empire was stagnating, and in some ways even regressing, at the very moment when the economies of the Western nations were taking off and surging spectacularly ahead. Thus, until the dramatic industrial upsurge of the 1890s, Russians of the nineteenth century experienced modernization mainly as something that was not happening; or else as something that was happening far away, in realms that Russians, even when they traveled there, experienced more as fantastic anti-worlds than as social actualities; or else, where it was happening at home, as something that was happening only in the most jagged, halting, blatantly abortive or weirdly distorted ways. The anguish of backwardness and underdevelopment played a central role in Russian politics and culture, from the 1820s well into the Soviet period.

Catherine the Great [ruled 1762—1796) and her successors recoiled in horror from the revolutionary waves that swept over Europe after 1789. Except for the brief period of rapprochement between Alexander I and Napoleon, which nourished liberal and constitutional initiatives from within the imperial bureaucracy, Russia's political role throughout the nineteenth century was to be the vanguard of European counter-revolution. But this role contained paradoxes. First, it meant enlisting the ablest and most dynamic of reactionary thinkers…but this only entangled Russia more deeply in those Western impulses and energies that the government was trying to blot out. Next, the levee-en-masse against Napoleon in 1812, although it created waves of hysteria, xenophobia, obscurantism and persecution, ironically, by its very success, swept a generation of Russians--most important, a generation of young nobles and officers--into the streets of Paris, and infused the returning veterans (the protagonists of Tolstoy's War and Peace) with the very ardor for reform that they had been sent West to blot out. [Joseph] de Maistre ¹ sensed something of this paradox: on one hand, he felt, or wanted to feel, that the serene magnificence of the palaces at the city center promised shelter from the storm; on the other hand, he feared that all he had fled might be pursuing him here, not only reflected but magnified in scope by the city's vast scene. To try to escape revolution here might turn out to be as futile as trying to escape the sun.

The first spark was ignited on December 14, 1825, just after the death of Alexander I, when hundreds of reformist members of the imperial guards--the "Decembrists"--assembled around Peter's statue in Senate Square and staged a large, confused demonstration in favor of the Grand Duke Constantine and constitutional reform. The demonstration, planned as the first phase of a liberal coup d'etat, petered out fast. The demonstrators had never been able to agree on a unified program--for some, the crucial issue was a constitution and the rule of law; for others, it was federalism in the form of home rule for Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine; for still others, the emancipation of the serfs--and they had done nothing to attract support beyond their own aristocratic and military circles. Their humiliation and martyrdom--show trials, executions, mass imprisonment and Siberian exile, a whole generation decimated--ushered in thirty years of organized brutality and stupidity under the new Tsar Nicholas I.

The reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855), which began with the repression of the Decembrists and ended with military humiliation at Sevastopol, is one of the most dismal in modern Russian history. Nicholas most lasting contribution to Russian history was the development of a political police, controlled by its secret Third Section, which came to penetrate every area of Russian life, and established Russia in the European imagination as the archetypal "police state." But the trouble was not merely that Nicholas' government was cruelly repressive: that it clamped down on the serfs (about four-fifths of the population) and crushed all hopes for their liberation, repressed them with horrible brutality (there were more than six hundred peasant uprisings during Nicholas' reign; one of his achievements was to keep nearly all of them, and their repression, secret from the country as a whole); that it condemned thousands of people to death after secret trials, without even a facade of due process of law (Dostoevsky, the most illustrious, was reprieved thirty seconds before execution); that it established multiple layers of censorship, packed schools and universities with informers, eventually paralyzed the whole educational system, finally drove all thought and culture underground, into prison, or out of the country.

What was distinctive here was neither the fact of repression nor its scope--the Russian state had always treated its subjects dreadfully--but its goal. Peter the Great had murdered and terrorized in order to break open a window to Europe, to open the way to Russia's progress and growth; Nicholas and his police were repressing and brutalizing in order to close that window.

Russia, it seems, cannot stand too much modernity; for the past two hundred years (or more), every time Russia has opened a window to modernity, it has almost immediately drawn a curtain over it. 

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https://langurbansociology.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/berman_marshall_all_that_is_solid_melts_into_air_the_experience_of_modernity.pdf

¹ Joseph de Maistre was a French aristocrat and counter-revolutionary writer, one of the leading voices of what came to be called the “Counter-Enlightenment”. Having gone into exile in the wake of the French Revolution, de Maistre then served as Sardinia’s ambassador to Russia from 1802 until 1817, posted in the city of St. Petersburg.

Who Wrote the Book of Fate?

"But how conceive a God, the source of love / Who on man lavished blessings from above / Then would the race with various plagues confound / Can mortals penetrate His views profound? / Mysteries like these can no man penetrate / Hid from his view remains the book of fate." (Voltaire, from "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster," 1755)

{As was to be expected in the current crisis, many turn to religion for comfort and/or for answers. Let us see, as they say, how that is working out for them.}

For starters, David French reminds us that in Adam’s fall, we sinned all, and that’s why we can’t have nice things: “The virus is evil. It’s a “natural evil” that exists as the result of the fall,” French explains, and goes on to cite Tolkien about “the close connection between evil and physical decay.” He also cites John Calvin; but Calvin's work hasn't been made into a series of movies that banked a fortune at the box office, so why should we listen to him?

We have fallen and we cannot get up, says French; “the corruption of creation has unleashed a deadly plague upon our land.” French sounds remarkably like Father Paneloux, a character in Albert Camus’ The Plague, who sternly tells his congregation, “Calamity has come upon you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you have deserved it.” 

French, however, is careful to end on a positive note, sharing the good news: ¹

“We are being attacked by a natural evil that inhabits a fallen world, an evil that human beings can confront and God willing control through His mercy and grace. But it’s also an evil that’s doomed (as all evil is doomed) by a savior who comes not just to grant individuals eternal life, but to remake and renew creation itself.”

Evil is doomed: got it.

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https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/how-an-evil-virus-points-to-the-crushing?

¹ As Bob Dylan said, “If you cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.”

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Next, the formidable theologian N.T. Wright disavows the very notion that Christianity ought to provide answers for natural evil, though many Christians try to do so:

The usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, “So that’s all right then?” What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?

The Biblical evidence, says Wright, is that God does not provide answers; in fact, God does not even have answers, ² which is why He (God, not Wright) joins us in our lamenting:

The point of lament, woven into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.

The family that laments together, um, repents together? N.T. Wright urges lamentation on us as our Christian duty:  

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders? Now there’s a thought.

Stuck at home as we are for the indefinite future, we have plenty of time to lament; so let's get to it!

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https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

² Proof that God has no answers is found in the Book of Job, wherein God, asked to explain the sufferings he has allowed to be inflicted upon Job, instead blusters about his accomplishments like a common Donald Trump: I laid the earth’s foundation and marked off its dimensions. Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place? And what about Leviathan? Many people are saying I made the very best Leviathan. Eventually, an exhausted Job gives in.

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Finally, at First Things, Peter Leithart offers a brief reflection on the (possibly) apocalyptic implications of our current crisis. Leithart notes (with a nod to Rod Dreher) that the literal meaning of apocalypse is “unveiling” (or “revelation”); therefore, suggests Leithart, we should consider, while sheltering in place, what it is about us that the pandemic might reveal. He writes:

In the United States and Europe, the pandemic may reveal many things: The fragility of our sense of invincible security; the frivolity of our entertainments; the risks of globalization and the risks of insurmountable national boundaries; the frayed condition of our social relations. Our confidence in science may be shaken—whether because the experts’ modeling drastically overshoots or because science can’t save us. Coronavirus may put a nail in the coffin of libertarianism, convincing everyone that only massive collective action can protect us in times of mortal danger. It may, on the other hand, be a blow to statism, if the massive collective action backfires. 

Leithart goes on to say (spoiler alert) that “The main thing exposed by any apocalypse is the state of the heart,” and he points out that, when things return to “normal,” it will be up to us to define what “normal” will be:

What will we do when things return to “normal”? Will we recognize the decadent abnormality of our pre-pandemic norms? Will our common effort ease partisan divisions, or will Washington return to business as usual? Will we learn self-restraint and delay our gratifications? Will the pandemic make us more or less addicted to the belligerent virality of social media? Will self-isolation permanently isolate neighbors from one another, or will our common battle and common fear bring us closer together?

Inquiring minds want to know. But don’t bother asking N.T. Wright, or Voltaire, or even God; they don’t have any answers.

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https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/apocalypse-now

Today's PSA

I recently received, in the mail, my postcard from Coronavirus.gov (why is the website not Chinesevirus.gov or Wuhanvirus.gov?) containing “President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America”. Naturally, I was touched (but not on my face) by the president’s willingness to take time out from his busy schedule to personally develop a set of guidelines for these troubled times; you can rest assured that the president relied on the best advice from medical and public health experts in order to keep us safe and help us survive this pandemic.

As a public service for those of you who have not yet received your postcard, here are a baker’s dozen of President Trump’s Coronavirus guidelines:

1. We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.
2. It will all work out well.
3. We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment—five, and those people are all recuperating successfully.
4. We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.
5. Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.
6. I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along…we had 12, at one point, and now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.
7. So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time.
8. We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.
9. It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.
10. It’s very mild. I’m not concerned at all. It will go away. Just stay calm.
11. There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been. Anybody that wants a test can get a test.
12. So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
13. I don’t take responsibility at all.

In conclusion: stay safe, practice "social distancing" (or "shelter in place"), wash your hands, and please, for the love of God and for everyone's sake, don't listen to President Trump! The man is an idiot inside an imbecile, wrapped in a moron,¹ and he'll get us all killed if we're not careful.

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{Thanks to David Leonhardt for compiling the Trump quotations: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html Also thanks to: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-statements-about-the-coronavirus/}

¹ He is also a sociopath inside a malignant narcissist, wrapped in a megalomaniac; or, if you prefer, a clown inside a buffoon, wrapped in a carnival barker. Shall I go on?

Sunday Sermon

Bob Dylan, “Wicked Messenger” (from the album John Wesley Harding):

There was a wicked messenger
From Eli he did come
With a mind that multiplied the smallest matter
When questioned who had sent for him
He answered with his thumb
For his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter

He stayed behind the assembly hall
It was there he made his bed
Oftentimes he could be seen returning
Until one day he just appeared
With a note in his hand which read
“The soles of my feet, I swear they’re burning”

Oh, the leaves began to fallin’
And the seas began to part
And the people that confronted him were many
And he was told but these few words
Which opened up his heart
“If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a93_VoS4amc (Patti Smith cover)

It All Started With Ivan the Terrible

{In which I resume my random, episodic, and unguided tutorial in Russian history…}

“May I be damned! I've killed my son! I've killed my son!” (Ivan IV, Tsar of all the Russias)

First, to be fair: historians agree that “Ivan the Terrible” was more accurately “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Magnificent,” the Russian word Groznyi being less pejorative than the English word “terrible”. On the other hand, Tsar Ivan IV, especially in the later years of his reign(s), did more than enough to merit “terrible,” or at least “terrifying”. To name just one instance, he was said to have beaten his daughter-in-law so severely that it led to a miscarriage; her offense in Ivan’s eyes had been to wear “immodest clothing”. The woman’s husband--Ivan’s son, namesake, and heir—understandably took umbrage at the assault and engaged in a heated argument with his father; the result was that Ivan Groznyi struck his son in the head with a staff and killed him. ¹

Terrible, formidable, or magnificent as he may have been, Ivan was a seminal figure in Russian history, widely held to have been the first in what became a long line of autocratic and absolutist tsars. Born in 1530, he ruled Russia from 1547 until his death in 1584, though he took a couple of abdication breaks, one of which was peevish and the other more strategic. It was Ivan who, inheriting (at the age of three) the title of “Prince of Muscovy,” consolidated the Russian empire and made Moscow its capital, while warring with his neighbors, establishing control over the vast wilderness of Siberia, seizing land to dole out to chosen vassals, helping forge the chains of serfdom, and torturing and murdering thousands; he also, in his spare time, wrote poetry, composed church hymns, and was “prone to paranoia, rage, and episodic outbreaks of mental instability.” Like Walt Whitman and like Russia itself, Ivan Groznyi was large (literally as well as figuratively), he contained multitudes; for better or for worse, modern Russia began with him.

While scholarly and popular biographies of Ivan are available (see below), allow me for now to enlist Wikipedia in describing Ivan’s historic significance:

Ivan completely altered Russia's governmental structure, establishing the character of modern Russian political organization. Ivan's creation of the Oprichnina, answerable only to him, not only afforded him personal protection but curtailed the traditional powers and rights of the boyars. Henceforth, Tsarist autocracy and despotism would lie at the heart of the Russian state. Ivan bypassed the [existing] system and offered positions of power to his supporters among the minor gentry. The Empire's local administration combined both locally and centrally appointed officials; the system proved durable and practical, and sufficiently flexible to tolerate later modification.

Ivan's notorious outbursts and autocratic whims helped characterize the position of Tsar as one accountable to no earthly authority, only to God. Tsarist absolutism faced few serious challenges until the late 19th century. Ivan's legacy was manipulated by Communist Russia as a potential focus for nationalist pride; his image became closely associated with the personality cult of Joseph Stalin. While early Soviet, Marxist–Leninist historiography "attached greater significance to socio-economic forces than to political history and the role of individuals", Stalin wanted official historians to make Russia's history "comprehensible and accessible" to the populace, with an emphasis on those "great men", such as Ivan, Alexander Nevsky, and Peter the Great, who had strengthened and expanded the Russian state. In modern, post-Soviet Russia, a campaign has been run to seek the granting of sainthood to Ivan IV; the Russian Orthodox Church opposed the idea. Under Putin’s rule, the glorification of Ivan intensified, and when in 2016 a monument was unveiled to him in the city of Oryol, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church personally supported this event. ^{2 & 3}

Over the centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church may well have held a grudge against Ivan, who, as tsar, exercised absolute control over the Church as over everything else in Russia; clerics of whom he disapproved did not retain their positions, or their lives, for long. This is not to say that Ivan was not a faithful Christian; again, Wikipedia summarizes:

Ivan was a devoted follower of Christian Orthodoxy, but in his own specific manner. He placed the most emphasis on defending the divine right of the ruler to unlimited power under God. Some scholars explain the sadistic and brutal deeds of Ivan the Terrible with the religious concepts of the 16th century, which included drowning and roasting people alive or torturing victims with boiling or freezing water, corresponding to the torments of Hell, consistent with Ivan's view of being God's representative on Earth with a sacred right and duty to punish. He may also have been inspired by the model of Archangel Michael with the idea of divine punishment. ⁴

“Inspired” may not have been the word that citizens of the city of Novgorod in 1570 would have used to describe Ivan:

Ivan grew suspicious that noblemen of the wealthy city of Novgorod were planning to defect, placing the city itself into the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A Novgorod citizen (Petr Volynets) warned the tsar about the alleged conspiracy (though modern historians believe that his report was false). In 1570 Ivan ordered the Oprichniki [his personal military force] to raid the city. The Oprichniki burned and pillaged Novgorod and the surrounding villages, and the city was never to regain its former prominence.

Casualty figures vary greatly from different sources. The First Pskov Chronicle estimates the number of victims at 60,000. According to the Third Novgorod Chronicle, the massacre lasted for five weeks. The massacre of Novgorod consisted of men, women and children that were tied to sleighs, then run into the freezing waters of the Volkhov River, which Ivan ordered on the basis of unproved accusations of treason. He then tortured its inhabitants and killed thousands in a pogrom; the archbishop was also hunted to death. Almost every day 500 or 600 people were killed or drowned. ⁵

If that doesn’t pique your interest in Ivan, and in Russian history, I don’t know what will.

For anyone interested in learning more about Ivan Grozyni, allow me to suggest--based on my own very limited research to date--Benson Bobrick’s Fearful Majesty, Robert Payne’s and Nikita Romanoff’s Ivan the Terrible, and Alexander Yanov’s The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History. 

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¹ Ilya Repin’s 1885 painting “Ivan the Terrible Killing His Son” (above) shows Ivan on the floor, mournfully cradling his mortally wounded son; the man wasn’t a monster, after all, as the epigraph to this post makes clear.

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Legacy

³ That Putin would be a fan of Ivan the Terrible is no surprise; “terrible” aside, Putin has followed Ivan’s example of briefly giving up power only to take it back again.

⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Legacy

⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible Wikipedia notes that “Many modern researchers estimate the number of victims to range from 2,000–3,000 (after the famine and epidemics of the 1560s the population of Novgorod most likely did not exceed 10,000–20,000). Many survivors were deported elsewhere.” Numbers notwithstanding, the Massacre of Novgorod shows that Ivan took seriously his role as “God’s representative on earth,” in particular “the duty to punish”.

Reality Intrudes

“This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said.” {Albert Camus}

Robert Zaretsky, writing about French citizens dislocated by the German invasion of 1940, reflected on the “durability” and the fragility of “everyday lives”:

What greater disparity could there be for the millions of refugees who, just days before they were pulled into the vortex created by the capsizing of the French Republic, still believed stupidly in the permanence of their civil, legal, and political institutions, as well as the durability of their everyday lives? “Rising streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm.” This is the “before” of our lives, the absence of punctuation reflecting the seamlessness of our days— that is, until the moment the seams suddenly unravel.

That moment of unraveling can be as banal as an overheard conversation or a glimpsed interaction, or as extraordinary as a Stuka bearing down on you. It is the moment when we are woken from our routine lives by a whisper or explosion, either of which demands “Why?” with equal and unexpected insistence. With a weariness tinged with amazement, staring at the empty skies for an answer or a stranger in a cockpit of a plane determined to kill us, we see the facades give way and the world “become itself again.” Try though we might to return to what we once knew, the strangeness of our human predicament has been restored. ¹

In 21^st-century America, the strangeness of our predicament has been restored first by the terror attacks of 9/11, then by Hurricane Katrina, by the financial meltdown of 2008, and now by COVID-19, none of which showed the least respect for our vaunted “American exceptionalism”. ² Life goes on, as it must, but while it may be overstating the case to say that “everything has changed,” it is unquestionably true that at such junctures something has been revealed: the comfortable narrative of our lives having been disturbed, we can now see the stagehands working frantically behind the scenes to repair the social scenery and to restore what we call “normalcy”—even though we have just been reminded that there is no such thing. 

Human kind, T.S. Eliot wrote, cannot bear very much reality. We want the quotidian facades; we want the scenery repaired and the curtains back in place; we want the trains to run on time. ³ What we desperately do not want is the burden of reality: a reality that includes our vulnerability and our mortality; a reality that repeatedly reminds us, no matter how loudly we protest, of the contingency of our lives; a reality that, in the end, does not seem to give a damn about us--which is why, in the end, we have to give a damn about each other.   

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¹ Robert Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning

² The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was also for many of us a reminder of “the strangeness of our human predicament”.

³ In our modern world, we even manage to make time itself run on (our) time. 

Welcome, Evelyn!

“Welcome here from outer space / The milky way still in your eyes” (Chrissie Hynde)

In a world that needs all the good news it can get--my son Brian and daughter-in-law Rachael (who, it must be said, did most of the work) have just brought into the world an adorable daughter named Evelyn Victoria! I'm not sure when I'll get to meet Evelyn, who has chosen for now to live with her parents in Buffalo NY; but I am so happy for Brian and Rachael and their other daughters, Katie and Sophia: what a wonderful family, and how lucky I am to be part of it (even at a distance)...welcome to the world, Evelyn Victoria!

For those who ask and for those who wonder—yes, this is a scary time to bring a child into existence: but when is it not? As Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) sang, “Welcome to the human race, with its war, disease, and brutality”; but she added, “You with your innocence and grace, restore some pride and dignity to a world in decline…”

Every newborn child seems a miracle, a blessing, and a savior of sorts; or, at least, a renewal of hope that this often dreary world can yet be saved and is worth trying to save. In fact, if it weren’t for the confusion it would cause, every baby should be named “Hope”.

Brian and Rachael are wonderful parents, wonderful people, and I trust them to keep Evelyn (and Katie and Sophia) safe. Selfishly, I find myself frustrated by the ongoing travel ban, the social distancing, and all the precautions that, taken together, mean that it will be a while before I meet my newest grandchild.

But that’s certainly something to look forward to, isn’t it?

Until then, my thoughts, prayers, love, and deepest, most heartfelt wishes are with Brian, Rachael, Katie, Sophia, and Evelyn: be safe, be healthy, be happy, and know that there are so many people in the world who love and care about you all.

And again, Evelyn: welcome to the world. It's a good place, and you've just made it better.

A Dilemma Wrapped in a Conundrum Inside a Clown Car

As spring arrives, a young man’s fancy turns to love; but the rest of us are preoccupied with questions of life and death. There’s nothing more exhilarating than taking part in a nationwide debate over a moral dilemma straight out of Ethics 101: who should live, who should die, and what’s the current value of human life as measured by the S&P 500?

President Trump put it best, as he usually does. “I’m looking at what’s going on and life is fragile. Economies are fragile. The whole concept of death is terrible, but…” Not death itself terrifies people, it seems, but the whole concept of death; although, on the bright side, that concept does serve to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Concentrate your mind, then, on this grim reality: even though our economy is the strongest it’s ever been, you wouldn’t believe how strong it is, no one ever thought you could have an economy this strong, it remains so fragile that it may take the deaths of tens of thousands of senior citizens to save it from collapse.

That’s a trade-off that Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, for one, is happy to make:

“No one reached out to me and said, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?" If that's the exchange, I'm all in.” ¹

Even more bluntly, an attorney by the name of Scott McMillan puts our situation in perspective: “The fundamental problem is whether we are going to tank the entire economy to save 2.5% of the population which is (1) generally expensive to maintain, and (2) not productive.”  Should we, then, reluctantly or otherwise, quarantine the elderly and the frail and let the young and healthy go about their business? “Business,” after all, is America’s quintessential purpose; in the oft-quoted words of the sadly maligned Calvin Coolidge, “The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world.” Or, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, “Give me prosperity or give me death!”   

What Would Jesus Do? What Would Hitler or Stalin Do? Keep in mind that a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are just a statistic. ² Where are the Obamacare death panels now that we need them? Darn you, Sarah Palin!

Meanwhile, trapped as we are between a rock and a hard place, and as we wrestle with the latest version of “Sophie’s choice,” Congress (those members not yet quarantined) contemplates a massive fiscal stimulus—corporate bailouts, direct stipends to individuals, tax holidays, student loan forgiveness, blue light specials, Green Stamps, “get out of jail free” cards, Obamaphones, and shiny new toaster-ovens for everyone. ³ The question, of course, is: if the president is sending us all back to work, what need is there for such a budget-busting stimulus, premised as it is on a serious hiatus in American economic life? Having declared himself, only a week or so ago, a wartime president, Donald Trump now suggests that, while we won’t officially surrender to COVID-19, we’re willing to concede it a certain amount of territory—maybe the Sudetenland?—as long as it doesn’t make any additional demands. Trump’s pivot recalls the biblical scenario of Moses speaking to the pharaoh: “Let my people go! At least, let the younger and healthier people go; you can keep the old and the sick, they’re pretty much just a drain on the economy anyway.”

In times of crisis, faced with excruciatingly difficult choices, a nation needs a functioning political system, trustworthy media, a populace willing to set aside partisan differences, and a steady hand at the wheel of State. Which is why I can only conclude: we are doomed.

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¹ At this time, the reactions of Lt. Governor Patrick’s children and grandchildren are not known, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to second grandpa’s emotion.

² The actual quote, attributed to Joseph Stalin, is: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” You should also keep in mind that dying is easy; comedy is hard.

³ And a pony: there must be a pony in there somewhere.