True Authoritarian Moves

Last week's firings were nothing compared to this.  The firing of Andrew McCabe from the FBI on Friday night was a true authoritarian move.  A review process that normally takes a year or more was rushed through in days, primarily it seems to deny McCabe his pension.  He had already given up his position, and he was on leave until the moment he could retire with full pension, which was twenty-six hours away at the time he was fired.

So to the usual bullying and thugery there is added vengeance and attempted intimidation.  A message presumably for anyone else who dared to cross the antipresident, the Homegrown Hitler in the making.

Obviously the antipresident and his craven minions are attacking the legitimacy of the FBI and special prosecutor Robert Mueller.  While attempting to intimidate anyone in Washington who doesn't fall in line, it seems designed to feed the political frenzy of the extreme right.

What is the end game?  The most immediately goal is to escape the consequences of various criminal acts by the antipresident and his family members.  With that out of the way, and with the ongoing purge of the federal government, and intimidation of Congress, the authoritarian presidency can truly begin.

What is the next move?  Jonathan Chiat is among those who remain convinced that it's firing Mueller and shutting down his investigations.  Another possibility is that the antipresident will issue preemptive pardons for himself and his family members now being investigated.   Having beaten the drum of calling the FBI and this investigation politically biased and out to get him, he can justify these pardons as justice.

Then after either (or both) of those, precipitating crisis in the world would be a big enough distraction, and war would be even better since it always consolidates the leader's power.  It's a series of huge risks, but the antipresident seems in the mood for them.  Only he and maybe Mueller know how close to nothing he has to lose by risking the country and the world.

Last week's firings were center ring shows in the tragic circus we're getting way too used to.  The House Republican "intelligence" committee report officially makes the Republican Party the equivalent of the Soviet Communist Party in the days of the Soviet Union: whatever the "chief executive" says is true, and has always been true.

But now the serious stuff involved in the Russia investigation is coming faster and faster, with McCabe free to go public, Comey's book coming out, and new revelations by the hour. And if Mueller sees what Chait does, there could be news from him soon, too.

Even an aspect of the investigations that seemed dormant (Cambridge Analytica and the targeting of voters) has exploded with two revelations, illegal harvesting of voter information and a very suspicious link to Russian meddling. The account of the oil company asking about targeting voters rather than customers is as chilling to read as the accounts of the 9/11 terrorists taking flying lessons, but no need to learn how to land.

Sunday Update: After the antipresident's internet invective, Chiat's prediction looks stronger.  Congressional Republicans didn't flinch at the apparent abuse of power in the McCabe firing, and their reactions to the prospect of the special prosecutor being fired seemed mixed, with some news outlets emphasizing their warnings against it, others their reluctance to act, and others split the different.

With the latest polling showing the Dems with a 10 point lead in generic ballot for 2018, the pressure on the antipresident may be to make his move sooner rather than after the elections.

The Time Machine.2: Traveller's Tale

“The man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.”
Thomas Carlyle

In an era attuned to the new, it blurted out its originality with a terse and daring title: The Time Machine.

There had been other tales of people traveling in time, but the means were mystical, accidental, inexplicable or unexplained. In the 1890s age of miraculous machines, this was the first widely read story to employ a device to take a character through time.

And with the telephone sending voices across space, the steamship and railroad moving bodies with unprecedented speed, and now the wonders of moving pictures and sound recording preserving the living past—why not a machine to transport someone to another time?

Yet as wondrous as such a machine would be, it would still be a machine—something solid and familiar.  A crucial quality of a machine is that it will do what it does repeatedly, for anyone who can operate it. It requires no special status or gift. So with a machine it becomes possible to imagine time travel as intentional, and accessible.

A new type of story was born with this novel: exploring not only other times but features of time itself—of time and causality paradoxes, timelines and loops. The Terminator, two of the most popular Star Trek feature films, and the long-running Doctor Who television series plus dozens of other stories that employ time travel technologies—all began with this one.

But being the first such story, there were no conventions of time travel that readers understood and accepted. A case had to be made, good enough to let the wonder take hold.

The Time Machine begins in the middle of a conversation. A group of upper middle class men are gathered after dinner in the comfortable London home of a scientist-inventor, who describes his theory of time as the fourth dimension, equal to the dimensions of space.

Speculations on a fourth dimension and what it might be were in the air in the late 19th century, as were debates over the nature of time. But these speculations were discussed among physicists and philosophers—this was a first presentation to the general reading public. (Einstein’s concept of the space-time continuum was still years in the future, though Wells’ story presages some features of it.)

This group of men has a few notable features. Three are identified only by profession: a Psychologist, a Medical Man and a Provincial Mayor. One is identified only by his name (Filby), one as the Very Young Man, and one—the narrator—is not yet identified at all. The inventor who is talking is called only—in the first words of the novel-- the Time Traveller (with the British double-l spelling.)

Why are the professional or important men not named? A necessary secrecy is perhaps implied, because of the controversial nature of the events to be described. There’s a subtle air of mystery. But it also creates an effect of these men as anonymous representatives of the reader.

These are sensible, upright and conventional men of their Victorian times. They like their host but seem to fear his unorthodox ways may lead him to do something rash, unseemly or disreputable, and taint them in the process.

So even in the relaxed context of after-dinner speculations they are skeptical. It’s notable as well that the group doesn’t include a physicist or philosopher more familiar with the ideas of the fourth dimension than the general reader, so their objections just sound stuffy.

Their host proposes that according to this theory, travel through time as well as space is possible. Moreover, he has invented a machine for that purpose.

He shows them a small model of it. He pushes a level forward, which he says will send the little machine into the future, or perhaps the past. It disappears. But his witnesses mostly don’t believe it. Several say it’s a trick.

It is a trick. The story employs a series of literary tricks to bring the reader along. For instance, the conversation is reported not by the Traveller directly, but by a guest, a so far anonymous but sympathetic witness and occasional participant. (His name, we learn later, is Hillyer.)

A singular story featuring a larger-than-life protagonist but reported by a witness is a frequent literary device, from Ismael in Moby Dick to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby and beyond. These witness characters are also the reader’s representatives within the story.

Both Hillyer’s narrative voice and the nondescript dinner guests keep the conversation from becoming too technical. When the Traveller shows them the full-size time machine, Hillyer can report only a general impression of what it looks like, without a word concerning how it works.

But most people don’t much care how machines work—just that they do. The mystery of the time machine’s function is mirrored in its exotic appearance. It’s all just plausible enough to nudge the reader to suspend disbelief, at least long enough to follow the wonder forward.

The following week another group of men gather for dinner at the same place (Hillyer and the Medical Man are joined by a Journalist, an Editor and one or two others.) Hillyer arrives late, but the Traveller has not yet appeared. They begin dinner, joking about where their unconventional host may be—they even speculate he may be off committing crimes.

They are laughing over champagne when the door bursts open and the disheveled Traveller appears, dirty and bleeding. He has just returned from the future, and he is about to tell his tale.

von Humboldt in South America

That he is called the Traveller already conjures up familiar tales of voyages, from the adventures of Robinson Crusoe (or long before that, of Ulysses) to popular accounts of expeditions to China, Africa and the North Pole, including Humboldt’s explorations in South America that fascinated the young H.G. Wells. The traveler suffers travails (the words are directly related) but discovers astonishing new places.

Returning home and recounting his adventures to others is another familiar storytelling technique. Wells himself mentions Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson as models, and this technique is also found in his contemporaries and friends, Henry James and James Conrad.

But there’s a fascinating difference (although something like it does occur in Conrad.) Though the story of his voyage is told in the Traveller’s voice, it is still being reported to us by Hillyer. We’ll eventually discover a plot reason for this, but in story terms it adds to the mystery. We’re being asked to believe that Hillyer remembers the Traveller’s words exactly.

However this is done so skillfully that the question may not even arise in the reader’s mind, at least until much later. For now, we are transported by the Traveller’s tale.

...to be continued.  For earlier posts in this series, click the "Soul of the Future" label below.

Voices in the Land of Guns

Thousands of students at thousands of schools all over America left class at 10 this morning for a minimum of 17 minutes, one minute for each death by gunfire in Parkland last month.  Commemoration, protest, call for action--the first such coordinated event.

They join the family of activism.  They know the emotions that erupt in the event, the emotions that get focused for their cause. It's not dry politics--it's the head and the heart, it's the soul's statement.  Many will find that they pay a price for their commitment.  I honor them for what they did today.

The Joke's On Who?

New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz is on a roll with this week's news:

Rex Tillerson: I Hope Trump Finds Out He’s Impeached on Twitter

Vladimir Putin Concedes Defeat in Pennsylvania Special Election

Trump installs former ‘Fox and Friends’ host as under secretary of state

Oh wait.  That last one isn't Borowitz.  It's the real news.

So maybe I shouldn't mention cable econ bullshitter Kudlow's appointment as chief White House economic advisor, who inspired such headlines Wednesday as:

Trump’s New Economic Adviser Lawrence Kudlow Has Been Wrong About Everything for Decades

Larry Kudlow may have been more wrong about the economy than anyone alive

Trump’s new economic adviser is really bad at economics. Here are the receipts.
Larry Kudlow has made some astoundingly bad predictions, even for a CNBC pundit.

Present: Reaping the Whirlwind

What a day in antipresidentland.  Eric Levitz:

 Rex Tillerson was one of the worst secretaries of State in American history – and his firing might be the worst development of the Trump presidency thus far.

Levitz's analysis is that the firing of Tillerson  presages a final withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (Tillerson supported it), and throwing the North Korea situation into chaos.  Tillerson is replaced by Pompeo, an anti-Muslim bigot.

Pompeo comes directly from heading the CIA, and is replaced there by the architect of a notorious torture camp in Thailand.

Jonathan Chait notes that Tillerson was fired after he agreed with the UK's PM that Russia is responsible for unleashing a nerve agent in a London restaurant, resulting in murder.

Undersecretary of State Goldstein said Tillerson had been blindsided by the firing, contrary to the White House account.  He was promptly fired as well.

Another aide gone: CNN:President Donald Trump's longtime personal aide John McEntee was fired because he is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes, a source familiar with his firing told CNN.  Later in the day, McEntee got a job with the reelect the antipresident campaign.

The antipresident was in California on Tuesday to tour scattered mockups of his fake wall.  Meanwhile the CA spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement resigned, because Jeff Sessions and his Justice Dept. were forcing him to lie.

The firing of Tillerson soaks up the headlines, on a day when Republicans anticipate the possibility--perhaps the likelihood--of losing a high profile congressional special election in western Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, the real reason for this post: On Slate, here is the best summary I've read for what the law says about a campaign consorting with a foreign power in an election, and specifically the criminal charges members of the antipresident's team--and the antipresident himself--may face.

The Time Machine.1: Launch Point

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic."
Arthur C. Clarke

H.G. Wells has become so identified with The Time Machine that several times he has been portrayed not only as the story’s author, but as the machine’s inventor, and a time traveler himself.

Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, time traveller
in Time After Time

Though in the novel the time machine’s inventor is referred to only as “the Traveller,” he is identified as H. George Wells in the first Hollywood movie adaptation of The Time Machine in 1960.

Going a step further, the 1979 Nicholas Meyer film Time After Time fully portrayed H.G. Wells as the inventor of the time machine and a time traveler to 1970s San Francisco.

Lois and Clark

This identification seemed to have achieved the status of a pop culture stereotype by the 1990s when several episodes of the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman featured a time-traveling H.G.Wells, who shows up in Metropolis.

Rod Taylor (seated, second from left) as Wells in 1960 George
Pal production of The Time Machine

Even for those who don’t go that far, the novel seems to have established an image of Wells as a comfortably wealthy middle-aged gentleman of the Victorian era, wearing fine suits and attended by servants in his great London house as he entertains important men of the day: in other words, in the clothes and context of the protagonist of The Time Machine.

Wells with his wife Jane on their latest technology,
the tandem bicycle in the 1890s

The reality was different. Though eventually his writing would earn him a similar status, at the time he was working on The Time Machine, the actual H.G. Wells was in his late twenties, short of money and living in a series of rented rooms.

 One hot August night he wrote at a parlor table with the window wide open for air. Moths attracted by the paraffin lamp flew through it and flopped around him, while outside a loud voice belonging to his landlady complained about him and his late hours (and all the expensive lamp oil he was using), ostensibly to a neighbor.

Wells was still an outsider. But his years in London, his work as a journalist, his reading and his acute curiosity made him an observant one. And there was much to observe.

For in many visible ways, London in the 1890s was the fulcrum of the future. It was the largest city in the world, and the center of world finance, industry, trade and transportation. With new telegraph cables under the sea, it was a global communication center. The British empire was long-lived, far-flung and vast, and as its capital, London was at the living center of history.

It was also an intellectual crossroads, a cauldron of knowledge, debate, literature and theatre, with a mix of new journals featuring outspoken opinions and speculations. It was a city of science, where theories were announced, ambitious expeditions and explorations were launched and celebrated, and where the latest technologies were on display.

1890s London street depicted in 1980s/90s Granada TV series
of Sherlock Holmes stories starring Jeremy Brett

The London that Wells knew was also in a period of transformation, when elegant but fading elements of the past coexisted with the forerunners of the future.  This was still the London of Sherlock Holmes, of Victorian ladies and gentlemen in horse-drawn carriages clattering through gas-lit streets. But some homes had electricity. Telegraph wires sang through the sky.

London traffic had resulted in the first urban underground railroad system in the world. Cholera epidemics earlier in the century eventually led to a rudimentary sewage system. But as in Dickens’ day there were still vast slums. An unromantic toxic fog hung over the city, produced by smoky factories more than by moody nature.

Even when the new machines were invented aboard, they quickly came to London. By 1895, Henry Ford had produced his first car and Diesel patented his engine; the Lumieres invented the cinematograph and motion picture camera, Edison the phonograph disc and Marconi the radio.  Machines could do magic.

Meanwhile, several seemingly unrelated new inventions, such as the electric elevator, the adding machine, cash register, the typewriter and the automatic telephone switchboard were combining with mass-produced steel to herald a new city dominated by high rise office buildings.

Before the decade ended, scientists would announce the discovery of the principles of rocket propulsion, the existence of radioactivity, radium and the electron, and Max Planck proposed his theory of the quantum. The science of the 20th century was underway.

1894 Art Nouveau cover of a publication
that often featured the work of H.G. Wells

"The relationship between 'imagination' and 'action' and between 'fantasy' and 'reality' were becoming more complex in the 1890s," wrote historian Asa Briggs, "as the religious props which had sustained traditional societies began to be knocked down and as the scale of economic enterprise was enhanced."

The new woman, the new journalism, art nouveau--to be new was everything and not to be new, wrote a critic in 1892, "is to be nothing."  Yet expansion and upheaval in the industrial age broke the continuity of many lives and communities, and cast the lives of everyone into new shapes--while destroying more than a few. Sons and daughters could no longer do exactly what their parents had done. They did not even inherit the same community, or the same world. Their present was very different from the past, and it seemed inevitable that the future would be a different world again.

"The Scream" (1893) by Edvard Munch is often cited as
an expression of 1890s anxieties 

While rapid change and powerful new technology energized the age, it also created a "curious confusion," in England and across Europe, as one writer observed in 1895, "a compound of feverish restlessness and blunted discouragement, of fearful presage and hang dog renunciation," and even a sense of "imminent perdition and extinction…[that]mankind, with all its institutions and creations, is perishing in the midst of a dying world."

And then there were other late 19th century inventions: nitroglycerin, dynamite, the machine gun, and barbed wire.

The present was moving very fast, but in what direction? So many of the ongoing tumultuous debates of the nineteenth century---in universities and in Parliament, in the burgeoning journals and newspapers that enacted a swiftly expressed public dialogue in this vibrant city---were focused on the essential question of what all this meant.

Evolution and other ideas in contention would have consequences for shaping the years to come. It was a debate for the soul of the future.

That debate was prominent even in the popular press for all of H.G. Wells’ conscious life, and was now reaching a climax in the 1890s, with a new century in sight. It involved theological doctrine and philosophical speculation, and the findings of the still very young social sciences. But most of all it involved the findings and theories of the physical sciences.

Since technology was the most visible agent of change, and since science supported it with ever-increasing knowledge that experience seemed to prove true (if by no other evidence than the fact that these wondrous machines actually worked), the most credible explanations were becoming those based at least partly on science.

Into this world came The Time Machine.

To be continued... For previous posts in this series, click on the "Soul of the Future" label below.