With God on Their Side

 I don't plan to make a habit of this--commenting on the politics of the day--anymore, but I did start with Jung on the hysteria of Nazi Germany latching on to a magnetic hysteric.  Jung implies that the eruptions of the unconscious are fairly frequent in mass society, and I admit I still don't understand what's going on--maybe mass delusion and hysteria are the default positions for mass civilization.

 In my last post I postponed consideration of the church as a cultural counterweight to mass hysteria, as Jung proposed, and I haven't read further in Jung's writings to work out more exactly what he meant.  But though it may make intuitive sense, that seems to be quite the opposite of what's happening now.  The culture is being pushed to hysteria by the loudest voices claiming religion as their central belief.

On this I defer to a contemporary experts, constitutional separation of church and state watchdog Rachel Laser and author Katherine Stewart, in conversation with Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.  It's also a podcast, and the introductory article itself is illuminating.  I've added bold to some sections below.

From the podcast:

Katherine Stewart: "Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots."

 Dahlia mentions some of the prominent players in Congress (like House Speaker Mike Johnson) and of course a certain candidate for President and his possible vp nominees, but she asks specifically about  influence on the courts.  (Another Slate article warns we very well could see a number of Supreme Court decisions this month that reflect the hegemony of far right and Christian nationalist ideas on the Court.)

Laser and Stewart trace the political history, beginning in the 1980s, of a patient legal strategy to "sideline and in some cases obliterate" the Constitutional prohibition against the establishment of a national religion. Besides gaining more taxpayer money for explicitly religious institutions, these efforts focused on abortion.

Stewart talks in more detail about their successful efforts to complicate and ban abortion, with ambitions to limit birth control and criminalize medical efforts to save women having miscarriages.  In doing so, they've actually gotten their particular language into the law. Then Stewart talks more about tactics, and this is especially illuminating:

"In the last 15 years, the rhetoric of violence has become more extreme... the calls for dominion, the calls for total domination, have become louder and more explicit. And part of that is a consequence of the rise of a spirit-warrior style of religion..."

Stewart traces the "theology" of the righteous taking over the "Seven Mountains" of culture, which include government, media, education and business.  Adherents of "Seven Mountain Dominion" include not only evangelical Christian nationalists but professed Catholics like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, and one would guess, several of the Catholics on the Supreme Court, notably Samuel Alito.  

Outsiders don't understand the meaning of the "Appeal to Heaven" flag that flew over an Alito home, and that's displayed at Speaker Johnson's office.  "So when they fly it, they’ve reinterpreted it as taking a stand for the idea of America as a Christian theocratic nation rather than a pluralistic democracy. They see it as a call for profound, and even violent, revolution."

Laser adds: "PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] did a poll on Christian nationalists, and they found Christian nationalists are about twice as likely as the rest of us to believe in political violence. That’s what we saw on Jan. 6 with the parading “Appeal to Heaven” flags that were at the insurrection. I think another important point to make here is the authoritarian nature of this Christian nationalist movement. This movement is rooted in the belief that America is a country given to European Christians, and that our laws and policies must reflect the same. If you believe that, you are antidemocratic, because democracy is rooted in equality. So the end goal of this Christian nationalist movement has to be the toppling of democracy to achieve their goal."

There is little question about what hysteric this movement follows, especially when "the former president screens a video called “God Made Trump” at his rallies..."

This may seem to be a mostly political exercise by cynical politicians and their consultants, whether or not they are true believers.  That's obviously part of it--can anybody really believe Trump is motivated by faith?  But leaders need followers, and Stewart says that established churches, their leaders and congregations are involved:

 "Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations."

Of course escaping theocratic rule was a major reason those Europeans came to America, though quite often they were escaping rule by theocrats other than their own.  The ambitions of this theocracy-in-process is also reminiscent of how the Catholic Church ruled in Europe when it was the only Christian game in town and even monarchs feared opposing it, because the Church's word was the word of God, anything else was heresy, with beheading and burning at the stake not infrequent consequences for the slightest perceived deviations.  The divine right of kings, on the comeback trail!

Today in America we already have everyday banning of thousands of books in public schools, due almost exclusively to these Christian nationalist activists, however they disguise themselves without really fooling anyone.  And of course we have laws beyond abortion bans, governing medical care of women based on their theology, again disguised without fooling anyone.

This Christian right dominion movement is fueled by what has traditionally been called religious fervor and righteousness, but in this context it seems another form of mass hysteria.  Though these experts don't discuss it, that hysteria may extend to a different kind of denial of climate distortion: the notion (which surfaces after major disasters) that hurricanes, floods, fires, etc. and other climate distortion effects are God's punishment for the paramount sins as defined by the reactionary right (abortion, "diversity" etc.) and that the only way to prevent these effects is to follow the Christian Nationalist program.   There are variations of this kind of belief in many religious traditions.

So perhaps it is not religious institutions but the institutions of the American civil religion as embodied in the Constitution that is our counterweight.  Laser may be promoting her own organization with her final comment, but it pertains:

" The antidote to Christian nationalism is the separation of church and state, because it refuses to let Christian privilege into the law, it refuses to let conservative Christianity be the guiding principle in America. It insists that America keep to its promises that are embedded in our Constitution, of religious freedom as a basic human right. And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation—because they are in lockstep with a movement that must get rid of church–state separation in order to accomplish its goals."

A Bitter Revenge

A former President of the United States was convicted of 34 felonies by a unanimous jury in criminal court, and most commentators I read or heard said that this will have little or no effect on his very good chances to be elected to that office again in November.  When in American history has something like this been even a remote possibility? 

 Yet, despite a jury trial with no procedural glitches, Republican Congressional and other elected government officials lined up against the judicial process.  Trump referred to the judge as “the devil,” and some of his supporters threatened retribution against the judge, prosecutors and the jury.  What other word is there for all this but hysteria?  

 The premise of this post and the two previous in this series (part 1 here, part 2 here) is simple: there seems to be no rational explanation for the current political situation in the United States, especially pertaining to the upcoming presidential election.  Attempts have been made to explain it in economic, political, cultural, even demographic terms, but none is sufficient.  Journalists are left to find new ways to say the situation is unprecedented, that it defies logic and certainly previous political norms.

 So it seems to me we need to broaden (and deepen) our exploration for answers, especially in the area that the modern West knows as the psychological.  The phenomena being manifested however has been well known to other ages and other cultures, dealt with under what we would call (but not all of them call) religion, and earlier definitions of philosophy.

 Since the rise of our current dictator-in-waiting, I’ve tried to account for these phenomena.  I found some  relevance in cult behavior, but this may be insufficient.  I recently turned to the essays of Carl Jung before and after World War II, analyzing the most notorious twentieth century outbreak of a thirst for authoritarian leadership in Germany and Hitler.  Jung applied a psychological term not much in use today: hysteria.  I find it very evocative.  It clearly bypasses rationality and reference to consensus reality.  And it fits the rise of Trump to a chilling extent.

 Jung writes of these phenomena in terms of the human unconscious, which is partly personal and partly collective, and its relationship to the conscious mind.  As a rule, an eruption from the unconscious that infects consciousness but is not recognized or evaluated by it, is dangerous to the individual, and when it is part of a mass phenomenon, to society as a whole.  This is particularly true when the eruptions come primarily from the darker unconscious, also known as the shadow.  

 Mass hysteria is galvanized and defined by the hysteric that demands it, and so in addition to image etc. this individual becomes a symbol.  How else to explain a person holding such sway whose speeches and so-called press conferences are largely incoherent? Especially one who has gone from “I alone can fix it” to “I am your retribution.”    

 One sign of being ruled by the unconscious is what Jung called one-sidedness, in which simplistic certainties dripping with self-righteousness replace the recognition of complexities. From denial, projection, etc. comes stereotypes of the Other as objects of hate. This is currently manifest on both sides of the American political divide, but most rabidly on the right, now quickly forming the American Reich.  Their hysteria is defined by their eagerness to override the procedures of the government of all.

 It is a sign of the extremes of the current situation that the American Reich routinely denies realities which pass all rational tests: even of the violent events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, caught by cameras and witnessed by millions on television.  Though not identical, this is related to the pathological lying that Jung identified as part of a particular kind of hysteric personality, such as Hitler’s.

 How have we gotten here?  We have individual responsibilities to look to ourselves, as well as to represent a conscious evaluation of our politics and society.  But Jung also identifies culture as a bulwark against rule by the dark unconscious, and that aspect is the subject of this post.

 Our American past is not free of eruptions of irrational violence, even if our histories gloss over them.  The country began with an invasion and cultural as well as physical genocide.  We still suffer effects from a century or more of the slavery of African Americans,.  There have been other periods and episodes of racial violence that erupted in various places.

 Our politics also has had episodes of violence and conspiracy, and of the urge (even in high places) towards authoritarian rule.  But we can also cite a political culture that was established with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and created a civic stability that became the envy of the world.  America had political and legal norms.  The rule of law under the Constitution was sacrosanct, the equivalent of a secular religion.

While attitudes and behavior we now define as racist and sexist, etc. were embedded in the culture, they were not essential to the founding principles, and therefore its culture.  In fact progress was made partly by repeatedly invoking those principles.

 The culture enforced rules on political behavior not completely enshrined in law, through the consensual behavior we call tradition.  There was always jockeying for advantage, but all parties were forced to obey rules enforced by the political system itself, and the public will behind it.  The Supreme Court became the final arbiter, and its interpretations of the Constitution at times may have been met with consternation by some, but they were accepted.

 So for example, duly confirmed vote totals were accepted by losers as well as winners.  The presidency was a high moral as well as political office, and though the office was held by men of questionable ethics, even the hint of criminal behavior would doom a candidate from the start.

 More broadly, there was a consensus reality accepted by all (or nearly all), and an accepted set of tests that said what was a fact and what was not.  And there was plenty of fierce debate within these strictures and structures.

 So what the hell happened?  People with a longer memory or deeper knowledge of history may point to prior precedents, but in my lifetime, the Vietnam War era exposed falsehoods and corruption in government and related institutions that damaged the sense of legitimacy.

 Trusted elements of the federal government (supported by large businesses and elements of academia with a common self-interest) were found to be lying, when they were not simply ignoring facts.  The cost was paid in blood and resources.  War protesters challenged their legitimacy, both in themselves and in contrast to the cultural principles everyone said they believed in.

 This war protest all began with conscious use of the research of facts, of applying ethical standards and of analyzing and speculating on structures that were responsible.  But as time went on darker elements of the unconscious joined in, as some became more desperate to end the war, and transform society. There were excesses resulting in violence, and visions of conspiracies that might have been fruitful speculation but were characterized more by the emotional power of unjustified certainty.  Recognizing complexity and ambiguity just wasn’t very satisfying.

 It is important to note that for all its challenges to the legitimacy of the three branches of government, the antiwar movement mostly respected the established norms of process—of elections and judicial decisions. And from the beginning, it dealt in facts as well as interpretations of their meaning.

 I’m not going to even try to follow the ramifications over the decades, but it’s pretty clear that in 2024 that politically both sides have in startling ways become their opposites.  The previously conservative right, that defended the establishment against the hippies and leftists, has become the insurrectionist, conspiracy-pushing antiestablishment totalitarian hysterics (maintaining however a still pious regard for wealth), more extreme than all but the fringe of the New Left ever was.

 The flip is sometimes remarkable.  Conservative America and the medical establishment once could only scoff and stare when hippie lefty types droned on about health food and organic processes, plant-based medicine and foreign techniques like acupuncture, meditation and massage.  Now that elements of these radical practices are fairly standard in establishment medicine, advocates, practitioners and “influencers” on YouTube promote supposed natural remedies, and turn out to be among the right wing deniers of Covid vaccines, absorbed as a convenient article of faith on the new right.

  

The answer to the why question is probably in the area suggested last time: in the conflict between what they know has been done to their lives that’s not directly their fault, and the deep shame (however unjustified) and various inferiority feelings they nevertheless have and desperately repress, even from their own consciousness, as well as undifferentiated anger at their plight as perceived victims of injustice or a national turn towards "evil."

 Judging from what this segment is visibly eager to suppress or reverse, they feel particularly threatened by cultural changes that get grouped under the term of diversity. This trend that has been going on in fits and starts for generations has sometimes been accompanied by conflict and violence, but now it is met by political power.  The difference is that this power embraces non-democratic means, which in itself for Americans indicates a dangerous eruption from the unconscious, an increasingly organized hysteria.

 Probably none of this would have emerged so strongly had not they had real grievances that were ignored or belittled, and real basis for feeling shamed and excluded. Or if instead of being cowed by them and trying to avoid controversy, politicians had shown some vision and conviction, especially when they weren’t facing an immediate election. Those in other political niches have their own shadow problems, and until they (or we) deal with those, this won’t get better.

  To some extent, we all feel threatened by change.  How we evaluate those feelings in consciousness makes the difference.  Whether we project, or on the other hand, feel empathy; whether we act out, or act to accommodate change.

 That’s some of the “why.”  The answer to “how” is partly, and I would still say greatly, in their self-created Internet-linked cult, in which they find mutual support, outlets and forms for their repressed rage, even a special language, and a drug-like feeling of power which lifts them from a knowing helplessness.  Radio made Hitler and television made Trump, but the membership of the American Reich is being made via the Internet, its social media and its algorithms.  This is dangerous for any group, who must remain conscious of what all this evokes in them.

 In dynamic back and forth, Trump and opportunists of the Internet (with lots of help from Russian and Chinese trolls) define for their passionate if quickly substituted beliefs, cobbled together from confronting new situations with hysterical interpretations of old doctrine and the grimmest hits of the past, plus fantasies of rebellious early America and the bluster common to dictatorships and organized crime.

 The Internet links huge numbers of people who may be otherwise isolated, and the speed and intensity of the communication can take hold at a level below consciousness, urging people to more extreme views as their unstated membership fee.  Cult behavior is even more personal—members who deviate can become immediate exiles.

 Add to the more active hysteria the “low information voter” (who may or may not eventually vote) who has little basis for choice other than feelings, which are usually negative, emerging without filter from the shadow of the unconscious. They see Trump as the champion of their own shadow, now liberated to express itself without the effective cautions of institutional culture.  (Low information voters also used to vote based on party loyalty, but as party and other supporting mechanisms fade, there seems to be less of this.) 

 This feeling of shared beliefs and truths, of belonging, becomes more important when other sources of identity (like the steady job in a community of intact families) are failing.  There is also the rush of battling common cause and a common enemy that must always be renewed.  It’s similar to the pumped-up “outrage” that some on the opposite side can get from demonstrations etc. as well as internal group sessions.

 So in a broad political historical sense, the mostly justified distrust of political institutions in the 1960s and 70s may have set the template for those who wish to take over if not destroy those institutions, not to expand democracy and diversity (as the 60s radicals advocated) but to establish White authoritarian rule dominated by a certain, mostly dark kind of Christianity.  The American Reich is still a minority, but seems dangerously close to taking power in a more significant way.

 Responding to this distrust of those who defend these institutions, new standards has been applied to electing officials, so that today there are more members of Congress and Senators who are ideologically rigid and otherwise more ignorant, added to those whose moral sense stops at what is good for their party.  They are representatives of the shadow.  This ideological fervor and partisanship has most alarmingly infect the Supreme Court, now effectively corrupted and politicized in ways that clearly benefit the American Reich.

 However it is worth saying that while the culture of American civic institutions has been badly eroded, it has not been eradicated.  The New York jury that convicted Trump on the evidence presented is an example of it, as are the many election officials throughout the country that have stood up to the bullying of the American Reich.

  

In the 1950s, Jung expanded on the dynamics of culture, the individual and mass society, especially in the writings that were translated and published in the US as a book in 1958, The Undiscovered Self.  Jung’s discussion of religion as a cultural counterbalance raises too many complicated issues to address here, especially in view of how much has changed since then, and the different context of the US.  Here, the civic religion of Constitutional freedom and democracy was strong, and for at least much of my lifetime, pretty much in tandem with the ethical teachings of institutional religion. But now both are divisive and often at odds, especially as civic education itself has been weakened.

 Particularly when established religion is no longer the basis of a cultural consensus, Jung writes, it is up to the individual to do the work of confronting the unconscious with personal religious experience.  The individual, he writes “needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.”

 Jung believed that modern people are susceptible to mass suggestion also because they tend to be insufficiently grounded in nature.  Beyond a mention or two in his 1946 essay, he elaborates on this in other parts of his work, and again, the topic is too complex and fraught with a different contemporary significance to be more than just mentioned here.

 Jung realized that the intellectual tenor of the time made a certain kind of rationalism the standard of validity, and that all this talk of the unconscious and so on was likely to fall on deaf and perhaps embarrassed ears.  So his outlook for the future wasn’t optimistic: “The underestimation of the psychological factor is likely to take a bitter revenge.”

  We may want or need to ignore the insanity of what’s going on—it makes for clickable sensationalism, but it fits into the everyday decadence on the rest of the front page.  Most of the time we have to ignore it to stay sane.  But that very insanity ought to be telling us that there’s more going on here than can be explained in newspaper columns and cable television roundtables.

 Jung believed that the possibility of the destructive contents of the unconscious expressing themselves in a “collective possession” is always present in society, even in our supposedly enlightened, rational times.  Nuclear arsenals made this possibility infinitely more dangerous even in his time, and now, we can add climate distortion.

 In the best of times, he speculates, it is held back by “the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population.”  He suggests an optimistic estimate of its upper limit is “about forty percent of the electorate.”

 Perhaps ordinary political strategies and voting patterns will result in at least holding back this hysteria from power in the next election.  But it may take more than that—it may require some scrutiny from a different perspective, a wider view of what is relevant, as well as what is at stake.   

Helplessness and the American Reich

In the last post, I quoted C.G. Jung from his essays just after World War II characterizing Hitler as an hysteric, in terms that obviously apply to our current dictator-in-waiting.  While this post sat atop this site, controversy exploded over a video posted on the Trump campaign site, calling for a “unified Reich” in America.

The Trump campaign took down the video, and said it was a repost from somewhere else, added by a staffer who failed to notice the nomenclature.  But this makes its own point: Trump’s hysterics evoke and give form to the hysterics of his supporters, and so these tendencies go beyond Trump himself.  He has clearly invited this form and content of hysteria, with statements that echo Hitler as his most inflammatory.  This affair illustrates and symbolizes a growing fact: the American Right is refashioning itself as the American Reich.

Support for other dictators in the world, as well as Trump’s declared dictatorial ambitions, have become overt among them.  Though some express resentment in public concerning Hitler references to Trump, and project them back on their political opponents, others seem willing and even happy to identify with Nazi symbolism and Hitler himself.  Trump’s statements echoing Hitler’s so closely are not only hateful and inflammatory, they give permission to his followers to accept—privately and increasingly in public—the ambition’s of the Third Reich in the 1930s and 40s, perhaps somewhat differently applied for our time.

In his writings on Nazism and Fascism, Jung concentrated on psychological factors as the necessary foundation for such a societal response, but he acknowledged other contributing factors.  “Naturally there were plenty of reasons—political, economic, social and historical—to drive the Germans to war, just as there are in the case of common murder,” he wrote.

Jung does not discuss any of those specifics.  In this post I begin speculations on such contributing factors, briefly glancing at 20^th century Germany, but looking at such elements in contemporary America, with their attendant psychological implications.

The now conventional shorthand version of history says that Nazi Germany was a reaction to the economic hardships and national shame imposed by the harsh terms of the peace treaty after Germany was defeated in World War I.  Another factor, probably related, was the immense monetary inflation in Germany in the early 1920s.

 Jung may have not bothered with such explanations partly because he saw similar hysteria in Germany that led to World War I, before any of this happened.  But I emphasize the German inflation because in my lifetime I’ve observed that no economic misfortune is as likely to evoke an hysterical response as is inflation.

 In my experience, we as a people will grimly survive recession and depression, but inflation drives us crazy.  I believe the reason is that, even more than unemployment or recession, inflation makes us feel helpless.  If you are unemployed, you could still imagine getting a job, or borrowing a certain amount, etc.  Inflation attacks the value of money itself, and hence its reality.

  In a recession, a dollar is still worth a dollar, and may even buy a little more. You can help yourself by getting more dollars. In inflation, the value of a dollar declines unpredictably. It’s unclear how to help yourself when dollars don’t have the same value from one week to the next. Each goal you might reach is not enough. Suddenly everything is uncertain, frightening and threatening.

 We saw the intensity of response in the American inflation of the late 1970s, which was nowhere near as large as Germany in the 20s, but was larger than the recent inflation, which is still being felt.  The response in 1980 (together with other factors) defeated a sitting President, and changed America profoundly. It led to the election of Ronald Reagan.  The postwar consensus was over, and rapid change in institutions and daily life began. 

An energy crisis caused by the Middle Eastern oil cartel, earlier recession and the ongoing flight of industries contributed (steel mills and auto plants closing, leading to economic hollowing especially in middle Atlantic and Midwestern state, including Detroit’s half-century of decline) but it was double-digit inflation that shook the security of the middle and upper middle classes as well as those below.  I certainly found evidence of this in interviews I conducted for a New York Times Magazine cover story.

 After decades of relative stability, even through various crises, global inflation hit again around 2022.  But much of the US felt it in the past year or so through the sudden spike in grocery prices, and then prices for other goods and services.  Although inflation is officially low, these prices—up to a third higher than a few years before-- continue to create anxiety and dismay.  Going to the grocery store is shocking, or restaurants. According to a news story this week, many Americans now view their everyday fast food meals as a luxury. Many people are less secure, and many others feel insecure.

 Higher food prices are likely caused by other real factors as well, such as the effects of various kinds of unaccustomed weather on crops, and related glitches in the supply line.  Nevertheless, that the realities—and the shock—of inflated prices don’t register proportionately in official economic numbers is just one of the ways in which the whole system of measuring economic health is broken.  These measurements (and what they don’t measure) add to the obscuring of the major and growing problem of the concentration of wealth in a few hands, while most Americans don’t share in the statistical growth, and feel themselves falling back.

 Though this inflation is very recent and thus the icing on the cake, this huge imbalance known by the dubious shorthand of economic inequality is a persistent and now endemic problem.  As people feel more and more insecure, they feel shame at their helplessness as well as anger.  They look for scapegoats (such as immigrants and other races), and they listen to those who best resonate with their otherwise silent hysteria.

 Though potent, anxiety based on money and status is not the only source of these feelings of helplessness.  There is also the most comprehensive threat to the future, to existence itself, to the world as we know it, of climate distortion.

 In Jung’s theories of the unconscious, the worst fears are likely to be the most repressed. In this case, the strongest of insecurities becomes the most threatening to even admit.  In a healthier society, that tendency would be tempered by conscious efforts to address reality, however frightening and difficult. 

 But that is not happening in one segment of the public, reflected in those whose political power is built on forming and intensifying their hysteria.  Perhaps the most classic example of this political as well as psychological response made the news last week, when Governor DeSantis of Florida signed into law a bill which removes any mention of climate as a priority in state energy policy, among similar provisions. 

 As numerous news stories mentioned, Florida was at that moment in the grips of a May heat wave that sent temperatures to 115F in Key West and gave Miami its hottest day in history.  In its most dire predictions to date, NOAA forecasts a dangerously active hurricane season, even as Florida has already recently experienced rising seas, flooding rains, damaging storms, toxic algae blooms and other disasters that manifest climate distortion.  In other words, Florida is ground zero for the climate crisis in America, and its governor’s solution is to forbid considering it—even forbidding the words.

 This is denial writ large, done consciously no doubt for political effect (it got a lot of attention for a law that actually doesn’t change much) and to mollify Big Oil donors. But it also could not be a clearer example of hysteria, and the cynical exploitation of hysteria, which in the end amounts to the same thing.

 Hysterics in movies usually throw fits under pressure, crying we’re all going to die.  But totally ignoring mortal danger is also an hysterical response. In practice these two responses often cause each other.

 The potential consequences of climate distortion are huge, too awful to fully grasp, or allow oneself to contemplate for long. Not much could be bigger than the end of the world as we know it.  But this is not the first such situation, and there is a longer history in how Americans responded to the earlier one.

 From almost the moment the first atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima was known, fear of a future that included the threat of instant and total annihilation began to take root.  As the nuclear arms race went on relentlessly, and it became a patriotic duty to support it with at least silent consent, or thanks to McCarthyism, the Blacklist and J. Edgar Hoover, risk ostracism if not arrest, the feeling of helplessness grew in every direction.

 At first government officials were amazed that the public was silent.  Psychologists talked about a national numbing, and the 1950s became known for a kind of hysterical quiescence: a manically happy face that any unusual event could turn into panic.  Later psychologists came up with the theory of “learned helplessness,” based on rats in a maze who stopped trying to escape when their previous efforts always led to failure—even after escape routes were open.

 Denial seems proportionate to the dimensions of helplessness.  People are not insensible to floods, fires, smoke, rising waters and heatwaves when they are their victims, though even then the denial can be quite remarkable.  Everyone else would like to ignore stories about these threatening events that lurk in the news somewhere every day.  These are “natural” disasters, almost by definition outside human control.  Yet those damn scientists pile up evidence that they are caused by how we’ve lived our modern lives. So suppressed shame is also part of the response, and anger at the double bind of creating havoc by leading normal lives.

 But it’s all so big that it seems impossible to address.  We seem to be helpless.  Individual efforts seem pitiful and deluded.   It must require a major and therefore threatening change to our way of life, which must be in some ways more threatening than the ultimate climate crisis consequences.  At least when they hit we’ll all be dead.  Maybe.

 How can it be my fault anyway? I did what I was supposed to do.  It must be a hoax perpetrated by evil forces just to shame and intimidate me, and to give them more power over me. 

 The contents of the unconscious, Jung writes, are not evil or destructive in themselves, “but are ambivalent, and it depends entirely on the constitution of the intercepting consciousness whether they will turn out to be a curse or a blessing.”

 This seems true also of the phenomena apparently behind this hysteria of helplessness.  The problem of income inequality can be addressed by higher taxes on the wealthy, and even a wealth limit, with the excess devoted to (for example) addressing the effects of inequality, and addressing climate distortion causes and effects.  This method was American policy from the 1930s through the 1970s to some degree, and some redress of excessive tax cuts of Reagan and the Bushes did begin in the Obama years, to be immediately reversed.  But the American Reich for its various political and psychological reasons, ignores any such remedy.

 Though incremental measures to address climate distortion may well help and perhaps eventually lead to societal attempts at solutions, this is not a mere political problem, nor one that can entirely be addressed through bureaucratic or economic means.  Jung warned (as early as 1919) that if the collective unconscious becomes animated “due to a complete breakdown of all conscious hopes and expectations, the danger arises that the unconscious may take the place of conscious reality.”  For many, it seems that it already has.

 This is the essence of the American Reich.  The conscious reality is denied.  They believe their unconscious fantasies and projections.  Some news outlets now routinely provide “fact checks” of absurd rumors and claims, most of them promulgated on American Reich social media. 

 So powerful are these fantasies, especially those promoted by their dictator-in-waiting, that previously establishment Republican politicians, eager for power, abase themselves by supporting claims in spite of quite obvious evidence that they are false.  This extends even to Members of Congress who hid from rampaging mobs, saw blood on the floor of the Capitol, and now deny that anything unusual took place there on January 6, 2021.

 Obvious hysteria has become an American Reich technique, from social media and vigilante activity to the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court.  

 How can this hysteria itself be addressed?  Jung suggests two ways.  First and foremost, as individuals, we look deeply into ourselves, for as he writes, if there’s something really wrong in society, there’s something really wrong in me. 

 This is true politically as well. There is something to some political responses and even right wing fantasies,  however distorted, that some on the left self-righteously ignore or one-sidedly deny. 

 We must all examine ourselves, to consciously restore balance with the unconscious.  For the hysteria, the anger, the hatred and helpless rage, the avarice and greed for power, as well as the arrogance, the envy, the prejudice, the projections and denial and the repressed feelings of inferiority, do not all occur on one side of any question, and certainly not on just one side of the political divide.  Haven’t we all seen the environmentalist who is always angry, always in a bad mood, glowering in the woods in his Save the Redwoods t-shirt?  

  “As a psychiatrist, accustomed to dealing with patients who are in danger of being overwhelmed by unconscious contents,” Jung writes, “I know that is of utmost importance, from the therapeutic point of view, to strengthen as far as possible their conscious position and powers of understanding, so that something is there to intercept and integrate the contents that are breaking through into consciousness.” 

 The other remedy is the culture—cultural norms, bonds, institutions.  For culture, Jung writes, “is our only weapon against the fearful danger of mass-mindedness.” 

 Speculations on how the American culture broke down to become the breeding grounds of the American Reich is the subject of a future post.  But Jung has something else to say about the importance of our political culture in surviving this hysteria of helplessness: the function of a democracy:

 “True democracy is a highly psychological institution,” Jung wrote in this same postwar context, “which takes account of human nature as it is, and makes allowances for the necessity of conflict within its own national boundaries.”

 Later he adds: “The marked tendency of the Western democracies to internal dissension is the very thing that could lead them onto a more hopeful path.”

 This of course is the most proximate threat of the American Reich: an end to this democracy in their totalitarian “unified” Reich.  Preserving what is left of American democracy is at stake in the 2024 election.  That also is a topic for next time, but is always worth emphasizing.

The Power of Hysteria and Hysteria in Power

"All these pathological features--complete lack of insight into one's own character...self-admiration and self-extenuation, denigration and terrorization of one's fellow men...projection of the shadow , lying, falsification of reality, determination to impress by means fair or foul, bluffing and double-crossing--all these were united in the man who was diagnosed clinically as an hysteric, and whom a strange fate chose to be the political, moral and religious spokesman..."

Who is being described?  Anybody we know? 

These are the words of psychologist Carl Jung, in an essay first published in 1946.  They refer to Adolph Hitler.

The usual political and economic explanations don't do the job. In trying to find a new and more satisfactory approach to even partially understand this strange current moment in America and elsewhere in the world,  it occurred to me to go back to the essays that C.G. Jung wrote just before, during and after World War II, about the psychology of that period in Europe. 

 Living and working in Switzerland and seeing patients from bordering Germany, Jung was well placed to observe everything that happened, day by day, over those years, and how people reacted, in their behavior and their dreams (which they discussed in their psychoanalysis.)  He was also well positioned to observe the rise of Hitler and to some extent of Mussolini in Italy.  While Mussolini was the dictator unleashed by a monarchy, Hitler was the dictator who abolished a democracy.  Hitler was elected.

These essays are not very well known.  They are preserved in Volume 10 of the Bollingen Series of his collected works, entitled Civilization in Transition.  Though Jung's activities in Switzerland led to controversy and charges of Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism, his writings and his activities in support of Jews and opposed to Hitler are matters of record.  In recent years, his contacts with American "intelligence"during the war were revealed.  Future CIA director Allen Dulles said his contributions were invaluable, especially his insights into Hitler.  During the war, Jung's name was placed on the Gestapo's enemies list.

The basis for Jung's psychology is the relationship of the conscious to the unconscious.  The unconscious is vast, powerful in our lives and by its nature unknown.  But consciously we can observe some manifestations in behavior, and some of the mechanisms the unconscious typically employs to obscure its role and convince us it's all our conscious idea, such as denial, projection (usually projecting one's own faults onto others) and displacement.  The more negative contents of the unconscious Jung also refers to as "the shadow." 

The most important fact about the unconscious is that it is "unconscious," but the conscious mind can readily convince itself of reasons for doing what the unconscious motivates it to do. Only with conscious introspection can we begin to understand and control behavior rising from the unconscious, to bring ourselves more into balance.  This is a very simplified description.

There are those who are severely out of balance, and times that Jung and Jungians would describe as one-sided.  These can be dangerous times.  Jung believed that much of the 20th century was and would continue to be one of those times, at least in Europe.  

This 1946 essay entitled (in English) "After the Catastrophe" continues on the subject of Hitler, whose particular brand of hysteria is "characterized by a peculiar talent for believing one's own lies.  For a short spell, such people usually meet with astounding success, and for that reason are socially dangerous.  Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident."

Before continuing, let's pause for a moment at that term "hysteria."  As a word, it has an unfortunate history.  It comes from the Greek word for uterus, and for much of its long history it was chiefly used for what was believed to be a innate female disorder.  More broadly it was also used to denote the expression of ungovernable and often violent emotion in any individual, or even in groups.  

It was also a psychological category well into the twentieth century but has since been rejected, not only because various psychological and medical ailments were given more specific names (all the better to match them with drugs to treat them) but perhaps more importantly, because of the rejection of that initial premise--that this is something women are more predisposed to exhibit.

Yet the word is generally understood and very evocative.  Most people probably still know what it means to say someone was hysterical.  It isn't a bland and technical term that is understood only dimly.

Of course it is often misused as a pejorative, and as a projection. But without its gender associations and prejudice, and without its meaning limited to fits or episodes but to a condition, and seen as the basis for not only a personal diagnosis but applied to groups, even an entire nation, the term is powerful.  At least for me, hystertic and hysteria explain a lot about these times.

Jung continues by addressing the question of why Germans didn't see through Hitler's act when much of the rest of the world found his "theatrical, obviously hysterical gestures" ridiculous.  "When I saw him with my own eyes, he suggested a psychic scarecrow...rather than a human being.  It is also difficult to understand how his ranting speeches...could have made such an impression....A sorry lack of education, conceit that bordered on madness, a very mediocre intelligence combined with the hysteric's cunning and the power fantasies of an adolescent, were written all over this demagogue's face."

"He behaved in public like a man living in his own biography, in this case as the sombre, daemonic "man of iron" of popular fiction, the ideal of an infantile public..."  

So why was this hysteric so successful?  "But the German people would never have been taken in and carried away so completely if this figure had not been a reflected image of the collective German hysteria."     

There are always hysterics in public life.  Sometimes media (and now social media) amplifies their hysteria because it's extreme, titillating, attention-getting.  But much of the time, hysterics are not particularly successful at even getting close to power.  When they do, it is because they have an audience of those who to one degree or another are themselves possessed by hysteria.  

Only something this extreme can begin to explain how a man who can barely complete a sentence, who is under indictment for more than forty felonies, who denies basic facts that are matters of public record, who denied a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans, who defies all political norms, etc. is by some accounts the favorite to regain power in November.  Or perhaps a little later.

At the moment, the United States is not united in thrall of the hysterics. If the polls and the pundits are correct, it seems almost evenly divided.  There is hysteria on both sides, and that is worth exploring. But the obvious danger is that the hysterics who have largely taken over the Republican Party will return to power to finish the job of destroying democracy, while unleashing even greater catastrophes. 

For now, let's return to Jung's description of individual and social hysteria:

"This is a pathological, demoralized and mentally abnormal condition: one side of us does things which the other (so-called decent) side prefers to ignore.  This side is in a perpetual state of defence against real and supposed accusations. "

"As a rule there is amazing ignorance of the shadow; the hysteric is aware only of his good motives, and when the bad ones can no longer be denied he becomes the unscrupulous Superman...who fancies he is ennobled by the magnitude of his aim."    

"Ignorance of one's other side creates inner insecurity...This sense of insecurity is the source of the hysteric's prestige psychology, of his need to make an impression, to flaunt his merits and insist on them, of his insatiable thirst for recognition, admiration, adulation, and longing to be loved.  It is the cause of that loud-mouthed arrogance...insolence and tactlessness..."

None of this contradicts the possible presence of contributing political and economic motives, of conscious manipulation etc.  Nor does it mean that feelings of insecurity aren't based in economic, political and social realities.  But our discourse on this strange and portentous time that insists that only political and economic motives are real, still can't explain what's going on.  Psychology underlies everything else, and cannot be ignored.  

Because there is clearly something going on--and more likely, several somethings--that is being day by day ignored.  I look at the Internet front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and other such serious news media and besides some factual reporting on wars and specific events, I see mostly evidence of hysteria and decadence, which is the hysteria of the rich and apparently secure.  Most of what is truly important is missing, and I don't mean psychological diagnosis.  I mean the likely factors underlying this hysteria.  More on that another time.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

 “ I think compassion and imagination go together.  If you give up trying to use your imagination for new things and for expanding yourself, you begin to wither away.  And if you begin to draw back from your compassion, you will begin to wither away, too. Compassion and imagination—not intelligence—are what makes the human species valuable.  And that’s our gift; that’s our great talent, and if we don’t live up to it, it will kill us.  If you don’t live up to your talent, it kills you.”

W.S. Merwin

This North Coast Place: Occupying Humboldt

 On Monday evening, April 22, we began noticing the sound of a large helicopter circling above.  We're used to hearing the Coast Guard copter passing by, and occasionally returning in a wide circle if it is on a search or rescue mission over the ocean.  But these were tighter circles and more persistent.  Yet it was a large helicopter, flying at high altitude, so it was hard to figure out what it was doing.  It was too big and too high to be engaged in a law enforcement operation, I thought.  Besides, this isn't Los Angeles.  

Then Margaret, as HSU faculty emeritis, got a text from the university, warning her to stay away from campus because of an ongoing dangerous situation.  We soon learned what it was: police were swarming onto campus to extract protesting students from Sieman's Hall, a building that houses administrative offices and classrooms.  The helicopter, which people online were saying had been diverted from a search and rescue, belonged to the state police.  The police action was unsuccessful, resulting in some injuries, and it was suddenly ended.  The occupation began.

Back in the Civil Rights and Vietnam era, I knew about and participated in various forms of protest, including the occupation of a college administrative office in the spring of 1970, in another part of the country.  There are a lot of differences now, and I know nothing of the people involved in the Humboldt occupation.  I know nothing of any of the involved individual's motives, character, behavior, anything.  Though I spent considerable time on the HSU campus over several decades, I haven't set foot on it in almost exactly 8 years, even though it is an easy walk away.  But there are similarities to the context: students involved in an occupation while people are being killed thousands of miles away, and  there are widespread and similar actions on campuses across the country.  And the basics of the situation are pretty much the same.  Which is why I knew that massive police action at the beginning was a fatal mistake.

  In general, these occupations occur for several reasons.  First is to express opposition to what is happening and to emphasize both awareness of it--in this case, Gaza--and the depth of concern.  The second is simply to express the pain and anger and other emotions in response to it, including frustration that it is not being effectively addressed.  For some who get involved, it is an opportunity to express ideological beliefs and commitments, and perhaps to push a larger political agenda.  These are protests.  But such continuing actions of disruption such as strikes and sit-ins have their roots not only in political protest, but beyond them in the labor movement, and they have specific goals: demands to be addressed.  An occupation combines expression with specific objectives.  Typically, most who are involved are there for expression, and general objectives.  Demands often come from a smaller group within the protesters, and may not emerge immediately.  

At the earliest stages, there is typically a broad mix of views and objectives among the protesters.  The action is something they can all agree to do together.  I've read a number of accounts of how the Humboldt occupation started, and they seem to agree that the initial action was planned as something like a sit-in, limited in extent and in duration.  A massive police operation to extract protesters at this early stage has always been a mistake, and it was an especially expensive blunder in this specific situation, because the protesters resisted.  

Who ordered this police action?  According to Thadeus Greenson in the North Coast Journal, the Journal repeatedly asked the university and the Chancellor's office of the state university system that very question, and got no answer.  Kelly Lincoln's report in the Independent (a southern Humboldt County newspaper) quotes Cal Poly Humboldt's Dean of Students Mitch Mitchell as saying, "The administration did not call the police."  Well, somebody did.  Somebody assembled various police forces, including that state police helicopter.  Somebody (though the timing of this is still unclear to me) alerted Mad River Hospital to prepare for mass casualties.  Either someone in the university with the authority to make the request, or some law enforcement official or officials who got it rolling themselves.   If I were an editor or reporter on this story right now, this would be the first question I would pursue. 

Most of what happened subsequently was precipitated by this initial response.  The possibility of such a student action must have occurred to somebody, at least when it began happening elsewhere.  Did the administration even have a plan?  Was this it?  Or was it a panic response?

On April 25, the Humboldt faculty voted a no confidence resolution in university president Tom Jackson and his chief of staff, and requested their resignations, mainly citing the police response and Jackson's absence from campus, but apparently this was all the last straw, after previous grievances.  In my experience, such a vote is very serious, and has brought down more than one university president.  But so far it has passed almost unnoticed.  The awkward New York Times story (which insisted on the formal title of California Polytechnic University, Humboldt) did not even mention it.  So that's another question I would pursue: what institutionally is the effect of such a resolution?  What is the process, the applicable history within the CA state university system?

Another question I would pursue concerns the student suspensions.  The affected students are confused about what they mean.  What do they mean? Did these students get due process?  It doesn't seem like it.  Suspensions are a serious matter, and in my knowledge of other schools, they had to pass through a committee process, often with the students able to defend themselves at some point.  Suspensions in fact may turn out to be more consequential than arrests, since most of those are likely to go nowhere.

But speaking of process, this was a fatal problem for some of the demands, as no one could grant some of them without a process involving many others over some amount of time.  And the relevance or appropriateness of others posed knotty problems.  They weren't so simple as the demands of labor sit-ins--for instance: raise our wages, since you have the power to do so.

 The question of anti-Semitic prejudice is particularly fraught, while the long-evolving Middle East situation, and the fact that the US is indirectly involved but not (like Vietnam) one of the main agents, distinguishes this political situation from Vietnam.  How widespread prejudice against Jews actually is on this campus or other campuses is unknown, as is the extent of targeting Jewish students because of Israeli actions. But several Humboldt County Jewish leaders signed a letter to two local (Democratic) political leaders countering their claim, saying that they did not regard the student protest as anti-Semitic, and they are offended that others made that claim without even consulting them.  Nationally, it's clear that Republicans are inflating anti-Semitic claims for their political purposes, and I've heard persuasive suggestions that Russian and Chinese disinformation have been whipping up these claims on social media (namely Tiktok) in their ongoing efforts to create conflict and chaos in this election year.  

  The occupation ended with an even more massive police action--close it seems to a military operation-- though the number of students in the building had apparently dwindled to fewer than 50, perhaps half that.  As it did in the Vietnam era, this overkill of official force is itself an educational experience, as likely was the experience of the occupation itself.  

Apart from militarized police confronting unarmed civilians, the involvement then and now of so-called academic institutions in what then became known as the military-industrial-education complex stands as a potent and poignant issue, though I don't know the specific applications to Humboldt. 

Approaching the 101 Sunset exit from the north the day after the occupation was ended, I saw a sign that normally would be flashing traffic or construction information, but this time it said: Campus closure will be enforced.  That pretty much signals the end of Humboldt as an open academic and community institution, at least for now. Papers, please.  The ACLU says the complete closing is unconstitutional, and violates Cal State policy.

The protests here and nationally have the unfortunate effect of taking attention away from the situation they were protesting, namely Gaza.  That's somewhat inevitable, but worse in this current period of multiple extremism and social media.  Such an occupying action seems best when it is brief. Administration policy is best when it is characterized by patience (does anyone believe order would never have been restored?)

  The allegations of damage to the building are troublesome but seem overheated.  Eyewitnesses did not discern damages that rise to the "millions of dollars" level that the administration claimed and fed to media and politicians.  It's likely they are including the costs of underwriting all that police involvement, much more expensive than cleaning up graffiti.  The ACLU noted that the campus is closed to news media except by permission, so independent assessments of damage are less likely.

Humboldt County is not currently endowed with an abundance of news media.  But the Lost Coast Outpost and Redheaded Blackbelt online passed on timely information, and the three print stories I read (in the Journal, the Independent and the Lumberjack) had good reporting on events and timeline.  The Lumberjack had more detail on what was going on within the protesting group, including the allegation of militant outsiders showing up and muscling in.  Rigid ideologues and provocateurs with hidden badges are familiar dangers.  Let's hope existing news media has the resources to go deeper into this story.

I thought the best of the reports was Kelly Lincoln's in the Independent in the April 30 issue.  Particularly poignant for me was the long quote from Laurie Krause, specifically decrying the initial police action at Humboldt.  She's the sister of Allison Krause, one of the four students shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State on May 4, 1970.  Allison (with two ls, unlike the more recent singer) was much on my mind that week of the occupation I participated in.  While we were inside, other students were killed in a protest at Jackson State.  Allison was 19, just a few years younger than me at the time, also from western Pennsylvania as I was.  Her sister and I have lived another 54 years, but she did not--one of her last acts was placing a flower in a soldier's gun barrel.

As Laurie suggests, Allison's death was caused in large part by a failure of university leadership, as well as by those who jump to a military solution that victimizes the defenseless.  But at that time we knew that this was the reality for many Vietnamese, just as we know that this is the reality day after day in Gaza.  Beyond justifications and provocations, that's what links these events, as it always has.   

Howdy Doodle

 

It was four summers ago—nearly five—that Margaret drove the six hours or so to the Bay Area, to an animal shelter that specialized in small dogs, especially the small crossbreeds such as goldendoodles (golden retriever/poodle.)

 This was the end of a process that began with her joking suggestion that, after two cat companions over the years, we might get a dog.  The joke soon became serious: she wanted a dog, a small one but not (I was assured) a very small, yappy dog. 

 We visited local shelters, where small dogs were in short supply.  She applied to other places, and ran the gauntlet of questionnaires (with more intrusive questions than would otherwise be tolerated) and phone interviews.  Eventually she qualified to be notified of possibilities, and visited with several dog candidates nearby.

 But the one she was sure she wanted was at the end of that long drive.  He was a rescue dog, a small poodle crossbreed of indeterminate type, found starving in a drainage ditch in the Sacramento Valley.  Because he was black he was less desirable to adopters.  Margaret had to promise to have a fence completed around the backyard in order to get him, and so she did.

 By the time the two arrived back here in Arcata, they had definitely and definitively bonded.  The shelter had called him Ace, not a name we ever considered keeping.  Margaret walked him in the mornings, but we took him together on his afternoon walk.  He got to the point that he let me hold the leash, as long as Margaret was in sight.  He liked that I walked faster. 

 On one of our first walks, Margaret was speculating on what kind of a doodle he might be.  “A Howdy Doodle,” I said.  Margaret is one of the few people who get that joke anymore, since she too is of the Howdy Doody Time generation, every evening at 5 on the family TV.  But she also liked it as a name.  And so he has been ever since: Howdy, and more formally, Mr. Doodle.  

When Howdy stretches to his full height—dancing and twirling before meals—he is maybe two feet tall.  He weighs in at 10 pounds.  His local vet suggested he has some terrier in him, and that seems right.  He has that tenaciousness.

  Evidently the poodle crossbreeds are popular because their hair is hypoallergenic.  And it is hair, not fur, so it grows. It doesn’t take long for Howdy to look a lot huskier than he is.  He needs grooming fairly frequently, if for no other reason than the hair interferes with his traction when walking. 

 The autumn after he arrived, I went back to western Pennsylvania for a long overdue family and friends visit. While I was gone, the fence was finally completed, and Howdy got to explore his yard.  Almost immediately he found a nest of angry ground bees, and both he and Margaret got stung.  That was pretty much the end of his backyard forays. He mostly won't leave the porch without an escort.  So much for the fence.

  When I returned from this trip, I assumed my nearly two weeks away would have eroded some of the progress I made gaining Howdy’s confidence, but much to my surprise, the day after I returned he allowed me to take him on his afternoon walk; for the first time, just the two of us. 

      Margaret took him to a few training classes and maybe once to a dog park and a few doggie dates, but Howdy wasn’t engaged.  After he identifies the smell of a particular dog he pretty much loses interest.  He doesn’t know how to play, either with other dogs, with us or with play objects.  He’ll sit on the beach beside Margaret and watch dogs chase sticks but it has no appeal. He goes to sleep.  Sometimes with me he’ll get into play position, and then doesn’t know what to do. If I toss a ball down the hallway he might retrieve it once.  But if I do it again he ignores it.  I guess he was just trying to be helpful, but if I keep losing the ball, it’s more polite not to notice. 

 He is however very smart.  He can functionally count to three and possibly four.  He knows quite a few English words and a few Italian expressions (particularly “aspet”, short for “aspetta,” which means wait, or just a minute.)  He remembers our several walking routes and always knows the way home. 

 Howdy is utterly devoted to Margaret.  I can come and go but he must know where she is at every moment.  He was with us for only about seven months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and for a long time we were seldom out of the house, except for his walks and other outdoor activities.  Since we’re both retired, this didn’t change much since. So the three of us as constant companions became the way of life he knows.

 Howdy is completely indifferent to cats—they barely register as lifeforms—but he himself has catlike characteristics. He finds that spot on the floor where the sunlight falls for his morning nap.  In particular, he adopts and insists on daily rituals.  He of course knows his mealtimes and walk times, and reminds us with plenty of time to spare.  But we each have other rituals with him, some of which he invented. 

 For example, I share part of my morning biscotti with him. Howdy has figured out that the first smell of coffee is the tip-off.  But he doesn’t always show up right away.  He stays in the living room (or even goes back to it) as I get my coffee cup, the milk for my coffee and the biscotti, all on the kitchen counter.  Then I walk over to the dinette table, passing the doorway to the dining and living rooms.  As I do, Howdy comes running in to intercept me, jumping and twirling.

 Early in his residency, he watched me slice an apple in the evening.  It turned out he likes apples a lot, but only without the skin.  So now my evening ritual is to cut small pieces for him, and I get all the skins.

  I’d noticed that he likes to bring his chew into the living room whenever we are sitting there, especially after dinner.  I thought this might be pack behavior, so in our apple-time I started looking at him while we both chewed on the apples, and he looked back.  He seems to enjoy this.

 I made up an “all gone” gesture for these occasions, which he understands and accepts totally.  He’s also  learned to look where I point my finger, and not just at the finger itself.   

 We used to range far afield in our walks but for various reasons, including a lot of new construction, we restrict ourselves to a half dozen regular routes in and around the neighborhood that we alternate (and alter) at Howdy’s discretion.  There are routes he found himself, and there are routes for some reason he doesn’t like. He can be stubborn but we’ve both learned to compromise. 

 I let him lead our walks, and go at his pace, which usually involves a lot of sniffing and marking, followed by brisk business-like walking.  I read in a book about animal senses that dogs should occasionally be taken on “smell walks” like this, but for Howdy, almost every walk with me is a smell walk.  He evidently has a constantly revised map of the neighborhood in his head consisting of smell trails.  I’ve watched him associate a smell with a dog he hadn’t seen before, then just turn away.  He would rather follow the trail of another dog than meet that dog. And of course he's constantly marking his own trail.  But he's not just mapping territory; he also seems to enjoy smelling flowers and aromatic plants.  

 However I do guide our walks in other ways, to keep him safe and out of trouble. I talk to him, but most of our communication in this regard is through the tension on the leash, to which he responds easily, most of the time. 

Howdy was very quiet for his first few months here but he is now comfortable enough to bark at the UPS truck and others who come too close. He’s also taken to barking at us at times, maybe a little frustrated we don’t get the nuances of his language. He wants to talk, too. Otherwise, he does constant perimeter checks for crumbs, and sleeps a lot.  I see him most relaxed when he is nestled between us on the couch, especially when he’s getting simultaneous rubs.

 So far I’ve learned that while a cat rules the household, a dog becomes its center, since he requires (and insists on) more active attention, and also gives it.  Through this troubling period of Covid, Howdy has held us together happily.  It’s the three of us now.  

Summer Is Coming

 

Summer is coming.

Last summer saw Phoenix exceed 110 degrees continuously for close to a solid month, with an average temperature in July of 114, and some 55 days cumulatively above 110, with 133 days of 100 or above.  Many other places in the U.S. had days and weeks of temperatures above 100F, up to and including 110. Even Seattle, where temperatures rarely top the 70s, went over 90. Even now the oceans are eerily warm, and at places the water is literally hot to the touch.

Today the National Weather Service issued its summer forecast: almost the entire United States is in for a hotter summer this year.

The heat starts a cascade of consequences, from larger, more frequent and more intense and fast-moving wild fires, to urban infrastructure failures (otherwise known as melting.)  But the heat itself maims and kills.  Apart from acute conditions it causes or contributes to long term damage to kidneys and other organs. Even with official statistics vastly undercounting heat related fatalities, they exceed deaths from hurricanes, tornadoes and all other weather-related causes.  Heat is often accompanied by excessive humidity, and the two together are a recipe for widespread death.

Even those who live and work in air-conditioning, with cool water taps at hand and a cold shower a few steps away, suffer from the heat.  But the worst effects fall on workers, both outside in the sun and inside corrugated steel sweatbox warehouses, where they rush around sticking online orders in packages, and packages into trucks. 

Research revealed in a new book (and previewed in a New York Times oped) shows that the effects of heat on concentration causes workplace accidents, some of them deadly. In California alone, the research found, there are some 20,000 workplace accidents a year that go unrecorded as heat-related, but are directly attributable to the effects of excessive heat. 

As for direct effects, the watchdog group Public Citizen estimates that nationally some 20,000 workers die each year from heat effects, with another 100,000 suffering injuries and illnesses.

Moreover it doesn't take much heat to take a physical toll, let alone a mental and psychological one. In places where it didn't normally get that hot, even temperatures in the 80s and low 90s can be fatal to the most vulnerable, and harmful to others.   A 2020 study shows that bad health outcomes begin with a heat index of 83F, even if workers have access to water and shade, and regular breaks. 

Heat is a pervasive problem across all ages, occupations and income groups, from infants and schoolchildren to elders, that not even air-conditioning can fully address.  But apart from the most physically vulnerable because of age and health, the risks are greatest for workers outdoors and in those warehouses.

But there is no current federal health law that addresses excessive heat.  President Biden has called for it, comprehensive legislation is being developed, but the current Congress refuses to pass emergency measures. (Biden's climate law provides funding for infrastructure to address heat, such as cooling centers.)

 So right now regulation is up to the states and localities.  Some cities, like Phoenix have instituted some protections.  California has had some protections for outdoor workers since 2015 (leading to fewer Workman's Compensation claims, by the way), but recent legislation to protect indoor workers is years away from implementation.  Oregon and the state of Washington passed heat protection laws earlier this year, after hundreds died in heat waves last summer.  Minnesota and Colorado have some protections, while other states, like New York and Nevada, have bills proposed, but have failed to act on them.

Meanwhile, state governments in Florida and Texas have not only refused to consider state standards but have forbidden counties and cities from creating their own heat protection rules, as Miami-Dade tried to do.  The Texas action was specifically to crush ordinances in Dallas and Austin that simply mandated 10-minute water breaks in the shade every four hours for construction workers. This ban against water breaks represents "the most pro-business, pro-growth bill passed in the 88th Legislative session, and will be a lifeline to Texas job creators," according to one of its Republican proponents, as he sipped his chilled designer water in his air-conditioned office. These Texas and Florida moves give wage slavery another dimension.

Even the measures on the books are inadequate.  The standards for excessive temperatures are too high, and the remedies are partial.  But anything that adds at least some air-conditioning, access to shade and water, and more frequent breaks is better than the slave driving practices of many places today.  (Air-conditioned trucks was a key demand won by drivers for UPS in their strike last year.)

Meanwhile, it might be worth contacting your favorite online seller and delivery service to serve notice that your patronage depends on humane heat standards for the workers who process your purchases. (If indeed you can find a point of contact.) This may be no guarantee--there is a current dispute in California over conditions in an Amazon warehouse which the company says has many safeguards in place, including air-conditioning, but that some workers claim is inadequate because of excessive humidity accompanying the heat.

There is the possibility of legal challenges based on the Occupational Safety and Health law requiring businesses to protect "the general welfare" of workers, but it doesn't appear any have been filed so far.

All of this is one symptom of our continuing failure as a country to truly address comprehensively the effects of the climate crisis.  Leadership has not found a way to be effective, and I suspect it is because they haven't made this a priority that they address regularly in the most public ways.  

Nevertheless, summer is coming.  

Quoth: The Menacing Metaphor

O’Gieblyn’s key warning is that metaphors are “two-way streets.”... When we describe our minds using terms borrowed from computers, we begin to see our minds mirrored in computers, and we cease to value the parts of our minds that differ from computers.”

Ezra Klein, referring to Of God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn

Quoth: What Education Is

Our early spring bumper crop of wild calla lillies

 “I remember as a boy of not more than nine if that, having to memorize a verse by Ben Jonson of all people.  ‘It is now growing like a tree, in bulk doth make man better be, or standing long at oak, a thousand year.  The lily of the day is fairer far than they,’ and so on.  And what he said was that you can live a good life, even if it’s a short one.  And that was pumped into us, and we were made to memorize it, and that has grown in my mind.  I’ve come from hearing it as a child to realizing, in old age really, what it really means.  The quality of life.  Well, you see, that’s big stuff in education.  You give that to little children, and you have set a time bomb in their minds.  Sometime or another they’re going to wake up and think, that’s what he said.  And that’s what education is.”

Robertson Davies

Origins: Easter and April Fool's Day

 Easter is what’s known in Catholicism as a moveable feast—that is, it doesn’t occur on the same date every year.  This religious holiday had been observed on different dates and days of the week until the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 decreed it would be observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox (the first day of spring.)  So it never falls earlier than March 22 nor later than April 25.

 Easter is the most important holy day (or holi-day) in Christianity, commemorating the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion.  In my Catholic schooling in the 1950s, it was the end of a drama that began four weeks before with the beginning of Lent, with the liturgy supplying the events and observances between. 

As for the timing of the observance and even the name, the early Church superimposed it on the Saxon festival to the goddess of spring, whose name was Eostre.  Some theorize that persecuted Christians celebrating their holy day at the same time as Eostre made them less conspicuous. 

 In any case, most of the other familiar elements of Easter echo the fertility rites and symbolism of the original holiday, like the rabbits (as in “breeding like,” the hare was the animal associated with the goddess Eostre in Saxon lore) and eggs (an ancient custom of exchanging actual eggs turned to chocolate in the nineteenth century.) 

 Some Easter eggs are worth more than others, like the gold and diamond décor of the Faberge egg, or the decorated eggs in Germany inscribed with a child’s date of birth, which functioned legally as a birth certificate in the 1880s. 

My Italian grandparents had various Easter traditions involving pastries and baked goods, but for the first time this Easter I had a Hot Cross bun, courtesy of our local Quaker meeting, of which Margaret is a member.  This bun tradition goes back to the Saxon feast of Eostre.  When the Catholic Church absorbed it, the bun indeed carried the design of a cross. 

Because of this year's calendar, Easter was celebrated just one day before another spring holiday.

April Fool's Day

 April Fool’s Day is always April 1, and that's a key to its specific origins. It has roots in many cultures that reach as far back as history goes, and probably farther. Part of its complex pedigree is a meaningful relationship to the American Bill of Rights.  But most directly, it's about New Years.

The historical roots of the day include ancient festivals of spring which often had some component of comedy, trickery and release from ordinary rules, which in the western world at least usually included orgies of gluttony, drunkenness and sexual licentiousness.

 The probable direct ancestor of April Fool's Day is more specific—when France adopted the Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century, New Year's moved from April 1 to January 1. But old habits are hard to break, especially if they began in 45 B.C., when Julius Caesar set up the old Julian calendar. Some gullible Parisians were tricked by clever neighbors into celebrating New Year's on what was now the wrong day.

Out of this was born the classic cry, April Fish! Which is something that did not cross the Atlantic when the calendar was later changed in America. No one is quite sure what the fish thing is about, but the day is still celebrated that way in France.  Still, the first April Fool's Day jest was probably, "Happy New Year!"

But the more important aspect of this history relates to the tradition of the licensed fool. For centuries, most European and some Asian countries had them, popularly known as court jesters. From imperial Rome through the medieval period and the Renaissance, official fools were not only a popular and well known presence in royal courts, but for part of that time were also employed by cities, clergy and wealthy families.

Their duties ranged from song and dance to pratfalls and acrobatics, ribaldry and general foolishness. At times no fashionable dinner party was complete without a fool hired to insult the guests. But the key element of the "allowed fool" was his (and occasionally, her) freedom to do and especially to say anything to anyone.

The official fool also has roots in an aspect of the aforementioned festivals, which featured a Lord of Misrule— a commoner who took on the trappings of the king or bishop or town mayor for a day. As far back as the tenth century, these became elaborate performances, mixing entertainment with social comment, and topical plays or burlesque sermons that satirized the real rulers of state and church, who had to at least pretend to enjoy it. These events became hugely popular, but nobody was fool enough to criticize the powerful if there were going to be reprisals. So the tradition included immunity for the fool.

When kings hired permanent court jesters, political satire as well as pointed personal remarks were part of their repertoire, and the tradition of immunity came with them. Archibald Armstrong, one of England's last and most political jesters replied, "No one has ever heard of a fool being hanged for talking, but many dukes have been beheaded for their insolence." So it happened that the only people in Europe with the absolute right of free speech were kings and queens, and fools.

This fact was not lost on others who were agitating for that kind of freedom for all. The original document of the Magna Carta, England's first great challenge to absolute royal power in 1215, was decorated with the figure of a court jester. From the late 15th century until well into the 17th, "societies of fools" flourished in France, composed of young men who criticized the government and agitated for freedom while wearing the traditional court jester motley.

America never had court jesters, though some of its first expressions of freedom and identity were in the foolery tradition, from the burlesque of the Boston Tea Party (a bunch of Anglos badly costumed as Indians who struck a blow for political independence by dumping tea into cold water) to some early symbols such as Yankee Doodle and Uncle Sam. 

 "Yankee" was a British ethnic slur which New Englanders turned into a badge of honor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy was a clown figure (what else can you say about a guy who sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni?) made immortal in the song sung at key moments in the American Revolution, including at the British surrender. A similar figure, a Yankee "wise fool" stock character popular in early American stage comedies, was a source for Uncle Sam.

Americans also pride themselves on being straightforward, so there's a companion tradition of mistrusting the tricky. But today our Zeitgeist depends so heavily on some forms of deceit--spin, disinformation, oversimplifying and the straight-faced lie--that selectively moralizing about other forms rings hollow.  Injustice wears clothes of obscurant nomenclature, and success by any means necessary is our guiding morality. Mendacity is a trick of power.

The heart of the fool's relation to free speech is speaking truth to power. For awhile we may have thought that serious journalism was going to do that, but when the most powerful owns the most presses, and the line between editorial and advertising becomes more and more imaginary, it's looking like a piquant hope.

The rich and powerful can easily ridicule the countrified (the original meaning of "clown") and unsophisticated, but the figure of the fool deflects the ridicule back upon the pretentious and corrupt. Freedom to criticize the powerful is at the heart of both the fool tradition and free speech.

The pretensions of power are automatic, perhaps the inevitable product of consciousness equipped with opposable thumbs. Our particular social systems depend on some forms of deceit while moralizing about others. Historians are dishonored for missing quotation marks, but not if the history they write is dishonest bunk. Paradox or irony shade into hypocrisy as we deny freedoms in the name of protecting freedom.

Today April Fool's Day is just about our only nod to this tradition. You can play tricks on people any day of the year, but the idea is that on this day, you are allowed to.  But since most of today’s jokes will be made online, it looks pretty much like every day on the Internet, where intentional misinformation is standard. This is the scarier side of information without authority, and often without conscience.

Since laughter seems to override anger, wit is often its own protection, at least temporarily. The cosmos itself seems designed with persistent uncertainties, which is perhaps why many religious and cultural traditions make the trickster a major myth.

Historically and perhaps in practice, the freedom of the fool makes way for freedom of speech in all its aspects. Humor often seems to make the truth clearer and perhaps easier to acknowledge. We have to be tricked into seeing what we would rather not see. We can have tricksters without truth, and in our entertainment-dominated society we mostly do. But rarely can we fallible humans have truth without tricksters.