He'd broken his word his good name for to clear
A handful of political things. Mostly links accumulated over the last few days, plus some pop culture.
1. Rebecca Solnit, "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway." From last November, but none the less relevant, especially at this moment the line: "Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?"
2. Caitlin Flanagan, "Worst Revolution Ever." Despite the title, not lightly written, and not dismissive of either the damage or the danger: "They were looking for someone to tell them what to do. Trump told them what to do. So did the velvet ropes."
3. Fiona Hill, "Yes, It Was a Coup. Here's Why." The information is cogent, non-alarmist, and not sugarcoating: "As in the case of other coup attempts, the president's actions have put us on the brink of civil war."
4. Zeynep Tufekci, "Most House Republicans Did What the Rioters Wanted." Following up on all of the above: "There is a great desire to blame Trump—who is certainly very much to blame—and move on, without recognizing and responding to the dire reality: that much of the GOP enlisted in his attempt to steal an election." And are still there, if the ten who dissented in favor of impeachment are anything to count by. (Me to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie, on hearing the number: "Holy fuck, is Sodom going to be spared?")
5. I have now found myself saying in several different conversations that America's foundation myth has conditioned its inheritors to believe that the revolution is always right—a mindset that not only failed to be disenchanted by the Civil War, I suspect it's one of the reasons the romantic rehabilitation of the Lost Cause caught on. The rebels are always the good guys. And now here we are with the good guys planning to lynch lawmakers, because nothing says freedom like a dictator-for-life, but there's no dissonance for the people who believe themselves in the tradition of Patrick Henry as much as P.G.T. Beauregard. All of which incidentally clicked into place how weird it is—and how American—that the Galactic Empire of Star Wars (1977) is a bunch of Nazis who speak RP. The idea of a Resistance had to wait for the sequels; the heroes of the original films are the Rebel Alliance. The Imperials have stormtroopers and Riefenstahl choreography and everyone on the Death Star looks like they just clocked off the garrison at Navarone, but The Empire Strikes Back (1980) explicitly cast its Imperial officers with British actors just to drive the parallel further home. I know I'm far from the first person to notice, but it's like shaking all the pieces of Axis & Allies indiscriminately together, so long as an American viewer would get the right inimical echoes. A little Dam Busters, a little Yorktown. And sure, it's impossible not to get some Rome in the mix when a Republic turns to Empire, but it's much less present in the aesthetics than the political name-checks; besides, we never personally fought the Romans. (For the record, I appreciate both Alan Garner's Red Shift (1973) and, however I feel about it as a version of Sutcliff, Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle (2011) reversing the usual convention and representing their Roman characters as identifiably American. I believe Vietnam was the impetus in one case; perhaps the War on Terror in the other.) The disparate strands of the current civil unrest were another piece of what reminded me, I suppose. Our national self-image is a hell of a thing.
1. Rebecca Solnit, "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway." From last November, but none the less relevant, especially at this moment the line: "Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?"
2. Caitlin Flanagan, "Worst Revolution Ever." Despite the title, not lightly written, and not dismissive of either the damage or the danger: "They were looking for someone to tell them what to do. Trump told them what to do. So did the velvet ropes."
3. Fiona Hill, "Yes, It Was a Coup. Here's Why." The information is cogent, non-alarmist, and not sugarcoating: "As in the case of other coup attempts, the president's actions have put us on the brink of civil war."
4. Zeynep Tufekci, "Most House Republicans Did What the Rioters Wanted." Following up on all of the above: "There is a great desire to blame Trump—who is certainly very much to blame—and move on, without recognizing and responding to the dire reality: that much of the GOP enlisted in his attempt to steal an election." And are still there, if the ten who dissented in favor of impeachment are anything to count by. (Me to
selkie, on hearing the number: "Holy fuck, is Sodom going to be spared?")5. I have now found myself saying in several different conversations that America's foundation myth has conditioned its inheritors to believe that the revolution is always right—a mindset that not only failed to be disenchanted by the Civil War, I suspect it's one of the reasons the romantic rehabilitation of the Lost Cause caught on. The rebels are always the good guys. And now here we are with the good guys planning to lynch lawmakers, because nothing says freedom like a dictator-for-life, but there's no dissonance for the people who believe themselves in the tradition of Patrick Henry as much as P.G.T. Beauregard. All of which incidentally clicked into place how weird it is—and how American—that the Galactic Empire of Star Wars (1977) is a bunch of Nazis who speak RP. The idea of a Resistance had to wait for the sequels; the heroes of the original films are the Rebel Alliance. The Imperials have stormtroopers and Riefenstahl choreography and everyone on the Death Star looks like they just clocked off the garrison at Navarone, but The Empire Strikes Back (1980) explicitly cast its Imperial officers with British actors just to drive the parallel further home. I know I'm far from the first person to notice, but it's like shaking all the pieces of Axis & Allies indiscriminately together, so long as an American viewer would get the right inimical echoes. A little Dam Busters, a little Yorktown. And sure, it's impossible not to get some Rome in the mix when a Republic turns to Empire, but it's much less present in the aesthetics than the political name-checks; besides, we never personally fought the Romans. (For the record, I appreciate both Alan Garner's Red Shift (1973) and, however I feel about it as a version of Sutcliff, Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle (2011) reversing the usual convention and representing their Roman characters as identifiably American. I believe Vietnam was the impetus in one case; perhaps the War on Terror in the other.) The disparate strands of the current civil unrest were another piece of what reminded me, I suppose. Our national self-image is a hell of a thing.
no subject
You're welcome; I'm glad they are useful to you.
I find it positively strange to hear it used negatively.
You can always use "coup," which seems to be emerging as the most technically accurate description.
Not a gotcha question: what is your definition of treason? I believe the term was in play at the time of the Civil War, rather than being a contemporary rear-projection.
no subject
Oh, I don't for a moment doubt treason was discussed all the time in the Civil War. I didn't mean to suggest it's a modern revision of history. On the contrary, I'm sure the feelings and language today are 150 times milder (though stronger, I think, than ten years ago).
Merriam-Webster tells me "treason" is defined thus:
the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family.
Under this definition, I think it's arguable if either the Confederacy or the emerging US committed treason. Neither sought to completely overthrow the parent government. The US wasn't trying to overthrow Britain; the South wasn't trying to take over the entire United States. Is it "overthrowing your government" to break away from it, make its sphere of influence smaller? One could argue yes; it takes away that government's land, resources, etc. But again, I don't see a huge conceptual difference between the South and the American colonies on that score. One could argue the South had more of a hand in creating the US than the American colonies did in deciding how the British administered them and, therefore, had more responsibility to stay, but I'm not sure where that reasoning takes us. If, for example, you helped design the Soviet Union and then decided it had become corrupt and you wanted your state to secede, are you ethically barred from ever doing so because you helped create the original government?
(Oh, and I see I had some slippage between "treason" and "unethical." It's a whole other question if treason can ever be ethical. To take the other part of the definition just as a "for instance," in Game of Thrones, Jaime kills his king, which is clearly treason, but he also does so stop the king from killing many other people, so is that ethical? Could be.)