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It is Good Friday. Usually Ferrebeekeeper posts a beautiful crucifixion painting from the astonishing canon of classical Christian art to celebrate this solemn holiday. These days though, it seems that Jesus is being crucified more-than-sufficiently by his own followers (whose inability to understand the great rabbi’s message of compassion or even to read his actual words has become the defining feature of contemporary Christianity). Therefore I have made my own little painting of Christ for Holy Week this year. It is not an image of Christ dying (or performing any of the various supernatural antics which are the frequent focus of Christian cult iconography). Instead I have portrayed Jesus riding a little white jenny into Jerusalem as he pores over a book.
The donkey is an underappreciated sacred animal in Judeo-Christian scripture. In the Bible, asses are mentioned more than 130 times (complete with specialized Hebrew equestrian vocabulary about color, age, use, and gender) and feature in some of the defining moments of scripture. Sampson uses the jawbone of an ass as his weapon. Balaam’s ass is one of the Bible’s three talking animals (and arguably the only one which is not a divinity in animal form). The (now extinct) wild ass was a symbol of grace and beauty. Throughout the scriptures, donkeys are always doing the hard work of ploughing, farming, irrigating, carrying, and even fighting (the Persian cavalry rides asses). Finally & most importantly (to Christians anyway; Balaamites might decide otherwise), Holy Week and the Passion begin when Jesus rides a white donkey into Jerusalem as described in Matthew (which, according to textual scholars, is the original gospel written by someone who was maybe a contemporary of Jesus). Here is the relevant text from the King James Bible:
21 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,
2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.
3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.
4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,
5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,
7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.
8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.
9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.
10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?
11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.
12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.
15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased,
16 And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
Although Jesus was putatively crucified by the Romans for pretending to the throne of Judea, careful readers will note that his death was mainly orchestrated by the Pharisees for interfering with their money-making operations (events set forth in this very passage we just read!).
The Jesus in my little painting seems to be steeling himself for harrowing the temple by checking out some relevant passages in his own sacred book (his writer’s proof copy of the Bible looks suspiciously like the same little white Bible my parents have had forever). The excesses of his followers as they throw fronds everywhere do not seem particularly connected to the son of man as he rides to the temple and to his doom (careful readers of Matthew might also be struck by how fickle, mutable, and downright frightening the multitudes can be in the story of Christ).
Of course, if this doesn’t appeal to you and you are taken back by my somewhat leading prose (and somewhat abstract image of Jesus) there is another possible interpretation of this Palm Sunday painting. The whole painting is only the size of my palm since I painted it in the tiny sketchbook which I carry with me. Sacred images and scriptural passages can have multiple interpretations, some of which are more right than others. Maybe it’s worth carefully looking at the actual book itself (without someone telling you what to think) just like Jesus is doing here!
Say, has anyone noticed that the Supreme Court is clogged with corrupt high magistrates who were appointed by popular-vote losing presidents or granted stolen court seats through Senatorial conspiracy and skullduggery? A lot of commentators from all sides of the media are remarking that the crazy pro-autocracy, pro-tyrant, pro-monopoly rulings from this compromised court require a political solution (unless we want to be ruled forever by unelected high priests in black robes who answer only to billionaires). But what would such a solution look like?
Americans other than Ted Cruz all believe in self-government, but today’s compromised Republic is pulling the constitution in weird terrible (totalitarian) directions and making a mockery of the original ideas of government by the people for the people. The Senate is hopeless: reprobates from bunch of mostly empty states filled with dust, nightmares, rusting mines, and white supremacists have power to derail any needed legislation or reform. The House is where the people’s business should really be decided, however it has been compromised by decades of anti-democratic, anti-majoritarian trench warfare (which is to say gerrymandering and voter interference have produced a strange anti-democratic & unrepresentative lower house, too). The electoral college means the president can lose the popular election by millions (…or tens of millions?) of votes. Yikes!
A reformed Supreme Court could help us transcend this democratic back-sliding!
Institutionalists and centrists favor term limits, however not only would this not solve any of our immediate problems, it would also probably not address any long-term problems. Thus we come to the solution most favored by progressives and reformers: Court packing! The Constitution never specifies how many Supreme Court Justices there should be. We could change the number and Joe Biden could ram through a super majority while we still have the Senate (you’re leaving the Senate soon anyway Joe Manchin, make sure Justice has to deal with some real justice).
The problem with court-packing is that it would lead to retaliation. If the Democrats packed the court with highly intelligent progressive justices of great probity, then, the next chance they got, the Republicans would fill it up with crooks and Clarence Thomases (although, frankly, we already have such a court, and could hardly do any worse). With such a back-and-forth dynamic, the court could soon become a huge body of political hacks and apparatchiks who ignore the letter of the law for whatever is favored by their backers and payers (although, again, it seems like we already have that). What could stop such a court-packing race?
My proposed solution solves this problem and likewise solves the wider problem of democratic back-sliding. It also gives Americans new dignity, new authority, and even a little bit of money! It is a guaranteed hit with every single American (except for nine). Every American citizen over the age of 18 should automatically become a Supreme Court Associate justice. We, the people, as justices of the Supreme Court, can “try cases” (which has already become the Washington jargon for “administer the nation”) through an Athens style direct vote by whomever wants to show up.
Obviously there will have to be some adjustments. The current salary for a Supreme Court Associate Justice is a not-inconsiderable $300k per year. With around 250 million justices, we would have to reduce remuneration to a more reasonable honorarium of say $13.00 per justice per year available as a $13.00 tax credit (assuming you remember to check the “I am a Supreme Court Justice” box buried somewhere in TurboTax). The court would no longer have offices and security details and clerks (and infinite lavish benefits) but would instead be issued a stylish laminated “official Supreme Court Justice” card (which I also imagine would be honored by Blimpie or Subways for a 10% “Supreme Lunch” discount on their budget mayonnaise sandwiches). We could probably also put some stylish gilding and holograms on this card to make court service more appealing to lazy or recalcitrant justices (of whom there will always be a hundred million or so). Likewise the Supreme Court building would need to be relocated/replaced. Presumably we could put some blind naked lady statues on Commanders Field and use that until a suitable new Supreme Court stadium/office is built by the Federal Government.
One wouldn’t expect every American citizen to have a sophisticated lawyerish understanding of precedents, precise legal language, witness testimony, and that kind of stuff. Fortunately, this wouldn’t matter since these days Clarence Thomas and some of those other right-wing nutjobs don’t bother with such niceties anyway. They just take money to do what their patrons say. So, as an incentive bonus, all of the new justices would serve with this same set of ethics rules! If Harlan Crow gives you 20 million dollars to vote on the constitutional underpinnings of building “Crow House Casino” atop Arlington Cemetery or whatever, feel free to just take the money and do whatever you want (just like Clarence Thomas!). Admittedly Harlan Crow might find it harder to individually suck up to and bribe 250 million of his fellow justices, but that is his problem (and a huge point in favor of this new Court as opposed to the extremely corruptible nine person version we are now suffering through).
By this point maybe you have stopped laughing and are saying: “Golly! I could use 13 dollars and I already have a black robe left over from my Darth Maul costume last Halloween! Also, I would like to personally run the nation and I could not possibly do a worse job than the current idiots and reprobates (not you, Ketanji Brown Jackson, although maybe you can have my 13 dollars to help us with the language of this new universal reproductive freedom decision). This actual democracy stuff sounds like a GREAT idea!”
Well, maybe your angry feelings not such a joke either! (in fact none of this is a joke, I am coldly furious about the corrupt Court and the broken republic and I am now willing to consider just about anything to expedite some desperately needed Constitutional reforms). If you also feel this way, then send this very article to your friends. Just copy this link and paste it in everything. Just do it! Or, if you don’t want to help make me self-promote myself into some sort of cut-rate Dean Swift, then write a white-hot letter to your national elected representatives.
Incredibly, the completely crazy and dangerous idea that we could all be Supreme Court Justices is less crazy and dangerous than what we currently have! Couldn’t we fix some of these problems before all of our eagles and marble buildings and high ideals implode under a wave of anti-democratic corruption? You actually have the power to agitate and fix this, whether you are a Supreme Court Justice or not. Start writing and complaining (and explaining). Also, whatever happens, you will always be Supreme in my book (even if Harlan Crow and Donald Trump say otherwise).
Liberty and Justice for All!
“All political lives… end in failure.” Mitch McConnell has won everything over the years. He has combined the ancient flaws left over from the Constitution’s creation with various non-democratic features of the Senate to always get what he wants (successfully ratcheting power towards monopolistic business titans and unelected Heritage-foundation judges who are pledged to circumvent the law for life—even as an ever-growing slice of the electorate opposes him). Yet, in the final analysis, Donald Trump has coopted all of McConnell’s anti-democratic tools for his (Trump’s) own self-aggrandizement and tossed McConnell and his priorities right under the bus.
It is grimly funny to watch Trump waltz into Congress and say that the only thing that matters is that Russia be allowed to annex Ukraine, the rest of Europe and eventually the United States (for Trump’s true agenda is now evident: the complete destruction of the United States and the death of every one of its citizens, save one), and see “Republican” legislators (these days the “R” really stands for Russia) line up to embrace this nihilistic self-destructive “policy” of abandoning our allies and then our nation to Vladimir Putin. In the end, McConnell will be remembered (if anyone is left alive to write the history honestly) as the person who broke the American political process to such a degree that it could not respond coherently to Russian infection and takeover.
This is the true dual legacy of the man who will be remembered as one of the biggest villains in American history: success enabling kleptocrats to loot the state; absolute failure helping America fight off a terrible external enemy which has corrupted our political process and is killing us from the inside.
One wonders who will succeed him as majority leader to take up Trump’s plans for national self annihilation: J. D. Vance, Tommy Tuberville, Chuck Grassley, Tim Scott…Lindsay Graham? They are all strong candidates (in terms of absolute moral weakness), but they will never have McConnell’s unique flair for manipulating dull institutional rules into tools for destroying the nation.
For some time it has been evident to anyone with a brain that MAGA, the “grassroots” Christofascist political movement presently destroying the USA like a metastasizing cancer, is a Russian intelligence operation. This week’s not-very-stunning revelation that the most venomous MAGA second-stringers like James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Chuck Grassley are acting directly on information and directions from Russian Intelligence does not seem to have much moved the needle of public opinion (not yet, anyway). Comer’s absolute complicity with Russia’s aims apparently hasn’t even merited particular mention in the big corporate media like the New York Times (I think the fact that Comer acts in the manner that Russian intelligence officials plan for him to act is a small notice on page B8, just below an article on whether it is better to buy Calabrian versus Tuscan villas). I suppose this makes sense: it is incontrovertible that the only man Donald Trump serves other than himself is Vladimir Putin. If MAGA’s beloved cult leader has always been an open traitor (and pays no political price for this), then it makes sense that all his sub-lieutenants, cronies, bootlickers, and apparatchiks would follow the same script…and eventually so would the great mass of true MAGA supporters.
This is completely infuriating to me. I grew up in blood red rural Ohio in the nineteen-eighties and the one item of universal faith among my childhood peers was the wickedness of Russia vis-a-vis the great Manichean moral questions of the Cold War. Why are so many of those same schoolmates now bowing down and proclaiming that they love (the xenophobic, bigoted, unfree nightmare that is) Putin’s Russia more than the frayed but still real democracy we live in?
Now we have a pretty obvious reason why Jim Jordan, James Comer, Mike Johnson (and Donald Trump) serve Russia. Such men are losers. They are credibly accused of beating and raping women, fraud, stealing money, hushing up institutional sexual abuse, and other anti-social behavior which would get anyone other than untouchable political leaders thrown in jail. They have to turn our nation into a fascist failed state because only in such a dystopia would such men be tolerated walking around outside of prison (to say nothing of running everything!). Their post-democracy plan is “the Thirty” (which we will talk about in next week’s post about why all sorts of American “elites” would support Donald Trump even though it is obvious to them that he is a deadly Hitler-style populist strongman).
However the true question of this moment is not why morally compromised oligarchs and political quacks support MAGA. The important question of the past decade is why my old scoutmaster, and my parents’ next door neighbor, and other kindly & excellent people from my youth have decided to directly support Putin via vile MAGA fascists? Why do veterans and farmers and lay ministers and fading football stars and, uh, Kid Rock support anti-American criminals like Trump and Jordan even when it is obvious that these and suchlike MAGA grifters actively support America’s enemies and look down on their own followers as dupes and patsies? Why do “real” Americans love Trumpler, even when it is obvious he hates them both generally and specifically? It makes me mad that so many fellow citizens (and friends and family!) are being lied to and manipulated in a manner that the Washington Post can never quite seem to grasp (no matter how many illiterates they interview at truckstops) but which Hannah Arendt (or Goebbels) or anyone who lived through the nineteen thirties would instantly recognize.
Liberal, humanistic, and free-thinking writers tend to identify the hatred of MAGA with the time-honored hatreds of racism and zenophobia. This “Basket of Deplorable” analysis has more than a grain of truth… but also alienates broad swathes of the population who could perhaps be persuaded towards other finer moral standards (most people alter and amend their values and conduct into rough comportment with that of their peers). To truly grasp MAGA (beyond the fact that Putin and crooked monopolists pay for it because it is useful to them) we must look towards an ancient and terrible family truth.
Grandma Pierson (a cosmopolitan artist and sophisticated tastemaker and the person in the family who was most like me) used to say “you become what you hate”. Then when she got old and sick and was stuck in a nursing home, she started watching Fox News (as reference for people of some happier future: FOX is an international media conglomerate which attacks and undermines democracy on behalf of crooked oligarchs and corporate monopolies). Soon she was talking all crazy about “those people” in Los Angeles and New York and how they were persecuting poor martyred President Trump. And so Grandma, who spent her life traveling the world, thinking freely, and helping Grandpa as he fought Russia spent her dotage clutching her pearls and rooting for grifters who want to abolish NATO. Gah!
You become what you hate.
This explains how democratic Israel became a jackboot apartheid state (sigh…we’ll talk about that in a later post, too). It explains how Russia became a mafia state with no connections to the failed promises of communism–but with all of the same old murderous totalitarian flaws of Lenin and Stalin. It explains a great deal about the world at a micro and macro levels (but you have to look at how people behave and what they do–not at the labels they give themselves).
You become what you hate.
When I was growing up, I would sit at my little plastic desk in Waterford Elementary and wonder why Russians hated freedom so much (it was the eighties and all schoolkids thought like that unless they were sophisticates from Exeter or something). Why were they so wicked? Such thoughts led to a horrible epiphany: that Soviets obviously thought of themselves as righteous heroes and thought of Americans as venial money-grubbers out to ruin the world with crony capitalism and insider deals. When I tried to talk about the real ramifications of that idea, it didn’t go as planned. I don’t think the communism per se was what was most hateful about the Soviet Union (though don’t get me wrong: I love my material things and don’t want to share them with others). The crazy authoritarianism, surveillance, cronyism, corruption, coercion, torture, state murder etc. etc. etc. which the Soviet Union utilized to implement communism were the real problems! Now, as an adult, I find that these qualities seem to be the true heart of MAGA appeal (They aren’t even hiding this at all at CPAC, or whatever that GOP totalitarian fan fest is called).
It is understandable that people are frightened by future shock, globalization, and neoliberalism (“neoliberalism” is a somewhat misleading euphemism for… corporate consolidation and monopolistic privatization schemes–which are exactly what Trump believes in–for those who can afford to pay). However backing Putin-style strongmen is a knee-jerk response (or maybe just a jerk response) which will only bear poisoned fruit and will neither turn back the clock to the social/moral norms of yesteryear, nor will it restore rural or rustbelt economies. Looking beyond the (Potemkinesque) luxury developments of Moscow to the rest of Russia (which Tucker Carlson didn’t get around to as Putin led him around on a leash) reveals a country where nobody would want to live.
I feel like my head will explode watching fraudulent failed businessmen and obvious Putin bootlickers run around attacking the military and the constitution every day for the sole advantage of our national enemies. If I could take a transcript of this era (with names redacted) back to 5th grade, it is easy to imagine today’s MAGA stalwarts back then condemning such banana republic-style crimes and pulling out there hair at the extent to which we are following a script written by adversaries.
Meanwhile, among the great and good, we have been busy hating Donald Trump (I wish I could say I don’t despise that coistrel with my whole heart…but such a statement would be an outright lie–which sounds pretty Trumpy already). These days Ezra Klein and Robert Kuttner spend all day every day attacking Biden and praising Trumpian political methodologies (guys, do you even remotely recognize how stupid & crazy all of your front-page articles about replacing Biden with Oprah Winfrey by means of secret deals at a crooked convention sound?). defenestrations and self-woundings and Even the very best of liberal commentators have lost the plot and talk about illiberal ends like locking our fellow countrymen up or sending them to extra-judicial camps like Guantanamo (even though that is indeed where Comer, Jordan, and Flynn all belong).
The poison of fascism is truly a poison (which the brave despise as a cowardly weapon all-too-likely to harm unexpected victims). It distorts and manipulates everyone and everything in a corrupted political body; not just the initial victims who knowingly imbibe (like poor Grandma when she got sick and scared) but even people on guard against it or fighting it. For example, instead of writing about beautiful Gothic art and Chinese porcelain, I now spend my days writing furious jeremiads against cretinous turncoats like James Comer whose name won’t even make sense to anyone 5 years from now (or 10, if we are stupendously unlucky).
And yet with such a methodology we now have a world where Ezra Klein and Robert Kuttner spend all day attacking Biden while giving Trump a free pass. Klein and Kuttner are (historically) liberal political journalists who are addressing our democratic emergency era by attacking Biden. Good work, idiots! [I am not linking to their stupid articles because they are stupid articles, but if you have looked at the Washington Post, or Vox, or the American Prospect you will find these allegedly pro-Democratic writers earnestly tearing Biden down for Trump’s advantage.]
You become what you hate.
Indeed, I had trouble my own trouble writing this article because I had to keep rewriting it. The initial drafts were so incandescently angry that they did not confirm to my personal moral style guide and were filled with off-balanced emotional language (or, more bluntly, my own writing looked like some sort of hate speech until I rewrote it many many times). How do you talk to people whose moral compass has been swayed by fear and unreason? Reason is a complex and unwieldy tool (which I can only really utilize at my finest & sharpest moments)–whereas fear and unreason are easy answers already known to work! These sorts of doom loops are not a trap for one side or the other–they are causing us all to suffer as we attack ourselves thanks to MAGA idiots enacting Russian plans.
In order to undo MAGA we need to beat Trumputin at the ballet box in November, but we are also going to have to reach out to people who have been swindled/bamboozled/manipulated into becoming what they hate. It isn’t just MAGA at this point. Everyone’s moral compass is starting to get skewed by the fight that Putin has us fighting with each other! You become what you hate, and we are all beginning to hate each other. It is a profound opportunity for our real enemies to hurt us and take advantage of us. For this alone (to say nothing of his hundreds of other crimes) Trump deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Maybe then we can get back to respecting and honoring each other and our country. We can surmount the political deadlock which is preventing us from solving problems and compromise on some reforms which everyone (other than crooked monopolists and grifting con artist politicians) recognize that we desperately require to keep our nation’s ideals, prosperity, and place of prominence secure from our enemies foreign and domestic.
新年快乐! Happy Lunar New Year!
The Chinese new year which begins on February 10, 2024 (or really “Year 4722” in the Chinese calendar) is the Year of the Wood Dragon! Although this blog has not been around for the full 4722 years, we have been around for longer than a full 12 year zodiac cycle, so you can peer back through the mists of time to the long-vanished 2012 (Year of the Water Dragon) to see what personality traits are characteristic of people born in dragon years (although in that bygone post, I forgot to mention that dragons’ lucky color is glorious golden yellow).
In the Chinese zodiac bestiary, dragons stand out as the only mythical creature out of the twelve which do not exist in nature (although it has been suggested that dragons could potentially be based on crocodiles, giant catfish, or dragonlike fossil creatures which are now extinct–all of which seem like intriguing possibilities).
Yet even if dragons don’t exist in nature, there are certainly plenty of dragons in Chinese art and culture…and there are “dragons” climbing the Chinese hills. The world-famous South Chinese stoneware (which is literally synonymous with China in English) was manufactured in “龙窑”, “lóng yáo“, which translates as “dragon kilns”. In order to reach and maintain the high temperatures (1100° to 1400 °C) necessary for the production of fine stoneware, ancient potters created multi chambered kilns which climbed backwards up the steep hills. The highest chambers maintained the highest and most stable temperatures and are where the most exquisite pieces of Chinese porcelain were (and are) fired. The top chambers were also where the smokestacks were located, so, when the kilns were operating, they looked like enormous segmented creatures climbing the picturesque wooded hills and belching smoke! lóng yáo indeed!
These kilns worked very well indeed…and they were enormous: vast numbers of porcelain vessels could be efficiently fired together at one time with a single load of fuel. Here in the year of the wood dragon it is worth remembering that all of China’s ancient porcelain was indeed belched out by a wood fed dragon! Yet what we at ferrebeekeeper are most concerned with are the fruits of these labors–the exquisite stoneware porcelain and fine ceramics of dynastic China. In this realm too, the dragon reigned supreme, as a timeless emblem of the Chinese state (except during the Yuan/Mongol dynasty, when dragons lacked the same governmental cache in the eyes of horse-oriented steppe-based overlords). It seems like 2024…err I mean “4722” is going to be a true year of struggle, strife, and change. As we fight our way through the mayhem, let’s pause to recall what is sidereal, ideal, and eternal by posting some dynastic dragon porcelain from ancient China.
To celebrate Lunar New Year, here is a first example, a glorious enamelware dragon vase from the Ming Dynasty (during the Ming era, yellow was reserved for ceramics of the imperial household). This piece is from the fascinating (and troubled) JiaJing period (1522 to 1566), so it was being fired in a dragon kiln just before Shakespeare was born. With any luck, there will be plenty more lovely dragon vessels to see here as we move onward through the year of the dragon, but for now best wishes for prosperity, happiness, and love in the new year!
Although the headlines are rightly dominated by the hair-raising/attention-seeking antics of Republican “legislators” trying to destroy democracy and mortally harm the United States, there is actually some good news today (albeit in the realm of research rather than within the acrimonious affairs of state): the National Ignition project, a laser-based inertial confinement fusion device which has been testing breakthrough nuclear fusion technology is now producing bursts of nuclear fusion which engender twice the energy which scientists put into the system.
For more than a decade Ferrebeekeeper has been following the amazing (yet also frustrating) saga of the National Ignition Project. The all-important project was built with national security money, putatively as a means of modeling the conditions and temperatures of nuclear weapons. This funding story illustrates the alarming strangle-hold which fossil fuel companies still have on our government (which must sell critical blue sky energy experiments as national security experiments so as not to offend knuckle-dragging oafs). The National Igniter consists of enormous banks of super lasers and super capacitors capable of emitting a brief burst of laser energy equal to 500 trillion watts of energy! I enumerated some of the other amazing facts and stats about the project in some of those other posts, or you can head over to Wikipedia to see even more amazing numbers and science facts.
Indeed, it is also well worth reading the National Ignition Facility’s Wikipedia entry as an extremely valuable lesson concerning the political, administrative, and logistic complexity of operating this kind of experiment. Unfortunately I cannot possibly do justice to the intradepartmental/multi-institutional wrangling about funding, building, and staffing (except to opine that even the largest and most sophisticated private companies would be unable to accomplish such projects because the managers would cancel all of the expensive or confusing things and give that money to themselves as buy-backs). This doesn’t even get into the engineering and nuclear physics of the project. At any rate, the National Ignition Facility has a complex history and has nearly been canceled multiple times by cost-cutters who have deemed the project impossible–which makes the fact that it is now surpassing new benchmarks all the more impressive.
One of the last posts I wrote in the old Ferrebeekeeper blog (before embarking on a year-long sabbatical) concerned the all-important milestone which the facility reached in December of 2022 when they finally got more energy out of the reaction than they put into it. Now that they are doubling their energy returns perhaps the lazy petrol-prone lords of finance will take abother look at funding some nuclear fusion power plant projects. Even if America’s hyper-efficient market-facing companies have no use for infinite wells of pure celestial energy perhaps someone from East Asia or Europe would be interested in a huge stake of humankind’s future.
So it is the end of another year, and it is time to write the post which I always put off again and again…right up until the last day of the year–which is to say I still need to write the year-end obituaries. Ferrebeekeeper readers will recall that the obituaries here are obituaries for those departed who meant a lot to me–so if you want to know about queens, popes, soccer guys, rappers, or whatever, you will probably have to look elsewhere. For example, last year, I only wrote about my grandfather, an international master operative who battled against Soviet and Chinese dirty tricks in Africa and Southeast Asia throughout the middle of the 20th century. These days, everyone rolls their eyes about the worldwide cloak-and-dagger proxy wars by means of which the Cold War was fought, but, please note that as soon as grandpa was dead (and his ilk out of power), Russia formed an alliance with China and attacked Europe, so I tend to think it all WAS pretty necessary, no matter what the anti-American apologists say.
Grandpa taught me how to take stock of the world and look at art (which he avidly collected), but for more specific lessons in world history and painting, I turned to a generation of teachers and masters who are now also passing away. And so it is with great sadness that I write about two of my illustrious teachers who died in 2022.
Walter Emil Kaegi, (1937 – 2022) was one of my favorite history professors from college (along with the late, great Emmet Larkin). Kaegi was a professor of Byzantine history, a broad subject which he approached with polymath intensity from all sides. In some respects, Byzantine history is regarded as the story of one thousand years of precipitous and ineluctable decline. Kaegi, however, remembered that history does not seem inevitable to those leading it. His multi-faceted view of the Byzantines was indeed filled with trademark battles, religious controversies, and palace intrigue, but he also added the trade, farming, technology, music, poetry, and ecology missing from the work of great Byzantinists of yore. Kaegi was a scholar’s scholar who knew Latin, Greek, and Aramaic just as well as English, but also learned French, German, and Russian so he could read the works of other scholars. Speaking of Russian, the professor always wore a hilarious heavy Russian hat which we bare-headed undergrads laughed at in the bitter Chicago winters (which illustrates that comedy, like history affords multiple vantage points on what is actually the truth).
Although history scholars like to speak of him like he was Gibbon, Kaegi was definitely not Gibbon. He instead synthesized some insights into the long fall of the Roman Empire from new resources–particularly archaeological/geological ones. Whereas most historians fixate solely on the doings of emperors, courtiers, bishops, and generals, Kaegi came to the conclusion that a combination of climate change, agricultural collapse, and religious change was driving events to a heretofore unappreciated extent (an insight worth remembering when eyeing the events of the present).
My other teacher who passed away last year will probably not be remembered foremost as a teacher–since he was actually an artist first. Ronald Sherr (1952-2022) was a brilliant portrait-painter who studied with Daniel E. Greene, Harvey Dinnerstein, and Burton Silverman before going on to paint America’s leading politicians, soldiers, and business leaders (and win all sorts or awards and accolades chronicled elsewhere). Since he rubbed shoulders with the mighty (or at least painted those mighty shoulders) he is liable to be incorporated as part of this era’s political zeitgeist. Indeed, in the recent headlines about former house-speaker Boehner crying when Nancy Pelosi’s official portrait was unveiled, CNN and the NYTimes neglected to dwell on the fact that Ron had painted the official portrait of both speakers!
Yet world-renowned clients was not what made Ron important as an artist. Ron was an artistic anachronism of sorts–he painted beautiful realistic portraits which looked like they had some piece of the living subject inside of them. His real method for obtaining these incredible results was not some trick or secret tool, but constant practice and stringent self-criticism. Ron’s artistic hero was Jon Singer Sargent who combined the unparalleled draftmanship of the Old Masters with the realistic color and focus of the impressionists. Ron likewise used this combination and it is what he tried to teach his students. We all remember that during our first year painting he would mostly ask seemingly obvious questions like “Is the head you have painted bigger or smaller than the model’s actual head? Is the torso you have painted more yellow or less yellow than the model’s actual torso?”
Our utter inability to answer these questions (at first) reveals part of why it is hard to teach painting. A great teacher must teach looking and comparing first….and then second and then last. Unless you can look at a subject with fresh eyes and regard your own efforts honestly, true realism will forever remain out of your reach.
Speaking of which I have not been painting realistically! Nor have I been applying the lessons of Byzantine history to the Byzantine circus factions of today. I worry that I have dishonored my amazing teachers by not making use of what they worked so hard to teach me. Now, thanks to time’s one way arrow and the nature of mortal existence, we no longer have the real masters. All that is left is the hazy memory of their teachings…although, come to think of it, here I am on a Saturday night (on New Year’s Eve no less) trying still to understand their teachings and make use of such learning to explain the world to others. Keep asking questions! Keep comparing. Keep striving for greater honesty. This is what I hear in my head as I set down the obituarist’s pen and reach again for the artist’s brush.
Longtime reader recall Ferrebeekeeper’s strange obsession with the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (which we have blogged about numerous times). When last we checked in with the National Ignition Facility (which is ostensibly designed to model the behavior of nuclear weapons, but which is really used to research useful mechanisms for generating power from nuclear fusion), the laboratory had successfully obtained a burning plasma by changing up the size and shape of the tiny gold pellet in which they enclosed the nuclear fuel. Great things seemed imminent!
And indeed, this week, the National Ignition Facility has finally made headlines around the world by obtaining more energy from a moment of nuclear fusion than the (enormous amounts of) energy which was used to power the reaction. The facility pointed its 192 super lasers at a tiny gold capsule filled with deuterium and tritium nuclear fuel. Then, for 20 billionths of a second, the lasers concentrated 500 trillion watts of energy on the nuclear fuel and presto! a moment of truly stellar energy output ensued (I wonder what sort of esoteric energy was released during this infinitesimal second). To quote the United States Energy Secretary, “Ignition allows us to replicate, for the first time, certain conditions that are only found in the stars and sun. This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon, abundant fusion energy powering our society.”
So far the newspapers and blathering heads on TV have all been stressing that the process is not yet ready for commercial use and emphasizing how long it takes to develop commercial procedures of any sort. MBA types call this phenomenon “the valley of doom” which describes a scenario wherein the government discovers something worthwhile and amazing, but trained MBA-economist types think that it will take longer than 10 years to develop commercial technology and therefor do not bother. Anything which takes more than 10 years is effectively non-existent to MBA people because (A) that is how financing works and (B) that is how they are indoctrinated by their shitty schools.
This case may prove an exception since the government (and all people of conscience) have a very strong incentive to move human society beyond fossil fuel dependency which is injuring life on Earth. Unfortunately, fossil fuel companies, Republicans, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and most of the world’s billionaires will now belittle this accomplishment and attempt to squelch it as quickly as possible (since their wealth and power are dependent on the fossil fuel economy). It is up to all of us (including you liberals in the back who have traditionally espoused that anything nuclear is fundamentally unwholesome) to make sure that we don’t squander this stupendous opportunity to move society forward and undo some of the terrible harm our never-ending thirst for dirty energy has wrought upon our beautiful world.
Well, we have reached the Midterms. Thus far, I haven’t blogged so much about this important election for reasons of emotional health: which is to say that watching America’s political crisis grind the nation’s progress to a standstill and turn us all against each other is both alarming and depressing! However, the election takes place tomorrow and it is now necessary to endorse candidates. Obviously, you should vote for the Democratic Party and its candidates for all elections on all tickets.
It is unfortunate to issue such a blanket endorsement. In better times, when the affairs of the nation were more ordered (and one of the two parties hadn’t gone completely rotten), it was necessary to assess candidates by their individual merits and positions. Hopefully that time will come again! Alas, right now, the GOP consists of anti-American fascists who are working as hard as possible to neuter and dismantle the United States of America and steal all of its assets to distribute to crooked kleptocrats and oligarchs. Their reasons any voter would want this outcome may be worth exploring later (I believe rich Republicans want to destroy the nation so they can loot it, whereas religious Republicans are unable to see that truth and instead think that treating people cruelly and badly is what Jesus would want). Yet the net result is the same—Democracy destroyed; the country rendered subordinate to Russia and hollowed out.
Americans like to pretend to be smart and cynical, so a lot of voters say “All politicians are crooked” Then these voters don’t vote…or they vote for grandstanding populists who mask graft with home-spun hucksterism. Such a fundamental mistake is understandable (since elucidating what is going on right now involves looking past the clicks-at-any-cost misdirection favored by large media-conglomerates). Also, in recent times, when the parties were very similar, pretending to be cynical so that one could be lazy and not vote was not a particularly grave sin. Yet this election demands voters’ full attention. We are nearing a point of no-return in the Republicans’ long planned doom loop (the mechanism they have used to ratchet a permanent hold of control despite commanding only a minority of votes). Read about the anti-government doom loop here!
The Republican party has not published a political platform. They believe that lies, coercion, rigged districts, and infinite dark money (from unknown payers) will be sufficient to win enough state-houses and gerrymandered house seats to permanently end representative government. They might be right! But before we just believe what they say and give up on self-governance, let’s take a closer look at what they actually want.
The real Republican Platform is horrifying. When you listen to what Republican politicians say, bear in mind that these are their true aims. In the absence of a published list of their agenda, here is an unvarnished list of their objectives and principles based on their words and actions:
- Russia is always right. Vladimir Putin is Emperor of the World and must be obeyed accordingly
- Government by self-determination should be destroyed. Monopolists, oligarchs, and foreign governments should make all of Americans’ choices for us.
- You and your family should be silent indentured servants to these same moneyed interests
- Hypocritical religious extremists should be allowed to dictate what you read, whom you love, and, above all, deny medical treatment to those they disfavor.
- Social Security and Medicare should be abolished and seniors should die in the street
It is not a surprise that the Republicans did not codify this totalitarian evil into a platform (although Greg Abbot tried). What is a surprise is that Republicans have sold anyone on any of these ideas! These corrupt and evil positions run directly counter to the universal ideals of freedom, democracy, and justice which our system was founded on. Once the Christian nationalists realize that banning abortion does not prevent abortion and that Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are very interested in replacing the safety net with tax tax breaks for billionaires (but care very little for the false pieties of evangelical Christianity), then perhaps the great masses of illiterates who dully stand by as these con-artists destroy the Constitution will be jolted out of their pretend cynicism, but by then it will be too late to retrieve the nation from “Big Lie” adherents who believe that only their party should be legally allowed to win.
It has probably not escaped your attention that I have said a great deal against the Republican/Fascist party and not said as much for the Democrats.
I was underwhelmed by President Obama. His inability to craft political consensus and break the nation out of this political deadlock struck me as being a result of his own political inexperience. I now see that this was exactly how his Republican political enemies wanted things to look. Also President Obama cared about the hostage–I mean nation–and gave up on some of his political aims for the greater good of the country. Obviously it does not matter to Republicans if the nation is destroyed, since that is their intention anyway (after all, it’s much easier to steal from a nation where everything has been ruined and the only remaining law-enforcement agents are proudboys and hollowed-out rent-a-cops). The rule of Solomon the Wise stands against Republicans. They are happy to kill the child just so that they can have control of it (BTW you should click on that link to a previous endorsement which says what I am saying now, but with greater Biblical eloquence and better examples). Nobody should vote for any Republican this year for that alone.
The Democratic Party has an unfortunate tendency to see problems in the world as being entirely America’s fault. They are eager to coddle foreign enemies while censoriously blaming our own diplomats, military, and intelligence agents (and straight middle aged white guys) for all of the world’s troubles. Yet for all of their wonkish idealism and dogmatic identity politics, they keep coming up with policy ideas, and they keep earnestly believing in the rules of democracy. They keep fighting the Russians and Chinese (and all of their downstream villains). They keep trying to make sure that people have enough to eat asnd can go to the doctor and can look after their kids. Most importantly, they want America…and you and your family to succeed. Republicans want you to die so that a billionaire can have all of your stuff. Then they want the world to die from climate change and habitat loss ( I don’t think the Republicans have fully thought this through but have merely embraced mass extinction because it fits with their other choices)
(Also I actually think Biden has done a decent job considering all of the interlocking crises we face…AND considering that the previous guy stacked the deck so that things would be impossible for him, but political operators say not to talk about how well Biden has done, so I guess I won’t).
But you should take Biden’s integrity into consideration and you should take the wholesale moral abomination of the cowardly, lying, traitorous criminal Republican Party into consideration as well when you go to cast what they undoubtedly hope will be the last (or next-to-last) vote you are ever allowed to cast. Republicans hate democracy, they hate nature, they hate your family, and above all, they hate YOU with all of their malice and malignancy. Vote accordingly.
Happy Halloween! As a special inktober treat for the special day, here is another little allegorical ink drawing of our times featuring strange orchid bishops sheltering in their Romanesque monasteries. The churchmen (who do not seem especially holy or worthwhile) interact with their doomed milieu through their little handheld personal communication devices. Meanwhile the haunted world outside is subject to dragon attack, volcanic eruption, war, and doom.
As ever, the strip of nature in the foreground is the true key to the meaning of the composition.
ferrebeekeeper 