On Beijing and Other Behemoths

One point is pretty clear to me:

The deeper our world gets mired in Covidity, the more absolutely vital it is that we Yanks, in particular, do not either worship or despise - much less demonize - this admittedly vile thing we call mainland China. AKA the One Indispensable Ingredient, without which our Global Pandemic Stew could hardly have come to a boil, much less boiled over.

Neither worship, nor despise, nor demonize. Honestly, is that so terribly hard? Is it asking so much that we do our best NOT to make the Red Chinese an even more vindictive, arrogant, self-righteous enemy - or medical savior - than they already are? By now we know that worshiping them, as we did at the height (c. 2005-2010) of our infatuation with All Things Beijing, can mean only the (further) economic, political and social degradation of America. And that, despite all our most grandiose/grotesque fantasies of permanent unipolarity. Even as despising the Imperial Chinese, as did the 19th-century British with their flippant, heartless pursuit of the opium trade, once meant only the moral and spiritual degradation not just of China, but even more so of Britain. While, lastly, demonizing them can only lead to the One Thing that we wretched Americans seem to "excel" at these days: more war, whether cold or hot or whatever lies in between.

My own advice at this point? Just respect Today's Neoimperial China - and above all be sure, from hereon in, always to cultivate a firm, respectful and guarded distance. Political no less than social.

As for that other favorite obsession of ours - our ongoing, through-thick-and-thin loathing, scorn and simultaneous demonization/belittling of Moscow? Something tells me the sooner we swear off that vicious habit, the vastly better our chances of discerning whatever residual goodness/usefulness DOES lie, even now, in the (still) beating heart of Russia. And, who knows? - maybe even bringing that goodness to the surface?

Remember, the world's not exactly becoming a safer place, or simpler, or easier to manage. Not even by us omniconfident Yanks. Nor are our most serious and formidable rivals exactly getting nicer either. Especially as we come ever more face-to-face with competitors like the (Anti-)People's Republic, which - although hardly deserving of our contempt or demonization (much less our worship, or continued codependency/partnership) - for sheer nastiness has few rivals anywhere. All the more reason, it seems to me, that we smart Yanks should try to conciliate all the (semi-)competent, well-resourced, NON-Communist, NON-Wahhabi friends we can get. Including, yes, Russia. Even if they wind up being just neutral bystanders.

 
Oh yes (to my American readers) - and wherever possible, vote American Solidarity Party.

(Edited.)

A Less Debilitating Busyness III, IV

III  (as continued from Parts I and II here)

 
My point is that humans can make a high-stakes drama out of anything. Certainly we moderns are no slouches compared to even our first-century ancestors. There is no work we humans do - no matter how inherently small, quiet and domestic - that we can't somehow find a way to make it BIG, complex, operational, challenging. To say nothing of globally arduous - and even agonizing. At the same time, there's no work we do that's so intrinsically complex and arduous, SO globally loud and overwhelming and interconnected, that God cannot somehow uncomplicate it. Or disentangle it. Perhaps even make it gentler, and quieter, and more local again.*

*Indeed, just from my own past two years' experience I can testify - and not just with home projects either - how uncanny are the myriad, gently insinuative ways in which our Maker may cause us to spill and drop and break things ever more gradually less . . . and less . . . and all, bizarrely enough, while actually saving us time. Which of course you're free to dismiss as so much anecdotal evidence. RIGHT: as if these infinitesimal building-blocks of personal training and discipleship have not, time and time again, proved themselves the immovable cornerstones of much bigger efforts, initiatives, even institutions. Then again, when hasn't Man Almighty been busy inventing "operations" either too small or too big for God to enter in? Which, naturally, leaves almighty US no choice but to be the sole lords of these "mere human" domains.

But please note the kind of work, the quality of result I'm talking about here: not more sloppy, or makeshift, or passable, or "good enough," but at once both genuinely easier, and more excellent.

Of course I'm aware how much all this goes against our Modern Grain. I realize this Hypermodern Global World is not only an action-packed, but an (often intensely) action-valuing place. Maybe even a world that sort of - well, worships Action. And arguably to such a degree as no human time or place ever did before. Why, "JUST DO IT," right? I mean, it's not like any act of mere quiet contemplation can ever shed real light on this person, place or thing - whatever it is - that I'm so fiercely anxious to get to work on. Indeed (a really hands-on, practical mover-shaker might argue), what place can these virtues of antiquity - or in particular, any such antique mode as we used to call contemplative - have in a 24/7 globe where creative and productive activity literally never stops?

 
At the same time, note that our traditional medical ethics begins with the words "First, do no harm." Almost as if to suggest that some - I don't know - quaint spirit of contemplation? might actually add a note or two of cautionary, harm-preventive grace to our efforts. Whereas we hypermoderns, in our futuristic wisdom, seem able to grasp only the curative mode. And so presumably have rendered the old maxim obsolete. Our modern injunction (did we dare to advertise openly such a thing) should probably read "First do SOMETHING."

Do anything, it would seem. As in, "Even if you haven't a clue, just keep on doing something until you do it right, OR discover the right thing to do, OR . . ." 

Which surely is the most wondrous thing about any incessant, unstoppable, whirlwind human activity: I just keeping piling more and more new, self-interposed data onto my original subject, lest there be so much as a pause, or breath, in which the infernal smoke of my work can clear. Thereby making me at last able to see the thing I'm trying to work - or change, or reconfigure - for what it is. Apart, I mean, from my own machinations.

And again, note this Age is especially proud of how it likes not just doing things - and preferably with as few words as possible* - but also doing them up BIG. And with a big splash. Apparently this is one of the grand wisdoms of globalization (or of the militarization that seems always to accompany it?):  Everything's better when done on a large scale, and preferably made a grand spectacle of. "SHOCK AND AWE," as I believe was the fashionable phrase at one time. After all, whatever it takes to make the world happier, more peaceful, more productive, right? Beijing, Baghdad, Benghazi, bank bailouts - again, the sky's the limit.

*Definitely not words of explanation, or apology, in any case. Much less words of inquiry or reassurance.

Yet surely by now, one might hope, some of us have grown tired, poor and miserable enough to venture a cautious question: i.e., Is striving to make a hyped-up, arduously global ordeal of just about everything -  and with words that only further agitate and "hype it up" - is that really the key to doing the job right?

IV

What is it, then, about exaggerating the difficulty, or seriousness - or complexity - of a pending task that makes us not only unhappier (and often crueler) in the doing of it, but at the same time more full of ourselves, and more demanding of ourselves?

What is it, I wonder, about doing even the simplest jobs in a tense, self-scrutinizing, other-comparing hurry - full of the importance of our task and yet, it would seem, utterly dismissive of that task's own natural rhythms and flow (having "digitized" it, so to speak)? What is it about doing that, in particular, that almost invariably, sooner or later ministers to our pride? And not just any old pride either. At least not the kind we most conventionally think of - one that's smug, comfortable, self-congratulating. But rather is it the sort of pride that is above all ambitious, and anxious. Sometimes even brutally self-critical. Only not with the species of criticism we most need - the kind that actually makes us into BETTER, kinder, more attentive and discerning human beings, and human workers. As opposed to workers who are just busier, harsher, more nagging and complaining. Or, in a word, more perfectionist. 

Perfectionist: Almost as if all real perfection depended solely on us, and always had. As if you and I were gazing out, for the first time, at the seemingly endless prospect of the original Eden from some grand palatial window. And feeling on the one hand wholly overwhelmed, yet also kind of furiously exhilarated, by what it's going to take to SUBDUE ALL THAT - to bring all that unimproved wilderness to its properly shorn, docile, tightly manicured perfection. All the various, numberless (multi-)tasks required, along with their just-in-time co-ordination - to be completed, indeed, just in time for the record-early deadline.

Talk about Pride in one's work. Along with the humiliation of just about everything (and everyone?) else. And lest we forget, Nature never sleeps: this is a War no less "endless" than its prospect.

Whereas I like to think of humility, in contrast, as a very different kind of agenda and project. Unlike all our Prideful Work or Workful Pride or whatever, it doesn't have to be such a hard, daunting thing to understand, or undertake. Think of humility, then, as that secret (neglected or forgotten) window, into the quietest part of the garden, through which we find ourselves making what may be, in fact, the strangest of all modern discoveries. That window through which we discover that, even in our busiest, demandingest work, what we hypermoderns so often call perfection is no longer the Key. At least not to the WHOLE operation. So that we no longer have to do everything with that angry, tense, micromanagerial meticulousness so popular today. The kind that tells us that not just our task or job, but the entirety of our success, our prosperity, indeed our very survival depends on our being, you know, perfect. ("What do you mean you're not clever? not SMART? You want to sur-VIVE, don't you? You wanna EAT, right?") Almost makes me wonder how simple, humble people in the past ever survived at all, much less made a living, without our monstrous self-promoting, self-judging Egos.

Or think of humility as that refreshment from the Garden in the cool of the day - if we could just open the (industrially-sealed) window. That quiet lowliness, if you will, which teaches us that, just because we no longer have to do everything with Today's hammering, harrowing perfection, we are now free to work even some of the biggest, most operationally urgent jobs wisely, flowingly, grace-fully. Perhaps even beautifully. And sometimes, as often as not, with that peculiarly old, still and haunting beauty - seemingly remote as our own birth - which yet also seems to anticipate and partake of what may be, in fact, the lowliest, most unexpected Perfection of all. Or surely, in any case, One very different from the kind we've grown used to performing in these digital times.

Imagine, if you can, a kind of Perfection that doesn't measure itself by what it disdains and discards, what it wastes and trashes and uses up, but rather by what It yearns to gather up and enfold into Its own bosom - even each one of us, and every creature. So that finally, at long last, you and I can begin to be something of what our Maker created us to be. And finally do the job right. Only this time, of course, minus Almighty Adam's (and Eve's) urgently necessary tension and strain, and anger.

(Edited.)

A Less Debilitating Busyness I, II: A Labor Day Reflection

I

This present world - for all its spiritual near-rottenness and decrepitude - yet has many practical talents and strengths. Yes, even NOW: in the midst of what may be the grossest misuse/abuse/dereliction of cream-of-the-crop, globally-sifted talent - and in the face of a global health threat no less! - that our world has ever seen.

Strengths, for instance, like our American Gift of Making Money, and drawing extraordinary profits from investments, in the most ingeniously circuitous ways. Ways that in turn can generate whole new industries, commonly called "financial," which in times of economic uncertainty may seem like the sturdiest house of cards you ever breathed on. 

We have other talents too, like the devising of technologies so miraculous, as it were, in their power to obtain and disperse "instant" results, they just might lead you to believe there's a technical - if not a technological - solution to every human problem. Until we wake up one day - in the midst of a world of global pandemic, violent domestic social unrest, and all-around massive public fear and distrust, alienation and confusion - to find that not only the problems but the (offered) solutions are more political than ever. 

 

But if there's one talent we continue to have and use in abundance - and even more so in this present Age? - it is the power to extract a loud, furious BUSYNESS out of the quietest, most inward, most penetrating things one could never imagine. Or, at any rate, things you and I likely could never have imagined, not if we lived another thousand years.

Things like, for example, the God of the fire and fury of Exodus coming to enter into the inmost corridors and recesses of the soul of His creature Adam. And then staying there permanently. And in a way so starkly, whisperingly quiet, that almost no one knew about it. Indeed hardly anyone even begins to suspect it - His Mother being perhaps the sole exception - until some 33+ years later. But please note how He does this: not by perching Himself atop some glorious, immovable summit of human maturity - like, e.g., the state in which our first parents were created in Eden - but by Himself living through every pre-adult biological phase, wise or "foolish," of our natural lives. Even as a fully helpless, fully human infant. "He came all so still." And what could be more silent, or more completely operative only in and through silence, than the Divine presence plunging right into, not just the "thick of things," but the thick of US - to calm all our human Seas of Galilee?

So how did we fallen humans manage to muck it up? What did we finally wind up making of this strangely still, unbroadcast, unfanfared First Coming? It's an oft-told tale, but all the more worth repeating, especially if we can hear it with fresh ears. In brief, our work was nothing less than the glorious spectacle - the wind, earthquake and fire - of a trial- and torture-prefaced crucifixion. Talk about scenes from a blockbuster epic. Which I suppose, when you think about it, is only too appropriate. The Spirit of (Self-made) Man tends to manifest itself through pretty much any glorious medium it can find - other than, of course, the still small voice.

"But the Crucifixion was utterly necessary for our salvation," you tell me. Indeed: and AMEN. My question is what made it necessary. Was it really the best in us, or the worst? Was it the depth of our secret human yearning for holiness, or self-sacrifice, or suffering, or spiritual heroism - real enough motives even today, I'll grant you - that made the crucifixion of God the Son both necessary and inevitable? Or was it the depth of our sin?

On the other hand, are the two factors really - always - as mutually exclusive as we're so often wont to think?

Indeed, what I'd like to suggest is that the two are often intertwined. That it is precisely this Depth of Sin - imbedded even (or especially?) in the very tissue of our noblest aspirations - that tempts us to make such a Big Angry Deal out of things that in themselves may be very simple, or loving, or kind. Or that tempts us, in this instance, to make such a big, bustling, noisy, nerve-wracking Production out of not just God's own coming, but sometimes every other major event and action in our lives.

Now the popular narrative, as I understand it today, is that the great mass of human beings are in essence pleasure- and comfort-seekers. As opposed to sacrifice- and glory-seekers. Most of us - so the legend has it - want nothing better than to live a safe, quiet, comfortable life. 

Which may be true. I just wish I could find more 21st-century evidence of it. The general rule I've most often encountered is that we mere humans tend to take glory any way we can get it. Even via the ministrations of a certain Tempter. And especially when it seems we have reason to suspect our Maker has been holding out on us (as no doubt Eve felt on first listening to the enlightenments of the serpent.) But all the more so, it seems to me, when the Glory-in-question is our very own self-made, self-won holiness or righteousness or spiritual heroism. Of course it can be a difficult road - indeed, as often as not it may prove not to be just hard, but excruciatingly hard work. Then again, even in mere carnal terms, do we humans always balk at the long, hard, grueling slog? Especially when the prize is a glory of one's own, and Nobody else's?

II

But now let's go back for a moment to the Crucifixion, as almost a kind of prototype of human self-glory. To many of us today it seems the very apex of human evil; I doubt if it seemed quite that way to many, if not most, of its participants. One point is clear to me: human beings are not monsters, at least not from birth. Or normally even within the first six to twelve years of life. And however many adult, well-adjusted, "mature" monsters may have been complicit or participant in the Crucifixion, for many of the others I have no doubt it was real, and really hard, work. The kind of work which often goes most directly against our natural human grain. Work in which, yes, anger, outrage, indignation towards Jesus surely played their part, at least among the more fanatically correct Judaeans and Romans. Along with a sort of anything-but-innocent satisfaction, or self-vindication. But real joy? Of all natural human sentiments, it's the one I find hardest to imagine there. On the other hand, I can well imagine some of our Lord's more idealistic tormentors - say, the Sauls of Tarsus among them? - applying themselves all the more vigorously to the ugliest features of the most odious task ever completed.

And all the more reason too, I suppose, when it might be argued that both offended parties, Judaean and Roman, were aiming at a certain angry, narrow, yet - on their own terms, at any rate - by no means indefensible Perfection. One of simple, un-nuanced secular Law and Order in the case of Pilate; one of the most authentic fidelity to Divine Law, together with vindication of the absolute unity and utter transcendence of that Law's God, in the case of Annas and Caiaphas. Both choices also being marbled, it's true - at least when measured against the strict letter of either code's standard of justice - with no small degree of corner-cutting, together with the vilest of worldly compromise. Still in all (a really hands-on, practical person might argue), the "real world" being what it is . . . and given the nature of omelettes . . . what else could they do?

Which "real world" is still, of course, very much with us. And if anything even more stridently and, well, uncompromisingly demanding of compromise, than was the Roman world of the 1st century. For now, suffice it to say that, in any age, we humans have garnered an impressive degree of expertise in making the most glorious Productions out of relatively small, manageable events, annoyances, obstructions, etc. Even in our own personal lives. (Which may go some way towards explaining our unflagging US divorce rates.) Not to mention public events on a much larger scale. And in particular, I notice, we restless, ever-dynamic and -impatient Westerners. At all events, we've proved ourselves no laggards in the fine art of crucifying innocents for the sake of some political expediency or necessity. 

But perhaps you'd like something in the way of more recent or current examples. What can I say? Other than to take your pick from our Western/US track record of the past 20 years: Full-spectrum dominances; Wars on Terror; MEGAbig outsourcing arrangements with post(?)-Communist China; Middle East hostile takeover-reorganizations; massive drone operations that, for all their superhuman precision and accuracy, have no light civilian impact; SARS and other epidemic rebounds; TBTF recession bailouts; sky's-the-limit national debt; Libyan civil wars; NATO enlargements; Russian encirclements; Iran embargoes/provocations; Yemeni genocides - yep, right down to our all-time show-stopping Mega-SARS Encore, unfolding even as we speak. I mean, the list itself may not be endless, but very likely the long-term consequences are.

(Edited.)

(continued here)

A Prayer Too Late?

Not to get overly dramatic,* but anyhow:

This hideous, bloated, self-infatuated monstrosity that presumes to call itself China:
May God save all the rest of us, and all the Chinese - wherever in the world they may happen to live -  from its blandishments, seductions, deceptions. And above all, from its monstrously arrogant stupidity.

*Really, since when has that ever stopped me?

Oh, and I almost forgot:

The same goes for that other hideous, bloated, etc, monstrosity. You know, the one that's most securely based in places like Washington DC, and Wall St, and Silicon Valley, and that presumes to call itself America.

A Balance Sheet

Well let's see now:

Work. Business. Technology. As everyone knows, these are three extremely important matters. Indeed, I can well imagine not a few zealous (and by no means unintelligent) Twenty-first-Century souls saying - or rather shrieking:

"Considering how much we've discovered we DEPEND on them - for EVERYthing - can they ever be important ENOUGH???"

Which is exactly my point. Sometimes it takes an awfully long time, in human-history terms, for Life's really critical and determinative factors to come into their own, to be seen as more than just nerdy sidelines, to be at last recognized for their true significance and essentialness and sacredness and whatnot. To be lauded, in short, as the factors, in relation to which everything else in human affairs - family, local community, love, religion, literature, art, politics, etc - is pretty much downstream. Just get the Operation(alism) right, and everything else will follow.

And so it's come to pass that in a Kind of Fullness of Time - the past twenty-five years or so - we humans have managed to award  these Three Most Essential Factors something like the respect they deserve. And naturally adjusted our own behaviors and ideals accordingly.  We have succeeded, possibly beyond anyone's wildest hopes, in making Work, Business and Technology into three of the most grimly unrelaxed, uptight, unforgiving bullets anyone ever dreaded having to bite. To say nothing of the actual surgery. And not just for workers, supervisors and and managers, but sometimes, I'd swear - in a weird sort of way? - even for customers. Sort of a "Get with the program - or BE programmed!" ultimatum, as I've bemoaned in other places (unprogressive soul that I am).

   

I call it the Capitalism of Sacrifice.

And then, as if that weren't enough Progress for two earths, we now have even bolder souls yet further raising the bar of perfection. Just these past ten years, give or take, America has succeeded in injecting that same Spirit of Urgency into other, equally life-and-death, salvation-and-damnation areas of human life. Like politics. And political allegiance (both yours and mine). And even the Politics of Disease Control. And Social Justice. And Law Enforcement. After all, can one ever get too unrelaxed, or too uptight, or - for that matter - too angry, about anything really important? I mean, you really do CARE about people, don't you?

"Not counting the cost?" you say? Frankly I'm wondering: Is anyone even tallying the gains anymore?

(Edited.)

America's Ancient Madness

NOTE: Ancient madness. Which is to say, ancient by American standards. Meaning at least as old as our Constitution and Revolution. And since there are those who, not without reason, hold that the precepts underlying both Revolution and Constitution are every bit as old as the Universe, or older than Time, or even as old as God Himself - why, who's to say that these precepts' accompanying vices, or downsides, aren't equally ancient?

And no, it's not just American racism that's being implied in the title. Though that may in fact be the one most telling symptom of a far more complicated Disease. What I'd like you to consider for a moment is a certain strand, or tradition, or current within our American political culture. One that's well over 200 years old, but by no means unrespected even today. A tradition perhaps best articulated in the Founders' Era by Thomas Jefferson; and in the pre-Civil War decades by "Manifest Destiny" Democrats like Thomas Hart Benton, or Lewis Cass, or Caleb Cushing. And yet not without its far subtler exponents in our own times (most of them, I suspect, largely unwitting of the fact, or at least unwilling to connect the dots in their own thought-processes).

I mean the tendency among some of our intellectual leaders, both then and now, to default to - to fall back on - an unofficial, wholly unsystematic, yet highly practical scheme of racial/cultural hierarchy. One that has, on the one hand, tended to "superhumanize" Imperially-minded mainland Chinese, particularly of the official and wealthier classes. Even as it has tended to "subhumanize" poor or disadvantaged Americans of African and Latin American descent. But more on that - especially the Sino-American Connection - in an upcoming post.

Right now, what most fascinates me is how those same eras - e.g., 1820-1860 - in which large segments of America tended to think in terms of (1) racial hierarchy, were also periods of (2) extreme political polarization, (3) "Manifest Destiny" kinds of expansionism, and (4) the wildest optimism concerning our trade, cultural and other ties with Imperial China (almost as if we couldn't get far enough from our European past except by getting as close as possible to our Chinese future). And what I keep seeing - but maybe I'm looking too long, and getting enthralled, mesmerized? etc - is a Thread of Madness running through all four patterns. The sort of madness that may still be with us, not merely in vestiges, but in the form of a hearty, robust, flourishing life - of an Idea - such as we haven't seen in America for over a century. Or possibly even since those glorious pre-Civil War decades.

Picture a kind of collective insanity. Picture the kind of mania in which you and I are so violently possessed, as it were, by the rightness of our own positions - say, of racial/cultural superiority, or of China-worship, or rabidly ultrapartisan dogmatism, or the Messianic/apocalyptic nature and mission of our exceptionalist country - that it's getting harder and harder for me to see the humanity of, e.g., you, because your positions happen to be different from mine. Even slightly different. Yes, even though you may be living right next door, or down the block from me. And despite the fact that we both may be threatened more or less equally by, let's say, the same public health crisis. A crisis that, whatever its degree of real seriousness or inflatedness, is in its effects no respecter of the political persuasions of either of us. Imagine, then, a kind of political madness that denies, or overlooks, or makes light of, or pretends not to see, the common interest, and by implication the common humanity, of people living closely together in a particular place. Usually for the sake of some fierce ideological preconviction: some preconceived or pre-judged ideology that, whether it intends the result or not, is in fact driving the residents of that place ever farther apart. And then, predictably enough, bringing them to blows.

My public-health case is of course just one example; our mutual madness may have any number of contexts and pretexts. It may lie in our stubborn attachment-to-division-and-hostility in the face of a common environmental threat - say, an approaching wildfire. Or a common security threat, like a jihadically-inspired self-detonation right in our own downtown. But where I see it best illustrated today is in our present lines of confrontation over the question of degrees of appropriate police force. A sort of confrontation that, pressed too far to its logical extremes, bids to make many of our urban neighborhoods both unliveable and uninvestible. For surely that's the problem with all police presence? Too much or too little of it can have more or less the same effect - namely, the creation of one kind or another of urban wilderness. Or wasteland.

Now, based on the present media coverage, you'd swear the gulf between the two sides was a difference of Cosmic Light and Darkness. Yet the fact remains: they are both agreeing to hate, or despise, or at very least misunderstand each other. So that, instead, what I'm most forcefully struck by is what the opposing sides have in common - both those looking to defang and defund the local police, and those who seek to further extend and militarize its powers of repression. Neither do I find this common element confined to just our angriest protesters, or most indignant extremists: if anything, here is a Faith that, for some time now, has been whispering, calling, screaming out to us Americans from every corner of our media, whether of opinion, instruction or entertainment.

I mean this quaint, unflagging old faith we have - at least as old as the presidency of Andrew Jackson - in a certain venerable three American "institutions of sentiment."  Three institutions of which the general assumption seems to be that, having made us Yanks so well-liked and effective overseas during these past 30 years, surely they can only be twice as serviceable in enforcing our domestic peace? Three institutions that, however much or little they've been lionized by previous American generations, in our own time seem well on their way to becoming as American as baseball and apple pie.

I mean, of course, our more-than-ever-popular American faith in (1) violence, (2) arrogance, and (3) confidence in the rightness - if not Divine righteousness - of one's own judgment. Attitudes that, when exhibited separately, can be mild enough in their short-term effects. But when yoked together can have an uncanny way of ministering to long-term political rage: intransigent wrath being apparently a further measure or confirmation of one's righteous confidence. So that, even when you and I find ourselves on diametrically opposite sides of an issue, somehow we're redeemed from real error, from real sin and wickedness by our positions of staunch, "dug-in" irreconcilability. As if, really, nobody could be ALL THAT BAD who holds to such dogged convictions.

And I suppose there is a kind of not wholly incoherent logic to such an argument. After all, whether we happen to be fierce, take-no-prisoners, no-margin-for-error despisers of the local police, or exalters of the same - oh, granted we're none of us anywhere near perfect - but still in all, we can hardly be evil, can we? I mean, look how angry and indignant and OUTRAGED we are. Whereas really nasty evil is cut from a different cloth altogether. Everyone knows, for instance, that Satan (so far as he exists at all) is a languid, leisurely, almost blithely indifferent sort of cultured gentleman. One who instigates evil mostly from sheer boredom, or for the aesthetic diversion of it all. And who, besides, has all the time in the world, and hence NOTHING to get worked up about. Much less irreconcilably embittered. Whereas we time-urgent, impassioned, laborious agitators and "up-in-arms"-ers . . .

So in conclusion, what I marvel most at is the sheer number of actively, angrily decisive people in America - the kind who shape and steer whole policies - who seem to take great pride in their moral entrenchedness and sureness. And even see their positions as a sort of insurance or stopgap against falling into worse forms of badness. Folks who care very intensely about their respective (often extremely violent, when not deadly) Ideals of Law and Order, or of Social Justice. And who may carry this caring to the extreme degree of forgetting about a prior public health threat (still very much with us) - one that they may feel themselves now immune to, but from whose more unpredictable effects they have no sure way of guaranteeing the immunity of their loved ones. A threat that, however much it may have been minimized or exaggerated, under- or over-reacted to, neither side can hope to get a clearer, more empirical and scientific handle on, by facing as mutual antagonists.

What it would seem, then, that neither side cares much about at all is the coronavirus in itself, and how best to overcome it. As distinct from best politically. Rather, more than ever their main concern seems to be with how pandemic can best be used to confirm and illustrate their own Most Favored Narrative. Apparently COVID-19 poses no real threat to us merely as human beings - no danger to what we call our common humanity - but only so far as we provoke or antagonize it, by making the wrong political choices: in this case, the choice being whether to damn to Hell, or to exalt to some kind of municipal heaven, an over-armed, fear-ridden and at times savagely arrogant municipal police force. "Make but the right Choice, my children, and lo, you shall have nothing to fear from the most contagiously human-hating respiratory virus. Your mere courage and conviction will set you free."

Welcome to heaven on earth. AKA Righteous America. And God help us all.

(A Smarter) Russia's Opportunity

I'll admit: I have no idea when a certain broad spectrum of our US governing class is going to stop being tantalized by the legend of a Trump-Putin-Satan Masterconspiracy to Subvert Democracy and Freedom Everywhere in the World.

And even then - in the event that (what's left of) the storm finally does blow over - I don't imagine this decade blossoming into one of the great ages of Western love for Russia, or Western hope or trust in Russia. Indeed, even among those on our side who wish her well, or have no particular beef with Moscow, there don't seem to be many who have any great faith in her - what shall we call it? - democratic potential, or (geo)political versatility. In short, I haven't noticed many who believe that Moscow is capable of doing anything really novel or surprising, and least of all on the geo-economic and geopolitical fronts. I mean, what are the options, right? Russia + China - USA. Russia + China + Germany - rest of Western Europe/USA. Russia + China + Europe + Iran - Saudi Arabia. Or even + Saudi Arabia. The possibilities are far from endless. Nor even terribly interesting. Unless, of course, one's aim is to enhance the prospects of some new strains of pandemic spreading even faster throughout Euro-Asia.

But most discouraging of all, I find, are those on both sides, pro- and anti-, who believe that any Russia, good or bad, authoritarian or liberal democratic, is by nature condemned to be a behemoth - i.e., an empire and hegemon. And that that holds true no matter how far she may shrink to her so-called natural, "non-imperial" boundaries. In essence, for her to cease being a beast would be to cease to exist.

I don't know if that's true. I sincerely hope it is not, and I most emphatically do not want Russia to cease to exist. Or even shrink to unrecognizable borders. One thing I'm all but sure of, however:

The more Russia keeps on trying to imitate, rival, envy, model herself after or compete with certain other (more or less stupid as well as brutal) behemoths - of which I count four as the principals - the more she continues to dream of being, say, a Counter-USA, or Co-China, or rival Europe or Saudi-foil or whatever, the more she is guaranteed to make a royal - or rather imperial - ass of herself. If not some yet more obnoxious and destructive species of animal. 

Now it may be that she has no choice but to remain, or become, a hegemon of one kind or another; or else deconstruct. Personally I doubt it, but either way: better a smart ass than a dumb grizzly. By all means let her be the kind of intelligent empire that knows how to do something really useful. The kind of subtle, patient and respectful hegemon that knows how to cultivate what has seemed like a lost - if not dead-and-buried - imperial art, since at least the end of the Cold War. Or more likely, since the geopolitical eclipse of the British Commonwealth in the 1950s. (Bearing in mind that even during that decade, what was left of the British Empire comported itself anything but honorably in countries like Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.)

I'm thinking of the kind of relative giant who knows how to stand in the breach and intercede for the relative pygmies. Who knows how to protect and buckler, to bolster and rally the common interests of certain smaller, rather less gaudy, bombastic and pretentious nations. Including not a few in Europe, Asia and Oceania. And in particular those nations that, in a sane world, would have every wish to go on trading with the likes of a USA, or an EU, or PRC or KSA, but have absolutely no desire to be swallowed up or partitioned, hegemonized or globalized by ANY of them. Much less pandemicized by them.

In short, here is what Russia needs to do, it seems to me, if she plans to be a sensible, measured, more or less humane sort of hegemon. As distinct from that Opposite Kind we've been overblessed with, over this past generation, across virtually every continent of the globe. And about whose occupations the Middle East in particular could write volumes.

She needs to secure - as opposed to enticing or dallying or playing around with - the good will and trust of a certain kind of niche country. I.e.,  the sort of country that gladly sees the point of being on good terms with a good-natured behemoth, or two. Perhaps even three. But has no wish to be either the pawn or the plaything, much less the meal, of four merciless Leviathans.

Of course I can't predict how big a niche it may turn out to be, or how many such countries Russia is likely to find. But right off the top of my head? - and especially in light of certain still-unfolding "global health" events - I'd say there are tons of them.