A Primer for Voters, Lesson #4: Weed the Garden
When I ask people about candidates they support--and why--they usually respond by praising their position of abortion or taxes or foreign policy. When I probe further and ask what, for example, J.D. Vance has done to limit abortion, they cite some speech he has given or a position paper, To quote the godfather of Beat poets, "The thing is, they never learn."
As a time traveler, I was able to go back to 1916 and to ask President Wilson about foreign policy. He said his main objective was to keep the USA out of the war in Europe. When I skipped forward to the early 1930s and asked President Roosevelt what was the main principle of his domestic agenda, he replied without hesitation: To get government off the backs of businessmen,. Moving forward I asked the Clintons what would be the theme of their administration, and they answered in union that it was to restore integrity to the executive branch and the federal government as a whole.
I could go on, but I learned one or two things from studying history and talking to politicos. First, it does not matter what they say about anything. One can say of the entire class of politicians what Douglas MacArthur said of FDR: "He never told the truth when a lie would serve." We have all met people who wanted to be liked, the sort of person who says whatever he thinks will make you like him, lend him money without security, trust him to take care of your wife when you have to be away. That is the type that becomes politicians. My friend John Shelton Reed, after spending some time in Washington, wrote that if you wanted to understand the people in DC, you should realize it is full of people who had been student body president or senior class secretary.
Second, even if a politician might have an opinion on some subject, it does not matter, because his public performances and statements are scripted by mercenary scribblers and hack advisors. When a politician does occasionally blurt out what he really thinks about something, as Michael Kinsley pointed out years ago, we call it a "gaffe."
Years ago at one of our annual board meetings, I opined that a law should be passed to outlaw political speechwriting and argued, "If a man can't learn to express his thoughts clearly and persuasively, he has no business seeking office." My board members--all conservative Republicans--were appalled. I pointed out that once upon a time, Roman senators, however much they had prepared their remarks, had to speak without a script, and members of the British Parliament, at least on the old days, were booed if they consulted notes.
The old Latin tag "Esse quam videri"--to be rather than to seem--has been adopted by dozens of schools, fraternities, and other dubious organizations. It comes, as everyone knows, more or less from Sallust who used the phrase to describe the younger Cato, and Sallust borrowed it from Cicero, who borrowed it from Aeschylus' description of Amphiaraus the seer in The Seven Against Thebes, who wanted not to seem but to be "the best" that is the most noble, honorable, and brave.
Reality is made up of deeds not words--except when the words are the truths revealed by prophets, proved by philosophers, and sung by poets--and as the New England primer put it, "A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds." Anyone who casts his vote on the basis of political spiel collaborates with the enemy who sows wheat among the tares.
Voters who pay attention to political speeches and the exchange of insults that dominate campaigns are only interested in appearances. So we are treated to the verbal dual between Tim Walz, who misrepresented his military service and bailed out just as his unit was being sent to the Middle East, and James Donald/David Bowman Hamel Vance, who heroically served his country by playing military journalist in the Marine Corps. Merle Haggard knew better than most voters:
When a President walks through the White House door
And does what he says he'll do,
We'll all be drinkin that free bubble-up
And eatin that rainbow stew.
I think of the line from “Mrs. Robinson”…”Laugh about it, shout about, when you’ve got to choose, every way you look at it you lose.”
Donors, not voters, decide policy, which is why both major parties are committed to war despite the respective Potemkin villages they erect to excite the minions.
I like the idea of banning speech writers and suggest also a geography test for candidates…easier to grade than the history test they should also undergo.
I meant to add that this is the year I’m writing in Mantan Moreland, since we have a precedent of the dead occupying the office.
I think probably Harris /Walz will soon be declared winners in November just as Biden/ Harris were recently declared losers in July . She has recited for the public but not conversed with the public since her appointment as our new leader.
I read recently the Ancient Greeks identified four tasks facing every human: to learn how to live, to learn how to die, to learn how to converse, and to learn how to read. I suspect the learning how to “read” was referencing more than a language as in “reading the signs of the time.” (But I will defer to Dr Fleming on this point ) The living, dying and conversation part are areas most readers of this blog have at least considered and considered well. The “reading” part however does not look very encouraging if progress, development, winning, greatness and the rest of modern boasts are still expecting fulfillment.
One aside about modern combat is that the constant boasts of superior weaponry and scientific progress has so reduced or expanded (however one likes to frame it ) the field of battle that today almost anyone can get blown up anytime, anywhere at any place. Even the distinction between uniformed and non uniformed combatants is fast becoming irrelevant . The Walz vs Vance example of going or staying home, serving or dodging, combatant or non combatant, deploying with your unit or wishing it well from a distance is so familiar since Vietnam that Walz can only be described as in the more recent company of America’s best and brightest. Bush, Cheney, Clinton’s etc … it’s a very long list. The last high ranking official I can remember who actually served in high office with the bullet wounds he received serving was the Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel who both parties ended up disliking for his reticence in sending more troops to Afghanistan and Iraq 1and 2.
Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech that he wrote with a bullet it in him. I think he was probably the last human being to occupy the Oval Office. He read books. Tom may remember Bruce Winders the retired historian of the Alamo telling the story of Bill Clinton’s visit. Clinton asked him nothing about the historic site. He asked, “So how long have you worked here?” John Major asked Winders for recommended reading and left with a half-dozen books, “For the plane ride home.”
I was recently asked to write a foreword for a new edition of a long-out-of-print Gertrud von Le Fort novel called the WEDDING OF MAGDEBURG about the destruction of that city during the Thirty Years’ War. Sherman’s troops in Columbia have nothing on the Emperor’s Croatian mercenaries, though it seems Tilly was a decent man. In any case, I’d like to lock all the neocons of the globalist think tanks and journals in the ballroom at some DC hotel and not let any of them take a bathroom break until they have listened to me read aloud the entire novel.
Curious fact: In thinking about American near-total ignorance of the Thirty Years’ War, I realized Mel Gibson or Ridley Scott or some other master if silver screen brutality hasn’t committed the event to celluloid. English speakers who have given up reading will have to make do with the compelling if problematic (and with carnage enough) 1971 picture THE LAST VALLEY, written and directed by GREAT ESCAPE screenwriter, James Clavell.
Michael Caine and Omar Sharif play a Protestant mercenary captain and a Catholic schoolteacher respectively, who broker a separate peace during the Thirty Years War in a secluded farming village protected by mountains. Caine, who read the picture as an indictment of religious turmoil in contemporary Northern Ireland, felt he delivered one of his stand-out performances. The photography is striking, clearly influenced by Jacques Callot’s baroque engravings “Les Grandes Misères de la guerre.” The masterful score is the work of none other than John Barry, composer of the James Bond soundtracks. Catholics looking for a “we-were-the-good-guys” narrative of the Thirty Years’ War will be disappointed. So will they by THE WEDDING OF MAGDEBURG.
I’m so sick of war.
Chris, thanks for the excellent comments. I have not seen “The Last Valley,” but will do so soon. Clavell is an interesting bird. He was a British POW in some horrible place like Malaya or Singapore, during WW II, from which he wrote what became the screenplay for an excellent small film, “King Rat” directed by Brian Forbes. The especially strong cast includes a young George Segal as the brash American conman, James Fox, Tom Courtenay, Denholm Eliot, and John Mills. I saw it when it came out and rented it about five years ago. It was still wonderful, and I hate all movies about prisons, concentration camps, submarines, and Antarctica. I get claustrophobic. (Yes, I exempt Stalag 17, Das Boot, and Jailhouse Rock [wink wink]).
Clavell’s Asian experiences produced his most famous fiction, “Shogun.” I’ve never actually read any of his books, because the one person I know who loves his novels is a dope.
Clyde Wilson reminds me that “Esse Quam Videri” is the official motto of North Carolina.
Yes, I did recall that. Of course there is the motto they put on license plates: First in Flight. They say it refers to the Wright brothers, but they were Ohioans who did all their real work in Ohio and went briefly to Kitty Hawk where the winds made testing easier. Surely, the NC legislature wouldn’t steal from chicken-shit Ohioans (Walker Percy’s phrase).
Chris,
Thank you for posting. I will certainly consider your reading and viewing recommendations . It’s good to see your name pop up on the blog and to read your good comments.
The list is endless these days but John Bolton is another irritant for me in matters of war and peace. Evidently he didn’t believe his war (Vietnam) was worth fighting as a young man and that’s probably fair enough. Yet, he apparently remains perpetually angst about all those that need fighting today. I wish he would shut up. Or as you put it — so sick of war.
On a brighter note, it’s good to hear from an old artillery officer still interested in life and life more abundantly.
Re Mr Check’s comments on the Thirty Years War, my favorite book is the vast, brilliant and fiendishly detailed “Wallenstein” by Golo Mann, Tom’s son. I have been reading it for close to ten years and still have some way to go.
Ninety-nine percent of the time we vote for “No”, especially on the propositions and budgets. An empty chair would be a better representative in the vast majority of cases than any candidate that is allowed to be proposed. We also let them know (maybe) that we’re on to the game and reject it utterly, although we do usually waste the time to participate to this degree.
I would be interested to know who is publishing the Le Fort book for which Mr. Check will be writing the forward and when we might expect to see it.
For an elective history class I read Simplicius Simplicissimus. Parts of that narrative have stuck with me, although I have no way of knowing how much might have been stylized or embellished.
We’ll check out The Last Valley.
Sorry to throw a grenade there and disappear–or “ghost,” as the “yout” say. Or said, anyway. It’s hard to keep up. The edition, Michael, willbefrom Ignatius Press, who has done good work in bringing back a number of le Fort titles. Even better in this category of bringing back forgotten Catholic writers is Cluny Press. Their edition of Agnes Repplier’s JUNIPERO SERRA is very well done. John Lukacs edited a volume of Repplier essays. He called her “America’s Austen.” If it’s a stretch (and–to paraphrase Pope Francis–who am I to say it is?) it’s not a great one, and Repplier and Lukacs called Philadelphia home. Speaking of which, we stage a great JRC long ago in Philly. Around toe corner from Rittenhouse Square. Claude Polin was there and Peter Brimelow declared it was a positive principle of conservative thought to mortgage to the hilt when interst rates were low! True story!
Okay: this website needs a method to go back and correct typos!
No apologies needed from Mr. Check, as his enthusiasm for the Msgr Knox Bible preserves him from any agita on my part. I thought I was alone on an island in my love for the Knox translation ! (For those who don’t get this connection I recommend his column in Catholic Answers magazine)
Cluny Press has done great work in rescuing long-forgotten works and I also look forward to seeing the LeFort book.
As for our topic here, it astounds me just how much money is spent on campaign propaganda. Here on the Ohio – PA border the airwaves are flush with puerile nonsense and my mailbox doesn’t see a day when it isn’t contaminated with such junk.