Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION , page 29

THE MAN WITH THE HAMMER

In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

― Ludwig von Mises

No one, in our time, believes in any sanction greater than military power; no one believes that it is possible to overcome force except by greater force. There is no 'Law', there is only power. I am not saying that that is a true belief, merely that it is the belief which all modern men do actually hold.

--- George Orwell

The other day I watched my cat lie down next to an anthill in the back yard. From the look in his evil yellow eyes I knew he could see the tiny ants swarming and scurrying beneath him on the sun-warmed stones; nevertheless he flopped down there without any hesitation and began to lounge as only cats and college students can. Within moments, however, he was crawling with outraged six-legged insects. He twitched a few times in irritation, then jumped up, walked away, and carefully removed all the ants from his body in cat-fashion, by eating them. He glared at the anthill for several seconds, walked back to it, and flopped down upon it once more, stretching out as if he intended to spend the whole day there. Needless to say, his second experience with the hill was no more comfortable than his first, though he did do great violence to the hill and destroyed several additional members of the ant colony before he fled once more.

Watching this incident over my newspaper, it occurred to me suddenly that my cat's behavior was almost perfectly analogous to America's foreign policy – to the modern American attitude toward nearly everything. Because Spike the cat was a hundred times larger and more powerful than any ant, he assumed he could settle upon the ants' territory without negative consequence to himself. When the ants fought back, however, he did not feel chastened or foolish; he did not seek a different place to while away the afternoon, or question his right to lay upon their territory. In fact he learned absolutely nothing, and returned in short order to repeat his initial mistake. All he accomplished in the end was to aggravate himself and take the lives of a certain number of ants.

At this moment, our new Secretary of Defense, “Mad Dog” Mattis, intends to ramp up the fight against the various Islamic factions presently causing havoc with our grand design in the Middle East. Indeed, he has already done so: during his brief tenure as the No. 2 man in our military establishment, America's armed forces have unloaded dozens of cruise missiles at the Assad regime in Syria, and dropped the so-called “mother of all bombs” – the largest non-nuclear weapon in our arsenal – on enemy forces in Afghanistan. Commando teams have hit various camps belonging to various terrorist factions. Drone strikes continue all across the globe with metronomic regularity. Mattis, a former commandant of the Marine Corps and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was known during his military service as a hard charger, tough and relentlessly aggressive. Recently, when asked by a congressman what kept him awake at night, he replied, “Nothing. I keep other people awake at night.” It goes without saying, though I am going to say it anyway, that Mattis is enormously popular with the fighting troops and particularly with those on “the tip of the spear” – the Rangers, SEALs, Delta Forces, etc. who do much of our killing for us while we sit safely in America, reading newspapers and watching cats fumble about on anthills.

Our soldiers seem to feel, more or less collectively, that Secretary Mattis is the sort who will “take the gloves off” and let them get down to the red business of slaughtering America's enemies wherever they may be found. One can hardly blame them for this. Since 1945 there has not been a single conflict in which America's military has been free to unleash all of its power and resources against its enemies. In Korea (1950 - 1953) and particularly in Vietnam (1965 – 1973), use of force was restricted and governed by numerous political considerations that left the men in the field feeling immensely frustrated. Even in the Gulf War (1991), politics dictated not only the way the campaign against Hussein's regime ended, but how peace terms were dictated, leaving a sensation among many that the war, while victorious in outcome, had not been a total victory (Hussein remained in power, after all, for another twelve years). And the so-called “Global War on Terror,” which has been conducted from 2001 onwards without letup, has been a strange and somewhat grotesque combination of overwhelming force and pathetic half-measures, which, if boiled down to a single descriptive sentence, might be: “Kill them – but don't offend them.” The result is that, sixteen years removed from 9/11, almost nothing has changed except the names of the enemies. Hussein gave way to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which gave way to ISIS, which will soon give way to something else, but the conflict itself is no closer to a resolution than it was on September 12, 2001, and may actually be farther away. Military men believe that this is because they have been handcuffed by politicians and bureaucrats-in-uniform, and this is understandable. To a man with the hammer, all the problems look like nails: every human being sees reality through the perspective of their own place within it. When I was in law enforcement, the most commonly expressed sentiment among my peers in the police, corrections department and so on was how helpless they felt beneath the tangle of regulations and red tape that constricted their every movement. It was bad enough to be opposed by cunning and relentless criminals; did we have to fight “downtown” as well?

I will not shock you when I say that it is the fantasy of everyone who ever carried a rifle or a badge to play either Rambo or Dirty Harry at some point in their careers. To saddle up, lock and load, and lay waste until every one of the bad guys was lying dead in a pool of broken glass and blood. This fantasy, eloquently expressed by Toby Keith in his song “Beer For My Horses,” is not rooted in enjoyment of violence; it is rooted in the belief that violence solves problems in and of itself, and that if only the restraining hand were taken away, if our latent power were unleashed, the world would be a better place. Fans of the 90s television show Home Improvement will remember that Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor's answer to any mechanical problem was, “More power!” He was constantly adding boosters and superchargers to things like lawn mowers and chain saws, and constantly dismayed when his mechanical experiments ended in fiery disaster. Like my cat, he did not learn from past mistakes, but kept applying the same methods over and over again and drawing no conclusions from their failure.

Allen's character was, of course, meant to be a caricature of the American male, but in a larger sense he was a caricature of America itself, whose answer is always “more power,” regardless of the question. Rambo made $300 million dollars not because it is a great movie per se, but because frustrated Americans just wanted to see our enemies blown all to hell, with no politician or bleeding-heart in uniform to stop them. The message of the movie was certainly simple enough: if you let American fighting men fight, victory is assured. This is almost certainly true, but it begs a very important question: why were they fighting in the first place?

To paraphrase the historian Walther Görlitz, the belief that power never fails, and that it is the solution to any and all problems, that enough bombs can settle any argument, is probably the most resilient and pernicious delusion of the modern era. It has been disproven so many times that one wonders that anyone believes in it all, and yet decade after decade it remains the basis of American foreign policy and the bedrock of American political thinking. During the afformentioned Vietnam conflict, General Curtis LeMay threatened to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the Stone Age; when someone pointed out that North Vietnam already lived in the Stone Age, LeMay had no answer. He just went on bombing. And in fact America dropped more bombs in Vietnam than all the combatants combined dropped in the whole of World War II. But the problem in that conflict was not a shortage of bombs. It was lack of strategy, both political and military, and a misunderstanding of what force alone can achieve.

In the early 19th century, the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz wrote a book, On War, which remains the cornerstone of all military thought and philosophy to this very hour. He defined war as “politics carried out by other means” (war, in other words) and stated that no sane person would enter into a war without having clearly defined postwar goals as well as a concrete strategy for winning. He emphasized that no amount of tactical brilliance could win a war if that underlying strategy was false – that bad strategy, like an improper foundation, would simply cause the whole effort to collapse. After WW2, a German field marshal under Allied interrogation stated that Hitler's mistake in that conflict was to flip Clausewitz's dictum on its head, to view military victory as an end in itself, and a cure for the political problems that had started it. Stalin, too, subscribed to this theory, stating, “A dead man is not a problem. Kill the man and you eliminate the problem.” When someone asked him about moral authority, referencing the Pope, the Soviet dictator famously sneered, “The Pope? How many divisions does he have?” To Stalin the idea of an underlying moral authority was nonsense. What mattered were how many planes, tanks, guns and troops you could muster, and whether or not you were willing to use them. Somehow, since 1945, we Americans have come to believe roughly the same thing as a nation. We are the world's foremost military power; our missiles can strike anywhere on earth, and our troops can be deployed within a matter of days to almost any point of the compass from the Arctic Circle to the South Pole. Furthermore, we are almost completely immune from retaliation. Abraham Lincoln's observation that “all the armies of Europe and Asia could not water their horses in the Ohio river” remains true today. It simply doesn't compute in our collective brains that groups of what we consider to be murderous savages, tucked away in places like Yemen and Nigeria and Indonesia, could defy us for any long period of time. If final victory in the “Global War on Terror” hasn't been achieved after close to two decades, then the answer must be simple – we aren't bombing them hard enough. What we need is...more power!

And more power is precisely what we are applying. Though the Trump administration is still wet behind the ears, we've already been told that there may be a need to put “boots on the ground” in Syria to tackle the threat of ISIS; that a military strike can't be ruled out against North Korea; and that we will stand no more nonsense from Iran. This, in addition to continuing U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Niger, daily drone strikes in Yemen, and, almost incredibly, another surge of troop strength in Iraq -- a war which, at this point, is nearly as old as the soldiers fighting it. Confidence runs high that more drone strikes, more commando raids, more cruise missile attacks, more bombs and more boots will somehow succeed where previous military action has failed; and that more money – endless torrents of taxpayer dollars, running into the hundreds of billions – will put some starch into the flaccid American puppet regimes in the Islamic world, or the so-called “friendly” Islamic states of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Surely, the logic goes, if we just combine larger carrots with larger sticks, we will finally hit upon the formula to exterminate Islamic terror groups, establish democracy everywhere, and keep the Mideast pipelines open and flowing into American combustion engines. The “Global War on Terror” will come to a victorious conclusion, and we can resume traveling by airplane without feeling like inmates in minimum security prisons.

As I have stated, there is a great deal of sincerity behind this belief, and it comes from a total misunderstanding of history; but this misunderstanding can work two ways. It would be wrong to say that violence never solves anything. America won its independence through violence. Slavery was abolished by violence. German, Italian and Japanese fascism were destroyed by violence. Violence was and remains a tool which can be used to settle important problems. But like any other tool, it is useless and can even be self-destructive if it is employed without intelligence. One will note that in the examples I just used, the objective of our government was always simple and clear-cut, and all military, economic and political considerations were subordinated to achieving it. In 1776 the objective was the end of British rule in America. In 1861 it was the restoration of the Union and later, the abolition of slavery (as a means of restoring said Union). In 1941 it was the destruction of fascism and the establishment of democracy throughout the world. But as I noted above, our military efforts subsequent to WW2, our record of success has been much worse even though our expenditures of money and bombs have been much higher, because our objectives have been nebulous or uninspiring, and we were therefore unable to unify our military, economic and political efforts. This applies especially to the endless “Global War on Terror.” In the beginning, of course, it seemed an easy thing to understand. We had been attacked on our own soil. Thousands were dead. Our greatest city had been symbolically emasculated. Naturally we wanted revenge. But amidst the cries for vengeance very few people asked why this terrible thing had happened. What was the motivation of the attackers? What were their strategic aims? What was it they hoped to accomplish through such a massacre, knowing that our retaliation would be swift and terrible?

Then-President Bush supplied convenient answers. “They hate freedom,” was one. “They want to destroy our way of life,” was another. On several occasions he simply wrote off the entire attack as an act of “pure evil,” as if the motivations of Osama bin Laden's gang were simply mustache-twirling villainy for its own sake. One man who rejected these explanations was Ron Paul, who stated that 9/11 was simply a consequence of America's interventionalist foreign policy. It was, in essence, the revenge of the ants on the cat who sat on their anthill. For decades, America has dropped bombs almost without number throughout the Middle East – in Libya, in Syria, in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Iraq. At the same time we have pursued a policy of arming, funding and enabling the Israelis to behave as they please toward more or less subject populations who are predominately Islamic in faith. And on top of this we have not only arranged for violent “regime changes” against inconvenient leaders, but constantly backed, with both money and arms, ruthless dictators who imposed stifling oppression on their own people. The story of American meddling in the Middle East would require a multi-volume book series of its own to tell in full, but the point is simply that our own hands are not clean and haven't been since before most of us were born. Much of the anger and hatred expressed toward us in that part of the region is quite frankly justified, and if you doubt that, take a look at the kill statistics vis-a-vis American drone strikes in the last few years – the proportion of terrorists definitely killed versus that of innocent bystanders who had the bad fortune of being a half-block away when the bomb went off. In many cases we are killing as many as five civilians for every terrorist, and in many documented instances the missiles have missed the terrorists entirely and wiped out dozens and in some cases hundreds of totally blameless people. This sort of thing may not bother the fat-bellied wannbe warlords you encounter in American bars and barber shops who don't give a damn how many ragheads we have to grease to get at the bad ones, but it bothers me, because I can put myself in the place of a hard-working husband who comes home to find his inconveniently-located house a smoking hole in the ground, and his family nothing more than bloody garbage smeared over the rubble. You have to be pretty cold in the heart and pretty thick in the head not to realize that every time we create this situation, we make the job of the terrorist recruiter that much simpler.

Americans are often frighteningly ignorant of the way they are perceived in other countries, but this myopia is not universal. I once encountered here in Los Angeles an old but vigorous retired businessman who regaled me with tales of his travels as a youth. One point he wanted to press home in particular was how lucky he was to have traveled extensively in North Africa and the Middle East in the early-mid 1960s. Americans, he said, were treated "like kings" by the Arabs back then. "They trusted us and believed us to be good-hearted people who didn't interfere in other people's affairs," he said. "And they remembered how well we treated them when our armies were in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia during WW2. How we had respected their laws and customs. How we left without a fuss when the war was over and how we later opposed the European colonial powers when they tried to steal back their empires in the 1950s." Now, he said, he wouldn't travel to the Middle East if you paid him. Generations of dropping bombs, toppling inconvenient regimes and propping up bloodthirsty tyrants has burned up all their goodwill. They see us not only as an enemy but as a bully, and a vicious one at that. The cheers, actual or secret, that went up in much of the Islamic world when the Twin Towers fell down were driven as much by a feeling that America's chickens had finally come home to roost as by any so-called “hatred of freedom.” The stark fact is that, rightly or wrongly, America is viewed by much of the population on this planet as simply a more up-to-date version of the old British Empire. We may be somewhat more sophisticated than our British cousins were about how we administer that Empire, preferring economic exploitation under the guise of trade to naked conquest; but in the end, when the economic hit-men fail, the troops go in, bringing the corporations behind them. Whether you agree with this assessment is immaterial and irrelevant; the perception has become the reality.

This year there was a tremendous wave of terrorist attacks throughout Europe and Africa – this despite the fact that ISIS has been almost as thoroughly wiped out as al-Qaeda, and that there are no longer a plethora of save havens for terrorists to train. These attacks keep coming, too: the latest was in New York just a few days ago. These are carried out by different groups with different methods, and in many cases these groups do not even get along with each other, but their ultimate goal is the same – get the cat off the anthill, to get the United States out of their countries – militarily, culturally, economically, and politically. It is a simple, clear-cut strategy, and it does not require much in the way of advanced technology or even organization. As we have seen, in the right circumstances, a fanatic with a car and a kitchen knife can do as much or more damage as a bomb or a machine gun; and such people, hiding in plain sight, are much harder to fight than a large, armed band which can be located, identified and exterminated by our military. We can throw Hellfire missiles at suspected terrorists in Yemen, but we cannot do it in Kansas City or Rome or Barcelona. And while we can and do arrest and convict terrorists and would-be terrorists in those places using conventional law enforcement methods, we cannot, using such methods, stop people from choosing to become terrorists in the first place. One cannot cure a disease by treating the symptoms. The limits of purely force-based solutions to political problems are once again looming unpleasantly upon us. Like the Roman army at Masada, we have come face to face with the limits of military power. The problem which brings our men and women to arms has come full circle and landed back in the laps of our politicians.

Secretary Mattis promises to take the fight to the bad guys, to keep them in constant fear, to wipe them off the face of the earth. Doubtless he is a skilled tactician and can accomplish much in this direction. But I submit that tactics alone cannot win the “war on terror.” We must have a strategy, and it must consist of more than destroying one terror cell only to watch two more spring up, mushroom-like, in its place. It must consist of more than giving hundreds of billions in aid to a loathsome regime like Saudi Arabia's in hopes that an even more loathsome regime won't come along and take its place. It must consist of more than keeping the flow of money, weaponry and moral support to Israel continuous and ignoring the stark reality that the gratitude of a few million Jews is paid for by the unrelenting hatred of two billion Muslims. It is perhaps this last point is perhaps the most important, for our politicians must recognize that the supply of potential terrorists is never going to run out. No matter how many times we return to the anthill and start stomping, fresh ants will continue to emerge from their hole, ready to bite and sting. The trick is not to find more and more sophisticated ways of killing them but to take away their motivation for doing this in the first place. And the way to go about this, or at least to begin going about this, is to understand that some – not all, but some – of their grievances against us are legitimate and need to be addressed. Our foreign policy is a clumsy butcher job and has been for generations. It is driven by greed, arrogance, and special interest, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the ideals laid down by our Founding Fathers, or with true patriotism. Americans would not tolerate for a day what we've routinely done to other countries all across the planet for generations, and we ought to start by acknowledging this fact. Should we do so, I think we will discover that the necessity for American bombs is often much lower than we have been led to believe, just as the arguments to keep troops in over 100 nations are thinner and more self-serving that most of us would care to admit.

Many people would say that my attitude is defeatist and another way of advocating surrender. But it seems to me our surrender is already underway, for we are playing directly into the strategy of our opponent. And to understand that, it is necessary to understand what a terrorist really is, and what he wants.

All terrorists (or "freedom-fighters," if you happen to agree with their aims) fight the same way. They employ high-profile terror tactics to effect political change. But the use of these tactics and the emotions they create -- terror and rage -- are means and not ends in themselves. By inciting fear across a whole nation or planet, they give themselves a power out of proportion to their numbers. By provoking rage, they ensure the victim government will retaliate. And as odd as it may sound, terrorists actually wantto be retaliated against. Their hope, often openly stated, is that the enemy government will employ such indiscriminate and violent means of repression that they will end up slaughtering innocent people as well as terrorists. The relatives of these slaughtered innocents will then become sympathetic to the terrorist cause and in many cases actively support or even join it. The very act of trying to destroy a terrorist organization thus, in many cases, empowers that organization. But the insidious genius of terrorism doesn't end there. By virtue of the terrible nature of its crimes -- shooting up schools, blowing airliners to bits, slaughtering concertgoers or tourists, killing even women, children and old people -- it tends to cause the societies it attacks to abandon its own democratic traditions – to opt for security over safety. When I look at how the country has changed in the last sixteen years, how many of our freedoms have been compromised in the name of “national security,” I am continuously reminded of Benjamin Franklin's words, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." The brutal truth is that in spite of all of our military successes, in spite of heaps of immolated terrorist corpses scattered all over the globe, in spite of huge new sums voted by Congress to flow into the military's already bulging coffers, we are losing this fight, and losing it badly. Americans have willingly exchanged hard-won freedoms for a sense of temporary safety. We have set up a surveillance state in which we are told “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” We have vindictively prosecuted whistle-blowers and hurled them into prisons, not for betraying secrets to our enemies, but for blurting terrible truths the government didn't want us to hear. We have allowed the persecution of unpopular minorities to satisfy our momentary resentment and anger. We are beating America into a grim new shape, and we are doing it at the behest of vile murderers who want to drag the entire planet back into the Dark Ages. Isn't that the real surrender?

Contrary to popular belief, there is a way to break the cycle of violence in which we presently find ourselves, and to do so without compromising a single principle; but to understand how we can escape, we must understand how we became trapped in the first place. And this is precisely what I aim to do in the next installment of this blog, "America: From Republic to Empire (and Back Again)."

Foreign Words We Ne Need To Steal

All English-using writers have occasionally experienced the frustration of reaching for a word that isn't there. The writer knows precisely the action, mood or feeling he wants to convey, but there is no single, clear-cut word in the language with which to describe it. He can make up a phrase, but it often comes off clunky and awkward. He can beat the thesaurus like a pinata, but nothing really useful falls out. And this feeling of frustration – for which, ironically, English also seems to have no word – is hardly unique to writers. Ordinary people feel it every day when trying to convey an idea, only to discover there is no vehicle for doing so. This discovery, coupled with a reluctance that English-speakers possess for studying the vocabulary they actually do have available to them, leads to a great increase in the usage of slang; but slang words, like politicians' promises, have very short shelf lives. They only temporarily fill the linguistic gap, they are often vulgar in expression, and it often happens that when they expire, the following generation does not replace them. I recently watched a documentary about the 60s, and what struck me was how little of the slang from that day was still in use now -- or even in the 1980s, when its originators were still quite young. The same thing has happened to the slang of "my" 1980s; with a couple of notable exceptions ("dope," for example) it has disappeared so completely from use that encountering it on TV re-runs is a little jarring, like stepping into a time machine.

In these circumstances, it is often necessary for English-users to appropriate foreign words to express their thoughts and circumstances accurately. American English is positively riddled with French, Latin, and German words which are unchanged from their original form except in pronunciation, but it seems to me that Americans are becoming more, rather than less reluctant to do this as time goes on, and are relying more heavily than ever on brunch words, slang, and idiom to communicate ideas. This jury-rigging of our language is a dubious thing at best, especially when there are so many delightful foreign words just waiting to be stolen and Americanized. I have decided therefore to make a list of some of my favorites. (Please note: Because the only language I studied in depth is German, I have included more German words than others.)

Opinionswille: This is an archaic and very complex German term which literally translates to “opinion of the will.” (Some attribute its invention to Adolf Hitler, but never mind that.) It presupposes the idea that one's will can have its own opinion, perhaps independent of the rational mind. In practical terms it means when a person expresses an attitude which rests in his or her desire to do something, or to avoid it. “I know I ought to lose weight, but it is my opinionswille that I eat this jelly donut.”

Shitaka-na-gi: A common expression in Japan, shitaka-na-gi is roughly equivalent to the French “c'est la vie,” and is generally used to express the stoic acceptance of something that really sucks about life. In broader terms it can be called an acceptance of the unfairness and harshness of life, the inability of humans to do anything but endure in the face of misfortune. The literal translation is said to be, “Nothing can be done about it” or, less commonly, “What can you do?” It differs from such phrases as "that's life" or "life's a bitch" in that there is no element of bitterness, merely philosophical acceptance.

Treppenwitz: A German word with two equally good meanings. You know when somebody devastates you at noon with a smart-ass remark, and you think of the perfect comeback at three in the morning? That's treppenwitz. But it can also mean a joke which might have been funny when it was uttered but later seems in bad taste. When Reagan-era functionary James Watt heard a reporter's assertion that the president's cabinet was essentially just a gang of old white men, he replied, “Not true. We've got a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” The assembled journalists erupted in laughter...then crucified Watt for his tastelessness the next day. But if you watch the clip, you'll notice they are all laughing at the time he said it. This "laugh now, cringe later" sort of behavior is treppenwitz at its finest.

Eomchina: In the movie CLOCKWATCHERS, the unhappy character played by Parker Posey bitterly references a meal during which she had to endure, “hours of listening to my parents talking about my sisters...my perfect sisters.” The sneering yet despairing emphasis she puts on the word “perfect” would be called in Korean “eomchina,” a reference to a person whose perfection drives you fucking crazy. When your mom screams, “Why can't you be more like your brother?” that means your brother is an eomchina.

Dafka: There is a scene in GOOD WILL HUNTING which defines this word clearly:

Will: My father used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, ‘Choose.’
Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt there.
Will: I used to go with the wrench.
Sean: Why?
Will: ’Cause fuck him. That’s why.

In other words, Will Hunting chose the wrench “dafka.” It is an ultra-flexible Hebrew term, which the novelist Herman Wouk defined as meaning “necessary, for that very reason, perversely, defiantly, in spite of everything.” One should note the use of the word “necessary” in Wouk's definition. It is not literal but perceived necessity, in this case the "necessity" of pride. I remember repeatedly taunting an older bully on my seventh-grade schoolbus, knowing he would punch me in the arm for it, but also knowing my defiance would eat in his guts like a worm all day long. I did this "dafka."

Weltschmertz: On the television show THREE'S COMPANY, the character of Janet would always stuff herself with french fries when put under great stress. Being an actress, she never gained any weight, but in America, the weight we gain from such stress-induced binge-eating is called “weltschmertz.” Given the present shape of America, I'm surprised this German word isn't as popular as “kindergarten.”

Dépayser: In English we use the clunky phrase “out of the comfort zone” to describe when a new activity, or movement outside the routine, brings us emotional discomfort in the form of anxiety and uncertainty. We lack a phrase which describes the reverse, a positive feeling triggered by travel or change. Dépayser is this word. People who travel for pleasure, and thus constantly place themselves in strange and unfamiliar locations by choice, do so in part for the feeling of dépayser. This year, when I was at a low point financially, emotionally and physically, I traveled to London and Paris. My health improved immediately, I began to write again, and I returned to Los Angeles feeling very much renewed. Thus dépayser.

"Torschlusspanik" describes a feeling of dread or anxiety produced by the awareness – sudden or creeping – that life is short, the fuse is burning, and we have only a limited amount of time remaining to do all the things we wanted to do with our lives. We would probably refer to it as a “mid-life crisis,” though the “panik” in “torschlusspanik” is not necessarily triggered by age. I experienced this sensation for the first time when I was twenty-nine years old, and began to grasp had chosen the wrong career -- law enforcement. Within a year I had left my profession, moved to a new state and returned to school. Thus, "torschlusspanik" can be a healthy thing, too.

Vorfreude: We appropriated “schadenfreude” (shameful or malicious joy) from the Germans long ago, but for some reason left its cousin Vorfreude behind in the Fatherland. This is a shame, because it is an extraordinarily useful word, covering not an emotion but the feelings which precede the arrival of a particular emotion. In particular, vorfreude is “the anticipation of joy,” i.e. the peculiar feeling of excitement, happiness and pleasure we get when we are expecting a joyous experience -- sex, food, Christmas morning. As Major Winchester said in an episode of M*A*S*H, in regards to preparing himself for a delicious meal, "Anticipation is in itself a sensory delight."

Belarus'ka: This is a Russian word that translates into “someone who doesn't want to get their hands dirty.” A person that gives you an ugly task, such as firing a co-worker, and then leaves the office early and turns off their cell phone, is definitely a belarus'ka. Since we're on the subject, it has a rough equivalent in German, called “Handschuhschneeballwerfer,” which means “a coward who criticizes from far away." When I was a kid we called these people "telephone tough guys," and the modern generation calls them "keyboard warriors." But "belarus'ka" is more precise. These are not necessarily physical cowards, people who prefer to be elsewhere when the consequences of their actions manifest themselves. Many of our politicians are belarus'ka.

Yaourter: This is one of the all-time great French words, which means literally “to yogurt.” Most commonly, a person “yogurts” when they attempt to fake their way through song lyrics they do not know, also known as “The Pearl Jam Effect.” This is such a common experience in America I can't believe we don't have our own word for it, but this one will more than do.
Incidentally, “Yaourter” can also be applied to people faking their way through a foreign language with a bunch of nonsensical gibberish, or even those just generally faking their way through a situation. (When I try to speak German to Germans, I am a "pulling a yogurt.")

Dab-jung-nuh: This is a terrific Korean word that means to be forced to say what someone else wants to hear, often in response to a question from someone else. When your girlfriend asks you, “Does this dress make me look fat?”, your response is almost certainly going to be a “dab-jung-nuh.” (If you don't employ a dab-jung-nuh, expect to sleep on the couch.)

Reichfreudeikit: Yet another archaic German word,
this is best translated into English as "joy in the kingdom," i.e. a sense of universal happiness felt by every last citizen, usually precipitated by some great national triumph. Examples of this in my own lifetime are rare, but would probably include when the American hostages returned from Iran in 1981, and when the Gulf War ended in 1991. America used to experience Reichfreudeikit a lot more than it does today, probably because there is so little sense of national unity.

Of course, I know the English language employs a quarter of a million words, and the ordinary American doesn't use more than a few percent of them. Doubtless if I opened the foot-thick dictionary I have on my desk, I could find many English equivalents to those I have listed here. But sometimes, damn it, it's more fun to steal.

Yoga Thoughts: Or, Namasate, Motherf----r!

The following is taken from my journal of 2014. I wrote it after coming home from my hot yoga class, so I could capture the thought process I go through each and every time I show up.

It is as relevant today as it was then.

Nice and warm in here.

Ah I missed the strangely soothing herbal scent of this place. Why have I been away so long?

How peaceful and quiet it is. A refuge from the noise and bad manners of L.A.

Here's my instructor. My, look at those abs. My, look at that butt. She knows her business. I'm in good hands.

Here we go. This isn't so bad. I'm in better shape than I thought.

Looking pretty good. Feeling pretty good. Shit, I bet I could learn to teach this for a living if I stuck with it.

Hmmm. I forgot how to do that pose. But still. Not so bad. We're like 15 minutes in and I'm barely sweating. Why did I think I was in such bad shape?

Oooh I felt that one a little bit.

Damn it why I can't I hold this pose? Why is my balance so bad? Shit, I just slipped. SHIT, I just said "shit" aloud!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Find your inner something. Oh no, we're doing that freaking pose again. Who designed this pose? The Marquis de Sade?
How long does she think I can hold this? I'm not a fucking mime.

Jesus I'm sweating like Nixon here. Vietnam wasn't this hot. Why doesn't she give us two seconds to towel off?

Calm down, calm down. Now. Inhale through the -- ? Is it inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, or inhale through the mouth and exhale through the nose? Doesn't matter 'cause I'm panting like a dog.

Christ not another lunge. And why do they call this "Runner's Pose?" Runners RUN. They don't stand at the blocks torturing their thigh muscles until their whole body is vibrating like a Goddamn tuning fork.

Everyone can do this pose but me. I hate you all.

Time to towel off. Wait, how'd my towel get this wet already? Why is my water bottle empty? I don't even remember drinking.

My thighs. Oh sweet Lord my thighs are burning. I can't possibly do this for another second. But I can't be the one who quits first. Quitting second is fine. But I can't quit first.

Crissake, isn't anyone going to quit? Am I the ONLY FUCKING ONE who can't endure this?

Oh thank GOD. We're lying down. Sweet gravity, I embrace thine bountiful bosom!

That's right. Let me just lie here a few minutes and stare at the ceiling in a spiritual manner. Hey, these ceiling fans would be doing me more good if they were TURNING.

No I don't want to grab my hamstrings. My hamstrings are burning chords of pain. And don't tell me to "soften my jaw." I LIKE my jaw clenched.

Oh no not abs. Merciful God not abs! IF THIS IS THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR ABS YOU CAN FREAKING WELL KEEP 'EM! Anyway I already have a six-pack...waiting for me in the fridge.

What do you mean, "Just three more!?" You said "just three more" FIVE MORE AGO, YOU TREACHEROUS SNAKE WOMAN.

Whoever put the KFC next to this yoga studio is a huge asshole.

F this. I quit. Gonna just lay here. No shame in that! They always say, "Just lie down if you need a rest." But wait, nobody is lying down. Everyone is doing this horrible crunch-thing. Everyone. Even the woman over there who is like 72 and clearly has never done yoga in her life.

WON'T SOMEBODY QUIT FIRST, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD?

What time is it? How long has this class gone on? This is the 60 minute class, right? Not the 75? PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE THE 75!

Gasp. Is it the 90?

PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE THE 90! I can't cry in front of all these hot girls. Then again, who would notice since I'm drenched in sweat?

Oh no the instructor's getting spiritual again. I am hurting in places where I did not know I had nerve-endings and she's talking about my spirit. What about my BODY? Flab does not like being tortured this way. FLAB HAS RIGHTS, YOU FITNESS FASCIST!

Seriously, if this ab stuff doesn't stop I'm gonna hijack Dr. Who's time machine and find out whoever invented yoga and hit them in the head with a crowbar. "Namaste THAT, motherfucker!"

Pretty sure my knee wasn't supposed to make that sound.

I am sweating like a slug in salt.

Maybe that nut on Yahoo Answers was right and yoga really was created by Satan.

Can't believe I paid for this pain. I could go pick a fight on the street and get my ass kicked for free.

Wait. She just turned the fans on. She only does that when she's winding up the class. Thank each and every god in the Pantheon of gods.

It's over. I can't move. Am I lying in a puddle of sweat or have I actually become the puddle? There's a question for the yogis. One thing's for sure, I'm never coming back to this herbal-scented antechamber to hell. Why did I ever agree to return in the first place?

Oh wait, here comes my instructor. In her spray-on yoga pants.

"Thank you, miss. Great job. Nice (cl)ass. Are you teaching tomorrow? Yes? Great. Terrific. Wonderful. I'll see you then. Unless something comes up."

(Like spending ALL NIGHT IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM YOU DEVIL-WOMAN)

Ha ha ha. Just kidding. I kid because I love. And because I'm delirious from dehydration and pain.

Namaste. Seriously.

Are You Now (Or Have You Ever?)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
– remark attributed to St. Bernard of Clairevaux

When I was in high school, I was directed by one of my English teachers to read Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. Ostensibly the story is about the Salem witch trials in New England during the period 1692 – 1693. In reality, the subject is not the trials but the mental attitudes which led to them. Simply put, it is a story about the power of accusation, and how that power can and often is brutally misused to destroy human reputations and lives, all in the name of justice.

You know the saying: “Everyone remembers the accusation, nobody remembers the denial.” Or, “Smear 'em on page one, retract on page twelve.” Or, “Throw enough mud and some of it will stick.” They are all different ways of saying the same thing: to be accused of something is enough to hurt you, and to be accused of something vile – like child molestation or treason – is enough to destroy you. Guilt or innocence don't play into it. Defense, no matter how artfully conducted and no matter how deeply rooted in the truth, never matches the flashy glamor of attack. Trials “in the court of public opinion” are never fair, and only seldom even accidentally hit upon the truly guilty. By the time facts come to light, the damage is usually done, and it is usually fatal.

At the moment, Hollywood – and to a larger extent, America itself, which in a sense is merely the larger reflection of Hollywood – is undergoing a frenzy of career-and-life-destroying accusation which probably hasn't been seen since the opening stages of the McCarthyism. And like McCarthyism, whose stated goal – the removal of communists and communist sympathizes from American public life – was in conflict with its real aims (the criminalization of non-criminal behavior), the present witch-hunt atmosphere seems to have two distinct and opposing characteristics. The more-or-less stated goal of the “#MeToo” campaign is to expose those in power who have committed severe sexual harassment and sexual assault under color of authority, and in this it seems at first glance to be quite effective. In just a few short weeks, a sort of steamroller of accusation has crushed, or at least badly wobbled the pedestals, of such Hollywood players as Harvey Weinstein, Bret Ratner, James Toback, Kevin Spacey, Chris Savino, Roy Price, Jeffrey Tambor, Russell Simmons, George Takei, Louis C.K. and Ben Affleck; it has perhaps aborted the unlikely rise of Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore, is setting fire to the legacy of Bill Clinton, and may have wrecked Al Franken's political career; it has driven Michael Halperin, Michael Oreskes and Lockhart Steele from their media jobs; and it has probably destroyed what was left of Bill O'Reilly's career following his ouster from Fox News. And this may be only the beginning. Fresh scandals probably await in the military, the judiciary, congress, big business, and elsewhere. The lid is being pried off a great stew of ugliness which has been simmering out of sight for decades. Women – and not a few men – are finally getting their own back for being subjected to the disgusting behaviors of those who crassly exploited and even violated them with impunity for years. So, you ask, what the hell could be wrong with that?

Well, for starters, the opposing characteristic of #MeToo is its complete disregard for due process of law. As in the Salem Witch Trials and in the McCarthy hearings themselves, it is enough for the majority of the people in the campaign – and evidently, the country at large – that a person simply be accused of wrongdoing for them to be judged guilty, shamed, and professionally destroyed. The idea that every person get their day in court, that they deserve a fair and impartial hearing regardless of how hideous or outrageous the accusation leveled against them, seems to have been dismissed as inconvenient and unnecessary – even “chauvinistic” and "misogynistic." For example, Hilary Clinton stated unequivocally during her presidential campaign that any woman who claimed to be the victim of sexual assault “had a right to be believed.” Coming from a woman who practiced law for many years, this statement is both incredible and terrifying: surely Clinton knows that no one making an accusation has a “right to be believed” under American jurisprudence. What they have is a right to be heard. The distinction is not semantic. A person who claims to have been sexually assaulted has every right to file civil and criminal complaints against their alleged attacker, but it is not the job of the police and the district attorney's offices to believe them, merely to investigate the charges to determine their validity -- or lack of it. Many false or exaggerated charges are filed in America; and many frivolous lawsuits. It is precisely this fact which causes us to proceed cautiously. In the classic 1943 movie, The Ox-Bow Incident, the murder of a rancher and the theft of his cattle are sufficient for an outraged Western town to lynch three drifters suspected of the crime; it later turns out the men were entirely innocent, and the man most vocal for executing the drifters a liar, coward and fraud. The message of the film is as brutally simple as its climax: the lynch-mob may be a satisfying way of venting outrage, but it is too blunt and crude a tool to be trusted. What's more, it is too easily wielded by those, like Joe McCarthy, who have ulterior motives.

Now, unlike the witch-hunts conducted by McCarthy and various committees of Congress during the 30s - 50s, I very seriously doubt that the destruction of innocent people is an intended consequence of #MeToo. I think the campaign's motive is largely pure, and, for the record, I think it quite likely that many of those accused are probably as guilty as hell. I've lived in Hollywood for ten years, and that is long enough to get an idea of who is getting away with what, and for how long. In the case of people like Weinstein, for example, or Louis C.K., what the broad public is learning about them now has been known to most people in this town forever. And it is notable that many of the accused are not even mounting token defenses against the charges leveled against them, but have meekly slunk out of the limelight after issuing blanket apologies. The point, however, is not whether the tactics of #MeToo are effective at flushing the guilty from their hiding places, but whether the ends justify the means. Supporters of what we now call McCarthyism believed that the threat posed by Communism gave them the right to ignore the U.S. Constitution. Supporters of Bush's Patriot Act and Obama's NDAA believed that the threat posed by terrorists gave them the same right. In each case, fear triumphed over reason, the lynch-mob mentality over the idea of due process of law. At the moment, accusations are being made without eyewitness corroboration, without physical evidence, without any proof whatsoever that they occurred; in some cases, these accusations are, to quote one reporter, “older than half the people living on this planet.” They cannot be verified or disproved and are often past the statute of limitations, yet they are being taken as seriously as if fingerprints, DNA samples and literal smoking guns were in police custody. Reputations that took lifetimes to achieve are being destroyed in less time than it takes to tap 140 characters into a Twitter account, and no one seems to care. On the contrary, the public seems to be almost salivating at the question, "Who's next?" And the very act of defending the accused is viewed by many as an act in support of “rape culture” generally. As with McCarthyism or the Salem Trials, or even the fictional (but too often real) Ox-Bow Incident, those who point out the slippery slope upon which we now reside are immediately lumped in with the guilty. And how hard would it be to ruin them as well? The destruction of you and all you've worked for is now only as far away as the nearest wi-fi connection.

I don't propose to analyze why humans respond so gullibly and eagerly to charges and so skeptically to denials; doubtless the secret is buried somewhere in our collective, tribal subconscious. The important thing is not that this tendency exists but that we fight it whenever it tries to surface, in whatever set of sheep's clothing it chooses to appear. In one of my favorite films, Magnum Force, the hero of the film, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, a man with a tendency to make violent shortcuts through the legal system, discovers a group of even more violent vigilantes has formed within the San Francisco Police Department, bent on exterminating the criminal population. Whatever sympathy Harry might harbor for these rogue cops, however, disappears when they murder an old partner of his who stumbles in their path: Harry rejects their overtures to join their death squad and sets about destroying them. When confronted by their leader, the following conversation ensues:

BRIGGS: Anyone who threatens the security of the people will be executed. Evil for evil, Harry. Retribution.

CALLAHAN: That's just fine, but how does murder fit in? When the police start being their own executioners, where's it gonna end? Pretty soon, you'll start executing people for jaywalking. And executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor 'cause his dog pisses on your lawn.

BRIGGS: There isn't one man we've killed that didn't deserve what was coming to him.

CALLAHAN: Yes, there is. Charlie McCoy.

BRIGGS: What would you have done?

CALLAHAN: I'd have upheld the law!

BRIGGS: What the hell do you know about the law? You're a great cop, Harry. You had a chance to join the team, but you'd rather stick to the system.

CALLAHAN: Briggs, I hate the goddamn system! But until someone comes along with some changes that make sense, I'll stick with it!

This scene has always resonated with me precisely because I understand the positions of both men. Briggs is fed-up with a “justice system” that seems to produce nothing but injustice; Callahan is equally fed up but grasps where vigilantism will inevitably lead in the end. He knows that Charlie McCoy, the cop who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was simply the first of much worse “collateral damage” to come. Silly as it may seem, the parallels to the #MeToo campaign are inescapable. On the one hand, it is an understandable reaction to a world which tolerated all sorts of sexual abuse and exploitation without batting an eyelash, and in some cases it has done inarguable good; on the other, it is still vigilantism, and this vigilantism is not less dangerous because it is virtual. One is continually reminded of the moral of A Tale of Two Cities, in which we discover that mob rule can be as dangerous to those who use it as to those they use it upon: the heads of the revolutionaries' end up in the same bloody basket as those of the aristocrats they overthrew. The whole practice of internet-shaming may produce short-term good, but the general trend of such tactics is always toward tyranny and injustice. Thomas Jefferson once famously remarked that it is better for a thousand guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be punished, and our legal system, flawed as it is, is more or less built around this concept. As a former law enforcement officer, I know better than post people how frustrating our legal and civil processes can be; how slow, how inefficient, how tipped in favor of the rich and powerful they actually are. I don't blame victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault from being trepidatious about coming forward, knowing what they have to go through to get even the possibility of legal satisfaction. Yet the alternative, in the form of the literal or virtual lynch mob, is much worse. If you don't believe me, ask yourself this question: if, tomorrow, you woke up to discover someone had made accusations against you for, say, rape or child molestation on Twitter, and discovered as well that thousands of people had accepted those claims at face value, despite the total lack of evidence or corroboration, what would your first impulse be? Aside from horror and revulsion, you would almost certainly seek to defend yourself by legal means. In other words, you would rely on due process of law to protect you and restore your good name. So, no matter how satisfying the noose and the pitchfork may be to hold in your hands, when you yourself are confronted with them, your instinct will always be to run to the sheriff. And what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Legal protections have to exist for everyone all the time, or they mean nothing.

Now, God knows we can do a better job in this country of preventing sexual misconduct in our leaders and employers, and it would probably be disingenuous to claim that #MeToo hasn't performed a certain public service, but at the risk of pummeling a dead horse until the bones fly, the question is not whether the methods work, merely whether they should be used. And I believe history has answered that question.

Just ask Joe McCarthy. Or his victims.

Private Radio

When the night comes
When no one knows
I can feel it
I've got my private radio
– Vanessa Carlton

Everyone has private passions – and no, I'm not referring to those which occur “with the shades pulled down." I'm speaking of the secret hobbies, the discreet habits we enjoy but do not necessarily share with others. Take television, for example. When I was a kid, I was more or less open about my love of Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica; I didn't talk much about my obsession with the original Dr. Who, a show which was, when I discovered it in 1979 or so, almost totally unknown in America. It was not because the show was unknown that I remained silent: it was because those who did know about it either found it ridiculous (because of its very low budget) or boring (because the hero, though always confronted by violence, almost never used it himself). One could say my refusal to openly embrace the renegade Time Lord was an act of cowardice (no child likes to be “different”) but at least fifty percent of my motive arose from a feeling of greed. When a squirrel locates a nut, he buries it; when a child discovers he enjoys an unpopular activity, sport, hobby or TV show, he keeps it not only to himself, but for himself. It becomes a private pleasure, all the more pleasurable because he enjoys it alone. Mixed up with this greed and the thrill of secrecy is an unassuming form of arrogance: only he is intelligent enough to have discovered this hidden treasure. Those who do not know are not smart enough to know.

This logic applies to older children and adults as well. When one discovers a band when it is still relatively unknown, one becomes a member of an exclusive society, and membership in that society is jealously guarded. Back in the 80s, the Metallica fans in my high school regarded themselves as a special musical elite; only they understood the pleasures of heavy metal, and only they were willing to endure social exile to indulge in those pleasures. A few years later, when Metallica broke into the musical mainstream, these very same people were aghast and angry. They attacked the “poseurs” and “casuals” that had jumped on the bandwagon (no pun intended) without having to suffer hostility and ridicule. At the same time, they attacked the band itself for “selling out” (which in musical terms more often means “becoming popular” than an actual financial transaction). For these metalheads, Metallica was a private pleasure no more.

As I stagger into middle age, I have discovered, half my amusement, half to my chargin, that many of the underground or semi-underground passions of my youth and formative/collegiate years have now “sold out” and become mainstream: Dr. Who would be the classic example, but comic books, action figures, science-fiction conventions, fantasy films, the UFC, and any number of previously “nerd-tainted” (or “extreme”) subjects are now “cool” and therefore safe to embrace. I am, however, not as hostile to this process as I was a few years back, when I, like the Metallica fans of my high school, reacted with anger and contempt to those who never had to suffer for their passion, but simply ambled in, late to the party, and reaped all the benefits. I like to ascribe this to maturity – I'm 45, it had to happen sometime – but whatever the cause, I have decided to share something with you that I have seldom shared with anyone: not so much in the hopes you'll embrace it, but rather because I no longer wish to selfishly hoard it for myself. The subject at hand is what is known as “old time radio.”

It's probably hard for the modern American, born, say, in the 1980s or 90s, to grasp the power that radio once held in this country – indeed, the entire “civilized” world. Before and even for a short time after the advent of television, radio gripped and dominated the fields of news and entertainment in a way which has only two modern analogs: television in the 60s – 90s, and in the internet from the later 90s until now. But from 1920 until the mid-1950s (the so-called “Golden Age of Radio”), most everything we associate with pop culture either sprang from, or was popularized by, radio: sports, hard news, celebrity gossip, game shows, and every form of episodic series you can imagine, from drama to horror, from sci-fi to comedy. This fertile period produced a number of shows which were later continued (or re-invented) as television series or films – good examples would be The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, The Green Hornet, I Love Lucy, Dragnet, Perry Mason and the soap opera Guiding Light, to name a few; but, as is so often the case, the vast majority of what was popular then did not translate well to the new medium of TV, and began to recede from memory as the years passed. Part of the reason was technical: radio shows were recorded on bulky magnetic tapes which were often miscatelogued, misplaced, damaged, destroyed or simply discarded when a studio folded or storage space ran low. What's more, from the mid-50s until the late 70s, there existed no medium by which these shows could be cost-feectively sold to the public: the practice of recording them on vinyl was cumbersome and expensive, and each 75 rpm disc could hold, at most, only two episodes – a ludicrously small number considering the price. It came as no surprise then that children raised during the early-mid Television Era had little knowledge or interest in the radio programs of their parents' generation; however, by the end of the 70s, the rising popularity of the small, sturdy and relatively inexpensive cassette tape made it both possible and profitable to market shows from the Golden Age of Radio in the same manner as musical albums.

I don't remember exactly how old I was when my father handed me my first old-time radio cassette, but I do remember the circumstances. We were on a family trip to the beach, probably around 1980, and it was my habit on such long drives to take with me a tape-recorder equipped with a small microphone. My older brother and I often used to pass the time by improvising farsical sketches – absurd, Saturday Night Live-style spoofs of our favorite programs – and possibly to avoid having to listen to our attempts at comedy (punctuated by many vulgar sound effects), my dad bought a tape at a roadside store and handed it to me to play. The show was called The Shadow and the episode, “Death From The Deep.”

I didn't know this at the time, but The Shadow was one of the most popular radio programs which had ever been recorded; it produced over 650 half-hour episodes from 1937 until 1954, and during those seventeen years, saw no less than six men play the title role, the first being none other than the great Orson Welles – indeed, it was Welles' voice that I heard when I pressed PLAY on that tape recorder.

Now, you must understand that I was raised on television. I knew nothing, and cared less, about scripted radio programs and if I had been introduced to them even a few short years later, when adolescence began to harden the faculties of my imagination, I might have listened for a few minutes, shrugged, and tossed the tape on the floor of the car. But I was at precisely that age when a boy's imagination is not only enormous but extremely vivid; an age when a simple ghost story, told in an offhand manner with scarcely any details, can produce mental imagery so terrifying that the boy might not be able to sleep for three days after hearing it. And so when the sinister music of The Shadow kicked in, accompanied by the diabolical laugh of The Shadow himself, I was instantly transported out of that big white Buick and into another, darker world. In that world, a wealthy young man named Lamont Crantson used the power of invisibility which he had learned while studying the occult in the Orient “to bring terror to the hearts of sharpsters, lawbreakers and criminals.” Adopting the alter-ego of The Shadow, he fought crime in all of its guises, natural and supernatural. Indeed, probably no superhero in history faced such a panopoly of evildoers: psychopaths, gangsters, mad scientists, enemy spies, saboteurs, racketeers, counterfeiters, arsonsists, human traffickers, kidnappers, crooked politicians, mass murderers, and, on rare occasions, foes with super-powers of their own. But what really drew me in to The Shadow – and later, to other radio serials as well – was not the concept but the execution. The Shadow, at its best, was tightly written, finely acted, and highly atmospheric. The sound effects created a sort of internal landscape within my mind – I could “see” the rain-drowned streets, the brooding fogs, the abandoned warehouses, the tough-talking gunsels in Fedora hats and trenchcoats, fingering their guns and knives as they stood beneath the harsh glare of the streetlamps. I had vivid mental images of Lamont Cranston, his lovely sidekick Margo Lane, their friendly antagonist Police Chief Weston, and even the submoronic cab driver who hacked them about town, Shreevie. Intellectually, I knew the sound of cars, horns, gunshots, crowds, creaking doors, barking dogs, rolling thunder, etc. were mere sound-effects, and the heroes and villains merely actors in shirtsleeves, speaking into microphones as they turned the pages of scripts, but this knowledge had absolutely no effect on my enjoyment of the show. The thing English teachers refer to as “the suspension of disbelief” was, in my case, absolute. When the radio played, I was there, wherever there was – be it a tomb in Egypt, the conning tower of a submarine, the cockpit of a bomber or a ski lodge in the mountains. Late childhood and early adolescence are tough times for anyone, and the ability to escape it all, to simply disappear into the Amazon or beneath the sea, to forget about bullies in gym class or that god-damned book report that was due next week and join The Shadow on his adventures, was the sort of spiritual morphine other kids sought by immersing themselves in music or following sports. But the effect, for me, was the same.

In the years following that fateful beach-trip, I gradually accumulated more episodes of The Shadow on tape, and also began listening to other programs as well, such as The Green Hornet and Inner Sanctum Mysteries. (I was also fascinated by news broadcasts from the Second World War.) My enthusiasm for Old-Time Radio was not always consistent, but the ebb periods, sometimes lasting for years, were inevitably followed by “flows” where some incident would rekindle my interest with interest, and I would buy a half-dozen new tapes and spend hours listening to them with the greatest pleasure. There were in effect two crucial moments in my personal relationship with OTR. When I was well into my twenties, my mom bought me, at Christmastime, an enormous box-set of Shadow episodes; but at that point I had fallen into an ebb-period and simply went home and shoved the package beneath my bed, where it lay half-forgotten for years. At the age of thirty, however, I found myself in the peculiar position of working in Rockville, Maryland but living in York, Pennsylvania. The 75 mile commute began to bore me senseless, and one day I remembered my mother's gift, hauled it from amdist the dust-bunnies, and threw it into the front seat of my car. Over time I slowly worked my way through every one of those fifty episodes while driving through back-country roads, often perversely delighted when, on moonlit winter nights, I would find myself actually unnerved by some of the gorier stories, just as I had as a boy of ten. The second moment came in 2007, when I belatedly discovered that thousands of OTR shows were now available in MP3 format, often for free – including the entire existing catelogue of The Shadow, which at that time included probably a hundred or more episodes I had never heard. At that time I had just moved to Los Angeles and was stuck in a laborious temp job at a defense industry subcontractor: the only way to stay sane in that hot, noisy, dusty warehouse was to screw in the earbuds of my iPod and retreat, mentally, into the world of The Shadow as I sweated amongst the spare parts. And when I had listened to every last one, I began to expand my horizons to other shows. They included Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Line-Up, Escape, and Suspense, just to name a few. At the suggestion of Stephen King, who devoted a long section of his book "Danse Macabre" to radio, I also began to listen to the radio plays of Arch Oboler and the Ray Bradbury Theater as well. Had I the room here, I could a tale unfold about the deep and abiding pleasure listening to these programs has brought me over the years. In gyms, on walks, during drives, and sometimes late at night when I couldn't sleep and needed something to occupy my restless brain, these shows – written by long-dead writers, performed by long-dead actors, recorded in long-demolished studios when my own parents were yet unborn – have been my faithful companions.

I could write a great deal more about old radio, the immense diversity of its programming, the jaw-dropping cleverness of some of the writing, the brilliance of its vocal performances. I could spin yarns about how marveously cheesy some of the stories were (The Shadow story “The House of Horror” involved: a trap door, a mad scientist, a talking parrot, a gypsy fortune-teller, and a machine which could transfer human brains into the bodies of gorillas), or how emotionally affecting some of the others could be (Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air did brilliant renditions of Julius Caesar, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Apple Tree, and Les Miserables, to say nothing of War of the Worlds). But that is for another time. For now, however, I will simply say that the mere act of writing this blog has led to a joyous discovery. As I stated before, The Shadow produced about 650 episodes during its run on radio, but two-thirds of the original recordings were lost, including the last five seasons in their entirety. That amounts to about 425 missing shows. In recent years, however, a renewed interest in Old Time Radio has led to the discovery of about fifteen episodes previously MIA. This gave me hope that more might yet be unearthed, but as time passed and nothing “new” appeared, these hopes began to dim. However, while doing a little research for this blog, I visited the Old Time Radio Reseachers Group Library and found that no less than eleven previously “lost” episodes of The Shadow have appeared since my list visit to their site about six months ago. I immediately downloaded the lot, and will have the satisfaction of listening to all of them in the days and weeks to come. And no, it is not lost on me that one of them, “Cold Death,” stars Orson Welles, whose voice, coming to me from that clunky old tape recorder in the back of that clunky old Buick all those long, long years ago, sparked my love affair with radio in the first place.

Scenes from the Class War

In my life I've had many jobs, from suit-and-tie to business casual to “just don't wear shorts.” But with the possible exception of the tough-guy street clothes I donned when conducting field visits as a parole officer, I could never have been mistaken for a member of what we generally call “the working class.” I never wore mechanic's overalls, or a reflective vest, or a shirt with my name stitched to it. I never sat in the back of a pickup truck on the way to work or carried a lunch pail or needed an extra seat on the Metro for my hardhat and tools. The space I occupied, even when I was making very poor wages, wages poor enough to be considered poor and never mind working class, was in fact a middle-class space. But this statement requires a bit of clarification.

Like most Americans, I have generally associated social class with money (or at least its absence). The government does it, too; there are very sharp lines drawn between “poor,” “working poor,” “lower middle class,” “middle class,” etc., and these lines are drawn by virtue of yearly income. But as George Orwell so brilliantly pointed out in his book The Road to Wigan Pier, class is often a state of mind and not merely a matter of income. In the England of the 1930s, he pointed out, a greengrocer and a naval officer had approximately equal incomes, but no one, not even the grocer, would have made the claim they were of the same social standing: the grocer, even if he possessed a superior income, was understood to be part of the “lower classes” while a naval officer, even one deeply in debt, with no land or title, stood well above him on the social register simply by virtue of his commission.

America's class system has similar nuances, at the middle-class level anyway, but ours tend to be weighted in favor of expectation – specifically, the sort of life we expect to lead, the amount of money we expect to have, and the way we expect to be treated by others in social situations. My own roots in regards to class are worth noting. My maternal grandfather was raised in a Catholic orphanage and at the age of fifteen was already a combat veteran, having lied about his age to join the U.S. Navy during WWI. He ended up becoming quite wealthy in the Roaring 20s, but the Depression ruined him and he spent decades slowly re-entering the adoptive class from which he'd been expelled. When he died prematurely in 1956, he was still considerably short of his earlier success, and it was only due to his wise investments that my grandmother and her daughter, my mom, were able to survive in comfortable circumstances. My paternal grandfather, on the other hand, was an itinerant electrician whose house in Chicago, which he shared with his wife and three children, was scarcely larger than the studio apartment in which I now somewhat claustrophobically inhabit. His children -- my father and uncle and aunt -- had to cut their own paths to the middle class via the power of hard work and scholarships. Thus, prosperity in my family tree was a relatively new phenomenon when I arrived on the scene in 1972. Yet knowing no other mode of existence, I possessed a middle-class outlook which I maintained – or which maintained itself, by a species of momentum – not merely through childhood and my teenage and college years, but through the long periods of poverty and near-destitution which came afterward. Part of this outlook took the form of expecting that the lifestyle into which I had been born would continue when I left the parental/collegiate nest and struck out on my own. I never thought about it consciously, but my general attitude was that somehow, even with an entry-level job, there would be no backsliding in my lifestyle or outlook. Indeed, even when I was near-destitute, averaging a negative bank balance the week before any pay period, coming home to a mailbox full of duns, eating spaghetti twice a day and going to bed hungry, everything about me remained fundamentally middle-class: dress, manners, speech, worldview, personal habits, even my choice of friends. I may have been poor, but I never considered myself part of the poor or of the working class, and neither did anyone else. Though I ate in truck-stop diners and drank in blue-collar bars, I was never mistaken, even accidentally, as someone who “worked” (meaning sweat) for a living. People knew at a single glance that I had been to college, that I preferred reading to television, that I'd never be able to change a tire by myself and that I'd probably use “perhaps” in a sentence if given half a chance. And this very correct classification carried with it both privilege and burden.

On the privilege side, I knew that I would be accorded greater respect, and often deferred to, by people in the service economy – waiters, countermen, cashiers, shopwalkers. Police officers would treat me with more civility than a prole or a poor man, and those I stopped to ask for the time or directions would be more accommodating. Poor women often regarded me as more appealing than men of their own class, whereas middle-class ladies would regard me as one of their own. Even rich girls would find me unthreatening, if nothing else. On the job front, I cut a better profile in interviews than someone who might not have been as articulate or as assured in a professional setting; therefore I could and did land work for which I was unqualified, purely on the basis of polish I had acquired as a result of my semi-genteel upbringing.

On the burden side, I was also despised by the very same class from which, in purely financial terms, I was actually indistinguishable. Some men wanted to start fights with me for no other reason than my speech-patterns, while some women went out of their way to let me know they considered me weak and effeminate for the same reason. Mechanics, plumbers and electricians – even tow-truck drivers – took one look at me and saw dollar signs, knowing in their hearts that I'd not know the difference between a cylinder head and a pile of jelly donuts. Homeless people who stared right through working-class pedestrians made beelines for me, often very aggressively, assuming I had money to spare (I vividly remember one homeless man turning away from me in disgust when I offered him a handful of silver change: clearly my clothes and manners had told him “cash only.”) The general consensus among working-class or poor people I encountered seemed to be that I was spoiled, soft, arrogant, condescending and in possession of an education which had no practical value and was therefore completely useless. And they were not entirely wrong. Class prejudices may be odious and immoral, but they exist, and like most generalizations and stereotypes, they are grounded in reality.

Life is full of strange and unexpected shifts of fortune, however, and recently an event transpired which allowed me a perspective on social class which I'd been previously denied. After a number of years working in Hollywood making video game trailers -- a nerd's dream-job, and a lazy man's as well -- I returned to the world of make-up effects. Now, when I refer to "make up effects" I am not referring to beauty makeup, nor to special effects, nor prop-making, nor visual effects, but to the craft (and in some cases the art) of manufacturing foam-latex and silicone appliances for movies and television shows. Every zombie, every demon, every monster, every badly wounded person, dead dog or cadaver seen in a movie or a TV show is constructed, wholly or in part, from foam latex (rubber) or silicone. And the process of making these things is about as messy and laborious as anything can be.

For starters, both foam latex and silicone are messy as hell to deal with. The former, in its liquid state, has the consistency of warm cake batter or icing, and has an especial affinity for sticking to clothing and arm-hair -- indeed, many "foam runners" shave their arms to eliminate the pain of having to remove the latex from their skin. The latter, in its liquid state, is probably the most aesthetically disgusting substance you will ever encounter, somewhere between seminal fluid and snot. Throw in everything else we have to work with -- acetone, 99% alcohol, styric acid, plaster of Paris, paste wax, etc., etc. -- and you have a perfect storm of dust, talcum powder, liquid and goo flying about all day long. This shit ends up not merely on clothing but in your hair, your ears, your nostrils, and sometimes in much more embarrassing areas as well. Any day in the summer where I take less than three showers is remarkable in itself.

Now, it so happens that both latex and silicone pieces are formed in molds, and these molds are often enormous and extremely heavy, since the positives are sometimes fashioned out of stone. The molds are held together by bolts, and when they are opened after baking, they have to be opened using both power drills and crowbars -- a task which requires both the raw animal strength of a lumberjack and the gentle dexterity of an eye surgeon. Likewise, every piece of equipment in the shop has to be cleaned after it is used, which means whisks, bowls, foam guns (picture an enormous syringe, the size of a shotgun), mold straps, etc., have to be scrubbed several times a day: if you have any form of arthritis or tendonitis, this repetitious strain on your hands will introduce you to levels of pain you weren't previously familiar with. In some cases, large foam pieces like cowls or full-body suits have to be washed and then wrung-dry in a mangler which would look quite at home in a museum dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition. And all of this, and much more, is done over and over again in conditions of deafening noise, blistering heat (have you ever been inside a walk-in oven?), suffocating dust and time constraints which would shame a mayfly. During shooting season, when we are running pieces for up to four television shows at a time, not to mention the occasional film, it is not uncommon to remain on one's feet for eight hours a day, in a ceaseless blur of exhausting movement: lifting, carrying, bending, kneeling, crawling, straining. (There have been times after work when I was too physically tired to drive home and had to rest for ten or fifteen minutes in my car before turning over the engine.) The point I'm trying to make is that what I do is very messy, and that in my work-clothes, I cannot be mistaken for anything but a member of the working class. My normal ensemble goes as follows:

Hot weather: Ball cap, sunglasses, bandanna (the Maryland State flag), sleeveless t-shirt encrusted with four of five different colors of old foam latex, spattered with paste wax, dusty with talcum powder and styric acid and shop dust. Work belt, similarly dirty, with heavy work gloves jammed in one pocket and latex gloves jammed in another. Cargo pants or jeans, out at one knee, filthy, and covered at the knees by thick pads whose logos have been long since rubbed away by hours of kneeling on the shop floor. Sneakers or boots, so layered in old foam the actual shape of the footwear is sometimes tough to determine.

Cold weather: All of the afformentioned, with a wool “burglar's cap” instead of a baseball hat, and a work-ruined khaki jacket with a broken zipper and ink stains all down the front.

In addition to this I usually have earbuds either screwed into the wells of my ears or dangling from the edge of my bandanna. Occasionally safety glasses or some other large tool, like an industrial box-cutter, swing from my belt. And of course I seldom bother to shave during the week, so I'm carrying a three-to-five day growth of beard as well. And this is the condition in which I both arrive to work at seven in the morning and leave at four o'clock in the afternoon, which means that any errands I run on the way to, or from, work, find me wandering about in my dirty MUFX gear. In the months since I've been doing this, I've noticed a difference -- sometimes subtle, sometimes profound -- in the way the world reacts to me.

For starters, when I walk down the street, or into a grocery or convenience store, the first thing I encounter is a decided sense of solidarity with other members of the blue-collar brigade. The guys stocking shelves at Ralph's, the cashiers at 7/11, the men in diners on break from road-construction projects, the Teamsters and production assistants on film shoots, all of these people who used to look through me as if I simply weren't there now offer a single, sincere-looking nod of commiseration. The landscapers and gardeners of Los Angeles, inevitably Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, also have included me into their fraternity. They sweat for a living, and they can see that I do, too: barriers presented by race, ethnicity and age all seem to dissolve in that single nod, because regardless of the color, hue or smoothness of one's skin, the sweat which pours from it looks exactly the same. This sense of group camaraderie manifests in small but profound ways. A few weeks ago I was walking to the door of the 7/11 across the way from my house, and a tough-looking biker dude of about fifty years reached the door a half-second ahead of me. This is precisely the sort of guy that, when I was a college student, government worker or entertainment industry flunky, used to regard me with hostility and contempt. I daresay if I had been in my slacker street clothes, he would have slammed the door in my face. But noticing my rig, my dirtiness, and my air of physical exhaustion, he seemed to recognize me as one of his own...and he held the door for me and let me enter first. The gesture was trivial but his glance seemed to say, "I get it, man; I know what it's like, and I can relate."

Looking so clearly like a WORKING MAN can have humorous side-effects as well. When I stroll into the bank to pay my rent, I notice a certain physical wariness from the well-dressed middle and upper-class people around me. They stand a little further away -- probably because of the dirt -- but also because they cannot relate to me, or rather they think they can't. I am that home-grown alien species, the workman, who is not supposed to arrive unless summoned, speak unless spoken to, or leave without permission. At the same time, they also tend to act slightly intimidated by my presence, as if I might be prone to punching someone in the face rather than simply saying "excuse me" when I want them to move. The slight but obvious discomfort they seem to feel, being stuck in a social situation (meaning a line) with someone they would not ordinarily associate with, and the often condescending or patronizing manner they assume should they try to pass the time, always makes me laugh a little up the sleeve I'd have if I only I were wearing them.

On top of this, I have often observed the loudmouth, trouble-making sorts you sometimes encounter on the streets of a major city give me no trouble at all when I'm in my workman's gear. They don't even make eye contact as we pass. It's true the blue-collar set is generally more ready, more willing and more able to kick ass if called upon to do so, and perhaps they understand this: or it may be they're simply savvy enough not to pick fights with a man who has two ridiculously sharp knives clanking on his belt. In any event, nobody -- not drunks, not homeless people, not smart-ass teenagers -- thinks it's worth their while to bother me, and this comes as a pleasant change from the days when I was a visibly middle-class guy in a neighborhood of the working poor, and couldn't go to the corner store without wondering if I was going to have to blast someone out of their socks.

From the standpoint of the sexes, I've noticed quite a bit of difference in the way I'm regarded by both men and women of all kinds. Men of higher social standing and better dress seem slightly intimidated and uncomfortable when I walk into a room with sweat glistening and tools all a-jangle. Somehow their masculinity is compromised by my mere presence, even when I am physically smaller or less muscular than they. This can be traced to basic middle and upper-middle class insecurity about blue-collar workers in general, for at the core of every male member of the MC and UMC lies feeling of inadequacy when confronted by someone who can actual do things. You may have a degree from Stanford and a Masters from Harvard, you may speak six languages and play the cello like a madman, you may be in perfect physical condition and clock six figures and know everything about international relations, but if you can't change the fuses, unclog a drain, shingle a roof, use a lathe, plane a piece of wood, handle an angle grinder, or tinker with an engine, deep inside you don't really feel like you have anything between your legs. The look of pathetic helplessness, of inadequacy and impotence, that any male white collar wears when standing beside an auto-mechanic, tow-truck driver or plumber hard at work is gross evidence of this. The white collar wants to take refuge in social superiority, in money, in the power of his intellect, but every time he attempts a sneer he is reminded that none of these things has any value in a crisis. The very things which makes him such a commodity at work, or in the dating scene, become liabilities when anything really practical needs to be done. What's more, awareness of his own physical softness often plagues him. In comparison with that callused, work-hardened, oil-smeared dude mucking about under his sink, he feels almost effeminate. Thus the grotesque sight of a man making $300,000 a year trying to make casual small talk and act buddy-buddy with a journeyman plumber who makes a tenth of that -- not because he feels any sense of kinship, but because his own inadequacies drive him to prove he can be "one of the guys," too.

In regards to women, I noticed changes of a different sort. If you take the work-version of myself out of a place like a bank, whose very nature tends to remind everyone of their social status, and place him in an area where there is more natural commingling, like a grocery store, reactions are more positive than I was expecting. There is less overt snubbing and more frank curiosity, possibly because -- so studies have told us -- women are genetically programmed to appraise and judge men based on their ability to protect and provide: and while a blue-collar man might not be able to provide much monetarily, his physical toughness and his practical ability around the house somewhat compensate for this. I've also noticed a little more respect from my female neighbors, when they see me trudging up my driveway in the afternoon, exhausted and filthy, tool-belt flung over one shoulder, work boots a-clattering on the concrete. Since, even in the 21st century, women probably perform an outsize percentage of physical, practical tasks around the home in comparison with their husbands, I'm convinced that they have greater innate appreciation for those whose jobs are of a generally physical nature -- a generalization, to be sure, but I think a fairly accurate one.

Perhaps the most profound change I noticed, however, comes not from without but from within. When I was working in video games, while the job itself was easy, the hours were extremely long, even brutal. Hundred-hour weeks were not unheard of, and as I once spoke about in this very blog, there was a time I went 30 straight days without a single day off. I used to drive down to Hollywood at nine AM in such a state of mental torpidity that I could scarcely operate the controls of my car, and often I wouldn't return until 3:30 the next morning. Yet one hot summer day, as I was sulkily plodding down Hollywood Way toward Warner Bros., I noticed on my left a crew of hardhats hard at work hammering shingles into a black rooftop. Even at that hour the heat of the sun was murderous, and the roofers, clad in their hats, neck bandannas, long-sleeved shirts and carpenter's jeans, looked as miserable as humans can look. I thought, "If you're feeling sorry for yourself, just imagine what their day is going to be like." I don't pretend that my present work is fully as arduous, or as dangerous, as roofing or construction, but it is hard enough for me, and it has served to remind me that despite the long periods of poverty and near-poverty I have faced in life, I never before really grasped what it meant to be of any other social class but the one I was born into. My middle-class attitudes, which carried me through life, sometimes buoying me up and other times dragging me down, are finally peeling away. I have, at the age of forty-five, finally managed to grasp that being born in a fairly comfortable set of circumstances does not entitle me to live within those circumstances for the rest of my life. Indeed, the gravitational tendency in capitalism is always toward poverty -- it is easy to be poor and to stay poor, but reaching the middle or upper middle class is damned difficult, and staying there, even if that class is your point of origin, is harder still. The scaled-down style in which I live, which I intended only to be temporary when I moved from Los Angeles to Burbank four years ago, has lately assumed a more permanent character. My material expectations have changed, possibly for the worse, but at the same time, I have freed myself of a dangerous delusion. I know now that in order for me to have what my parents earned, momentum is not enough. A sense of entitlement is not enough. Even my education is not enough. Only work -- real work -- will suffice. And as Orwell once said, that at least is a beginning.

THE LAST SHOT OF THE CIVIL WAR

Going backwards in time is a strange and rewarding thing. It's strange because it is impossible, and yet in certain circumstances you can in fact do it. It's rewarding because – unlike nostalgia, another form of time-travel – it allows you to be in the past but not of it. And I assure you, the distinction has a difference. I realized this only moments after setting foot on Manassas Battlefield Park.

Among Civil War battlefields, of which I'm told there are more than ten thousand, great and small, Manassas, which is also known as Bull Run, has a unique distinction. It was the scene of not one but two major battles, both of tremendous importance, fought almost exactly one year apart. The first, on July 21, 1861, was also the first real contest of the war – the kickoff, one might say, of a ball game that was eventually to kill 600,000 people. The second, on August 28 – 30, 1862, much larger and bloodier, is believed by some historians to have contributed measurably to eventual Southern defeat, even though – like the first – it ended in Confederate victory.

This is dry fact. But the reality is very different, very immediate. When you are driving southwest on Virginia Route 28 you are visibly part of the Twenty-first Century. A smooth ribbon of asphalt stretches before you. The windows of towering office buildings glitter. Traffic helicopters prowl overhead. Nature is not really part of the equation: even the sky is blocked off by an endless series of hulking traffic signs. Turn onto Grant Avenue in Manassas, however, and everything begins to change. The clock ceases its relentless march forward and begins to spin back, faster and faster still, until, just a short while later, you glide up the access road into the Battlefield Park. And suddenly it's not 2017 anymore. It's the middle of the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding the few cars in the parking lot, which seem not to matter at all, or even to exist (they take on the quality of heat mirages; there but not there), you have arrived in another era. Green fields roll and roll into the distance, crisscrossed with wooden rail fences. Rows of cannons, their bronze muzzles gone turquoise with years, sit in the near-exact firing positions they occupied over 150 years ago. A lone farmhouse, made of stone, sits solemnly before a three-grave cemetery shrouded in iron. In the distance, woods press hard against the lighter green of the meadows. As far as the eye can see there is nothing of modern technology to blight the landscape, not even – this is the impression the place gives, even if it isn't the actual truth – power lines or aeroplanes droning overhead. Not so much as the distance shimmer of a skyscraper. Nothing except the chirp of crickets and the buzz of the occasional fly. There are a few statues, it is true, but old Stonewall Jackson looks quite at home sitting on his horse watching the battle which gave him his nickname. As for the monuments, some of them were built by the soldiers who fought here themselves. If they don't belong, nothing does.

When the first fight took place – it's called “First Manassas” by Southerners and “First Bull Run” by Northerners, after the habit of the former to name battles after the nearest town, while the latter dubbed them after the nearest watercourse – the two halves of the country had been at war for about three months. Neither side, however, started the war with anything that could be properly called an army, and it had taken that long for the two combatants to manufacture them. Those armies, Union and Confederate, marched into battle full of confidence and ignorance, led by men who had never led real armies before, officered by men who in many cases had bought their commissions and knew nothing about soldiering, and manned by boys who thought the war would be a grand single-day adventure. They wore uniforms in every conceivable color and type, used tactics that hadn't changed since Napoleon's day, and carried a dizzying array of flags – state flags, regimental flags, national flags – which looked damnably similar and were confused with each other once the fighting commenced. And they were shadowed by crowds which had come by coach and carriage from as far as Washington and Richmond – often carrying champagne and picnic baskets – in hopes of claiming eyewitness to a historical event. They certainly saw one, but not the one they had envisioned, for First Manassas had all the grace of a barroom brawl.

For openers, neither the Union nor the Confederacy could properly control the forces they had marched into the field, and it was little wonder: before the war, when America was still a united country, the total strength of its Army was just under 28,000 men. At First Manassas, each side boasted armies larger than that – 35,000 for the Stars and Stripes, 32,000 for the Stars and Bars. Most of those soldiers were raw recruits who had volunteered for exactly 90 days of military service, and were soldiers in name only. But when the commander-in-chief of the Union army, Winfield Scott, had pointed this out to President Lincoln, the president had replied, in his usual, quotable way: “I know you are green, but they are green also. You are all green alike.” He was right. Once the fight commenced, soldiers marched in the wrong directions, threw away their equipment when it got too heavy, fired on their own men by mistake and sometimes just as accidentally refrained from firing on the enemy. Of the 67,000 total troops under blue or gray command that day, only half actually made it to the battle, and of the participants, quite a few took to their heels when the shooting started, unable to withstand the noise, terror and confusion. Indeed, when the fight was over, neither the Union army, which fled back to Washington, beaten, nor the rebel, which stood victorious, were fit for further battle or even coherent forces. This was not due to losses, for by the standards of the war which followed, the casualties were light: the Union suffered just under three thousand, the Confederacy just under two. (The total number of dead was less than one.) No, what wrecked both armies – what prevented the Confederates from marching on and taking the now-helpless city of Washington, and perhaps ending the Civil War right there – was the shattering effect of battle itself. Like two steam locomotives striking head-on, it scarcely mattered which gave and which got; neither was capable of further movement.

More than men or armies were blown to bits that day, however. So too were the arrogant, romantic delusions maintained by many on both sides: after First Manassas, few clung to the belief that modern war was glorious, or that the enemy would give up easily, or that the conflict could be won by inexperienced generals leading mobs of raw recruits. Both sides dusted themselves off and prepared for a long, gruesome struggle.

They got one. A year later the fighting had spread to the Far West, the Gulf Coast and even to the Atlantic Ocean, but neither side had been able to win a truly decisive battle. In the East, the close proximity of the Union and Confederate capitals – at Washington, D.C. and Richmond, respectively – had locked the armies there into a continuous push-and-shove, with each trying to menace the other's while protecting their own. President Lincoln had become deeply frustrated with Winfield Scott's replacement as commander-in-chief, General George McClellan, and had entrusted command of the Union forces in northern Virginia to a hitherto successful Western general named John Pope, whose sole virtue seemed to be his aggression (when warned by his cabinet that Pope was a lair and a braggart, Lincoln replied, “I know Pope's family from Illinois. They're all liars and braggarts. I don't see as to why being a liar and a braggart would disqualify a man from being a good general.”) Thus Pope. On the other hand, the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, had also found, in Robert E. Lee, a leader for whom aggression came as naturally as breathing; but Lee's reputation as a human being was considerably better. At the opening of hostilities, Lee, who had opposed secession and openly stated he would have abolished slavery if he thought it would prevent civil war, was actually offered command of the Union army. But his loyalty to Virginia – to his “country,” as he called it – was greater than his loyalty to the United States. Thus Lee.

When they met, in the summer of 1862, the war had lost much of its earlier, amateurish character. Incompetent officers were fewer, and many of the soldiers had become march-hardened and battle-ready, accustomed to the grim rigors of campaigning in dust, mud, rain and snow. Equipment was better and more uniform, and communications and supply, even on the impoverished Southern side, much improved. The armies, too, had grown enormously: the Union marched 77,000 men to Second Manassas (more than Napoleon had at Waterloo), while the Confederacy could count some 50,000 in its ranks. What had not changed for the better, at least for one side, was the difficulty the Union always seemed to have – did, in fact have, until two years later – in bringing to bear all the forces it had on hand: one in five of the blue soldiers who crossed Bull Run were never engaged. Nevertheless, Pope had a numerical advantage of about twelve thousand men, and if numbers alone decided battles, he certainly would have won. But then again, if numbers decided battles, the entire war really would have ended the first Manassas around.

(It is an embarrassing truth of history -- embarrassing to Northerners, anyway -- that the South operated at a disadvantage in almost every great conflict of the war, yet somehow managed not only to hold out for four bloody years, but on several occasions seem to come dangerously close to victory. If the war itself were a movie, the tag-line for the Confederacy would have been, "Always outnumbered, always outgunned." There were very definite reasons for this. In 1861, the North numbered some 21 million people, while the South could count only 9 million, one-third of which were slaves. Therefore the Union had a much larger pool of manpower upon which to draw from for its armies, and could generally replace its losses rapidly, while the South suffered from a permanent shortage of men. Likewise, the South, being agrarian, had only a fraction of the North's industrial power and a totally inadequate railroad network: on paper, they were beaten even before the war began. But wars are not fought on paper anymore than they are fought with numbers, and Lee believed that if he harnessed the splendid morale of his troops to his own superior generalship, he could find a way to destroy the blue adversary.)

Like many battles, Second Manassas turned on a series of mistakes, thus adding some credence to the Russian axiom that wars are not won by the most competent army, but by the least incompetent one. Lee had difficulty controlling his wilful chief subordinates, Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, while Pope – who was "hated by everyone in his command from his immediate staff to his generals to the youngest drummer boy" – managed not to notice 25,000 enemy soldiers marching up to attack his flank at the height of the battle, a blunder which proved fatal. The flank was crushed, and Pope was extremely lucky that he had enough resolute soldiers in his command to prevent a total rout. Nevertheless, the defeat was complete and humiliating. A Union general summed up the feelings of many when he wrote bitterly of the aftermath: “A splendid army almost demoralized, millions of public property given up or destroyed, thousands of lives of our best men sacrificed for no purpose.”

Lee's triumph was great and did much to bolster his burgeoning reputation as a military genius, as well as his army's reputation for near-invincibility in the face of stacked odds. But history teaches us that victory can be as dangerous, in its own subtle way, as defeat. Emboldened by his win, Lee proposed to Jefferson Davis an invasion of Maryland, during which he intended to draw out and annihilate the Union Army; unfortunately for him, General McClellan -- restored to command by Lincoln after Second Manassas -- got hold of these plans and ambushed Lee near Sharpsburg, MD, on Antietam Creek. The resulting battle was the bloodiest single day in American history, and while Lee gave better than he got in terms of casualties, he had less men to lose and was able to escape total destruction only because McClellan, once again, proved too cautious in his pursuit.

Antietam (or Sharpsburg, depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you live on) was a direct consequence of Second Manassas, and the consequences kept coming. The withdrawal of Lee's bloodied army back into Virginia emboldened Lincoln into signing the Emancipation Proclamation, which, though it had no actual, immediate effect on slavery (since it only “freed” the slaves in Confederate-controlled territory), had massive political effect. Prior to Sharpsburg, the strategic goal of the United States was to restore “the Union as it was” – in other words, crush the rebellion but leave the institution of slavery intact. After Sharpsburg, it became clear that it was not possible to wage war only on secessionists; the cause of secession, and the keystone of the Southern economy, slavery, had to be smashed as well. The Proclamation had another, added benefit for Lincoln: it went a long way toward destroying any hope Jefferson Davis had for obtaining foreign recognition of the Confederacy. The European powers were dependent on the South for cotton, but very reluctant to endorse slavery. So long as the Union had been unwilling to dismantle the institution, Europe could climb into bed with the Confederacy with a clear conscience, for there was little to choose between the two sides from a moral perspective; but once the elimination of slavery became part and parcel of the Union's war aim, it became politically impossible to side with an aspiring nation which kept millions in chains.

The Confederacy finally toppled in 1865. In that same year, just before mustering out of the Grand Army of the Republic of the United States, a group of Union soldiers assembled at the Manassas battlefields to commemorate what had happened there. Using muscles toughened by years of conflict, they erected a simple monument of brick and stone to their fallen comrades from both battles -- "the patriots," they called them, and truer words were never spoken. Adorning the monument were five heavy artillery shells drawn from their own ammunition caissons. A photo of the commemoration ceremony, on display at the Battlefield Park today, shows the soldiers crowded unsmiling around the monument, clad in their distinctive uniforms and looking every bit as tough as the shells. In 1975, the National Park Service conducted a restoration of the monument, which was beginning to show its age. Their engineers discovered, to their astonishment, that the shrapnel shells mounted on the weather-beaten brickwork remained live despite the intervening 110 years. Bomb experts were called in to defuse them, but during the process one of them exploded. And to my knowledge this was the last shot fired in the Civil War.

Meatless and Sober in America: A (sort of) Horror Story

The first thing you notice when you quit drinking, even temporarily, is how much it effects the people around you. Not yourself, necessarily; just the people who normally interact with you.

"What, you're not drinking?" They say, worry-bafflement lines furrowing their brows. "Are you on medication or something?"

That's one response. Another is contemptuous amusement. "How long you think that's gonna last?" -- always delivered with a sneer. Then there are those who equate drinking with masculinity and therefore assume your testicles fell off when you were doing jumping jacks at the gym the previous day. (I won't tell you what those people say, but it rhymes with "hag.") What it all amounts to is that the change you have made changes the way they deal with you. Some are suspicious, as if they feel threatened. Others are angry, as if you've suddenly passed harsh judgement on their own lifestyle. Some utterly lose interest in you. "Give me a call when you're off the wagon," is a common response, as if we are entering a voluntary and mutual suspension of friendship.

A few others are encouraging. "Good for you!" They exclaim, and, perhaps being nondrinkers themselves, immediately find you more approachable and interesting than they did yesterday, when your conversation was littered with talk about beer, bars and hangovers. But you've switched sides! Turned coat! Jumped ship! You're playing for the other team now! Suddenly they see you as if for the first time, and like what they see. I've literally bumped friendly acquaintances to full-fledged friends merely by eschewing the grape for a few months.

Another thing you notice, if you quit drinking longer than temporarily, or permanently, or even vastly reduce your drinking to the occasional beer or glass of wine, is how it effects your own behavior. The time formerly spent in bars or pubs or dissipating oneself in front of a TV with a beer in hand is now free to do -- what? The first weeks of total sobriety were a clumsy attempt to answer that question. I found I exercised more, having more energy; and also needing ways to interact with people that didn't involve staring at them from over the rim of a shot glass, took my exercise more socially. Instead of the gym with earbuds wedged in place, swimming or yoga classes with a friend. Instead of hiking solo, hiking with pals who, being sober or nearly so, weren't hung over on Saturday mornings and could do a hard eight miles in the Verdugo Mountains. Instead of taking my laptop to the sleazy biker bar across the street to do my writing between sips of beer, I took it to the library in the park, which was certainly quieter and had less people in it who would stab you in the femoral artery with a screwdriver if you looked cross-eyed at them.

I also started doing things, like going to the movies, which do not require alcohol as part of the social ritual. (True, they require soda, popcorn and candy, all things I shouldn't be consuming, but to hell with it -- I'm not a fucking monk, people.) In this way I was able to re-discover my passion for cinema, which had waned in recent years. But it did also put me in the position of having to drive home from the theater through Hollywood, and the crowds of drunks who always seem to be having a better time than me. Certainly they were wearing less clothing.

It changed my behavior in more subtle ways as well. I live across the street from said dive bar and from two stores that sell alcohol; also down the block from another bar (which poses as a restaurant, but nobody is fooled). I used to frequent all these places to satisfy my thirst for beer and Irish whiskey. Now I look at them the same way I regard vacuum-cleaner repair stores: as places I have absolutely no fucking interest in setting foot in. It makes my neighborhood more closed-off than it did before, changes the way I move around. When, on my nightly walk, I pass by yet another liquor store on Burbank Boulevard, which is very brightly lit at a rather dark part of the street and thus resembles a huge pinball machine, I am now struck not by temptation but how vulgar the place looks. I used to nip in there on impulse, sometimes to peruse the isles, sometimes to buy a half-pint of the True to curb my restlessness or ease my boredom or take the edge off some frustration I was experiencing. But not anymore. I just walk by, disinterested and vaguely disgusted, because, goddamn it, I never liked pinball. Also because the guys walking out always do so with a furtive air, as if they've just left a strip joint. Did I look like that, when I slunk out with a bottle of Jameson in my hand?

It goes yet further. Because I no longer drink very much, I also tend to avoid situations where drinking is the center of activity. Like barbecues or parties thrown by folks I know who are heavy drinkers. Everyone is thrusting beer and wine and booze on me the moment I walk in, and I don't want it, and I get tired of explaining why. Once, I simply walked around with someone's abandoned half-empty beer for hours, and that convinced people I was one of the brotherhood, but I sure did get tired of holding that warm, sweaty can. So did watching people dissolve into slurring, red-eyed drunks who kept touching their noses to make sure they were still there. Suddenly I understood how all my non-drinking friends had felt in college, enduring every manner of low-farce buffoonery for years while simultaneously being told how "lame" they were for not ending the night in a puddle of vomit.

Of course there are times when I do miss the drinking life a little, and occasions -- three this year to be exact -- when I have guzzled myself blue. Each incident was one which merited exiting the wagon. The first was when I found out my novel Cage Life had won Best Indie Book of 2016. The second was at a wake in Hollywood for the make up effects artist Elvis Jones, who had died in Central America while on location. The last was on my birthday. (The morning after each binge was a reminder of why I decided to cut back so drastically in the first place.) I can't promise there won't be more of these one-off debaucheries, but by and large I think there will be less. I've discovered, or rather re-discovered, what life is like on the soberer side of things, where alcohol is consumed like slices of pie -- one at a sitting -- and not like Doritos, devoured until the supply is exhausted. And I kind of like it. But I can't say it has been easy. No, strike that: I can say it's been easy, but I can't say it's been convenient. Because there are a thousand things that constantly conspire to annoy you and try to make you renege on your pledge -- not so much devils on your shoulder as devils in your path, jabbing you with their tiny pitchforks and calling you a fucking f-----t.

It's the same thing when you go vegetarian. Even as a simple experiment, which my present vegetarianism is, sticking to one's guns is a gigantic pain in the ass. You begin to grasp the universality of meat, the way it pervades every aspect of American culture, in ways far more nuanced than alcohol does. Take my experience at the airport yesterday, for example. I arrived at Dulles at quarter past one o'clock for a four o'clock flight back to LAX. After the usual security procedures and so forth, I was at my gate by two. That left two hungry hours before departure, so I perused the vast array of eateries outside my gate. They were, in order: A hamburger joint, a hot dog stand, a cheese-steak shack, a pub that specialized in burgers and wings, a coffee/salad/sandwich shop, and an Asian restaurant. I zeroed in on the Asian place only to find that of their ten entrees, ten had meat in them, so unless I wanted to buy ten vegetable spring rolls at $4.95 a pair, I was out of luck. I backpedaled to the coffee shop, but the only meatless thing they had there was the coffee -- which, for all I know, had fucking bacon in it, Homer Simpson style. At last, about 100 yards from my gate, I found a pizza place which offered six types of craft pizzas, one of which didn't have meat on it. In addition to being largely on the wagon and experimenting in sort-of vegetarianism, I'm also on a low-sodium diet, so eating a footlong pizza was probably a stupid idea, but by that point I was too hungry to care.

Since I was out of town for a solid week, I had nothing in the fridge to eat, and so naturally, this morning, I went to the diner down the street for breakfast. This diner has a menu that weighs about 3.5 pounds and is as thick as my first novel. In that menu, among all those hundreds of choices, are about ten options that are vegetarian-friendly, and if you cut out the dinner salads you have about six. If you're a vegan or the type of vegetarian who doesn't eat eggs, you're basically fucked. Luckily I do eat eggs, but it's still pretty tedious to see a menu the size of a Tolstoy volume and realize your basic choices are iceberg lettuce and Saltines. But never mind the diner. Many of my favorite meals at my favorite restaurants are now, if you'll pardon the pun, off the table. The Shepherd's pie at the Buchanan Arms? Done. A cheeseburger and a milkshake from In 'n Out? Nope. The salt and pepper chicken at Tender Green's? Sorry. The very act of "grabbing a sandwich from somewhere" has become problematic bordering on impossible.

How do real vegetarians do it? Even in Los Angeles, where vegetarians and vegans are common stuff, everything and everyone seems out to make life as difficult as possible for you. What isn't meat-based or garnished with meat is often cooked in beef or chicken stock or some other damned thing that once mooed or cackled. And if you're trying to avoid dairy as well, forget about it. You may as well stay home and invoke the Dark Arts to try to make tofu taste like something other than wet Play-Doh. Shit, even a 7/11 is a veritable death-trap of lurking dairy. The raisins have yogurt. The chocolate has milk. The muffins have -- well, I don't know what the muffins have, but I know my vegan friends can't eat them. And God help you if you get invited to a friend's house for dinner. The poor sod who thought it would be a good idea to have you over will soon regret it when they realize they have to cook you a whole separate meal. But it gets worse! Just try going to a sporting event sober and meatless and dairy-free -- just fucking try it! You'll be shelling peanuts inside five minutes, because that's the only goddamn thing you can eat -- assuming, of course, the oil fits your diet. (My friend Tracy tried to order sweet potato fries the other day, only to be told the oil isn't "vegan-friendly.") Another friend of mine, Lindsey, was reduced to eating Boston baked beans one day at the beach because the only alternatives were fried fish and hot dogs. I know there are times in life we feel the system is rigged against us and it's just self-pity talking, but this time the conspiracy theory is a fact: the system really is rigged! If it isn't a cow or doesn't come out of one, America doesn't want you to eat it. And if it isn't loaded with alcohol or sugar or caffeine, America doesn't want you to drink it. Remember when Oprah Winfrey got sued by Texas cattle barons for "slandering beef?" That shit wasn't an Onion article, it actually happened! The barons didn't win, of course, but the fact that they were even able to bring the lawsuit to trial ought to tell you something. Beef and booze are big business. You avoid them both at your peril and at your serious inconvenience.

Now, before you raise your moral guard, don't bother. I'm not going to adopt the horrible habit of denouncing something now that I've (mostly) given it up. I've known many people who've found Jesus, or stopped using drugs, or embraced veganism or fitness, who have become intolerable prigs and born-again preachers who live to tell you you're going straight to hell, spiritually or physically, if you don't follow in their footsteps. They are nothing but pains in the ass and I have no intention of emulating them, for to do so would involve staggering hypocrisy on my part. God knows I got a lot out of drinking and probably even more out of eating Tyrannosaur-sized portions of red meat, pork, fowl and fish for nearly all of my life. I suppose I'm just curious how the other half lives, and how radical changes in diet will effect my weight and general health now that I'm (gasp!) a middle-aged man. But now that beef jerky and cheese pie and inch-thick T-bones are no longer a part of my life -- at least for now -- and alcohol has become a sort of dessert-treat rather than a staple of my diet, I'm discovering what generations of other people, including my non-drinking vegetarian father, stumbled upon before me: it's not so much that you are what you eat, as you are what you don't.

Monsters in Charlottesville

At the end of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, the embattled heroine Nancy, who has lost everyone she loves to the murderous revenant Freddy Krueger, confronts the killer in her bedroom. Throughout the film, Nancy has done everything possible, offensively and defensively, to defeat the homicidal maniac, and seems to have finally obliterated him. But wise Nancy is no horror-movie dupe. She stands over the empty bed, host to so many terrible nightmares, and begins to speak.

Nancy: I know you're there, Krueger.
Freddy: (emerging from the bed) You think you was gonna get away from me?
Nancy: I know you too well now, Freddy.
Freddy: And now you die.
Nancy: It's too late, Krueger. I know the secret now. This is just a dream, too. You're not alive. The whole thing is a dream. I want my mother and friends again.
Freddy: You what?
Nancy: I take back every bit of energy I ever gave you. You're nothing. You're shit.

Nancy contemptuously turns her back on him. Enraged, Freddy hurls himself at his teenage nemesis... and disintegrates, screaming, into nothingness.

The idea of robbing a monster of its power by simply ignoring it is an old one in both mythology and storytelling, and implies a peculiar sort of relationship, in which in the monster is dependent upon its victims not merely for sustenance, but for its very existence. To some degree is this what differentiates a monster, which is imaginary, from a predator, which is real; wolves do not give a damn if caribou believe in them, because what a wolf needs to live is meat, not acknowledgement. In this sense the monster, who requires you to participate in your own murder, is actually weaker than the predator, who can kill you whether you believe in him or not.

Fifteen years ago, I was living in York, Pennsylvania, working for the District Attorney's Office as an pre- sentence investigator. It so happened that my apartment, which stood across from the courthouse in which I worked, was also on the same block as the city library, and one day a fellow named Matt Hale, who ran an organization called the World Church of the Creator, booked the speaking room of that library to give an address about the beliefs of his church. Some time after he did so, it was discovered that Hale's “church” was a white supremacist organization of some sorts, and a debate arose in town about whether the library should allow him to go ahead with his plans. To me the debate was baffling. Hale was an unknown figure representing a tiny fringe group which was based in another state. It was unlikely that his lecture would be attended by more than a dozen people, and when it was over, he would get back in his car and return to Ohio, or wherever he came from, without the vast majority of York City ever having known he was there. What point was there in debating his freedom of speech, which was a natural human right enshrined in the First Amendment, and inalienable? And more importantly, what was to be gained by giving him attention? Even within the smallish and badly disorganized neo-Nazi community in America the man was a nobody, so why make him into a somebody by talking about him? The most effective weapon against the Hales of the world, I argued, was simply to ignore them, for in the absence of a large body of people who subscribed to their beliefs, the only way they could gain a sense of power was to bring attention to themselves -- to make them seem they were more important than they actually were.
And the sad fact of life is that it is much easier to get attention by evoking fear, anger and hatred than it is through demonstrations of love or logic. A burning cross will always draw a larger audience than an episode of Cosmos and never mind if three-quarters of the people surrounding the cross are only there to put it out.

My arguments did not sit very well with most people, who delighted in reminded me that Hitler had once been an obscure political figure at the head of a fringe party with no money and only a tiny following. They yawned through my counter-arguments that the Nazi movement had at its center a brilliant and dynamic leader (which Hale was not), that it had strong support within the segments of the German military, intellectual, and industrial classes (which Hale did not), that it numbered a fairish group of war heroes, scientists and other prominent citizens in its ranks (which Hale's group didn't), that it was superbly organized and empowered by political and economic conditions which were unique to Germany of the 1920s and 30s (which Hale wasn't), and – most of all – that it existed in a racially homogeneous country that spoke a single language (which America most decidedly isn't). But even if we accepted the Hitler comparison as valid on its face, we would have to admit that Hitler only achieved national prominence in Germany by using provocative tactics to garner attention: he knew that it is far more desirable for a politician to be hated than to be ignored, and indeed, his mortal enemies, the Social Democrats and Communists, both played directly into his hands in this regard. Both had private armies, and both unleashed those armies on Hitler's men. Yet the more they attacked the Nazis in the press, in the streets and in the beer halls, the more the police, press and man on the street in Germany became aware that they existed: in essence, they provided Hitler not only with free publicity, but legions of potential supporters who otherwise might never have heard of him -- including wealthy industrialists with fat checkbooks. By acting as if he and his followers were a national menace when they were merely a smallish regional party wracked by infighting and a perpetual shortage of cash, they helped make him a national menace. In effect, they helped transform a monster, who was merely frightening, into a predator, who was actually dangerous. More dangerous, as it turned out, than they were.

My secondary argument was no more successful than my first. Hale was all anyone wanted to talk about, and a number of people that I knew boasted that if he showed up, they'd march in protest outside the library, and if push came to shove, well, they'd push and they'd shove too, and possibly throw a few rocks. When I stated emphatically that this was precisely what Hale wanted -- to be taken seriously, to be viewed as a threat -- I was looked at with impatience and pity, as a teacher might regard a well- intentioned but particularly stupid pupil. Clearly I didn't get it.

As it happened my fears came true. This debate spilled into the local papers, the local TV news, the regional news, and finally, the national. Protestors bused in from all over the country to stand outside my window and shout obscenities at a man they hadn't heard of a week before. Neo-Nazi and skinhead groups, who also probably had no idea who Hale was before the news had informed them, did the same, though their obscenities were pointed in a different direction. Reporters and photographers also arrived by the seeming trainload. On top of all this, every police officer in the city, as well as every deputy in the sheriff's department and numerous troops of State Police, showed up to maintain order – so many cops, in fact, that the City of York spent its entire budget for law enforcement for a year in a single day. By the time Hale showed up to give his lecture, the streets surrounding the library were so packed with humanity you couldn't see the asphalt, and I was told I'd need a special pass, issued by the city, to cross through the police lines to get to my own apartment. In the end, about 25 people were arrested as fights broke out between the more militant of each faction, but Hale himself was neither seen by these people nor harmed by them; he came and went, like Elvis, through the library's back door. I wasn't physically present for his exit, but I'm told he was well pleased by the events of the day, and why the hell not? He had gotten precisely what he'd wanted and had zero chance of otherwise obtaining, i.e. national prominence, courtesy of a group of people who probably would have killed him if they'd had the chance.

It is sometimes said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. In reality, sometimes the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do something stupid, like give evil a megaphone. And a great deal of knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em comes from determining whether what you see before you is a dangerous predator, or a mere monster.

Since the candidacy of Donald Trump began to gather steam, there has been a wave of extremist sentiment in this country which I would not earlier have believed possible in this day and age – even though I flatter myself that I was more sensitive than most of my peers to one side of it, the "rightist" side. But the anger is hardly limited to what we loosely call the political right. It is just as violent on the left, though spurred by a different set of grievances, and that collective fury has manifested nowhere so pointedly as in what used to be called “political discourse.” It has become permissible, and even chic, for people to say things in public settings which would have been absolutely unimaginable just ten or fifteen years ago. And I don't simply mean by the collection of ill-educated and grammatically challenged fools that inhabit the internet like fleas on a junkyard dog: I mean from educated people, professional types, even politicians of high standing. Phraseology which was once banished to the “outer darkness” of political thought has re-entered the mainstream. People are waving communist banners and Nazi flags. They are openly calling for violent revolution and the assassination of political figures they dislike. They are questioning the humanity – not just the character or intelligence but the actual humanity – of people of different racial types, religions, and political affiliations. They are training themselves to see virtue only in those that agree with them completely, and villainy in anyone who demurs, even slightly. More and more we are witnessing a seeming normalization of radical thought. Scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds, one would think America of 2017 is America of 1775 or 1861 -- a powder keg waiting to explode into bloody violence. But is that perception reality, like wolves scratching at the door? Or is it merely a fear-induced phantom, like the The Man Under The Bed or The Thing In The Closet that terrorized us as children?

I flatter myself that I have a fairly wide circle of acquaintances who cover an enormous geographical area, and the majority of people I speak with privately, regardless of race, ethnicity, religious belief, economic stratum, or political affiliation, are manifestly not radical. They might be Tea Party conservatives or Bernie Sanders-style democratic socialists, they might be sullen Libertarians or self-righteous Greens, but at heart they are ordinary Americans who want to live ordinary American lives, free of the violence and hatred extremism brings. Yet universal, or nearly universal, among them is a sense that things have gotten out of hand, that we are heading in a direction no one wants to go, but nonetheless heading there, and even increasing the pace at which we move. The overall feeling that people seem to exude seems to be one of resignation, of helplessness. Somehow “they” (whoever “they” are) have gotten their hands on the levers of power, their fingers on the emotional and physical triggers; somehow “we” have become pawns in “their” game and lost our ability to set our own course. My decidedly unscientific but very interesting sampling of our populace leads me to conclude that it is not so much that there are more extremists in this country now than before Trump (or Obama), but merely that the extremists we have are getting louder. And part of the reason they are getting louder is that we are listening to them, and worse, reacting to them by beginning the slow but sure process of taking sides. We are, in effect, granting them power over us by believing that they are stronger and more numerous than they are – than we are.

If you are familiar with Tarot cards, you know that the “Devil” Tarot features that least popular angel holding a naked man and woman in captivity with a chain. According to the official explanation, however, “They appear to be held here, against their will, but only closer observation, the chains around their necks are loose and could be easily removed. This symbolizes that bondage to the Devil is ultimately a voluntary matter which consciousness can release.” In other words, the Devil has no power but that which we give him, and what is the Devil, anyway, but the ultimate monster?

The perception that we are drifting toward doom, that huge armies of extremists -- Antifa on one side, the Klan on the other -- are gathering like fantasy-novel armies in the wings, ready to do apocalyptic battle, is
just that -- a perception. But we feed into it when we believe it is real, and even worse than real, inevitable. Because fear creates anger, and anger creates violence, and once violent action is taken it no longer matters if the fear was justified. The monster becomes the predator, which can only be destroyed by violence. There is, however, a flip side to this coin. That which we summon into existence by our belief can sometimes be dispelled by withdrawing that belief. It is possible to restore ownership of our country's discourse to ourselves, and it is ispossible to re-marginalize the motley collection of nuts, bullies, loudmouths and psychotics who have hijacked our politics and our national discourse, and to do it without falling into the trap of fighting them physically. We've done it before. In 1925, membership of the Ku Klux Klan stood at somewhere between three and six million people, and the group had enormous political and social influence in the South and Midwest. Now it numbers around 4,500 people, or roughly about as many as Starfleet, a single Star Trek fan club. But what is crucial to understand is that the KKK was broken almost completely without violence -- without violence from its opponents, anyway. A combination of clerical denunciation, newspaper exposes, education campaigns carried out by the NAACP, and later, a tireless effort by the FBI to destabilize the organization, shattered this once-mighty predator into a cartoon monster, not much more frightening than a Frankenstein nite-lite. Had the Klan been attacked violently, by armed mobs, I daresay things would have turned out quite differently -- many who sat on the fence, sympathetic but previously unwilling to join its ranks, would have seen such attacks as mere prelude to attacks on themselves. But by occupying the moral high ground, the enemies of the Klan left it nowhere to go, no one to appeal to. And the more brutality the Klan used in retaliation, the more it was disgraced, exposed, and shown for what it was. In time even many of the worst bigots wanted nothing to do with it. The fate of the KKK was no longer viewed as a bellwether of the white race.

It may seem as if contradicting myself here, speaking on the one hand of how it is possible to dispel negativity by ignoring it, while at the same time pointing out how taking action can be effective; but again, it is important to know what action to take and when to take it, as well as the difference between a predator and a monster. One requires positive action on your part, the other may not. If you own sheep, you must guard against wolves. If you have children, you need not arm yourself against the Boogeyman. He can be destroyed through other means. The seeming powerlessness of the great masses of ordinary, moderate American people is not a physical reality: it is a perception created by specific incidents and experiences, mostly secondhand and communicated and propagated by fear-mongers in the news and social media. It can be overcome in large part simply by grasping that it is not real. In contrast, the rise of political groups which seem hostile to your interest cannot be dealt with by simply wishing they would go away. Organized activity is required. But organized does not necessarily mean violent. It is more difficult to use one's head than one's fist, but more often than not, the head gets better results.

The rise of extremism in any form is damnably tricky; we must be on guard against it, but it cannot be destroyed by attempting to destroy it violently; this only makes the monster more powerful. Just as Nancy gave power to Freddy by believing in him, so we give power to these tiny fringe movements, composed mostly of morons, voyeurs and the dubiously sane, whose sole virtue is the ability to get attention and engender feelings of fear which are totally disproportionate to the actual level of menace they represent.

I have news for you: the vast majority of people on the political right are not neo-Nazis or white nationalists or sympathetic to the Klan. Likewise, the vast majority of people on the left are not communists or anarchists or secretly beholden to the U.N. They are normal, ordinary Americans. They work for a living. They raise children. They drink coffee, watch television, scroll through their news feeds, complain about how bad their football team is. They drink beer on the Fourth of July and buy things they don't need at Christmas. They may disagree with each other on abortion, taxation, welfare, immigration, gun control and whatever else you care to name, but they don't want to use violence to impose their point of view on their neighbors. Sarcasm, maybe, but not violence, because they know that the ballot box is a better place to fight than the streets. It is only when they believe that they are being physically threatened that they begin to make threats themselves. But most of these threats are illusory. They come from a tiny fraction of the population who have no following and no real prospect of getting into power, even tangentially. The best the troublemakers can generally do is to stir up trouble on social media by provoking people into reacting to them and thus making them seem more important than they are. They are good at it, I grant you, but it takes two to tango.

The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, followed an attempted march by right-wing extremists which was met – predictably and foolishly – with an even larger counter demonstration, itself populated to some degree by extremists of the opposing side. Those events led, directly or indirectly, to three deaths and several dozen injuries: in other words, to any given Saturday in Chicago. Yet every news outlet in the country, as well as all forms of social media, are acting as if the rebels just fired on Fort Sumter. People are jabbering about a “Civil War 2.0” -- as if the preconditions for such a conflict have actually been met. Richard Spenser, a once-obscure former alt-right magazine editor, has become a national figure, rather like a mouse which runs in front of a searchlight and appears, in shadow form, to be a giant rat. Even good old David Duke has been plucked from the ash-heap of 1980s politics, dusted off, and pointed before the cameras; if I may hit you with another metaphor, rather like a rotted old muppet being manipulated by your mean old uncle with the glass eye and the taste for Jew jokes. Yet lost in all the coverage, hype, anger and fear-mongering is the fact that the total number of people involved in each march was actually pathetically small.The tally of “neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen” who made up the initial march is estimated at two or three hundred, while their opposition probably numbered a few thousand – not enough, even in combination, to fill a minor league baseball stadium. Truth be told, the number of rightists fanatical enough to brave stones, tear gas and police dogs just so they can wave a Nazi flag in public is very, very small, and the number of people angry enough to leave their homes and travel long distances to confront them, risking arrest or injury to do so, is not much larger. Just as every hockey team possesses only one or two players who can properly be called goons, even the more extreme ends of the political spectrum possess only small groups of violently active people from among their ranks. Incidents like that which took place Charlottesville are tragic mainly because they are unnecessary. Nothing that happened there had to occur; it occurred because a small group of frightened, angry people holding one point of view decided to hold a rally, and thus provoked a somewhat larger group of equally frightened, angry people holding the opposing point of view to show up in protest. The actual psychological motives for such confrontations are always interesting, and almost never what you might expect. (Where, after all, was this level of left-wing outrage when the Klan held its yearly gathering at Stone Mountain, each and every year Obama held office?) The truth is that in all those noisy, curse-laden face-offs between opponents and supporters of, for example, abortion, have you ever seen someone make an epiphany face, throw down their placard and exclaim, to the person spitting insults and threats at them, “My God! You're right! You've destroyed my argument and changed my entire point of view!” ? Of course you haven't. The purpose of political confrontation in the post-MLK era is almost never to educate or persuade, but to attack, verbally or physically, those with different beliefs. And such attacks never accomplish anything, except to harden your opponent's stance. It was for precisely this reason that Martin Luther King adopted Gandhi's tactic of "satyagraha" during his fight for black liberation; by renouncing violence and aggressive rhetoric, he occupied the moral high ground, aroused sympathy and respect, and -- perhaps most importantly of all -- turned many people around to his way of thinking. But not one person will leave Charlottesville with a different point of view than had when they arrived; they will simply feel their existing emotions of anger and hatred more deeply. They are feeding into a cycle of violence which can only escalate. They are giving the monster its power, and in so doing, tacitly agreeing to become its next victims.

The military philosopher Clausewitz once wrote that "the mistakes of a single hour, made early in a campaign, often cannot be rectified later on even by weeks of sustained effort." In other words, what you do at the beginning of a fight -- when the clay is wet, so to speak -- is often far more important than any actions taken later, when that clay has hardened. We are at that crucial time now. A few pimply monsters groan at us from the dark, trying to fool us that they have substance, and numbers, and can tear us to bits when we sleep. But it isn't true unless we we make it so.

I am not an alarmist, but neither am I clanging a cow bell and croaking "All is well!" when the city is on fire.
It's for damn sure there are predators in American political and economic life today who need to be called out for what they are, confronted, and yes, if necessary, fought (who they are and how they should be combated is a subject for another time). But it is equally important that we differentiate the predators from the mere monsters, the cartoon villains hiding in closets and lurking under beds, who have precisely as much power as we grant them and no more.

Bullies, Hypocrites, and Your Place in Hell

A week or so ago, I woke up to the news that Chester Bennington had hanged himself. If the name doesn't exactly ring a bell with you, I freely admit it didn't ring any with me, either -- or wouldn't have, had his name not been smeared all over the news for about a month previously. Bennington had been the lead singer for Linkin Park, a rap-metal band which had blown up the airwaves in the 2000s with a string of mega-hits but faded from relevance in more recent years, though commercially they remained quite successful. Interestingly, Bennington committed suicide just two months after the suicide of his close friend and fellow singer Chris Cornell, who'd fronted for Soundgarden, Audioslave and Temple of the Dog.

In the weeks preceding Bennington's death, he had appeared on the pop-culture radar once more, but this time for all the wrong reasons. Linkin Park had released an album called "One More Light" which was violently attacked by critics and fans of the band alike. The oldest and tiredest, but also the hardest-hitting, charge which can be rendered against musicians is that they have "sold out," and "One More Light" was viewed by many as a sell-out album, an attempt by fading rockers to go mainstream in order to recapture their cultural relevance and, presumably, replenish their bank accounts. These attacks deeply angered Bennington, who lashed out in interviews with comments like, "if you’re gonna be the person who says, ‘They made a marketing decision to make this kind of record to make money,’ you can fucking meet me outside and I will punch you in your fucking mouth, because that is the wrong fucking answer.”

It was the fan backlash to these and other comments which brought Bennington back into my personal awareness. My various social media news feeds were a torrent of abuse heaped on Bennington for everything from his physical appearance to the sound of his voice to the type of music he made to the supposed decline in its quality; but they were most especially reserved for the fact had struck back at his critics. Evidently he had been growing increasingly angry and frustrated that fans and critics could not let go of their memories of Linkin Park's first two albums, "Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora," the former of which was released 17 years ago. It is hardly unique for a band to get lost in the shadow of its own early work -- it happens to authors, too, not to mention artists, actors and directors -- but in Bennington's case the burden of his early mega-success seemed to grow heavier over the course of time. This was due largely to the fact that each subsequent album was criticized for not being an exact copy of the originals. In ordinary human lives, the past is supposed to fade with time and not grow more vivid, but with artists the exact opposite often obtains; futures become bleak, presents irrelevant, and only the past seems to matter.

All public figures are subject to criticism and ridicule by that same public, especially in the age of the internet, and Bennington was no exception. What was exceptional in his case was the intensity and the viciousness of the attacks. It was not merely that he had become a prisoner of his own early success, condemned for failing to repeat his formula exactly; he was also attacked even more violently when he tried to reinvent himself into something completely new. As my grandmother would have said, "they got him coming and going," for whichever direction he turned, the critics were waiting. He was like a boy beset by multiple bullies, at once pushing and shoving. And in the last weeks of his life, the bullying increased to a savage intensity. I couldn't lift my phone or turn on my PC without seeing threads and articles devoted not merely to bashing Bennington's new sound or defiant attitude, but to people specifying how much they hated him personally, how much they wanted to beat up "that skinny little shit." What surprised me was not the ferocity of the trolling -- the internet is an ugly place -- but the fact that so much of it came from people who admitted they were, or had been, devoted fans of his band. Some people evidently found no contradiction in boasting that they considered two or thee of Linkin Park's albums masterpieces they had "played to death and still listened to," yet, in the same sentence, wishing they could take Bennington up on his challenge to "meet them outside." He was laughed at, ridiculed, insulted, threatened, dismissed, negated as a musician and a human being, and all because he had expressed crude but understandable frustration with being subjected to same.

I don't profess to know precisely what drove Bennington, a father of six children, to hang himself. He was depressed by the suicide of his close friend Cornell (he died on what would have been Cornell's birthday), and obviously upset by the firestorm of abuse he'd endured following the release of "One More Light," but I imagine the cause lay deeper within himself. Artists are often very troubled souls, thin-skinned and beset by demons and doubts, prone to overthinking everything and often prone to gloomy outlooks on life. They come into the world both blessed and burdened, and the burden often outweighs the blessing, at least within their own minds. It's seldom a shock to me when such a person chooses to take their own life, or commits default suicide by drinking or drugging themselves into oblivion. Many struggle on the edge of that cliff for years or decades or their entire adult lives, and no one knows the struggle is even taking place until it ends, tragically, with a shotgun blast or a length of rope. What I do know is that the difference between life and death is often found at the central point of their spiritual corrosion -- that is, the point where they are most damaged, most weakened, most susceptible to attack. And that area, like as not, was either created or expanded by bullying. For once a person has been bullied -- I don't mean once or twice, but over a long period of time, and usually at a vulnerable age -- they never completely recover from the experience. They will never be able to endure taunts and mean-spirited ridicule with the same equanimity as a self-assured person who was not bullied during their formative years. Like Achilles, their vulnerability is both built-in and permanent, and no amount of success, fame or material wealth will make it go away.

When Bennington killed himself, the reaction on the Net was as effusive and passionate as it had been in the month leading up to his death, with the exception that all the sentiment was turned on its head. Many of the very same people (I recognized their profile pictures and internet handles) who had called Bennington a "skinny, talentless little faggot" and pleaded for a chance to "beat the shit out of him" just weeks before, now painted cyberspace with weeping emojis and long, heartfelt paens to his greatness. They expressed dismay and horror at his death and said things like, "RIP brother," "thoughts and prayers for your family" or the classic, "I didn't like the guy buy I never wanted this!" (This begs the question of what, precisely, they did want when they wrote things like, "Fuck you and your shitty music. Die!").

I found the hypocrisy of all this affected grief to be quite disgusting, and for more than the obvious reason that it is just exactly that. The truth is I understand Chester Bennington uncomfortably well. I too am the creative, "artistic" type, and I also know what it's like to be bullied -- thoroughly, mercilessly and inventively, over a period of years. I know the deep and abiding scars such bullying leaves, as well as the brimming reservoir of anger which can run over either as depression or violence or both. And, perhaps worst of all, I know what it is like to see the bullies of yesteryear turn around in the present day with friendly smiles, pretending or perhaps even believing that they did you no wrong. It was fascinating, though by no means encouraging, to run into people at my high school reunions who were among the most sadistic and enthusiastic bullies I've ever encountered, and discover how completely they had forgotten their behavior -- if, indeed, they had ever acknowledged it in the first place. In one instance I was asked by a former classmate how "X" was doing. This classmate had viciously bullied "X" all through junior high school and into ninth and perhaps tenth grade, sometimes physically attacking him, and doing so despite knowing "X" had tragically lost his father in an accident; yet as a grown man he seemed to regard "X" with genuine affection, as if they had been buddies who'd shared many a sophomoric hi-jink. The truly awful thing about the conversation was that his solicitous questions as to "X's" status and well-being carried no trace or irony or malice; they actually seemed sincere. Another former classmate, now mother of a large family, held forth at some length about her liberal principles and how much she hated Donald Trump because of his long record of bullying behavior: yet she herself was one of the queen bee bitches of my formative years, a Cordelia Chase-type ringleader who made cruel sport of the awkward, the unattractive, the unathletic and the poor.

Don't mistake me. I am not an advocate of holding grudges, I believe in second chances and I have seen people change remarkably over the course of not terribly long lifetimes. I don't believe that someone who was a jerkoff at sixteen must necessarily be one at twenty-eight or forty-five, but I do insist that he or she at least take some responsibility, and accept some accountability, for the wrongs they have done. I have far more respect for an unregenerate scumbag who freely admits all of his crimes and outrages and openly plots to commit more, than I have for someone who spent their youth tormenting others and now pretends that none of it ever happened. This latter type reminds me of the line in Shakespeare about "remembering with advantages." Doubtless a lot of former bullies need to re-write history within their own minds so as not to despise themselves in later life, and I'm sure bullies that have procreated feel an even more urgent need to "remember with advantages" their own school days, lest they wake up in the middle of the night trembling at the thought that someone like their younger selves might take an unhealthy interest in their own children. When Chester Bennington was alive, many took distinct pleasure in harassing him online, and when he committed suicide, many of those same people affected (virtual) tears of sympathy. In some cases, the tears were probably not even affected. One thing is for certain: in all the hundreds of comments and posts I scrolled through, not one expressed any remorse or discomfort for past posts raining abuse on the now-dead singer. Not one person said, "Gee, I kinda feel bad I trashed him so hard -- maybe he read some of that and it got to him." To even acknowledge the possibility, you see, would be to acknowledge the responsibility that accompanies free speech. Technically speaking, and legally, there is nothing to prevent one person from verbally bullying another; it is a question of morals, of right conduct, or more simply put, of not being an asshole. But again, to accept responsibility for something means acknowledging that you did it in the first place, and judging by some of the ex-bullies I mentioned above, that is precisely what these people train themselves to avoid. They want, simultaneously, to act like shitheels and think of themselves as good people, to vent their sadism and to deny ever having been sadistic. Like participants in a riot, they wake up the next morning and go about their business as if nothing happened. And I suppose, from their point of view, nothing did. But it is worth remembering that in Dante's Inferno, hell is composed of nine concentric circles, with the least odious sinners in the first circle and the worst in the ninth.

The eighth is for hypocrites.