Anger of Repose

Free speech is the right to shout "Theater!" in a crowded fire.

— Abbie Hoffman

After millenniums of suffering second-class citizenship, Western women can take heart in the fact they're at last on equal footing with men. 

You'd think they'd kick back and relax, at least a bit.

But, no.

A lot of Western women are still incensed and, as a result, unable to tolerate a man's literary opinion when it differs from their own.

I ran headlong into that anger yesterday when I (naively) commented on an article posted by the feminist historian Max Dashu on her popular Facebook page, "Suppressed Histories Archives."

The article, by a playwright named Sands Hall, described how Wallace Stegner plagiarized the diary of a Victorian woman, Mary Foote, when he wrote his Pulitzer-prize winning novel Angle of Repose.

Hall's contention was that Stegner stole more than a diary; he stole the diarist's life.

The unanimous tone of the steamy comments by Dashu's fans rankled me. 

I am, after all, partial to Wallace Stegner and to all novelists' right to fictionalize.

Those comments called Stegner "morally bankrupt" and "corrupt," a "colonizer," "thief" and "oppressor" who enjoyed "destroying a woman's character and reputation."

He was also compared to a rapist.

For good measure, Dashu's fans indicted other loathsome males for plagiarizing women's writings, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl Jung, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Einstein and Homer.

Yes, Homer.

"I wish Stegner were still alive to be shamed, sued, and stoned," one fan wrote.

Stegner should go to the "chopping block," said another.

"A curse on the name of Wallace Stegner," added another. 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

"Who do we cancel next?" I commented.

Big mistake.

For my five-word comment, I was told I was "petty," "cheeky," "hysterical," "reactionary" and "misogynistic." And I was assaulted for my age—even though Max Dashu is three years older than me.

But wait, there's more. Adding nuance, I commented further:

"Thanks for posting this article. I was not aware before of the accusations against Stegner. There is a good podcast featuring Sands Hall at the link below. She amplifies the article and related play she wrote. Calling for Stegner's posthumous stoning and the retraction of his Pulitzer is a clear-cut form of 'cancellation,' whether the word bothers you or not. Many of the comments sound like those of a frenzied mob clutching to its grievances. Sands Hall calls Stegner's ripoff of Mary Foote's journal an instance of early 'postmodernism.' But the mob wants to exhume his body, like Cromwell's, and desecrate it."

Max Dashu replied, "So according to you, no one should be outraged at him stealing a woman's work and then stomping on her reputation? He in fact canceled her!"

"In the US," I responded to Dashu, "we’re sensitive to mobs after the Salem Witch Trials."

"What 'mob?" Dashu wrote. "A woman tracked down the story of a man who massively appropriated a woman's work while smearing her life story, and you whine about 'cancellation.' He hasn't been canceled. Someone shone a light on his misdeeds."

And at that scolding, Dashu's fans started to pile on. 

"Shut up misogynist," one wrote.

"Calm down, Nancy boy," said another. 

"Robert is mad that women are pushing back," said another.

"I’m sensitive to slandering a woman since the witch trials," said another. "And I’m a witch, so don’t even fucking go there."

"It’s pathetic that you’re so testerical and worked up over this dead guy who stole women’s work," another said. "He STOLE her work and passed it off as his own. Typical male entitlement and privilege on your part to think you get to define everything around you. SHUT THE FUCK UP."

Based on my encounter with Max Dashu and her fans, I could write a play about an fiery mob rushing to judgement. 

Twelve Angry Women.

But it's been done before.

POSTSCRIPT: Learn more about Wallace Stegner's plagiarism from a new interview with Sands Hall. Great stuff!

Stupid Lasts Forever

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.

— Aristophanes

A Tennessee Republican this week held up Hitler as the paradigm of self-improvement.

State Senator Frank Niceley defended a bill to ban the homeless from public parks by invoking Hitler's time as a tramp in Vienna:

"I wanna give you a little history lesson on homelessness," Niceley told his colleagues. 

"In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. 

"So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses. And then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. 

"So, a lot of these people, it’s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life, or in Hitler’s case, a very unproductive life. I support this bill."

If Niceley wanted to live up to his name, he'd also sponsor a bill to provide Tennessee's homeless with free toothbrush mustaches.

Propaganda

If there is such a thing as "woke propaganda," this meme is it. The meme's creator, intent on convincing you the Founding Fathers embraced diversity, counted on readers' ignorance of Latin.

E Pluribus Unum means, of course, "Out of many, one," not "Out of one, many."

The motto, proposed by Adams, Franklin and Jefferson in 1776, referred to the 13 colonies' determination to form a single, new nation independent from England.

It hardly promoted diversity—especially as that word is most often used today.

Propagandists count on the holes in our education.

Propaganda, from the Latin propagare, meaning to "spread," entered English in the 18th century. 

It was the shortened name of a Roman Catholic organization, the Congregatio de propaganda fide, the "Congregation for Propagation of the Faith."

Propaganda only acquired its modern sense ("the spreading of information") in the early 20th century.

The Congregatio de propaganda fide was housed in Rome in a baroque building on the Via di Propaganda named the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide, the "Palace for the Propagation of the Faith." 

The Propaganda, instituted by the Pope in 1622, comprised a committee of cardinals tasked with spreading Catholicism, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The Propaganda's mission derived from a command by Jesus (in fact, his last) reported in the Gospel of Matthew: Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."

The cardinals hoped to spread the Catholic faith, but it was a follower of Marx, Georgy Plekhanov, who popularized the use of the word propaganda to mean the "spreading of information" (or as we now say, "misinformation"). 

During the late 19th century, Plekhanov wrote essays that called for the tandem use of agitation (speeches) and propaganda (pamphlets) to sway public opinion.

His one-two punch formula was shortened to agitprop by another follower of Marx, Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin argued that while agitation uses slogans to sway public opinion, propaganda uses arguments.

Agitation targets the uneducated; propaganda, the educated.

In either case, the truth gets shortchanged.

"Truth is the most precious thing," Lenin said. "That's why we should ration it."

Hurry, Wisdom

We are at a moment in time where we desperately need to accelerate wisdom.

— Elise Loehnen

With so many things so out of control—inflation, the virus, domestic terror, foreign enemies, and global warming—we are perfectly poised to elect a strongman as president in two years.

That's what fear-filled idiots do.

We need wisdom to steer us, but wisdom's in short supply right now (like a lot of things).

Amazon won't deliver it overnight.

Then again, maybe it will.

Emerson said, "If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

We should make that the first, perhaps the only, question we ask of a candidate.

Books may not be the only source of wisdom (there's the "school of hard knocks," too); but they're a primary source—and a ready one.

Ezra Pound said a book is a "ball of light in one's hands."

Hurry, wisdom.

Let there be light.

What's Wrong with America

Against one who denies the principles, there can be no debate.

— Aristotle

Breaking my pledge to ignore reactionary loudmouths, I recently reacted to a Facebook post by just such a loudmouth.

He posted a meme blaming the high price of gas on Canada.

Yes, Canada.

When I challenged his unsubstantiated claim, citing the consensus of oil-industry analysts—namely, that Canada is doing its best—he responded by calling me "snarky" and insisting that analysts are all just "spin doctors."

"Facts shmacks," he wrote.

(ICYMI: Canada already supplies the US over 4 million barrels of oil every day, according to oil-industry analysts, who agree the country's oil exports are maxed out because investors refused last year to expand Canada's production facilities.)

Contra principia negantem non est disputandum.

"Against one who denies the principles, there can be no debate."

In America today, we can't agree on facts. 

We can't even agree on that there are such things as facts.

Norman Mailer predicted 50 years ago that America would wind up in this place when he coined the word factoid.

Conservatives dwell in a world of factoids. Trump won. Covid-19 is a flu. Blacks are just immigrants. Disney grooms queers. Canada is denying us oil... and we should nuke them.

Aristotle saw 2,500 years ago that parties who cannot agree on the facts of a case simply cannot reasonably discuss it.

The best the parties can do is name-call.

The 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper believed mankind's greatest enemy was irrational relativism, which prevents our mutual acceptance of facts.

By caving into irrational relativism, "one cannot rationally discuss anything that is fundamental," Popper lamented.

The only way out of the impasse, he said, "lies in the realization that all of us may and often do err, singly and collectively, but that this very idea of error and human fallibility involves another one—the idea of objective truth."

Alas, until every conservative is willing to let go of fear, we're stuck with irrational relativism.

But there is a quick exit from our impasse.

It's the solution to relativism known to philosophers as the argumentum ad baculum ("appeal to the stick"), first suggested by the 11th-century Aristotelian, Avicenna.

Its forcefulness derives from force.

"Those who deny a first principle," Avicenna said, "should be beaten or exposed to fire until they concede that to burn and not to burn, or to be beaten and not to be beaten, are not identical."

I like that solution!