Common Sense

It don't make much sense that common sense
don't make no sense no more.

— John Prine

My keyring holds two identical looking keys. 

One unlocks the front door; the other, the back.

Murphy's Law governs my keyring.

No matter which door I'm hoping to unlock, I always choose the wrong key.

That defies common sense.

But common sense is passé, anyway.

Today, we're "structurally stupid."

Or are we?

When I use my housekey, I do so in the firm belief that it will open the lock.

Even though it never does the first time, I believe it will.

I presuppose that turning the key will unlock the door.

Why do I believe so?

Experience. 

Know-how.

Trial and error.

The very same trial and error that underpins science.

I have an inductive means for making judgements about cause and effect in the real world.

Those means aren't perfect, but they're good enough to get me into the house.

They go by the name “common sense.”

No, we're not structurally stupid.

Some of us just prefer to be assholes.

Illth

Americans—Republican voters, especially—romanticize the rich. 

They're held up as titans, when in fact they're just lucky.

The Victorian critic John Ruskin felt that Englishmen of his day were equally guilty of romanticizing the rich—and were wrong to do so.

Rich people hoard, Ruskin argued, taking their wealth out of circulation.

But wealth is only useful in circulation.

"If a thing is to be useful," Ruskin said, "it must be not only of an availing nature, but in availing hands. 

"Usefulness is value in the hands of the valiant."

Ruskin, leaning on his Classics education, defined the "valiant" as the "valuable;" as those who "avail towards life." 

In a word, workers.

Ruskin thought the rich were worse than just idle: the rich are like "dams in a river" and "pools of dead water which, so long as the stream flows, are useless, or serve only to drown people."

Ruskin wondered why English didn't have a word for the harm caused by wealth. 

He suggested illth. 

Illth, Ruskin said, is the "devastation caused by delay." 

By hoarding their wealth, the rich postpone its use until after their deaths. 

In this sense, Ruskin believed, the rich act as "impediments" to the flow of wealth.

From their great country houses, nothing ever "trickles down."

Ruskin published these thoughts in 1860, 12 years after Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto. 

But whereas Marx's essay, published by a small society of fellow travelers, was largely ignored, Ruskin's, published in a popular magazine, created a firestorm.

The English critics despised it.

Ruskin's essay was declared "one of the most melancholy spectacles we have ever witnessed."

"Absolute nonsense," "utter imbecility," and "intolerable twaddle," the critics wrote.

One critic called the author himself "repulsive," adding that Ruskin was the "perfect paragon of blubbering; his whines and snivels are contemptible."

But was he contemptible in condemning the rich for fostering illth?

I don't think so. 

Illth, you could say, is the underbelly of wealth.

Wealth is a 13th-century word meaning "prosperity." It derived from another Old English word, weal, meaning "health."

Ill, also a 13th-century word, came centuries later to mean "unhealthy;" but its original 13th-century meaning was "wicked." 

Illth, therefore, means "wickedness." 

Ruskin's point was clear: when you look at their underbellies, the rich are wicked.

They block our way to prosperity; they don't create it.

Will Republicans ever get it?

HAT TIP: Thanks to copywriter Nancy Friedman for introducing me to illth.

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."