jude folly

Now that this scandal has been beat to pulp, we should move the conversation beyond any further details of the South Carolina governor’s infidelity and skip the talk about his mental well being.

The particulars of the story bear a striking resemblance to a novel called Damage (by Irish writer Josephine Hart), a tale narrated by an unnamed protagonist - an English physician and up-and-coming Member of Parliament - who, by all appearances, had possession of a wonderful life. Like Mark Sanford, his rise to prominance as a capable and admired elected leader inspired talk of his potential as a head of the nation.

The novel’s opening passage presents themes about the human condition - what I would liken to pangs of an undernourished soul - that play out with dreadfully regrettable effect.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. . . .

For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. . . .

And in my own life, I have traveled far, acquiring loved and unfamiliar companions: a wife, a son, and a daughter. I have lived with them, a loving alien. . . . and tried to be what those I loved expected me to be - a good husband, a good father, a good son.

Had I died at fifty I would have been a doctor, and an established politician . . . . One who had made a contribution, and was much loved. . . .

But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now, who do not regard that as a tragedy.

The promising politician finds his ‘imprint’ in a dark, mysterious young woman (French, of course, for full fatalistic effect) who happens to be his grown son’s romantic companion. As if powerless against the collision of greater forces, they commence an affair whose calamitous arc ends with the death of his son.

While the Mark Sanford saga doesn’t feature a taboo element like incest, judging from the weepy press conference he held to admit that he had cheated, and from the emails he exchanged with his lover, the affair was no frivolous fling. At the risk of implying that Gov. Sanford’s behavior should be excused, I think it worth considering that, like the novel’s central character, the magnitude of his misdeeds reflects a great spiritual longing or hunger of the soul; requiring a moral catastrophe proportional to the unfettered becoming (or metaphysical fulfillment) that contemporary culture has few resources to accommodate.

Well, then he should not have sought public office, would be the common sensical response. True; and I would observe that in order to serve our republic, we require candidates to submit to somewhat extreme contortions of image and soul in order to appeal to a rule of the majority.

Yet how easy it is to disparage elected officials for the chameleon qualities they adopt and not recognize our complicity in the compulsive ‘costume’ changes (a.k.a. flip flopping) politicians must make to remain politically relevant. Yes, voters play a significant role in all this madness - though in Mark Sanford we witness the implosion of one political career that could not conceal the impassioned, vulnerable and utterly human qualities that far too many in the United States would prefer to deny about themselves.

Adulterers or not, absconders of duty or not, we are Mark Sanford.

Two weeks into the Iranian voter protest against the questionable outcome of their presidential election, and right wing pundits continue to squeal and bray for President Obama to take urgent action in the name of ‘democracy’; the ‘will of Iranian’ people is at stake. Such goading presumes the president’s cheer leading and turning cartwheels would give Iran’s hardline leadership a moment’s pause.

No doubt, given the several handfuls of Persian protestors that have been slain, the hundreds that have been arrested and thousands that have endured a beat down by the police and the paramilitary thugs known as Basij - the situation conveys great peril now, as well as the likelihood of a catastrophic crackdown by the country’s ruling clerics.

Among other absurd accusations lobbed at President Obama, he’s criticized as lacking ‘moral fortitude’ or ‘moral clarity’ for the measured tone of his response to the abuse meted out to citizens participating in demonstrations; also the object of caricature, described as a ‘man of the hard left‘ - an apologist for the likes of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez - one who would prefer a ‘totalitarian Islamic regime’ over a ‘free Iranian society.’

If the pundits think they’ve scored any political points with their cheap shots at the president and dyslexic assessments of the situation in Iran, they’ve only betrayed an obscene (some might argue willful) ignorance of historical context and the sordid legacy of the United States’ relationship with Iran.

Typical of those who ignore the history of US covert intervention in the affairs of other countries, they would rather forget or dismiss what President Obama acknowledged in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world just weeks ago - that the United States played a role in the 1953 ousting of Iran’s parliamentary-appointed prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.

I would argue that this act of meddling in the national affairs of Iran set the pace for a troubled and troubling relationship bewteen the two countries; a dialogue that most certainly became a face off after the 1979 Revolution created  a window for Islamic clerics to seize control of the country. Now, at a moment when the Iranian people have a chance to actively decide their nation’s political destiny - not just free from foreign manipulation but also unshackled by their leadership’s paralyzing suspicion of the West - wouldn’t it make sense to offer moral and diplomatic support, but mostly just sit this one out?

Lewis Lapham, former editor at Harper’s, serves as editor of a history-focused literary magazine called Lapham’s Quarterly. It publishes a collection of excerpted writings by the greats of literature, philosophy, art, politics and any other arena of renown. Each issue features texts gathered around a specific theme (e.g., States of War, About Money and Eros). Fall 2008’s theme, Ways of Learning, addresses education.

In a stunning preamble to that issue, Lapham presents an incisive, often devastating, critique of education in the United States. How fitting that he titles the piece ‘Playing with Fire,’ evidently inspired by a maxim tacked at the top of the essay, a quote credited to Plutarch:  ’The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.’

No less incendiary than that sentiment, Lapham delivers a far-reaching but nuanced analysis of the forces at work in the perpetual shortcomings of education. Taking a cue from the 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education, which cautioned that the the nation’s schools were flooded with ‘a rising tide of mediocrity,’ the author illustrates a broader cultural context to account for the said deluge of underachievement.

Two mistaken but often unquestioned assumptions at work in the demise of education are 1) the belief that education is a commodity and 2) that the humanitites are inconsequential. As Lapham discusses each assumption, I cannot help but marvel how each notion enables and provides cover for the other; working together they render a consensus thinking that the writer savages in the following statement: ‘If the kids know how to run the computers, work up the punch lines for Disney or Goldman Sachs, figure the exchange rates between the euro and the yen, what does it matter if they don’t know who won either the Revolutionary or the Civil War?’

If Thomas Jefferson were to have his say about what is taught in schools, he might reiterate his hope for a citizen prepared for the demands of self-government and encouraged ‘to judge for himself what would secure or endanger his freedom.’

Echoing Jefferson’s thinking toward the end of the essay, Lapham writes, ‘What makes men and women free is learning to trust their own thought, possess their own history, speak in their own voices.’ If conveying this kind of knowledge could not be co-opted, packaged and mass marketed for maximized profit, would there be any takers?

After months of abscence and seemingly useless deliberation I am pleased to be writing here once again and anticipate more frequent posts in the near future, offering hopefully more thoughtful content. In the mean time, have a look at a review I’ve composed covering Robert A. Burton’s exploration of belief and the brain in a book called On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.

The national achievement last night defies words of any consecration or commemoration. Finally this country sees through our legacy of mystifying fear and prejudice. Dreamers, for once, have prevailed.

part 1

part 2

As far and widely as I’ve read and listened to commentary about the economic crisis the country faces, this 60 Minutes story strikes me as the best explanation of what went wrong. Take note of this strand of the narrative: investment banks that sold the ‘repackaged’ mortagages of questionable credit also offered ‘credit default swaps‘ as a means to ‘insure’ investors against loss should the underlying investment result in default.

As most readers have probably already found out earlier this week,  a resumed search for cluesinto the disappearance Steve Fossett has lead to a discovery of wreckage from the plane flown by the millionaire adventurer.

In an entry back on June 12, I speculated on the possibility that he had intentionally vanished from human contact as an act of the ultimate adventure. At the time I was not aware of a suggestionmade by US Civil Air Patrol’s Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia Ryan - that Fossett might still be alive, since the aircraft had yet to be discovered.  Now that the revived search has confirmed the finding of human remains at the crash site, it appears likely that this story amounts to no more than the tragic end to an exceptional life.

However, I await the results of DNA testing to be absolutely certain that this was not Fossett’s greatest feat.

I took a look at the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges, specifically their trading stats for Jan. 2008. Combined for that month, they executed 442.6 million trades, which would add up to a huge heap of money extracted from the securities industry. A penny-per-trade tax strikes me as far more reasonable, but I suspect the captains of corporations at Wall Street would squeal like stuck hogs in objection, all the same. Anyway, I sent a note to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Finance & Urban Affairs to make the argument as follows:

Dear Committee Members:

Over the past week I’ve paid close attention to the news headlines depicting the financial crisis the United States faces. Of all the solutions bandied about, I’ve yet to hear anyone propose a penny-per-trade tax on the execution of any equity, mutual fund, option, futures, or credit default swap transaction.

If trading has been the very mechanism that distorted the value of our assets, shouldn’t it also be the process by which Wall Street lends a hand in resolving this crisis?

Respectfully yours,

Subject: $1-per-trade tax on securities (buying and selling) 

Dear Sen. Dodd,

I write to thank you for your efforts to hold Wall Street accountable over the current financial crisis this country faces. If I may be so bold as to suggest one phase of the solution to this potential economic cataclysm: a
$1-per-trade tax on buying and selling of securities (stock, bond, mutual fund, option, futures, credit default swaps, et. al.) that can go towards defraying the cost of the much-heralded $700 billion bailout.

If the investment banking and securities industries have had a part in bringing our economy to the edge of ruin, then perhaps it is a modest proposal to expect they participate in its salvaging.

Respectfully yours,

Jude Folly

In anticipation of the release of Indignation, the 29th book by Newark’s notorious son, Esquire has offered to its readers a ‘crash course’ guide to prepare readers for what I’ve seen with my own eyes is a standard, even whispy plot predictably taken from Roth’s biography.

Such Manhattanite pandering is only surpassed when Woody Allen releases a new film.