Thursday, October 18, 2018

Expects A Revolution

Angelo Codevilla has piece up at American Mind, Our Revolution's Logic.

Point #1 TL:DR

He is dire in his predictions, and fairly spits out his contempt and anger at the American ruling class. His anger at Republicans is exceeded only by his anger at Democrats. That's what he usually does, and I hope he is overreacting.  I hope that most Americans are just not as worked up as the political junkies, and have no intention of getting dragged into any serious violence or even excusing it in others.

There was a time of greater violence in the late 1960's and "revolution" was in the air. I was young, and worried that said violence would invite repression. We thought ourselves a deeply divided nation. Then came disco, and we mostly forgot about it for a while. America solved its revolution problem by ignoring it. Some of the rebels switched to Gramscian strategies, but the fighting seemed to stop, except for people trying to shoot Republican presidents.

I hope that's what we are looking at again.

I would like to draw your attention to two paragraphs early in the essay. (Ed. Early, because I didn't read all that far.) Codevilla is quoting from Thucydides account of Corcyra's revolution in 427 BC, the fifth year of the Peloponnesian* War. He describes how moral actions had deteriorated on all sides in service of the revolution.
The more freely to harm enemies, “words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.”
“Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected…even blood became a weaker tie than party….The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence…when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one…success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence.”
I have mentioned many times the changes in ordinary meanings of words as a tactic to distract and confuse. Religious cults take ordinary theological words and put new meanings into them.  CS Lewis asserted that the aim of the Christian should be to take the ancient ideas and put them into modern language.  Instead, people were using ancient language to smuggle in modern ideas that the original writers did not intend. He and Orwell were both writing about this at about the same time.  We should take notice.

The next paragraph worries me as well. Some Democrats are talking about packing the Supreme Court, and in response, Republicans are saying "You might regret giving Trump that idea if he thinks he needs to beat you to the punch."  There's nothing magical about the number nine, but I dislike monkeying with institutional practices that have grown up over centuries.

*I am pretty sure I have never spelled "Peloponnesian" without having to look it up, and look back at it at least two more times. And I didn't know who Corcyra was, either, but I imagine he was important if he got a whole revolution named after him.


james said...

Yes, it has been more violent within living memory. My old office faced the new brickwork of Sterling Hall. And we have that multi-tribe thing going that you posted about.

And some things seem threatening and fade away--antifa seems to stay in its safe zones and hasn't seemed to want to branch out to where they might get hurt, for example.

But complacency would be a bad idea. I don't know what little pebbles avalanche a bad situation into a lethal one. Codeville thinks he sees it spiraling already, but I'm not sure. It doesn't take a majority to start a war.

Distraction! That's the ticket. Look! a GMO squirrel!

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest ... Nah, old-fashioned.

Sam L. said...

The Left is pushing. The "Antifa"ers are running wild in Portland OR.

james said...

Yes. But not, oddly enough, in Madison. I suspect it isn't safe enough for them. They need the police to be on their side, or at least look the other way.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ james - a good point, which I hadn't quite put together. This is largely happening because of police nonintervention. This is a specific training of law enforcement now, which says that heavy intervention can make situations explosive, so best to let things burn out on their own. It is something of a reverse of a "broken windows" policy. It's not necessarily crazy when paired with efficient arrests and prosecutions of the few real problem people. I don't have confidence that is happening.

Texan99 said...

The apparent collapse of the immigrant caravan makes me think of Giuliani and the turnaround of New York City some years back. Sometimes the police "fail to intervene" for so long we almost forget there's anything effective they can do. It turns out that, when they feel like it, there's plenty they can do. If they're not doing it, sometimes that means they quietly support the result; any words they dribble out about it are a lame excuse. A previous administration would have wrung its hands ineffectually at the caravan. Trump is not conflicted about whether he will tolerate its arrival.

Texan99 said...

PS, It was only recently, after listening to some audio courses on the Peloponnesian Wars, that I finally got more or less straight in my head how they differed from the Punic Wars. I still can't retain any details about them, such as who/what Corcyra was. And words with the occasional double consonant are the worst: exagggerrrate, Philllipppines, Carrribbbean, milllennnium, I have to look them up every time.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

That's my double-consonant list as well, though I get Caribbean right because of the Caribs.

ErisGuy said...

I count myself—apparently accurately—as one of the few Americans who paid attention when I read Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Thucydidies, Homer, Euripides, and Herodotus. And many of those other DWEMs. All lost now, like the dinosaurs, found only when fossilized.

“Aristotle was not Belgian!”