Marginalia...

... was the original name of this blog and the subject of the first post on it, so I'm always delighted to find something bloggable that can take the "marginalia" tag.

I love this one, from the biography "John Adams" (pp. 763-764)(commission earned):

Unlike [Thomas] Jefferson, who seldom ever marked a book, and then only faintly in pencil, [John] Adams, pen in hand, loved to add his comments in the margins. It was part of the joy of reading for him, to have something to say himself, to talk back to, agree or take issue with, Rousseau, Condorcet, Turgot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, or Joseph Priestley.

Ah, John Adams was a proto-blogger! 

"William Wordsworth swore by walking, as did Virginia Woolf. So did William Blake."

"Thomas Mann assured us, 'Thoughts come clearly while one walks.' J.K. Rowling observed that there is 'nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas,' while the turn-of-the-20th-century novelist Elizabeth von Arnim concluded that walking 'is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things.' And ask any deep thinker about the benefits of what Bill Bryson calls the 'tranquil tedium' walking elicits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau admitted, 'There is something about walking that animates and activates my ideas.' Even the resolutely pessimistic Friedrich Nietzsche had to give it up for a good saunter when he allowed, 'All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.'"

From "Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking" by the writer Andrew McCarthy (NYT).

"... Simon and Garfunkel also played a high-profile gig at Gerde’s Folk City in the Village, and a couple of shows at the Gaslight Cafe. The audiences there, though, regarded them as a complete joke..."

"... Dave Van Ronk would later relate that for weeks afterwards, all anyone had to do was sing 'Hello darkness, my old friend,' for everyone around to break into laughter. Bob Dylan was one of those who laughed at the performance — though Robert Shelton later said that Dylan hadn’t been laughing at them, specifically, he’d just had a fit of the giggles — and this had led to a certain amount of anger from Simon towards Dylan."

That's from the podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," "Episode 135: 'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel." 

I've never been much of a Simon and Garfunkel fan, though, of course, I've often enjoyed listening to their songs. They did seem self-absorbedly gloomy, and I completely identify with the people who thought it was funny to intone — out of the blue — "Hello darkness, my old friend." I have a vivid memory from 1965, when "I Am a Rock" was a hit, and I was 14. I was with some of my girlfriends and a boy from our class, walking by, suddenly and, I think sincerely, sang out "I Am a Rock." Oh, how we laughed at him! It still makes me laugh. You're a rock, are you? That's so interesting. I guess if he was a rock, our derision didn't hurt him.

Knowing little of S&G's background, I learned a lot from that episode:

"When acceptance is the highest value, when avoiding condemnation online is worth more than the truth, the truth will be swiftly discarded."

"Online likes, followers and reputation — weak, empty values — dominate the teenage world because teenagers are not being taught alternative ones by the culture or, often, by the adults in their lives. They — we — are not being given the tools to answer the questions that really matter: What is truth? What is justice? And what is the purpose of life?"

From "I'm 17. And I'm Immunized from Woke Politics. Here's how" by Daniel Idfresne (at the Bari Weiss Substack). 

Idfresne has a YouTube channel. Here's an example of what he puts up:

Brains.

 

In 1793, Rousseau had been dead for fifteen years.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 20, 2021

Rousseau wanted to eat the rich’s braaaaaains

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 20, 2021

ADDED: Turley took down the tweet Kruse mocked. He's reposted like this, so that it no longer depicts Rousseau as speaking of "eating the rich" in 1793.

For identity politics, there is no surer bet than attacking the “super rich.” Since philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau spoke of “eating the rich” before the Reign of Terror, politicians have had an insatiable appetite for class warfare politics.https://t.co/nBIE0zW0iJ

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 20, 2021

"Once the folks at The New Yorker learned of Althouse's callout, the conversation among those involved might have gone like this...."

Tom Blumer at NewsBusters imagines the scene at The New Yorker after its editors read my post telling them that "libtard" wasn't "Rush Limbaugh's favorite epithet" — as stated in Pankaj Mishra's "How Rousseau Predicted Trump." I knew from listening to the show that it wasn't his favorite epithet, and I found out from searching his archive that he never used the word.

Excerpt from the imagined dialogue:

Fact Checker 2: Well, we haven't found any examples yet, so we're already in trouble with your claim that it's his favorite. Our best hope is to try to do what Althouse did. Mishra, search his archives.  I'm sure you'll find at least a few "libtard" uses, and we can get this pesky harpy off our backs by deleting the word "favorite" from your essay....

Mishra: ... Wait a minute, his archive is available only to subscribers for $50 a year. What, people pay for this garbage? I'm not giving that racist, homophobic, sexist bigoted wingnut any of my money!...

I must say, I get uneasy reading even what is clearly marked as imagined dialogue. I don't know that Mishra would call Limbaugh a "racist, homophobic, sexist bigoted wingnut." It's funny to attribute words to a real person for comic effect, but in this case it's so close to the original problem — attributing "libtard" to Rush Limbaugh. I'm saying this here not to call out Blumer — I think the comic spoofing is good — but to show you the strength of my instinct to protect individuals from false statements. This is a justified and humorous effort at figuring out how people — powerful people in media — would have thought about a real problem they faced.

Mishra: Rather than get our hands dirty and commit the crime against humanity of sending Limbaugh money, let's just assume Althouse is right and note at the very end of the online version that "An earlier version of this article erroneously connected the epithet 'libtard' with the radio host Rush Limbaugh." With that language, some readers will still think that he uses the word from time to time.

Fact Checker 2: Then we'll put the correction in tiny letters in a small corner in the next print edition.

Whatever happened to The New Yorker's pride in meticulous fact-checking?!

Here's an example of a strongly stated assertion — in the first paragraph of an article — that is easily fact-checked in a few seconds on line and that is plainly, embarrassingly wrong and a glaring reflection of bias.

This was an article I cared about reading, "How Rousseau Predicted Trump/The Enlightenment philosopher’s attack on cosmopolitan élites now seems prophetic." I cared, because I've been thinking about Trump's recent Second Amendment remark in terms of the right of revolution, and I'm the kind of educated, elite reader The New Yorker is aimed at. I like to think I can relate present-day politics to classic works of philosophy — get the lofty long view of things. So I jump in:

"I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump said during a victory speech in February, and he has repeatedly taken aim at America’s élites and their “false song of globalism.” Voters in Britain, heeding Brexit campaigners’ calls to “take back control” of a country ostensibly threatened by uncontrolled immigration, “unelected élites,” and “experts,” have reversed fifty years of European integration. Other countries across Western Europe, as well as Israel, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, seethe with demagogic assertions of ethnic, religious, and national identity. In India, Hindu supremacists have adopted Rush Limbaugh’s favorite epithet “libtard” to channel righteous fury against liberal and secular élites.

Rush Limbaugh’s favorite epithet “libtard”? I read The New Yorker, but I also keep up with Rush Limbaugh, and I don't feel as though I have ever heard him say "libtard." It's certainly not his favorite epithet. I know that without even checking. When Rush Limbaugh talks about liberals — which is probably his favorite subject — he says "liberals." That's epithet enough.

Has he ever said "libtard"? Rush Limbaugh puts the entire transcript of his shows up on his website. As a subscriber, I can search the entire archive. And there isn't even one instance of him saying "libtard"!

"Libtard" is an offensive word, unnecessarily dragging in disrespect for the mentally challenged. Yet The New Yorker assumes Rush Limbaugh uses it and — precisely when it's showing off the most elite approach to political analysis — purveys utter misinformation to its readers. Will those readers check? I had a basis for doubting, because I actually monitor what's on the Rush Limbaugh show. But I suspect most readers will rely on their existing bad opinion of Rush, a bad opinion that is stoked by this highly respected magazine with its longstanding reputation for stellar fact-checking — a reputation it seems to think nothing of throwing away. 

UPDATE: The New Yorker acknowledges and corrects its error.

"In everyday life, acting virtuously means such boring things as being kind, honest and dutiful."

"For moral prodigies, such pedestrian examples are beneath notice. Rousseau, 'drunk with virtue' as he put it in his 'Confessions,' nonetheless shipped off to a foundlings home all five of the children he had with his semi-literate mistress. She protested, but Rousseau cared not for he had 'never felt the least glimmering of love for her.' Robespierre floated aloft upon a similarly callous intoxication. The Republic, he said, was founded on 'virtue and its emanation, terror.' Hence the work of the Committee of Public Safety, whose chief handmaiden was the guillotine and whose activities depended critically on anonymous reports about those whose commitment to virtue was less than wholehearted. Yale, though sitting on a tax-exempt endowment of $24 billion, does not have the guillotine...."

From "The College Formerly Known as Yale/Any renaming push on the Ivy campus should start at the top—with Elihu Yale, slave trader extraordinaire," by Roger Kimball, on the occasion of the creation of Yale's "Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming." It's in the Wall Street Journal, so you may have to Google some text to get a link that will work for you.

50 years ago today: the Vatican abolished its List of Prohibited Books.

"The 20th and final edition appeared in 1948, and the Index [Librorum Prohibitorum] was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI...."

The aim of the list was to protect the faith and morals of the faithful by preventing the reading of heretical and immoral books....

The Index included a number of authors and intellectuals whose works are widely read today in most leading universities and are now considered as the foundations of science, e.g. Kepler's New Astronomy, his Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, and his World Harmony were quickly placed on the Index after their publication. Other noteworthy intellectual figures on the Index include Jean-Paul Sartre, Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius. Charles Darwin's works were never included.

More of the list here, along with some discussion of what was not included:

Not on the Index were Aristophanes, Juvenal, John Cleland, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. According to Wallace et al., this was because the primary criterion for banning the work was anticlericalism, blasphemy and heresy.

"America never stopped being great. We need to make America whole. We have to fill in what’s been hollowed out."

"We have to make strong the broken places, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our country.... [W]hat we need in America today is more love and kindness.... Instead of building walls we’re going to break down barriers and build … build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential, because then and only then can America live up to its full potential too."

Said Hillary Clinton, in her Super Tuesday victory speech, clearly aimed at Donald Trump, answering his "Make America great again." America is always already great. Nothing to do there. The problem is that everyone isn't equally included in the greatness. We need to stitch us all together and fill in the hollowed-out gaps. It's a concise summary of the difference between the progressive enterprise and capitalism.

Trump has pushed back:

Hillary cannot make America great. She was talking about something yesterday, making America whole, whole. No, no, I don’t want whole. I want great again. I think I’ll use that as a commercial. We’ll make a split screen. She’ll be saying "we’re going to make America whole," whatever that means — I don’t think she knows what it means. We’re going to make America whole, and I’ll be saying, "we’re going to make America great again."

What does "whole" even mean? He just says he doesn't know, perhaps nudging us to think it's jibberish, flim-flam, con artistry, but perhaps nudging lewd/sexist minds to hear "hole." But "whole" — I think, to be accurate — envisions the people as a single body, an ailing body, needing healing and restoration to full health, wholeness.

The idea that the people form a single body has phenomenal historic resonance. I'm picturing "Leviathan":



Think of the "body politic" — all the people in a particular country considered as a single group."

The analogy is typically continued by reference to the top of government as the head of state, but may be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of the Aesop's fable, "The Belly and the Members."... The metaphor developed in Renaissance times, as the medical knowledge based upon the classical work of Galen was being challenged by new thinkers such as William Harvey. Analogies were made between the supposed causes of disease and disorder and their equivalents in the political field which were considered to be plagues or infections which might be remedied by purges and nostrums....

And Jean Jacques-Rousseau wrote of "General Will":

As long as several men assembled together consider themselves as a single body, they have only one will which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being. Then, all the animating forces of the state are vigorous and simple, and its principles are clear and luminous; it has no incompatible or conflicting interests; the common good makes itself so manifestly evident that only common sense is needed to discern it. Peace, unity and equality are the enemies of political sophistication. Upright and simple men are difficult to deceive precisely because of their simplicity; stratagems and clever arguments do not prevail upon them, they are not indeed subtle enough to be dupes....

"The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth."

A foreboding title to a column by Tyler Cowen, published in the NYT.

A spiffier title expressing the same concept is found in the text of Cowen's column: "War! What Is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization From Primates to Robots," which is the title of a book by a classics and history professor named Ian Morris:

Morris considers a wide variety of cases, including the Roman Empire, the European state during its Renaissance rise and the contemporary United States. In each case there is good evidence that the desire to prepare for war spurred technological invention and also brought a higher degree of internal social order.

That reminded me of the old Camille Paglia quote: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." Searching for it on line, I found it in a discussion — in the corner of Reddit called "MensRights" — of the statement "If women ran the world there would be no wars." But here's a better source for the Paglia quote, the 1990 review of "Sexual Personae," in the NYT, written by Terry Teachout:

... Ms. Paglia heats things up considerably by drawing a flashy assortment of extreme conclusions from her basic premises. Not only does she praise ''the spectacular glory of male civilization,'' she flatly rejects Rousseau's vision of ''benign Romantic nature'' and its offspring, ''the progressivist strain in nineteenth-century culture, for which social reform was the means to achieve paradise on earth.'' Feminism, she claims, is ''heir to Rousseau'' in that it ''sees every hierarchy as repressive, a social fiction; every negative about woman is a male lie designed to keep her in her place. Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate. . . . If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.''

Now that I've gotten this far afield, I feel I must note that Tyler Cowen had nothing to say about the rise of women in the modern West. 

writing : speech :: masturbation : copulation.

That last post, about Bridgegate, ends with some musing about how email and texting are preserving in writing far more of the kind of remarks that used to appear mostly only in speech. Researching a different topic, I stumbled upon a strangely relevant passage in a book (called, of all things, "When Men Are Women: Manhood Among The Gabra Nomads Of East Africa"):

[Jean-Jacques] Rousseau wrote about the difference between speech and writing, and following Plato, he regarded speech as more authentic, present, or real than writing. Writing, in his view, imitated speech but never quite accomplished the interpersonal communication possible with direct speech. Rousseau noticed, however, that he communicated his thoughts more clearly and accurately in writing than in speech: "If I were present" in a conversation, Rousseau wrote, "one would never know what I was worth," since shyness would inhibit his speech (quoted in Derrida 1974:141). It is Derrida who points out the paradox: writing, though a false imitation of speech, is nevertheless truer than speech. Rousseau, Derrida explains, "valorizes and disqualifies writing at the same time" (1974:141). For Rousseau, the relation between writing and speech is much the same as that between masturbation and copulation. Masturbation, like writing, is an imitation motivated by a lack — in this case the lack of a sexual partner. Masturbation is a faint imitation of copulation, but because it represents a "perfect" union between sexual partners, who are in fact one in the same person, masturbation trumps copulation as writing trumps speech. 

The different topic I was researching came up over in the comments to that "growing brain cells through sex" post. Would masturbation work on the brain cells or was it something about sex with a partner? I realized that my assumption that masturbation wouldn't work resonated with really old notions, like the idea that masturbation could make you insane. Researching that, I easily found the Wikipedia article "History of masturbation," and I was fascinated by the line:

The 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw masturbation as equal to 'mental rape,' and discussed it in both Émile and Confessions. He argued that it was the corrupting influence of society that led to such unnatural acts as masturbation and that humans living a simple life amidst nature would never do such things.

So many strange ideas. So many potential connections. Think about them, write about them, talk about them here in writing. We might grow some brain cells.

"A beard is a celebration of nature that brings appearance closer to that of untamed human animals..."

"... a Rousseau-esque gesture that was crucial to the age of Aquarius, a time when long-established norms of behavior collapsed and made public life a clearer expression of formerly unspeakable private desires. By contrast, the shaven and crew-cut athlete suggests a martial fury that is joyless—a grim, self-denying efficiency that may work in war but is exactly the opposite of the essence of baseball, which, for all its competitive ardor, is playtime...."

Just be careful that beard doesn't obstruct anybody.

(Wow, in the GIF at that second link, Middlebrooks looks like he's dancing The Worm.)

ADDED: "Immediately after we got off the field into our locker room, we congratulated Jim and said, 'Great call.' It's out of the ordinary, but when it happens, and it's the World Series, you expect to get it right."