Dear Tunomukwathi Asino,

Journalists always want rapid responses.  The following answers to your questions have been posted at my blog, where I express views on a variety of similar issues.

How long have you lived in Centre County? (if not born here, then What caused you to move here?)
I moved to State College in 1992 to become a Full Professor of History at Penn State University.  This is, however, a peculiar question.  The chances of a university professor’s finding a job in the city where they were born is just about zero.   I don’t know any university professors who work in the city where they were born.   I was born in Detroit, and I tried once or twice to get positions at Wayne State University and University of Michigan, but nothing ever came of these efforts.

My first job was at the University of Iowa, and I liked it there, but I was uncertain about my future, so I took a step down and moved to Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas, where I became the first black member of the history department of that “lily white” institution, and I believe the first black senior faculty member ever.  Shortly after arriving at SMU I received a post-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation, which made it possible for me to escape and live in England with my family for two years.   I did not find Dallas a congenial social or intellectual environment for my children, and we were all much happier living in Cambridge, England.

From there, I was able to move to Brown University because I had produced two books.  Then I went to Boston University, where I continued to publish.    During the eighties, I also served as visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Vienna and Fulbright guest professor at the Free University of Berlin.  I improved my German and read 100 books in that language, meanwhile publishing two more books of my own.

What is/was your job?
I am a history professor, with interests in American, African, and European literary history, intellectual history, the history of political thought, the history of art, the history of theology, the history of classical music, Africana Studies, and opera.  I decided on my career at the age of 14.  I never seriously considered any other career, not even high school teaching or junior college teaching.   I always knew I wanted to be a professor at a major research university.

Did you raise children here? (how many)
I raised no children here.  My youngest son was 18 when I arrived, and he graduated from State College High School in 1993.   He received earlier portions of his education in England, Germany, and Austria and in public and in the private schools of Rhode Island.    My older son, who graduated from Yale in 1987, has never lived in Pennsylvania.

In your experience, has life changed for blacks in Centre County over the course if your time here?
I have seen no changes whatever in the status of blacks in Centre County during the 17.5 years I have lived here, but my perspective is extremely limited, due to the fact that my only tie to the community is the University.  I have only once been called a “nigger.”

Can you point to key moments or events locally or nationally during your lifetime that had a significant impact on your life?
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had the courage to invoke the United Nations Charter and end de jure segregation in America.  President Lyndon Johnson enforced affirmative action.  Without their leadership, this country would still be a living hell, dominated by the likes of Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican from South Carolina, the great hypocrite, who seduced a young black girl and secretly had an illegitimate child by her, while preaching segregationist doctrines.   Senator Trent Lott was rightly condemned for praising the evil racism practiced by Senator Strom Thurmond.

What is the most surprising thing related to being black that ever happened to you here? (this might be a good thing or a bad thing but follow up if necessary by asking how that turned out or what impact it had on the person)
I have had no surprises.  Everything has gone exactly as I expected.  I arrived here extremely well-advantaged, and have enjoyed a privileged and atypical life, unknown to most black people anywhere on this planet.

Is there more work to be done in the area of race relations here? If so, in what would you propose specifically?
I do not see any race-specific solutions to the problems of working-class black families, who earn less than $60,000 per year.  I call for a national program of industrial revitalization, like the New Deal of the 1930s, which combined capitalism with socialism to improve the lives of white, black and other peoples in the United States.   The best possible immediate solution to the problems of the working poor is a rebirth of American industry, but such a development is impossible without firm government support, such as the support that industry receives in China.  Only with a rebirth of American industry will it be possible to raise interest rates, raise taxes, and to increase government spending in the public sector, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did.  Industrial revitalization would also make it possible to have socialized medicine, with a private option, such as I enjoyed when I lived in England.

A good first step to improving the lives of working people – black, white, and other – would be to fire the fat cat senior executives who have been destroying the private sector, and working the puppet strings of Congress.  They are obviously inadept, and have constantly demonstrated their lack of public spirit.  Yet they claim that they deserve to be paid higher salaries than a dedicated public servant.

General David Howell Petraeus has a Ph. D. from Princeton, and he earns less than $250,000, although he is exceedingly more competent that most people in the private sector who earn 10 times his salary.  The executives in the private sector don’t know anything worhtwhile and they have nothing to offer.  They are the cause of our problems.  When will the American people understand that the emperor has no clothes?  The fat cats corrupt government, and manipulate media to elect officials who do not believe in medicare, social security, paying the national debt, or even supporting the military.  These are the same hypocrites who are currently destroying both the private and the public sectors of our economy.    The executives at Chase Manhattan and AIG ought to go out and get honest jobs, such as cleaning rooms at Holiday Inn.

Prospects of a Revolution from the Right
February 28, 2009

Ethelbert Miller, the Washington poet, is right in expressing fears of a revolution-from-the-right. According to Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups are on the rise.  Meanwhile “respectable” conservatives are already blaming Obama for aggravating the economic crisis.

For a discussion of  typical conservative doublethink as to what caused the housing and banking crisis.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1011

Unfortunately I frequently have students informing me, that the banking crisis was caused by the Community Reinvestment act!    That’s as big a joke as blaming minimum wage laws for unemployment, or blaming the Great Depression on the New Deal.  But don’t laugh!

The above dogmas are currently being taught and accepted in most economics departments and MBA programs.  The sad thing is that good kids regardless of gender, race, or class, are susceptible to such notions and absorb them indiscriminately.  It is ironic to contemplate working class students rising up in anger and protesting that they can no longer afford to attend business schools that indoctrinate them with propaganda that is tailored to undermine their own class interests.

How can we win against this sort of thing?

We must continue to inform them that Roosevelt increased taxes and created government jobs, and that his only fault was not being aggressive enough until the war provided him an opportunity.  One stage  of his recovery plan was the Lend Lease Act, which kept the factories humming by building tanks and giving them to Stalin.   Another part was the banking reforms, which kept us out of a depression for almost seventy years.

For thirty years under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Democrats and Republicans conspired to dismantle the New Deal.  Under Alan Greenspan, appointed Fed Chairman by Reagan, and renewed by Clinton, and both Bushes, the government followed a course of constant inflation, in the prices of health, education, and housing.  The Congressional Budget office, Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Council of Economic advisers, etc., conspired to fudge the statistics and lie to us about inflation, telling us it didn’t exist.

In reality, real wages dropped constantly, tempting middle-class households to take out adjustable rate mortgages, foolishly hoping to benefit from constant inflation of housing prices to compensate for inadequate purchasing power — in other words speculating against the dollar

Meanwhile, their children were graduating from college owing tens of thousands of dollars, and unable to find jobs.  It became increasingly difficult to afford the costs of health care for our grandparents, our parents, our children, or ourselves.

The housing bubble has popped, and I predict this is nothing compared to what may be coming if the credit card bubble busts.

When people start pushing wheelbarrows full of worthless money to the supermarket, they will blame Obama, and that should be enough to bring out the Nazi armbands.  As it was in Germany, 1923.

General Motors and General Petraeus

General Motors and General Petraeus
by Wilson J. Moses, February 14, 2009

Americans have notoriously short memories, so I have to remind myself that the first $700 billion bail-out, the “Troubled Assets Relief Program” (TARP), was a product of the Bush administration.  It was presented to the Senate by former Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, who isn’t stupid.  Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, also not stupid, accompanied him on his trip to the Senate, but the proposal belonged to the Bush administration.  Paulson graduated from Dartmouth, where he demonstrated sufficient agility and mental quickness to become an All-Ivy linebacker, and to make Phi Beta Kappa, as well.  Paulson was obviously playing dumb, like a fox, in his intentionally inept responses to the questions of Richard Shelby (R-Ala) ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

Much as I oppose the ideology of Senator Shelby, I must give him credit for saying that “Even if the Paulson plan works perfectly, which many doubt, including nearly two hundred economists, it will not stimulate new lending, stop de-leveraging, help distressed home owners, or jump start the economy.”  The Senator’s doubts were obviously well-founded, for, so far the plan has not worked.  As many suspected, although Sen. Shelby did not say it, Mr. Paulson has shown himself to be no more than high quality stick-up artist.    Many bankers have lined their pockets, with the bail-out monies, and so have the executives at General Motors.

Paulson got away with playing dumb, but he knew exactly what he was doing when he got $750 billion from the government for his Wall Street bail out.  He knew the heads of insolvent banks had no intention of addressing the economic melt-down.  He knew the money would disappear into the pockets of brilliant, but incompetent executives.  Paulson himself, formerly employed by Goldman Sachs, one of the banks he arbitrarily selected for salvation, is estimated to have earned over $16,000,000 in the year he became Secretary of the Treasury.  His estimated worth is around $700,000,000.  Fair enough everybody wants to be rich, but why should I pay him, or people like him for performing no detectable public service, and lining their friends pockets?

President Barack Obama seems to think that people like Henry Paulson have expertise for which we must pay whatever astronomical salaries the market supposedly demands.  Compensation in the $15 million range is the unavoidable cost of the superior expertise of people like Stan O’Neil, who ran Merril Lynch into bankruptcy.  But Ben Bernanke, presumably an expert of similar acuteness, draws a salary of only $191,300, and we trust him to clean up the mess.  It seems unlikely the quoted figure is Bernanke’s entire annual income, but if he is willing to serve the Fed for such a reasonable salary, why can’t the government find other people of his caliber to work in banking for similar amounts?

General David Howell Petraeus does his job for less than $250,000 per year

General Petraeus, who holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, isn’t stupid, but he too works for a reasonable salary.  Even his critics must admit that he is capable, intelligent, ambitious, and loyal.  He has shown far more competency at his job than the people who have been managing General Motors, Chrysler, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, or Goldman Sachs.  Most of them are compensated with salaries and bonuses in the multi-millions.

And General Petraeus does his job for less than $250,000 per year.

I say nationalize all corporations that benefit from any government bail-out, and immediately rescale all executive salaries to correspond to salaries paid in the United States Military.  If senior business executives don’t want to work for $250,000, then let them walk.  Every year a considerable number of military officers, above the rank of major, but below the age of fifty go into retirement.  Why cannot we dip into this reservoir of talent to replace the parasites who are currently leeching off the taxpayers?  This question is somewhat rhetorical, for retired colonels and brigadiers are not the only pool of available talent.   There are other persons in this economy, besides younger military retirees, who are capable of running businesses and industries for reasonable salaries.  But the candidate pool for a nationalized business or industry would logically include military retirees, many of whom have demonstrated administrative ability along with their records of commitment to public service.

Thomas Friedman? Benjamin Franklin? Which do you Trust?

Thomas Friedman? Benjamin Franklin?  Which do you Trust?

Copyright©2008 by Wilson J. Moses

Thomas Friedman, the author of “All Fall Down” NY Times (Nov 25, 08) often gets things wrong, before getting them half-right.  He is unfair in placing any blame for this real estate bubble on the “People who had no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years.”  People who fall into that category are of ordinary intelligence, and have need, as we all do, of  “the kindness of strangers,” in order to survive.  Although some people with IQs of 90 are capable of  graspin household microeconomics, others with IQs above 140 are not.  Our current crisis provides incontrovertible evidence that, most Americans, including college graduates with high achievements on standardized tests, lack a basic understanding of saving and investment.

Benjamin Franklin created Poor Richard’s Almanack to teach many things, among these, a non-confrontational class-consciousness, an appreciation for saving, and an awareness that personal prosperity sometimes, if not always, requires a moderate parsimony.  Serviceable as it is, few Americans today can put Poor Richard’s common-sense ethic into practice, to guide an enlightened self interest.

It is thus necessary and proper for a civilized nation to sustain such structures as fire departments, public schools, a well-regulated  banking system, social security, and public health, in order to protect the masses, both bright and dim, from clever but unscrupulous risk-takers.

Another category of Friedman culprits, “people who had no business pushing such mortgages,” did not for the most part make “fortunes doing so.”   Most of these are people of mediocre understanding, honest, but credulous, who work at the local bank on Main Street.  These people also lack class consciousness and have never learned from Poor Richard’s catechism how to serve their own interests.  These people did not make millions, but currently find themselves in danger of losing their homes, victims of their own irrational exuberance and blind faith in the conventional wisdom of their leaders.

Friedman’s third category, the people who were “bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties,” are somewhat more culpable.   These products of the Wharton, Chicago, and Stanford MBA programs, and lesser institutions, are capable of understanding their errors, and might have known better, but they are so lacking in creativity, imagination and skepticism (despite their vaunted grade point averages and standardized test scores) that they really are not to blame either.  They were simply following the teachings of their mentors in business school.   They are ideologically screwed up and dreadfully spoiled, but not bad people at heart.  It is simply that the typical MBA began with the intelligence of a playboy bunny, and was further dumbed-down by their business school.

More to blame are the professors, in the humanities and social sciences, who abandon the field of political economy to a few “experts” in the “appropriate departments”.   We stick to our syllabi, and allow our students to be mislead that the reforms of the New Deal were the cause, not the cure of the Great Depression of 1929-1940.   We fear to confront our colleagues who “validate” their positions with mathematical models, so elegant as to outdo the most artful constructions of classical and medieval astronomers.   These hire teams of graduate students to crunch numbers to “prove” that the sun circles the earth, and the rest of the planets move in exotic epicycles.

Mathematicians and physicists, are thus blamable because, despite the lessons of the Long Term Capital debacle of the 1990’s, they collaborated in the credit swap fantasies, inventing hypothetical choirs of angels to dance on the heads of hypothetical pins.  Professors in the liberal arts and sciences betrayed ourselves and our students by our cowardly silence.  A little faith in our own common sense might have led us at least to suggest, that the empire’s clothiers were half-naked themselves.

These sorcerers and their Mickey Mouse grad students have interests overlapping those of their Wall Street chums, who did indeed make a lot of money from pumping up the real estate balloon.   Also culpable are the Federal Reserve bankers, the Secretaries of the Treasury, the House and Senate committee members, whose buddies marketed and rated the bonds, sold them, bought them, refused to regulate them, and convinced ordinary people that unrestrained price inflation (whether in real estate, commodities, or securities) is inevitable, eternal, and benevolent.

There are plenty of Americans who really do try to live within their means; people who are content to have fixed-rate, 30-year mortgages at reasonable rates, who establish monthly budgets, who drive modest cars for a decade or more, pay their taxes, and try to accumulate capital by thrift and saving.

Controlled inflation can be beneficial to small capitalists, small farmers, and even to wage earning people.  Benjamin Franklin realized as much when, at the age of twenty-one, he called for an increase in the colonial money supply.  But the American dream of a perpetually expanding “South Sea Bubble” of the sort that Mr. Henry Paulson and his Wall Street cronies seek to restore is unrealistic.

Americans’ realistic expectations during our most prosperous era, were solidly grounded in the Henry Ford principle of a living wage, and the Thomas Malthus principle of public spending towards development of public infrastructure.  No restoration of economic security will be possible if we start with the assumption that these principles, which eventually came to be called “Keyneanism,” have been entirely discredited.

The Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower economy provided a factory worker with a thirty year mortgage at 8%.  It also provided a four percent return on a pass book account at a Main Street bank.  An eighth grade graduate could afford to send two or three children to college, without taking out loans, and a young couple could afford a 20% down payment on their first home.  Evolving world conditions may never allow for America to revert to that economy,

Thanks to Reaganomics, the Roosevelt structure has been so mindlessly vandalized that Eisenhower Era expectations are no longer realistic.  But whatever the cause of our present ills, no cure will be found in the pseudo-patriotic bravado of so-called “conservative” think tanks, or in the pep talks of MSNBC pundits.  Any solution must be found in a completely new appreciation of those areas of the economy that are actually productive, including industry, agriculture, communications, transportation, and trade.  We need producers like Ford and Rockefeller, Carnegie and Gates, who despite their predatory tendencies, at least created material industries.

Finance is not an industry but a service, where we do not need those who commit the semantical crime of referring to securitized mortgages as “products.”   The demand of the hour is not for buccaneers or risk-takers, but for sober anti-inflationists like Nicholas Biddle and J. P. Morgan to guard against the speculative borrow-and-spend bubbles that accompanied Reagan’s voodoo economics.

Friedman states an obvious and almost redundant truth, obvious to at least some of us.  The system is broken, and the American dream, insofar as it is based on a perpetual spiral of borrowing to speculate, is completely unrealistic.  Friedman admits that certain irrational aspects of the dream may not be retrievable in the short run.  My reading of Poor Richard’s Almanack leads me to the common-sense assumption that they are not realizable in the long run either.

Wilson’s Obama Poem

Wilson’s Obama Poem
Copyright©2008, by Wilson J. Moses

Obama married black America
The mighty wife
And two precocious little girls
Innocent, elite, dainty
Prettiness comes as naturally to them
As skipping.

But lest we forget
(And this to me is important)
His folk were not from Niger or from Congo
They spoke a Nilotic language
And fought for cattle on Afric’s eastern plains
They did not furnish captives
For the dungeon of Cape Coast Castle
Or dance under the lash
On decks of slave ships
No dreams deferred of forty acres
And a skinny mule

The father he barely knew
Was a Kenyan goatherd
With a Disneyland T-shirt
And a bright American scheme
Leaving on a jet plane
Crossing a continent to gaze on the Pacific
Towards a land where palm trees swayed
And a cute whte girl from Kansas swam within his ken
Doing a hippy love-dance

Mather’s University was Cotton
That seemed within his reach
But beyond, alas, his grasping fingers
The apostate father slipped back
To Africa.  Resourceful mom
Moved on to Indonesia

Thus from a global meeting of East and West
A black Irishman with midwestern roots
Offspring of an Atheist/Transcendentalist Union
(Never Catholic. Never Muslim)
Came to Chicago
Where a Dark Madonna with big shoulders
Taught him the black Jeremiad
And becoming African American for the first time
Obama Married black America.

As Newton to Galileo; so Marx to Adam Smith

Newton said, “If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”   Many scholars have assumed that principal among these giants was Galileo.    I suggest that Marx stood on the shoulders of Smith in the same metaphorical respect.  One of Marx’s feet was placed on the shoulder of Smith with respect to labor theory of value, which Smith so staunchly defended against the physiocrats of the ancienne regime.  The other foot was placed on Smith’s other shoulder, an understanding ot the inevitability of class conflict.

Here the metaphore breaks down, because we run out of shoulders.  Other important components of Smith’s theory, were as compatible with Marx as they were irreconcilable with the theories of Thomas Jefferson.  Smith was opposed to slavery, on economic and on moral grounds, while Thomas Jefferson defended it at length in Notes on the State of Virginia.  Smith understood the importance of the industrial process and the legitimate moral claims of the artisans and mechanics, who were objects of Jefferson’s profoundest contempt.

JOE THE PLUMBER & ADAM SMITH

JOE THE PLUMBER & ADAM SMITH
by Wilson J. Moses

This election is a continuation of the culture wars, and it is likely that cultural symbols may trump economic interests.  On the cultural level, this plays out the Vietnam war all over again.   That is one reason that Ayers has emerged as an icon.  Previously the election of 2004 was about Vietnam, with John Kerry serving as an icon.  McCain, also an icon, sees the Presidency as his opportunity to vindicate not only the Iraq war, but Vietnam, as well.

On the economic level, Republicans, see the election as a way of further destroying the Keynesian economic policies that predominated from Roosevelt through Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.  People like Joe the Plumber foolishly believe that if they were not taxed, they could take their money and use it to invest on their own.  It is obvious to everyone but themselves that they lack the capacity to do so.   Indeed, most of us lack the capacity to do so, and it is this knowledge that distinguishes a working-class liberal from a working class conservative.   The Sarah Palins lack all humility, and really do believe that they are as smart as Warren Buffett.  They forget that a guy like McCain begins life with tremendous advantages, and proceeds thereafter, with access to information and institutions that they are unavailable to most of the working class.  Far too many workers foolishly believe that they can succeed outside institutional structures supported by government and taxation.

Adam Smith, who is so frequently mis-charactrized by Marxist historians, said in 1776:

“It sometimes happens, indeed, that a single independent workman has stock sufficient both to purchase the materials of his work, and to maintain himself till it be completed. He is both master and workman, and enjoys the whole produce of his own labour, or the whole value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed. It includes what are usually two distinct revenues, belonging to two distinct persons, the profits of stock, and the wages of labour.
Such cases, however, are not very frequent; and in every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another.
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.”

Joe the Plumber does not see the need to have a plumber’s license, or a union card, or to pay his taxes.   He earns $40,000 annually, and yet he identifies with people earning $250,000.   This ordinary wage earner does not, and cannot understand what Adam Smith is talking about.   His vision is too occluded by his his abstract fears, his unrealizable American Dream, and his subliminal recognition of his inferiority to hereditary aristocrats like John McCain, who are stronger and smarter than himself.  He is unaware of his interests and incapable of acting in accord with them.  Adam Smith is often misrepresented as standing in opposition to Karl Marx.   In fact Marx stood on the sturdy shoulders of Smith.

Paul Craig Roberts, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. This erstwhile Reaganite quotes the following statement from Pravda in his article at COUNTERPUNCH http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08132008.html

“Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is ‘magnificent foreign intelligence’ such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being ‘driven around the country in vehicles’? Suppose Russia declares for instance that ‘Saakashvili stiffed the world’ and it is ‘time for regime change’?

Paul Craig Roberts concludes: “The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.” Shocking when one reflects that Paul Craig Roberts was a prominent Reaganite!

We are now being forced to face a number of myths: Myth no. 1. Reagan won the Cold War. Myth no. 2. We live in a post-industrial age. Myth no. 3. The United States is the only super-power.

If we were in a post-industrial age, we would not be trying to set up NATO in all the states of the former Soviet Union in order to break the Russian monopoly on central Asian oil. If we had left the industrial age, we wouldn’t be competing with the Chinese for oil. Obviously we are willing to risk a nuclear war in order to control the energy sources, necessary for life in an industrial era.

I am not inclined to see things from the Russian point of view, so correct me if I am wrong: Couldn’t any fool see that the Russians have their own peculiar version of a Monroe Doctrine? And can’t any fool see that if the United States doesn’t want Russian missiles in Cuba, the Russians don’t want NATO forces in Georgia.

George Bush once said of Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.

There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.”

Obama has wisely kept his mouth shut with respect to Georgia, as much as possible.

McCain continues to talk big while carrying a wet noodle. Unless he wants to launch the nukes.

Why are you so quick to say “We are all Georgians,” Mr. McCain? I am not prepared to follow you there. We are both old enough to remember that Joseph Stalin is Georgia’s most important contribution to the history of our times. In fact, whenever we hear of Georgia, Stalin is our first if not our only association. Georgia is the victim of Russia in the same way that Austria is the victim of Germany. The worst crimes of the “evil empire” were perpetrated by a Georgian. I am not prepared to blow up the world for Georgia’s newfound national integrity.

What is McCain proposing to do, follow in Napoleon’s footsteps with a march on Moscow? This is typical McCainism, patriotic bravado, backed up, in this instance, by good ol’ Joe Lieberman. Let us hope and pray that all this dangerous posturing is purely for domestic consumption. Aside from its control of gas and oil reserves, Russia’s trump card is, of course, increased support for Iran’s nuclear program. McCain supports the very Bush policies that provoked this crisis. His saber-rattling could be the start of something big.

Bush is dispatching Condoleezza Rice to Paris and then Tbilisi and sending military and Naval forces with “humanitarian aid and medical supplies.” Uh huh.

Let McCain have the presidency, then he can go ahead a blow up the world. Why should I care? I am sixty six, and five months older than the late Isaac Hayes. As for the McCain supporters, they will continue to sell bravado — even when they see their children dying from radiation sickness, their hair falling off, their skins peeling away.

Tristan et Iseut I

Tristan et Iseut I
Parmi les versions de Tristan et Iseut les plus connues sont les versions du deuxieme siecle de Béroul, de Thomas d’Angleterre, et d’Eilhart von Oberge, et celles du troisieme siecle de Gottfried von Strassbourg et Friar Róbert. Pendant le moyen age, il n’y a pas un grand intérèt pour découvrir ou reconstruire un version originale du poeme. Les écrivains du cette epoque n’avaient aucun intérêt ou estime pour le utilité du concept “renouvellement” tel que on le comprend aujourd’hui. On peut dire, que la legende de Tristan et Iseut est parmi les exemples de l’amour courtois, les plus connus. Chaucer, s’interessait, a la tradition tristanienne parfois directement, parfois satiriquement, comme on peut decouvrir dans ses contes“The Franklin’s Tale” et “The Millers Tale.” Des autres ecrivains du moyen age, comme Thomas Malory, qui a fini son text anglais, La Morte d’Arthur (1469 ou 1470), ou Thomas Caxton, l’imprimeur qui a amelioré et publié la soi disant Mallory-Caxton version de la legende en 1485, n’ont pas d’interet pour rechercher ou decouvrir une version originale. Pourtant, la legende du Tristan et Iseut represent un tiers de cette oeuvre, mais les événements dans la vie des deux amants ne sont pas le seul intérêt dans la Mallory-Caxton narrative. En conséquence la version, qu’on trouve dans le text de La Morte d’Arthur est incomplete, et sans egard pour les problemes et incoherences de differente sources variables. Les poetes du seizieme siecle et des lumieres ne faisaient guere attention aux légendes du Moyen Age. Bien sûr il y a des poètes anglais de la Renaissance, comme Spenser et Shakespeare qui s’interssaient au haute Moyen Age, mais en général, les poetes erudites et les humanistes entre 1600 et 1800, comme Milton en Angleterre ou Racine en France, etaient plus preoccupés avec la civilisation classique. Ils essaieint, spécialement en France, de reconstruire ses oeuvres, a les methodes aristotliennes et consideraient la Moyen Age comme un age de barbarisme. Les francais meprisaient specialment les traditions medievales dans la literature anglaise. Bien sûr Voltaire avait un grand respect pour les anglaise, mais dans le reaume scientifique seulement, il n’avait pas d’égard pour Shakespeare ou même pour les anciennes tradition literaires anglaise. Quant aux Anglais, lui méme, ils n’avaient pas d’egarde pour le Moyen Age a cette epoque, bien que, a consequence de leur nationalism litteraire, il a fallu qu’ils canonisaient Chaucer et Shakespeare. Mais en general, les legendes mediavale comme Tristan et Iseut n’etaient pas populaires pendant les lumieres.
C’est au debut du dixneuvieme siecle, avec la naisance du mouvement romantique, que les humanistes comme Goethe, ont developé un nouvel intérêt pour le Moyen Age, et pendant le dixneuviemme siècle, en 1859, que Richard Wagner a construir la version moderne la plus importante de la legende. A la Fin de siècle, Joseph Bedier, a essayé de faire une reconstruction du poème, et decouvrir les eléments essentiels de la lgende (1900). Mais ´le plus important dans la philosophie de Bedier est la croyance qu’il y a une version original, qui a existé jadis. Apres le temps de Bedier il y a des autres erudites qui cherchaient à construir d’autres renouvellements. Ces reconstructions representaient les efforts des erudits et poetes de faire quelque chose, qui etait sans importance pour Malory ou Caxton au XVe siecle, ou pour Wagner pendant le XIXe. Wagner a ecrit son opera Tristan et Isolde (1859) sans égard pour les versions deja existantes, qu’il a connu, puisque ses intentions etaient parfois erudites mais pas scientifiques, ou on peut dire qu’ils sont artistiques avec un vernis d’érudition. Pour Wagner le plus important etait de construir et exprimer sa propre philosophie au moyen de sa musique et sa poesie, et il n’avait aucune intention d’etre fidele aux versions mediéval de Béroul ou de Gottfried von Strasbourg.
L’erudit americain Henry Adams a théorisé (1904) que la legend medievale, comme la legende moderne, n’ont pas à voir avec les experiences des amants originals. Il doutait s’il y a jamais vraiment aucunes amants originals. Les versions orales des troubadours du XIe siecle, et même les intentions des ecrivains du XIIe et XIIIe siècles sont tres eloignes des recits “originaux.” Adams a insinué dans un ton assez ironique, que l’esprit de la original serait plus proche de l’esprit de Wagner, que de l’esprit du Béroul ou de Chretien de Troyes. Adams a reviser les idées des specialistes de cette époque, et partageait leurs opinions que la source de la legende etait dans l’age de pierre, et que l’original Trystan, ou l’homme que il symbolisait, n’avait pas vu un cheval ou une épée d’acier. Pendant que Bedier a essayé de comprendre l’esprit du recit original, Adams a sutenu l’opinion selon laquell il est impossible de comprendre l’esprit de l’orginal. En général les erudits du XIXe siecle, comme Bedier cherchaient les origines, des differentes versions de la legende, et essaient d’imaginer quel étaient les elements essentielles de la legende. Ils ont posé des problems qui étaient sans intérêt pour les anciens ecrivains et poetes.
Bedier a la fin du XIXe cherchait la soi disant “Ur Tristan,” qui probablement n’avait pas existé, et plusieurs des erudites de XIXe siecle a supçonner, q’il n’y a pas de recit original. Donc Les erudites du vingtieme siècle, mais les érudites d’aujourd’hui s’interesse plus à comprendre a quel façon les versions differents peut refleter les preoccupations des societés respectives qui ont construi les differentes renouvellements. Chaque epoque ont fourni les receptacles culturelles pour accuellir les versions differents de la legende. Pendant le dernier semain, j’ai lu une artiicle qui a presenté une observation tres ironique, que l’original Tristan peut etre un porcher du sixiem siécle. Cette interpretation vienne du XIIIe siecle, donc on peu penser, que meme les erudits medievals ont d’un sens d’ironie, pendent que ils rassemblent les sources et exemples des texts ancienne pour reconstruir l’histoire de la litterature de l’occident.

Obama vor der Siegessäule

Es gibt zwei grundlegende Voraussetzungen bevor man democratischer oder republikanischer Kandidat der amerikanischen Präsidentschaft werden kann. Man muss die Todestraffe vertretten, und man darf keine Kritik von Israel dulden. Naïve Europaer glauben dass Hillary, Gore, oder Obama irgendeine Position gegen die Totestrafe genommen haben; ganz im Gegenteil, sie haben sie klar und deutlich unterstutzt, weil sie unvermeidbar von jeden ernsthafter Kandidaten unterstutz werden muss. Dass so viele Missverstandnisse zu dieser Frage unter Deutschen gibt, finde ich merkwürdig und erstaunlich. So eine Meinung wäre nie gehalten von jemandem der mit der durchschnitlichen amerikanischen Bevolkerung normalen Kontakt hat. Naturlich gibt es andere Bedingungen, aber vor einigen Wochen musste Obama die Frage beantworten ob er die Totestraffe für den sexuellen Misbrauch eines Kindes empfehlen würde. Natürlich, in diese Falle war nur eine Antwort möglich, und weil Obama kein Narr ist, wusste er ganz genau, dass auch wenn das Kind nicht getötet war, dass seine Antwort nur ein unbedinktes “Ja” werden konnte. Aber es war über die bereits entscheidende Frage von des Schutzes Israels worum der Hauptdiskurs während dieses Weltbummel ginge, und zwar Obama hat versucht alles mögliche zu tun um diese Frage richtig zu beantworten. Es wäre interressant, also, wenn er seiner bildhafte Rede über allerlei menschenfeindliche Mauern, während er in Jerusalem war, oder vielleicht als er an die Grenze zwischen Mexico und Texas anstatt im Berlin gegeben hat. Es war, aber, niemals zu erwarten dass Obama etwas sagen würde, dass als Angriffsmitttle von Seite der amerikanischen Rechtradikalen verwendet werden konnte.

Alle vernunftige Leute vermuten dass Obama kaum Chance hat diese Wahl zu gewinnen. Die einzige wichtige Sache ist, dass er diese Gelegenheit ergreift um der Welt zu beweisen, dass es innerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten, eine grosse Menge vernünftiger Leute gibt und dass nicht aller die Meinungen der Republikaner teilen. Nicht jeder glaubt dass Washington die Hauptstadt der ganzen Welt sein sollte, und dass der amerikanische Präsident berechtigt ist die Kultur und das Denken aller Menschen in dieselbe Richtung zu rudern. Leider als der ehemalige Präsident Jimmy Carter diese chauvinistishen Ideen zu vermildern versucht hat, wurde er als ein alberner und feiger Schlappschwanz in fast aller Zeitungen abbildet. Zu dieser Zeit wäre es auchreichend beschädigend einfach zu sagen das irendeine Vorschlag von Obama der Ideen von Carter ähnelnt, und es wäre genauso ausreichend zu sagen dass irgendeine Idee von McCain der Politik von Reagan ähnelt. Auf der anderen Seite ist es auch günstig wenn ein Demokrat wie Obama mit Kennedy verglichen werden kann. Es ist unwichtig dass Carter ein kultiviertes und hochentwickeltes und komplexes Bild der Welt hatte. In der Weltanschaung des grossen amerikanischen Pöbels ist es viel wichtiger dass Reagan und Kennedy filmsternähnliche Popularhelden waren. Beide haben wohlbekannte Erscheinunge im Berlin gemacht, die trotz Ihrer geringfügigen Wirkung im Weltgeschichte, vom Volk als Epiphanies betrachtet wurde. Besonders im Falle von Reagan, hat der Präsident gesprochen und sofort ist die Mauer gefallen. Es ist fast unpatriotisch dieser Meinung zu widersprechen, und sie steht als unbestreitbare Wahrheit in fast allen Textbüchern.

Also war es für Obama gunstig eine berliner Erscheinung zu leisten, aber für die bushfreundliche Merkel war es gleich wichtig dass er nicht vor dem Brandenburgische Tor spach. Ausserdem war es notwendig für Obama dass er ein Seiltanz zwischen patriotosmus und Weltburgrlicheit erledigt. Das war eine fast so wichtige Sache wie der Korb den er vor einige Tagen im Afghanistan geworfen hat. Aber die standige Kritik an Obama ist, dass er widerspruchlich ist, dass er Kosmopolitisch ist und gleichzeitigh mehr als eine Stelle verteidigen kann, und dies kann für einen Politiker gefärlich sein, weil dies die Merkmale eine elitiaire Intellektuelle sind. Beziehungsweise muss mann niemals vergessen dass auch ein Kriegesheld, wie George C. Marshall, Begrunder des Marshall Plans, von den Rechtsextremisten, während der McCarthyzeit, 1950-1953, as Verräter beschimpft wurde. Damals wurde Eisenhower der vernunftige Hinweis gegeben, Marshall nicht gleich zu verteidigen. Er musste nämlich Zeit gewinnen bis er in das Weisshaus kam und er die Gebetsfrüstucke eingesetzt hat, bevor er die geheimnissvollen Massnahmen ergreiffen konnte, um McCarthy zu Fall zu bringen. Also wird es bei Obamaglaubenden optimistich erwähnt dass wenn er gewählt wird, dass Obama mit der Unterstutzung eines freundlichen Kongresses, einen Weg finden wird, eine Liberalagenda durchsetzen zu können. Ich bin aber skeptisch.

Cette lettre est ma propre composition, bien que j’aie reçu l’aide de Beate mon précepteur. On peut voir que mon Français est aussi mauvais que mon Allemand.