Moral lessons from Vichy France

 Donald J. Trump started a war with Iran without approval from Congress; he has killed without any moral justification - there will be no regime change, no saving the Iranians slated for death due to their protesting against their oppressive regime, but there will be a diminishment of America. The American people lost their heroic illusions during the Vietnam War, but we could say our best angels caused us to see the errors of our ways. We kept up the tug-of-war between our public morality and our power up to Trump. With the arrival of Trump, there arrived the thinking that power made right.

All that came to me from reading The Philosophers and Churchmen Who Fell for Fascism and listening to Is Trump’s VILIFICATION Of Democrats Worse Than Past Presidents?

That essay contains the following:

In that frothy age in France, there were many forks in the road. A person did not wake up one day and decide to collaborate with the Third Reich. There was a slow, almost imperceptible process of decision whereby someone was led one way or another. Of those who counted themselves faithful Christians, many adapted to Vichy, but many others stood against it in favor of a different idea of France—and a different idea of faith.

It is instructive, however, to consider how individuals who began from similar starting points went two separate ways. Some, like the philosophers Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson, saw the wickedness of Vichy for what it was, while others, like Bishop Auvity, compromised themselves morally step by step. How to maintain moral clarity and avoid a blind wandering into wickedness is a question of perennial importance. This age in France can tell us something about it. 

Think how we should apply this to us, and our times.

The Chuck Todd podcast has no explicitly moral axe to grind, but what else underlies politics and our ability to judge the actions of politicians.

 sch 3/24

 

Readings - Stroll Along

 I have been trying to catch up on too many fronts. What energy I have had today is long gone. Therefore, some notes on readings for the past few days.

Chain of Ideas by Ibram X Kendi review – anatomy of a conspiracy theory (The Guardian)

The central thesis is that the ideological origins of what Kendi terms “our authoritarian age” lie in the so-called “great replacement theory”. This is defined as “a political theory that powerful elites are enabling peoples of colour to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedoms of White people, who now need authoritarian protection”.

Is this not just white nationalism by another name? Not exactly. “Since Trump’s election in 2016 great replacement politicians and theorists had been increasingly organising international meetings, networks, charters, and associations,” Kendi argues. “For a long time, these extremists had concentrated domestically … before shifting to the transnational battle to defend the White race … which is why terming great replacement theorists ‘white nationalists’ doesn’t fully capture their new identity and ideology.”

Crucially, great replacement theory is not a single concept but a chain of interlocking ideas. The idea that racism against peoples of colour is over is connected to the idea that anti-white racism is on the rise, which is connected to the idea that insurrections against democracy protect the nation and so on. These ideas are easily challenged when looked at in isolation; it is their interconnectedness that gives the great replacement theory its emotional resonance. If the chain concept sounds familiar, by the way, that’s because it is borrowed from a quote by the 18th-century French lawyer Joseph Michel Antoine Servan, cited by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: “A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas.”

I should put Anne Fadiman on Essays, Personal and Historical over on the writing blog, but my idea for that blog is to showcase fiction. 

The Varieties of Religious Experience is the one William James book I  have meant to read for almost a half century. There is now a free e-book.

You probably have never heard of of Howard Jacobson. I ran across him in prison. In my mind, back then, I categorized him as an English Philip Roth without Roth's prickliness. If I can find time, I would read more Jacobson, but now he has a new a novel you might check out, The Guardian review, Howl by Howard Jacobson review – a tragicomic portrait of a Jewish man’s despair, makes a quick introduction that does not contradict my memories of what I read.

Howard Jacobson writes characters at their wits’ end; those characters are usually men, and those men are usually Jewish. Additionally, and problematically for both them and everyone around them, their collective wits are capacious: easily enlarged to allow idiosyncrasy to bloom into neurosis, preoccupation into obsession. And Jacobson’s men do the opposite of suffering in silence (although they do that too); they are much given to exhaustive and exhausting disputation, to arguing their point long after their interlocutors are longing for bed, and not in the fun way all parties might hope.

I am making the same decision for Empty Hiss; The short story form is an uneasy vessel for Helen Garner’s particular intensity by Max Callimanopulos (LARB). If not the short story, what format for intense emotions? Poetry?

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Lent, Orthodoxy and The Like

 I have already noted how a physical ailment is keeping me from doing as I think I should this Lent. It has left me too tired to attend church for one thing. However, I am learning from this conflict between body and spirit. It has given me an opportunity to look back at certain points in my life and think I made the right choices, even if the immediate reasons were not commendable. It also reminds me that while things could have been worse, they were bad enough that I need to keep my focus on behaving better to help counter the ugliness we too often let ourselves fall into.

Tonight, I read Are Evangelicals the New Liberals? (Marginalia Review of Books) is a bit misleading and, from my Eastern Orthodox perspective, sets out all that is wrong with Protestantism. Orthodoxy does not see the need to reinvent itself - neither Christ nor human nature have changed - but how to apply our Tradition to modern times. 

Why Orthodoxy Doesn’t Use Systematic Theology | Apophaticism, Mystery, and Lived Doctrine

 

About doctrinal differences:

 

  

Some books to explain Orthodoxy:

 I would add Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Way.

A brief introduction into Orthodox worship:

 A reminder we are not perfect:

 Looking in at one of our saints:

 Nasty Christians:

 Christian duty to their country:

 About Hell:

 Orthodoxy on Trial: Protestant Critiques and the Eastern Christian Response

 A Protestant Asks: What Is Orthodox Christianity (And Why Is It Growing?) w/ Jonathan Pageau

 Reject “Moralistic” Christianity!

 sch 3/19

Book & Writers

 I am undecided on whether to put reviews of books/writers on my new and still not open for the public blog. Today, I am more inclined to publish them here.

 Murakami:

 

Anne Petry - probably not a name you know, but a writer who did mean something once and whose work I read while in prison. She is worth reading; if still not sure, watch the following.

 

Jack Kerouac:

 Shakespeare (for the doubters):

Robert Heinlein's The Man Who Sold The Moon":

 

 sch 3/17

 

Indiana - Politics, Arts, Weirdness, History

Indiana is changing its Bill of Rights to do away with bail for all.  

 I think the arguments for its necessity are bogus and allow more power to the General Assembly than is good for Hoosiers. Congress has set up the federal system to ban bail for certain offenses, regardless of ability to pay, regardless of the actual dangers presented by the defendant. We will be allowing the same power to the General Assembly.

Also on this subject: Indiana bail amendment clears General Assembly, sending detention question to November ballot. 

TPUSA invades Indiana schools. I would have asked Governor Braun who are the other groups on the other side of TPUSA that are so loud in Indiana schools.
 

How Indiana is different from other states:

 Indiana history!

Our Civil War: 

The Whitewater Canal:
 

Sun Ra and Indiana:

 

“Chasing Ashes” has been put aside - the sinus infection caused that - but not my research. I want to see what I may be missing by getting the viewpoints of others. This is also why the videos of Muncie and Adnerson were watched.

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Touring Muncie

One thing that the past month of ill health has done for me is watch videos.  Two YouTube that make a case for Muncie—not a good case, but a case. 

 

sch 3/17

Touring Anderson

 I found myself truly impressed and surprised by the people who want to drive around Anderson and Muncie.

 

 

And I have to admit there was an unsettling feeling when I drove around the Mounds Mall area last year.

sch 3/17