Syriana

Remember in The Godfather how young Michael Corleone first appears, a dignified and principled Army captain who disdains the workings of the Cosa Nostra? But when his family is threatened, Michael transforms into a ruthless Mafia don with a code of honor that, for all its rituals and sanctimony, is chaotic and evil.

A similar character-driven drama is playing out in Syria where the son and heir of the monstrous Hafez al-Assad has followed in his father's footsteps, murdering over two thousand peaceful protesters to keep his grip on power. This same young man, Bashar al-Assad, once promised reform and freedom in his country. Returning from England, where he studied ophthalmology, he briefly encouraged a free press and countenanced dissenting voices. Bashar befriended the popular Syrian political cartoonist Ali Farzat, attending a gallery opening of a collection of his gently satirical works. He expressed admiration and encouraged their publication in a new magazine...for a little while.

Bashar either changed or he dropped his façade. Everyday we read of further atrocities in Syria's streets at his behest.

The cartoons here are by Ali Farzat. The one on top is from 2007 and states a universal truth about the alacrity with which nations go to war. Last Thursday, Assad's thugs kidnapped Farzat, beat him brutally, and broke his hands. But earlier today he seems to have overcome his injuries and sketched himself in his hospital bed. Click on the picture for a closer look at his gesture of defiance. Also, more of his work is displayed on his Facebook page, but the captions are in Arabic.

The Proper Study of Mankind

Where is the touchstone of memory? A friend's father had a charming quirk by which he discounted all changes to his environs. Thus the new Walmart was only squatting on Mr. Stillman's farm, and the sleek Exxon was just a mask fitted over the old general store with its hand cranked gas pump.

For people of my generation, an implanted memory abides from our first schoolbooks of Dick and Jane, Baby Sally, Spot, and Puff, and their lives on Pleasant Street. Theirs was a worriless world of temperate weather and kindly neighbors. From time to time, as I drive around Southern California, I see such neighborhoods with mature trees, wide streets, and grassy medians. For just a moment or two I can be fooled into thinking my memories are real and that the world of Pleasant Street in the 1950's is worth going back to.

But Pleasant Street is not a touchstone; it's a chimera. Post war America, despite its booming economy, was a place of great suffering. Poverty and discrimination were rampant. Conformity to narrowly defined religious and political beliefs, and social restrictions, were rigorously enforced both informally and by law. Shibboleths abounded regarding patriotism, sexual mores, race, God, and American exceptionalism.

And yet, I think we may be forgiven for hoping that one day we'll live in a demi-paradise of neighborliness and blooming gardens on shaded streets. What is unpardonable, however, is to believe that the past ever held a time when greater wisdom prevailed.

I mention this after reading Ryan Lizza's article about Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann in this week's New Yorker in which he names people who have profoundly influenced her religious and political thinking, starting with the late Francis Schaeffer, who helped inspire the rise of the religious right, and who denounced the Renaissance as a time when the world ceased to be God-centered and embraced the heresy of humanism. Others include a revisionist historian who sees the Civil War as an attack by the Godless North on the Christian South, and followers of "Dominionism" which is a call for an American theocracy.

I hope that greater exposure of Ms. Bachmann's atavistic thinking will result in her greater renunciation and derision.


The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793. In this neo-classical work, David appropriates the style of religious art (think of Michaelangelo's Pieta) to depict a secular martyr: radical journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat. The painting was grandly reproduced onstage in Peter Weiss' inspired 1963 play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , or Marat/Sade for short, which was embraced by radical chic audiences of the Viet Nam era.

Angry, Abandoned, Radicalized Middle

If I were a political creature, I'd be tempted to start a new movement, or perhaps a party, and call it AARM: Angry, Abandoned, Radicalized Middle.

This week saw two strong rebukes to our political system, first by the historic downgrading of American debt, and next by a resounding market slump. Both have been attributed to the recent debt deal in Congress that came up short of its goals and settled nothing. Not a cent has been cut from the budget; we have merely a promise to reduce spending while the country borrows enough to tide us over until after the next election.

A committee of twelve has been named, evenly divided between the parties and the Houses of Congress, to negotiate just 1.2 trillion dollars (down from 4 trillion) in budget cuts. The party leaders named the members and it appears that on the hill, it's business as usual. There are no mavericks in the bunch.

Meanwhile we centrists, who we're told comprise a majority of the voters, are unrepresented.

The polarizing issues are taxes vs. entitlements. The Republicans oppose any tax increases, or "revenue enhancements" in the parlance of the euphemizers, whatsoever. The Democrats are defending Social Security and Medicare, plus a host of social programs, against all cuts.

The A.A.R.M. sees clearly that both sides are wrong.

Taxes were foolishly lowered under the Bush administration and should be put back where they were. Entitlements have been overpromised through the years; modest adjustments in them today may prevent drastic cuts, or even elimination, later on.

But there is no time to waste. And so far as this writer can see, that's all Washington is doing or wants to do: kill time until the next election when each side hopes to effect a sweep so that it won't have to compromise. In other words, the once coveted middle ground has been abandoned and neither party wants to answer to the nation's centrist majority.

Are you feeling as angry, abandoned, and radicalized as I am?

Solitude by Marc Chagall, 1933. The worried rabbi represents the Jewish people, outcast from the darkened city at the onset of the holocaust. The Torah scroll, the small and innocent looking cow, and the violin that's been set aside, recall the shtetl life that is no more. An angel flies unnoticed through ominous skies. Solitude decries the people's abandonment and isolation. Click on the picture for a closer look.

No posting this week.

Please come back next week.

"Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know"

Until the word "serenely", Lord Byron's poem seems to prophesy Amy Winehouse. Perhaps the last eight lines are also apt, if we read them as what lies beneath her shadows. Certainly Amy and her art present a nocturnal beauty.

She was a flawed creature who thought herself ugly and who wrote "You Know I'm No Good." She was wrong.


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
(1814)

Amy Winehouse (1983-2011) left us two distinct and impeccably produced albums, with a dozen or more songs yet to be released.


Girl Smoking by Wilhelm Sasnal, 2001. Sasnal is a realist not in the way he paints, but because he only paints what he has seen. When I came across this, I spent a long time studying her shocks of hair and the defiant turn of her neck. Click on the picture for a closer look.

The Weakness of Solidarity

Among the more memorable things that President Ronald Reagan said is his Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." The irony is that he didn't need to say it because the GOP has long been loathe to air its laundry in public.

Their solidarity has not always served them well. George W. Bush received near unanimous party support as he cut taxes while waging a war of choice. Since then, many have regretted that more Republican voices weren't raised in challenge.

In the current debt-limit crisis, which most of us are thoroughly sick of, Republicans are again presenting a solid front. However, it's only a front. Behind the scenes, we are told, Speaker Boehner is warding off a challenge to his leadership by Congressman Cantor. His walking out of negotiations with the president makes us wonder if he isn't afraid that he can't deliver his caucus once a deal is reached.

Senior Republicans, especially in the Senate, are prepared to reach an accommodation with the Democrats over tax increases but are being shouted down by Tea Party members, mostly freshmen Congressmen, who are implacably opposed. And all the while, declared GOP presidential candidates are contributing no visible leadership on this issue. I suggest that the Republican party is not so much solidified as stalemated from within.

Is it a stretch to say that the Republicans are paying a price for cozying with the Religious Right? The party that should be the wellspring of economic wisdom and legislative prudence is now in the thrall of people whose economic convictions are as dogmatic as their ideas about abortion, creation, climate change, and the rights of gays.

I've often said that if America had a truly conservative party, I'd join it. But right now, I remain a social liberal/fiscal conservative without a home.


Perhaps the last generally admired Republican to occupy the oval office was Theodore Roosevelt. But as a trust-buster and an ardent conservationist, he might not have been a Republican today. Here is a campaign poster from 1900 that is marvellously detailed except that it neglects to identify the candidates. TR ran as the progressive William McKinley's new pick to be vice-president. McKinley was assassinated in 1901 by an anarchist. Click on the picture for a closer look and note the "bug" at the bottom of the page indicating that the poster was printed in a union shop.

Beaux Arts

In Lyon, across from the Musée des Beaux Arts, stands this fountain by Frederic Bartholdi. If his name rings a bell, it's because he sculpted the Statue of Liberty. It depicts France as a woman riding a chariot and driving four hard charging horses. They represent the four great rivers that flow through the nation, which are, I think, the Seine, Rhone, Garonne, and Loire, but I'm just a tourist and a wine drinker.

The picture doesn’t do the whole setting justice, for next to it are some outdoor cafes that sprawl out onto the square. The fountain is passionate and alive with its horses galloping amid powerful water sprays, while the people sit leisurely drinking their boissons and reading or chatting, either with each other or on their cell phones.

Since my return to America, I've heard nothing but debate about government budgets. Not only is Washington stalemated, but nearly every state is in crisis. Minnesota just reopened its government after shutting down altogether. Here in California, seventy state parks are going to be closed, leaving them vulnerable to irreversible damages and losses. For it is a sad fact of American life that public art and open spaces are invitations to vandalism: the revenge of the weak upon the society they despise and that despises them.

No one builds fountains like this anymore. Indeed, resources for all civic amenities are drying up, and opportunities to wile away time in a public place, with ease, beauty, and grace, are fast disappearing.

La Fontaine Bartholdi, 1889. Click on the picture for a closer look, and see if you can find where he engraved his name.