Note to Americans

   

   In many ways it is shock-

   ingly shameful, that one

   privileged observer might

   finally portray the palp-

   able upheaval with which

   we all quiescently have

   lived, whether with com-

   plaint or exultation. To

   be 'roused by some anon-

   ymous prophet to confess

   the necessities of res-

   ponsibility, is unusual.

   What is the measure of

   consent in the governed?

But let's not lose our sense of humor

I, for one, have never been less than

delighted whenever the American Pres-

ident dismisses one of his more appal-

ling depredations of speech, as mere-

ly sarcastic. Who can object to even

the most abject desperation to deny

his own intentions, when they are so

immaculately exposed? Not for a mo-

ment, could anyone suggest that such

self-exculpation should deprive one

of a narcissistic claim of exemption  

for cheeky blondfanny, as opposed to

being seen for the worst ass around.

All this quivering, getting to you?

I was thinking, it might just be

timely for the Speaker to accept

one of those speaking engagements

which are the bane of a San Fran-

ciscan's existence, to mollify

the unseemly vibrations coursing

through her Party from the unend-

ing teases of the President. He

plays their strings of righteous

moral compulsion as the gift they

are to himself, from his spoiling

Office of infinite prerogatives;

and there is cause to soothe this

quivering with a little demonstra-

tion of sang froid that's seen it

all. At least she, of all obser-

vers, will understand how sumptu-

ously it suits the President, to

be chided on arms concessions to

someone unlikely to employ them.

A head fake, contrary to inter-

est, is a bauble to polish as

fondly as Yorick's skull, in the

pageant of histrionic vengeance.

So much eloquence, so little time

I've been interested in The Aeneid again lately, so I've been less attracted to the prospect of achieving moral satisfaction, offered by people who advocate the impeachment of the American President, when the commitments of translators of that poem fur-nish so much of that fleeting peace by their example. The rendering of that work into English is one of the great struggles the mind can undertake, and we have seen how the ordeal yields an appreciation of an impossibility revealed even in the original. Inevitably, to witness this dilemma's exposure is to undergo the seeming urgency of experiencing its consequence, a trust in the limits of the intellect against impassioned certitude.

Human beings appear to have no choice but to strive for beautiful, orderly explanations of the ugly things we do. These explanations may also represent a basic drive - and in one way a more painful one. We have chances to get land, livelihood, and security for the next generation, pretty much in the forms we imagined or even better, though the cost will be high. We cannot match in reality our vision of what we need to create from our minds. Virgil couldn't, and I certainly couldn't in my efforts to translate his glorious poem.

Anything like a zeal for an impeachment verges on a vain matching of this awe-somely fateful need to create, with reality. Who sees its consequence?

James McNeill Whistler

The Ocean Wave

1883-84

  Whistler in Watercolor

  On exhibition at the Freer

    through November 3

Virgil

The Aeneid

Sarah Ruden

  translator

  fragment from her

  essay of introduction

Yale University Press, 2008©

Next stop, the Haymarket?

The New York Times published this

lovely photograph of the latest

resort of politics to Washington

Square, reminding one and all of

the genius of the Electoral Col-

lege to ignore such excesses of

popular sentiment, with a sage

hypervaluation of our agrarian

wastes. Emma Goldman, eat your

heart out: what happens in

Greenwich Village stays there,

give or take a Weather Under-

ground brownstone bomb blunder.

But of course, it's true. Of 

the many ways this republic

has invented or adapted to re-

duce its vulnerability to any

reckless reliance upon one

person, one vote, nothing has

outdone good, old-fashioned

shaming of the call for that

human right, itself. Hence,

our President's excoriation

of homelessness, as a blight

on the prestige of Nob Hill.

This proficiency in oligar-

chy's seizure of power in the

United States, has meant that

the electorate isn't remotely

a wellspring of policy, but 

manipulable blocs, exploitable

for permits to rule over them.

But I stray. It was a pleasant

evening in Washington Square.

Society, the direst study

This past Monday, the photographer
Robert Frank died at the age of 94.
Seeing as an untiring, and sometimes
unsparing examiner of America, he's
urgently to be remembered for an al-
most paradigm-shifting attitude and
style in his portrayals of this so-
ciety, published in 1955, under the
title, The Americans. Among other
things, this compilation made it
possible, and quite necessary, to
stop conceiving of the United States
as a nation, and to study it exactly
as it is, as a society. Not a figment
for anthems, an organism for defining.

This photograph of an urban trolley
could have been taken virtually any-
where in the United States in 1955.
It happens to come from New Orleans,
and because it does, it enables what
the late San Francisco columnist Herb
Caen used to call, elsewhereans, to
recall in smug horror, and everyone
today to consign to antiquity, for
its candidly visible moral turpitude. 

Everyone, but the Supreme Court of the 
current American government, composed
unscrupulously and dishonorably to re-
flect the ruling presumptions of this
society in 1955. Robert Frank's Amer-
ica is enshrined in the Court's latest
tribute to Donald Trump's racist core
of political support, in Barr v. East
Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a ruling re-
jecting a U.S. District Court injunc-
tion against the new American govern-
ment's wholesale reversal of asylum
law as it relates, exquisitely, only
to the Southern border.

I do not pretend to understand pho-
tography. I do not pretend to under-
stand the law. But Robert Frank made
no claim to understand them, either.
His study was society, and how it
lived with itself. He contributed
unforgettably to the protection of
that urgent distinction, lifting the
fog of nationhood to show how we act.

Robert Frank
Trolley
1955

Moving again, sorting

.. as contradictory as isolation-

ism and internationalism could

sometimes prove themselves to be,

there was a common factor between

them, though only of a negative

character: isolationism existed

in a sphere of timelessness; in-

ternationalism existed in the fu-

ture. Neither existed in the world

of the present. Thus the attitudes

which the young republic had adopt-

ed had not yet satisfactorily sol-

ved the problem .. of how to chart

a course in the world as it was.

There is so much exercise given to

the term, "sorting," in the social

sciences these days, that its vir-

ility in the reclamation of socks

from the laundry room has fallen

almost into desuetude. Be that as

it may, we soldier on, who jetti-

son whole shelves of our library

as we move house, tripping lightly

as we're dripping priceless cash-

meres from a maze of vegan fibers.

I nearly threw out Felix Gilbert

this morning, the fellow whose ob-

servation opens this entry. In the

ostensibly better world to which

all our mobilizations - our sort-

ings - are directed, if in vain, a

disposal of Professor Gilbert is

an opening of the sea cocks in the

hull of human progress. Now, my an-

cient, trusty Harper Torchbook of

the text transcribed above, priced

at 1.25 pre-supply side American

dollars, finds itself back aboard,

illuminating the dawn from one of

its unexcavated layers of wisdom.

Writing in 1961 of General Wash-

ington's time - even then, past -

Gilbert allowed drop an unexamined

paradox which comes in handy in an

age like ours, as binomially ossi-

fied as any since the Third Reich,

which he fled: You're both wrong,

sums it up, pretty nicely for a

Monday. One doesn't read Felix Gil-

bert without gathering the under-

standing of the fatality of fixed

ideas, and of the absurdity of

choosing between hostile illusions.

One could read this insouciant,

not to say nonchalant, paragraph

of his with a nicely poured taste

of morning coffee, and appreciate

the possibilities for serenity.

Felix Gilbert

The Beginnings of American

  Foreign Policy

  To the Farewell Address

Princeton University Press

1961©

Purging Toryism of its excuses

One always thinks of Hakluyt when

the party of hereditary privilege,

anywhere in the English-speaking

world, throws its literate elements

to the maw of nativist cannibalism.

There's a nasty stink of inorganic

impostorship in these impertinences,

phony Conservatism purging virtues

of the soil from which it arose. The

Times publishes a fine report today,

on the compulsory schism which Brit-

win's Prime Minister is imposing on

his Party, culminating in expelling

one of his country's ornaments of a

distinctly British tradition, the

investigative discovery of the world.

He might as well have told Francis

Drake not to go sailing, or Patrick

Leigh Fermor not to go out walking;

so he jettisoned Rory Stewart, than

whom no one holds a more permanent

claim on travel literature's shelf.

Britain has only begun to be sorry,

for a gruesome imitation of America.