See some notes under Volume 1 which really belong under this volume.
Disclosure: I’ve been listening to the podcast but really don’t see any differencSee some notes under Volume 1 which really belong under this volume.
Disclosure: I’ve been listening to the podcast but really don’t see any difference with each episode of this being a chapter in an audiobook.
I’m apparently still ahead of the books (I’m beyond episode 130 as I write this) but want to capture some notes along the way
One approach that Hickey uses that I really like is to overlay two pieces of music so you can hear how similar they are, or similarly play back to back short excerpts; and when he can’t do this, he’ll sing a part, after self-deprecatingly giving us fair warning about his vocal abilities. I particularly liked in episode 132 on The Four Tops he apologizes for doing a bad Dylan impression, “everyone thinks they can impersonate Dylan, everyone’s imitations of Dylan are cringe worthy, and mine is worse than most” but goes on to exaggeratingly sing “Reach Out” like Dylan, elongating each word at the end of the line…and it’s perfect: you can really hear how Dozier had Dylan in mind when he crafted the lyrics and melody for this song. Hickey ends with “Let us never speak of that again. I think we’d better hear Levy Stubs sing it again to take that unpleasantness away.”
Episode 135 Simon and Garfunkel: schoolmates who meshed over reading Mad Magazine [I can’t really articulate to generations who followed how influential Mad Magazine was in shaping the world view of a large cohort of my generation]
Episode 131: The Supremes. There’s a lot here, but what stood out was how many hits The Supremes had - they were really the only rival The Beatles had
Episode 130: Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” - he covers the outrage of Dylan’s shift to electric. And discusses the Newport “axe” incident- “a rumor that still has currency fifty years later.” “Peter Yarrow, trying to keep the crowd calm,” said “He’s gone to get his axe” using “musician slang for a guitar” but the audience wasn’t familiar with that term and had see Seeger furious … earlier in folk songs about working, Seeger had imitated swinging an axe, so the rumor started that Seeger had been so annoyed with Dylan going electric that he had tried to use an axe to severe the cables.
Episode 129: Stones’ “Satisfaction”: for whatever reason, I thought the Stones had issued this song before some of their others (eg. As Tears Go By). I’d picked up on some of the misogyny in Stones’ ‘60’s songs but was blown away by Hickey’s walking through song after song and pointing out the misogynistic lyrics. And I’d not known much about Brian Jones other than he was a founding member of the group and he’d died young; but what a creep, going way beyond even the misogynistic lyrics of the songs.
Episode 128: Byrd’s “Tambourine Man”: I knew that Crosby could harmonize with anyone, but also thought he was something of a schmuck, which Hickey touched upon (more recently prior to Crosby’s death, he’d made some nasty comments which caused a final unreconciled falling out with Nash, Stills, and Young)
Pledge Week Bonus: “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto: I’d known this melody forever, since childhood. I wasn’t aware of how the Japanese market at the time was incorporating and adapting to western pop music. And I wasn’t aware that this song is one of the bestselling songs of all time....more
Well, full disclosure, I listened to the podcasts, over fifty some podcasts that this volume covers, and I wanted somewhere to capture my thoughts regWell, full disclosure, I listened to the podcasts, over fifty some podcasts that this volume covers, and I wanted somewhere to capture my thoughts regarding the podcast.
First off, it’s incredibly researched; I’ve listened to several podcasts on music history and this is the best. And I’m often surprised by how old some songs I’m familiar with are - that what I’ve heard for years is actually a cover of a much older song. And it’s incredible but he really starts with riffs and passage from 1930s songs, such as a horn riff that somebody in the 50’s transposed and played as a guitar riff
And I like how he weaves details into his narrative that provide depth; for instance, in The Beatles “I feel fine” he points out that Lennon based this on a blues song from the 50’s he was familiar with (and notes that this riff was used in the 1930s); the guitar riff sounds remarkably similar, but Hickey takes pains to point out how Lennon made changes that made it his own and he was not merely usurping someone else’s work; and for this song, as for numerous other songs, Hickey gets to use his phrase “there are no firsts” when the discussion of the first use of feedback is raised in connection with this song; and he points out that Townsend, Beck, and Clapton were all already using feedback in their stage performances. And how Ringo’s drumming for this song sounds like drumming from a Ray Charles song.
Or how he points out that the drums on “What Your Doing” easily morph into the iconic drumming on “Day Tripper” and pointing out how similar they both sound to Hal Blaine’s intro to “Be My Baby”
(and as I write this, I’m realizing that since I’m up to Episode 127, these two Beatle examples will be in a likely Vol II, but they exemplify Hickey’s work: but notable episodes in the first fifty: Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton; Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean by Ruth Brown; Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan; Ain’t That a Shame by Fats Domino; and, of course, Rocket 88; wait, on second thought, there wasn’t a bad or a subpar episode: they were all illuminating. And don’t let the titles of the episodes mislead: each is a deep dive not only into that song, but also others songs by that artist; the artist as well, other contemporary artists, and often the broader music scene.)
One aspect that I appreciate is his giving an upfront warning about sexual assault, drug use, slurs used in songs that aren’t acceptable today, and the racism that was prevalent (virulent?). And I like that he pays particular attention to the contributions of women to the industry, whether as individuals (where they typically got no recognition or credit) or as members of girl groups....more
So I’d read this essay in college a long time ago in The Orwell Reader, but i came across it just now excerpted in the epigram for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ TSo I’d read this essay in college a long time ago in The Orwell Reader, but i came across it just now excerpted in the epigram for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message: “In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphlteer.”
And the inside flap of Coates’ book notes he “originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic ‘Politics and the English language,’ but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.”
“because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in—at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own —but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. . . . Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are: (1) Sheer egoism. Desire to be clever, to be talked about. . . . (2) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world. . . . (3) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity. (4) Political purpose—using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the type of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
“What I have most wanted to do. . . .is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always. . . .a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write. . . .i do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. “...more
“I am most concerned, always, with those who do not have a voice…” [Coates in connection with an interview on GMA]
Epigram: “In a peaceful age I might h“I am most concerned, always, with those who do not have a voice…” [Coates in connection with an interview on GMA]
Epigram: “In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer.” - George Orwell, “Why I Write.”
Jacket flap: “Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic ‘Politics and the English Language,’ but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.” [so now I’ve gone back to re-read both of these Orwell essays. ]
“He’d [my father] had just finished a history of the rebellion of the enslaved in eighteenth-century Guyana. He…was pained by how the rebellion concluded—not just in defeat but with its leaders turning on each other and ultimately collaborating with the very people who had enslaved them. He sighed as he recounted it to me and said, ‘I don’t think we are going to get back to Africa.’ My father did not mean this physically. He meant the Africa of our imagination, that glorious Eden we conjured up as exiles, a place without the Mayflower, Founding Fathers, conquistadors, and the assorted corruptions they had imposed on us. That Africa could no longer even be supported in his imagination because the corruption was not imposed at all but was in us, was part of the very humanity that had been denied us.” (pp 56-57)[see the blurb above from the jacket flap]
“I had spent my trip alone, walking and wandering, grieving and marveling, so that the Dakar I saw was not so much a city of people but, like Gorée itself, a monument to the Last Stop before we were remade. It occurs to me that I had come to see a part of Africa but not Africans. . . . I began to feel there was something deeply incurious in the approach of a man who insists on walking through the rooms of his childhood home to commune with ghosts, heedless of the people making their home there now. . . .But there was no guilting from the group. . . . But they were something more. We are, Bkack people, here and there, victims of the West—a people held just outside its liberal declarations, but kept close enough to be enchanted with its promises.” (pp 58-59)
“The verbs are surreal, but the shock of them, the contrast, brings the inanimate to life. . . .These sentences stick with me, so that just as the word adaption’ is attached to a creature, the phrase ‘seismic event’ conjures glass shattering, refrigerators walking, and the ground undulating (what a beautiful word).” (pp 71-72) [i, too, have always liked the word “undulating”; there’s a physicality in pronouncing it: your tongue is completing the act of undulating while you are saying the word; “ululating” is a close second, and a bit more onomatopoeic.]
Going to South Carolina in response to teacher Mary Woods’ request to help her push back on the attempt to ban his book Between The World and Me prohibiting her from using it, not in civics or current events class, but in a AP English course on writing, and after attending a hearing, “expect[ing] to come into a den of hectoring fanatics. And instead I’d found that there were allies fighting back. Allies.” (p 103)
“Again I felt the mental lens curving against the light and was reminded of something I have long known, something I’ve written and spoken about, but still was stunned to see here [Jerusalem] in such stark detail: that race is a species of power and nothing else.” (p 126)
“Throughout the West Bank I saw cisterns used to harvest rainwater. These cisterns were almost certainly illegal. . . .Any structure designed for gathering water requires a permit from the occupying power, and such permits are rarely given to Palestinians. . . .and in those West Bank settlements which I once took as mere outposts, you can find country clubs furnished with large swimming pools. On seeing these cisterns, it occurred to me that Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself.” (p 128)
“And more, it occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet—under American patronage—that resembled the world that my parents were born in. And I was in that world, even as I walked haltingly through Yad Vashem, which is, among other things, a grand narrative of conquered ancestors built by their conquering progeny. I can see that, now that I have walked the land. But there was a time when I took my survey from afar, and invoked this same land to service my own, more narrow story. It hurts to tell you this. It hurts to know that in my own writing I have done to people that which, in this writing, I have inveighed against—that I have reduced people, diminished people, erased people. I want to tell you I was wrong. I want to tell you that your oppression will not save you, that being a victim will not enlighten you, that it can just as easily deceive you.” (p 128-129)
“But passport stamps and wide vocabularies are neither wisdom nor morality. As it happens, you can see the world and still never see the people in it.” (p 135)
“The Black writers working at the journals and magazines I read seem bent on putting as much distance between themselves and Black people as possible. That wasn’t me. If I was skeptical of the gift, I was never skeptical of the people. I came to think of my trade—long-form magazine or new journalism—as a kind of scientific process that, when correctly applied, must necessarily reveal the truth. And for a time, I saw the practitioner of that science as an individual, as singular, standing alone, applying the process, searching for truth. And then I found myself in newsrooms where, for the time in my life, I was often an only, in newsrooms with no Black editors. I thought I could stand apart, but looking back, I see that the parts of my thinking that were most reinforced were those that most dovetailed with those around me, and the parts that were hardest to hold were those that did not. I wrote a lot of stuff I came to regret—a lot of smart ass contrarianism, a lot of mean prose—in the young rush to get into the paper or magazine. And even after I matured, I found that my old instincts had not. I became a better technical writer, but my sense of the world was stunted. There were no Palestinian writers or editors around me. But there were many writers, editors, and publishers who believed in the nobility of Zionism and and had little regard for, or simply could not see, its victims. Zionism’s victims. Even now, after all I have seen, my pen skips as I write this to you.” (pp 206-207)
“Zionism was conceived as a counter to an oppression that feels very familiar.” (p 207)
“During World War II, the Afrikaner politician John Vorster lobbied for his country to enter the war on the side of Nazi Germany, despite South Africa’s historical ties to the United Kingdom. ‘We stand for Christian Nationalism, which is an ally of National Socialism,’ Vorster said. ‘In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism, and in South Africa Christian Nationalism.’” (p 214)
“I felt that i was still waking up, feel that I am still waking up, still searching for the right words, still trying to see a people whose oppression depended on their erasure.” [This reminds me very much of Elizabeth Cook-Lynne’s Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner.]
And, wow, has this book and author garnered (?) some media attention; CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil snarked “I have to say, when I read your book, I imagine if I took your name off it. . . .the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” This statement and treatment of Coates caused turmoil within the CBS staff, with CBS News later saying the interview “did not meet editorial standards.” Coates explained that “There is no shortage of that perspective [that Israel has enemies on all sides] in American media. . . . I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice”, saying he wanted to center a different perspective.
Interesting the number of one star reviews that sling the term antisemitism at this book, as if any criticism of Israel, or anything that is not pro-Israel, is automatically antisemitic. I appreciate Coates’ starting point about the perspective of the writer, but wonder if along the way he lost his way, at times, or maybe his experience hadn’t matured enough, with this in the third section; but then again, he admits that he was engaged in a challenging learning curve with the Palestine section, but, as he notes, he is giving a voice to those who do not have a voice. I too have a much to learn about the history of the Middle East: my knowledge is isn’t a deep enough, mostly limited to current media coverage rather than having done a more detailed dive. I wonder about Coates’ thoughts after the Hamas attacks that occurred just after this book was published. I have to wonder what Hamas’s end game is: they had to know from the start that they couldn’t win, so is it seeing no other alternative other than just a brutal lashing out ? Is it a cry for help from for the rest of the world to intervene? And so, I’m not sure how to rate this book; the writing itself is excellent; but there’s an unfinished aspect to the last section…...more
Sheila Huftel “The Crucible”: quoting from The Dramatic Event: ‘The Innocence of Arthur Miller’: ‘Bentley conjures up Kafkaesque images and reminds usSheila Huftel “The Crucible”: quoting from The Dramatic Event: ‘The Innocence of Arthur Miller’: ‘Bentley conjures up Kafkaesque images and reminds us that Miller’s mentality is that of an ‘unreconstructed liberal.’ The Crucible is interpreted politically; Bentley points out that ‘communism’ is a word used to cover politics of Marx, the politics of the Soviet Union, and, finally, ‘the activities of all liberals as they seem to illiberal illiterates.’”
“Miller discovered from the court records that Abigail Williams, a child of eleven, sometime a servant in the Proctor’s house, cried out Elizabeth as a witch. Uncharacteristically, the child refused to incriminate John Proctor.”
Thomas Porter “The Long Shadow of the Law: The Crucible”: “The probity of the court is taken for granted; due process is the means by which the defense can insure justice for the individual. Miller’s play not only uses the formula* as a dramatic framing device, but also raises the question about the value of the trial itself as an instrument of justice. At the heart of The Crucible is the relation of the individual to the law.” *individual freedom vs. rules from society to constrain him as
“If the reign of Law is central to the American democratic ideal and if the ‘fair trial’ is the ritual which insures its inviolability, the worst of all perversions in this area is a ‘bad’ law enforced by a ‘corrupt’ court.”
“He [Miller] was deeply disturbed as he watched men who had known him well for years pass him by ‘without a word’ because of this terror ‘knowingly planned and consciously engineered.’ McCarthyism was in the air and it had all the qualities —for those personally affected—of the witch-hunt.”
“the real inner meaning of the play is not simply an attack on McCarthyism, but a treatment of the perennial conflict between the individual conscience and civil society…”
“Though the major issue in the play deals with the individual and society and with judicial corruption, Miller found his dramatic motivation in a domestic triangle.” [from the records, that Abigail accused Elizabeth but refused to accuse John Proctor despite the urging of the prosecutors]
“The ‘evil’ in the play focuses on Abigail…It is not her actions that condemn her: dancing in the woods by modern standards is no crime, her desire for John Proctor is rendered quite understandable…rather it is the means she uses to pursue her ends. She is willing to sacrifice the community and everyone in it, to subvert the function of the Law, in order to gain her objectives. Her wickedness, then, amounts to a shrewd use of the hypocrisy, greed, and spite that thrive in her neighbors under the pretext of seeing justice done.”
Yeah, I dunno, I got to a point with reading these that they all seemed to plough the same ground, that none were rising above the others to provide a view that was innovative, suggesting something new; they all began to blur together…
Ok; this one was different
Wendy Schissel Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: A Feminist Reading : “is a disturbing work, not only because of the obvious moral dilemma that is irresolutely solved by John Protor’s death, but also because of the treatment that Abagail and Elizabeth receive at Miller’s hands and at the hands of the critics. In forty years of criticism very little has been said about the ways…reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales and cold unforgiving wives in order to assert apparently universal virtues. It is a morality play based upon a questionable androcentric morality. Like Proctor, The Crucible ‘[roars] down’ Elizabeth, making her concede a fault that is not hers but of Miller’s making: ‘It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery,’ she admits
“The setting…Puritan New England…may indeed have parallels to McCarthy’s America…but there is more to the paranoia than xenophobia—of Natives and Communists…in Miller’s version of the Salem witch trials, and all too frequent in the society which produced Miller’s critics is gynecophobia—fear and distrust of women…Hale’s books would be ‘highly misogynic” tomes [is she quoting from the 1948 foreword to the ?] yet another fear-filled version of apocryphal bad woman: they look to Ecclesiasties which declares ‘the wickedness of a woman is all evil. . . there is no anger above the anger of a woman. . .from the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die.’
But her “humanly, humanism, and history, to me, is unnecessarily over the top and undercuts the seriousness of her argument. And she also undercuts her arguments with hedging her own argument with “may have prompted Miller…”; and Hale’s books “would be…”; and “also an apparently frigid wife” [her italics, but Elizabeth acknowledges she has been “cold” (though it is Miller who pens this)]...more
Several of her passages about the future turn out to be very prescient, unfortunately. It’s difficult, knowing the outcome, to listen to her optimism.Several of her passages about the future turn out to be very prescient, unfortunately. It’s difficult, knowing the outcome, to listen to her optimism.
I was glad to have listened to the definitive edition; I liked hearing about the changes from the other editions.
When we visited Amsterdam we toured the Anne Frank House. The living space is smaller than expected when you think that seven people were there.
One thing that left a lasting impression on me was a room on our way out that had each wall lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves with nothing but this book translated into different languages, a testament to this young woman and the impression she made, and continues to make, on the world....more
I tried the audiobook and, I’m not sure what my expectations were, but it was extremely…meh; no, not even meh: worse; I guess, as the book jacket declI tried the audiobook and, I’m not sure what my expectations were, but it was extremely…meh; no, not even meh: worse; I guess, as the book jacket declares, I was expecting more irreverence…
and the narration, other than the frequent clips dropping in Bourdain’s bits (a bit after the fact since he’d passed away before this book was done…how do you title a book as being from someone when they died before the book even came together enough for them to participate in crafting the book? Bourdain’s “participation” is audio clips from his prior work), the narration, at best, can only be described as soporific; the material wasn’t even good enough to up the audio speed beyond 1x; and the splicing, ugh, back and forth from the narrator to Bourdain was harsh and jolting.
Glad I got this through Libby and didn’t pay for it....more
“Acknowledgements: This book is the product of a decade of conversations with dozens of people. To everyone who took the time to speak with me, often “Acknowledgements: This book is the product of a decade of conversations with dozens of people. To everyone who took the time to speak with me, often for hours at a time, thank you. Thanks to the people who spoke despite fearing violent backlash and those who could only speak anonymously. Thank you for being willing to take the risk about such controversial subjects and disturbing events.”
Unorthodox for me to begin my notes with what comes at the end of a book, especially nonfiction, but here there is importance in Elle Reeve’s words thanking these people for their bravery - and hopefully Reeves will encounter more brave people to interview as we enter a second Trump administration.
…at times it felt like she was too focused on people’s personal lives and relationships (like the segment connected to the Munchausen quote below); I dunno; I’m sorta twixt and tween on this: does examining personal relationships validate who or what they become, what they morph into? We like stories where someone meets someone else who makes them a better person, so, can’t the same happen in reverse?
“Roger had been black pilled. To understand what that means, you have to have seen the 1999 movie “The Matrix”….in the matrix, the hero, Neo, is presented with a choice: take the blue pill and return to life in a pleasant illusion created by machines. Or take the red pill and learn the truth. And what is the truth? That you are a slave Neo; like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste or touch. A prison for your mind. The red pill became the main metaphor of internet politics. It didn’t suggest a conversion, that you had adopted a new set of beliefs, but that you had liberated yourself from politics entirely. You saw the world as it really is. You were thinking clearly for the first time in years, maybe your whole life.
I’d heard the red pill narrative of dozens of alt-right trolls, whose red pill was that whites supremacy was good; and radical virgins called ‘incels’ whose red pill was that feminism had ruined society; long before I’d heard from Qanoners whose red pill was that Trump was fighting a secret, satanic cabal that had seized control of the government. . . .Once the red pill metaphor took hold, endless variations followed: the green pill, the white pill, the iron pill. . . . The only one that matters is the black pill…a dark but lethal (gleeful?) nihilism: the system is corrupt and its collapse is inevitable; there is no hope. Times are bad and they’re going to get worse. You swallow the black pill and accept the end is coming. “
“Most of the people I interviewed on January 6th had been black pilled. Even if they wouldn’t have described themselves that way and even if they’d never heard the term. . . . They were absolutely certain they were the good guys. . . .i stared at their faces twisted with rage. . . . And wondered how many of them knew the origin of the ideas that had brought them to Washington.”
“In many interviews I have to not just convince someone to give me information, but to help them realize what information they have. Sometimes I send them an infamous Donald Rumsfeld quote. . . “
“For Incels, the red pill is that some men will never have sex because they are too ugly and there is nothing they can do about it All men and women fall somewhere on a scale of attractiveness. . . but feminism had disrupted nature’s balance…Alpha fucks, beta bucks…”
“At Towson University, Heimbach created a white student union. . .concerned about black male versus white female crime…”. I remember this guy and how weird (?) it seemed that this was taking place more or less in my own backyard.
“When the patient consciously exaggerates symptoms for an external goal, like a car accident victim playing up his pain to get an insurance payout, it’s called malingering When a patient fakes or induces symptoms out of an unconscious need to get attention as a sick person, it’s a serious mental health condition called fictitious disorder imposed on self, or, as it was once known, Munchausen syndrome A factitous disorder can cause real health problems.”
“President Theodore Roosevelt had warned about race suicide: Americans of northwestern European descent being replaced by immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe. In 1902 he wrote that a person who avoided marriage and children is, in effect, a criminal against the race.”
I known about Fox News harping about replacement theory, and knew it extended back at least to the 1920s when the US began to implement broader, stricter, immigration quotas, but hadn’t known it extended back further.
“Despite their efforts, the SPLC covered the event with the headline ‘Prominent Racists attend Inaugural H L Mencken Gathering.’. . . John Derbyshire’s talk ‘had the kind of edge that might get him in trouble with our handlers.’ Four years later Derbyshire was fired from The National Review for a racist essay about the death of Travon Martin. I read Derbyshire’s essay when it was published . . . and I thought it was the perfect example of the ambient racism I’d seen growing up in Tennessee. I wrote ‘National Review columnist John Derbyshire doesn’t write the most racist stuff on the internet, not even close. But Derbyshire does effectively demonstrate, year after year, exactly how racist you can be and still get published by people believe themselves to be intellectuals’. Back then I had no idea behind the scenes there was a whole system of organizations dedicated to carefully nudging that line a little further.” I like that she rips the mask off the National Review and exposes their racism.
“In June, 2020, Trump threatened to deploy active military troops to put down the protests after the murder of George Floyd. In response, Mark Miley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released a message to military commanders saying, ‘Every member of the military swears an oath to the Constitution, which grants Americans the right to freedom of speech and legal assembly.’ At Miley’s retirement ceremony three years later he said, ‘We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wanna be dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution. And we take an oath to the idea that is America. And we’re willing to die to protect it.’ The same month, Trump posted online that Miley deserved to be executed.” I hope the military remembers this going forward....more
“What amazed me was how malevolent the whole thing seemed. Me? Why do you want me? I was young and had no idea the world killed so casually.”
“Everyone“What amazed me was how malevolent the whole thing seemed. Me? Why do you want me? I was young and had no idea the world killed so casually.”
“Everyone has a relationship with death, whether they want one or not. Refusing to think about death is its own kind of relationship. When we hear about another person’s death, we’re hearing a version of our own as well. And the pity we feel…is that that kind of thing could never happen to us. It’s an enormously helpful illusion. Some people even take the illusion further by deliberately taking risks, as if beating the odds over and over again gives them some kind of agency; it doesn’t. But it’s an odd quirk of neurology that when we are fighting the hardest to stay alive, we are hardly thinking about death at all; we’re too busy. Dying is the most ordinary thing you will do but also the most radical. You will go from a living, conscious being, to dust.”
“The paramedic suggested drinking water in the shade…and calling back if I didn’t feel better. Barbara said, “a few minutes ago he was going blind and passing out; he’s going to the hospital. I was clear-headed enough to remember the renowned statistic that married men live longer than unmarried men. Surely this is one of the reasons, I thought.”
“Left behind was a young student named Irwin Schrödinger who had listened awe struck as Hasenhall proved that mass and energy determine each other’s values and are therefore the same thing. Matter is spirit reduced to the point of visibility, there no matter as Einstein later put it….
Because quantum physics could be tested without being understood, it allowed humans to see how the universe worked without knowing why. At that point, physics was so abstract that it bordered on a kind of mysticism. For two hundred years, scientists trusted that the physical world could be understood because it could be measured.
But in 1927, Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that subatomic particles changed behavior when observed. That lead to staggering questions whether matter and reality was ultimately even knowable. Schrödinger both clarified and deepened the issue by showing that electrons, the foundational unit of existence, were just a series of probabilities that only collapsed into one state when measured by humans. As proof, he offered his famous dunkin experiment (thought experiment).
Put a cat in a steel chamber along with a radioactive isotope that has a fifty percent chance of decaying over the next hour. If it decays, it will release a poison gas that kills the cat. When you open the chamber an hour later, the cat is either alive or dead; but until then, the dead cat and the living cat are statistically smeared together into one wave function. A wave function is a mathematical description of all possible values for an electron, including existence and nonexistence…if a cat could be there and not there, so could a whole universe, some physicists observed, and there was no way to prove otherwise.”
“The problem with rationality is that things keep happening that you can’t explain. . . .My father was a devoted rationalist who nevertheless believed that humans have souls and that each soul briefly exists as its own entity like a wave of the ocean. Souls are made of something we don’t understand yet. And waves are just pulses of energy moving through a medium. My father believed that when we die our souls are subsumed back into the vast soul matter of the universe, like waves subsumed back into the sea. He didn’t believe in anything as simple minded as heaven, or as extravagant as reincarnation. But he also never looked up at the stars because he said he found the immensity overwhelming.”
“The arbitrariness of death would seem to mean that life has very little value unless you flip the equation upside down and realize that any existence with guarantees can be taken for granted far too easily.
In a sense modern society has the worst of both: lives that can end in a moment because that has always been true but the illusion of continuity….my odds weren’t Russian roulette odds…or combat odds, or even cancer odds…infinitely smaller before that [getting to the hospital] because of the random details that determine who lives and who dies: whether I’d gone running that day; whether the ambulance was on a prior call; whether Dr Dombrowski had already gone to bed. You are statistically more likely to die at three in the morning rather than three in the afternoon because senior doctors try to avoid graveyard shifts.”
“But I didn’t die. And it made me wonder what this new part of my life was supposed to be called.”
“In [William F.] Barrett’s [b. 1844], …his book on deathbed visions became a classic compendium that many people recognized but no one understood…the accounts are startling consistent. In Barrett’s era, people tended to die at home, unmedicated, often with siblings or friends having preceded them. Death was common and familiar to most people and not necessarily something to be feared. In an era of slow communication it was entirely possible to not know that a close friend or even family member had died And Barrett considered visits by the recently dead to be exceptionally strong evidence of an afterlife.”
I think what I liked most about this book was that it was written by someone who could write…and think; someone who could communicate with clarity. I also liked that it wasn’t obfuscated through the mystical lens of religion. And Ive previously found that books narrated by their author to be…lacking in the audio experience; not this time....more
“There is an old Arabian proverb…‘that he is no physician who has not slain many patients.’”
Mukherjee does touch on The Radium Girls, along with the C“There is an old Arabian proverb…‘that he is no physician who has not slain many patients.’”
Mukherjee does touch on The Radium Girls, along with the Curie’s, as a continuation of Roentgen’s discovery of the x-ray, how it could be useful but came with destructive powers. I wished that he would have discussed the massive radiation doses suffered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the resultant cancers; I really think as this information began to emerge (e.g. John Hersey’s Hiroshima), people began to take some notice of the radiation’s lethal effects.
And it was revelatory to read that cancer has been found in the mummified remains of our pre-dawn of civilization ancestors; I think we tend to think of cancer as something more recent, though as Mukherjee points out, prior to the development of modern medicine people succumbed to a myriad of diseases and maladies before they were able to be around long enough to develop cancer (though he contrasts this with noting some young people afflicted with some forms of cancer, particularly leukemia); and he notes that the written record of medicine, while it does contain a few, a very few, examples describing cancer, the old records do not include many examples; and those it does contain often drop off the record, so it is unclear if the patient died or recovered.
His discussion of cancer as opportunistic - in essence like any other enitity - trying to find its own ways to propagate. And insidiously too, such as skipping a generation with DES.
Interestingly, he mentions at one point a lab culture that had been around for some time; I believe he mentioned 40 years; more interestingly, he doesn’t specifically mention Henrietta Lacks.
It was enlightening to read how the effort to cure, or at least address, leukemia was involved from the beginning in the war on cancer; I suppose this has much to do with leukemia impacting youngsters, whereas many other cancers (though not all) take longer to develop and are found in adults.
His discussion of the battles between the cancer surgeons versus the chemotherapists brought back memories for me of when my father was dying of cancer and his primary physician discussing his prognosis (not good) and saying to us: don’t let the chemotherapists get to him, they’re ghouls (his word) [we made the right choice spared Dad the ravages of chemotherapy in the last weeks of his life]
I thought this book, while informative, could have used tighter editing; there was, for my taste, too much filler, too much wind-up to get to the point being made.
And no offense to Fred Sanders who narrated the audiobook, he did a fine job, but I guess I read nonfiction at a fast clip and had the rate for the audiobook set at 1.65…again, back in to editing, I could have absorbed more information faster…...more
“Epictetus: ‘Do not explain your philosophy; embody it.’”
I found Breyer makes cogent arguments about the shortcomings of purely textualist readings, a“Epictetus: ‘Do not explain your philosophy; embody it.’”
I found Breyer makes cogent arguments about the shortcomings of purely textualist readings, although he really didn’t have to do much to persuade me; but I was interested in hearing him make his case as to why he doesn’t think textualism/orginalism doesn’t work: and he doesn’t disappoint. And as he notes, it’ll likely lead to more judges imposing their own personal views in their decisions. (And as we’ve more recently found out, the Court can just make up stuff when textualism/orginalism doesn’t work for them. And where did this “major question doctrine” come from?)
As a policy nerd, I appreciated his discussion about an IB (Interpretive Bulletin) vs a regulation. And explaining that a regulation goes through notice and comment, giving everyone the chance to weigh in and express their views, and the agency can make changes in response to comments; and in my agency every one of those comments was read. [How regulations will fare going forward with the current SC overturning Chevron remains to be seen, which happened after publication of this book though Breyer discusses the attempt so far at the time he was writing to overturn Chevron. I think there’ll be a huge increase in litigation as parties seek to overturn or dismantle regulations that they do not like. And this SC overturned another longstanding precedent that imposed a six year statute of limitations on challenging agency regulations, so now everything is fair game for litigation going back forever. And going forward what will be the impetus for agencies to promulgate new regulations if the SC continues to hold the view that dismantled Chevron? So now instead of having an agency with its staff experts having promulgated regulations, it be an individual judge making it up on their own. What a naked power grab for the judiciary by the SC On another note, I found satisfaction in teaching regional staff about the importance of reading the Preamble to a regulation; that the Preamble discussed the agency’s response to the comments and often contained nuggets of information in this discussion that helped clarify what was in the regulation.]
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised of the Textualist’s dismissal of the legislative history of a statute, but I’d held out hope. I found reading legislative history to be immensely informative when I researched statutes; at times, I’d find myself reading the Congressional record to get a sense of what views legislators had and to discern what the intended.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at being familiar with many of the cases Breyer uses as examples; some were work-related, like SAMPTA (who or what constituted a traditional function of government) to the recent decision overturning OSHA’s ability to issue emergency regulations as COVID mushroomed; but there were numerous other, non-work related I was aware of, so I guess I follow the SC more than I thought. ...more
One thing that impressed me (concerned me?) were the number of other books Stewart references that expose or push back and refute some of the same issOne thing that impressed me (concerned me?) were the number of other books Stewart references that expose or push back and refute some of the same issues she raises.
Stewart examines vouchers and charter schools, legislation to push religious boundaries (or to foment push back from liberals); funding of organization after organization each in it own way exerting incrementally a push to the right; including the Federalist Society picking candidates for the courts. (I wonder what she would have to say about Mike Johnson as the current speaker of the House- or the repeal of Roe - maybe time for an update or a new book.). She points out that “when members of minority or unpopular religions seek to exercise their ‘rights’ in the same way conservative Christians do, they are frequently prevented from doing so.”
A minor drawback: she spends time describing the background of many of the players; in some cases this may be germane to what these people are doing; other times it just seems like unnecessary filler.
I also wish in her Epilogue that instead of leaving it out as she states, that she had shared more information about some of the organizations that are pushing back and how they are going about doing so.
One of the things I learned about “the Johnson amendment” passed in 1954 (at the urging of then Senator Lyndon Johnson) “intended to prevent public money from passing through churches via tax deductions into the hands of politicians.” [I knew there was a prohibition on this, I just didn’t know its basis] “‘The government is inside our churches trying to muzzle our pastors and prevent them from having free speech or freedom of religion.’ ‘Pastors don’t have the same right of free speech that everybody else has,’ Barton complained. In fact, pastors are free to say what they like; the Johnson Amendment simply says that they can’t also collect their tax subsidies if they electioneer from the pulpit.” (p 143)
“Taylor Farms has come under scrutiny for its labor practices. According to a report by the California-based investigative journalism outfit Capital & Main, first published in 2014 and updated in 2017, ‘Taylor represents the platinum standard for corporate industries that seek to maximize profits by treating their workforce as someone else’s problem—whether they be temp labor contractors or taxpayers who must pick up the tab when it comes to providing workers’ medical care, food stamps and other social services.’” She could write a whole ‘nother book about how American corporations pass costs on to taxpayers....more
“no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information co“no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” thus ‘internet exceptionalism’ (American) was created (at least in the U.S.) treating such providers differently print or broadcast companies
Unsurprisingly, when people talk about this section, they never remark about how it had it roots in established case law that dealt with publishers and distributors ( think newsstands as such, or book sellers)
And it is interesting to note how the earliest court case dealing with section 230 interpreted it so that “had Wilkinson (the judge) agreed with Kayser (plaintiffs attorney) that Section 230 merely immunized online services until they received complaints or other notice about third-party content, then the legal landscape for platforms in the United States would look like the laws in much of the western world.”
The EU takes a different approach, while professing free speech puts limitations in place and allows providers to be sued in certain situations, and allows a ‘right to be forgotten’
I’m not so sure I agree with this author’s fanboy embrace of section 230; he applauds the unfettered growth of certain internet platforms, but doesn’t seem to address whether such huge (monopolies?) are a good thing; and I find it troubling that internet trolls can anonymously destroy other people’s lives and yet the ISP - who don’t require the content provider to properly identify themselves- I somehow libel free. And the rise of fake news and unchecked propaganda, furthered by the use of AI, is wreaking havoc on our political landscape. Now that the internet has grown, has matured to some degree, it may be time for some guardrails. Although he does agree that 230 needed to be amended to address online sex trafficking (and while they’re at it, labor trafficking or trafficking in general?)
“Some evil and twisted people use the internet and they take advantage of open communities to harm others. Section 230 did not motivate the people to write defamatory lies, invade privacy or plan crimes. The root causes these harms are greed, mental instability, malice, and other social ills…”. Ugh, the ‘guns don’t kill people’ argument. Anonymity certainly aids and abets the trolls.
I felt at times there was a degree of detail provided that really didn’t add to the discussion of issues in the book, so yeah, filler to pump it up to book length; I did, however, appreciate providing the background and mindsets of the judges involved in the various decisions.
And I thought it curious that the author kept inserting himself into the writing…a lack of objectivity…
“In the process (1995), Wyden earned a reputation as a go-to member of Congress on technology issues - something that he says his teenage children found humorous.”...more
“Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken But simply unfinished.” - Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb
The epigram for this book t“Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken But simply unfinished.” - Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb
The epigram for this book truly informs what follows.
“Prominent eighteenth-and nineteenth-century thinkers…worried that democracy risked becoming a ‘tyranny of the majority’ - that such a system would allow the will of the many to trample on the rights of the few…What ails American democracy today is closer to the opposite problem: Electoral majorities often cannot win power, and when they win , they often cannot govern. The more imminent threat facing us today, then, is minority rule. By steering the republic so sharply away from the Scylla of majority tyranny, America’s founders left it vulnerable to the Charybdis of minority rule.”
“The norm of accepting defeat and peacefully relinquishing power is a foundation of modern democracy. On March 4, 1801, the United States became the first republic in history to experience an electoral transfer of power from one political party to another.” The book then explores how fraught with tension this transfer was, how fragile it was, from constitutional breakdown to the threat of violence, potential civil war.
…it can’t happen here… it then we’re shown sobering examples in France (1930s), Spain, Thailand, and others were democracies came perilously close to being dismantled or were dismantled. Oh, yes, and then Wilmington NC.
Disproportionate representation in the Senate. “Hamilton, criticizing the Article s of Confederation, argued that the equal representation of the states ‘contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail….Likewise, Madison described equal representation in the Senate as ‘evidently unjust’ and warned that it would allow small states to ‘extort measures [from the House] repugnant to the wishes and interests of the majority.’ James Wilson of Pennsylvania also rejected equal state representation, asking, like Hamilton, ‘Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men or for the imaginary beings called states?” “The states had existed as semi-independent entities since the Revolutionary War; they had developed strong, almost nation-like, identities and interests which they jealously defended”. Hence the representation in the Senate.
Interesting to find how the Electoral College is connected with slavery - count based on two senators plus each congressional district; but, wait, in the South, they were able to count slaves as population - the infamous 3/5’s clause in the Constitution (counting people who were not even considered to be citizens {at least the Tsar’s serfs were citizens - my comment} and who could not vote) - so the South was disproportionately overly represented in the House. And the South opposed popular vote count of the president: “the South’s heavy suffrage restrictions…left it with many fewer eligible voters than the North.” Though the College provided advantages for both small states and Southern states
“the Electoral College was not a product of constitutional theory or farsighted design. Rather, it was adopted by default, after all other alternatives had been rejected.”
So many concessions to the southern slave holding states were baked in in the beginning {but we abolished slavery over 150 years ago, so why can’t we get rid of counter-majorian features that appeased the slave states - they’re no longer necessary as slave states no longer exist}
The shift of population from rural to urban has polarized the parties, whereas a hundred ago both parties had constituencies in rural areas and urban areas.
At the time of drafting, democracy was new so they put certain guardrails in place; but many were compromises - concessions really (not necessarily well thought out) to get all the delegates to vote for the thing (and not petulantly threaten to break away and align with some foreign power) including making it nearly impossible to amend. Counter-majority impediments that allow the the tyranny of the minority
And other practices like judicial review and the filibuster (which allows a further antimajorian impediment beyond disproportionate representation) which are nowhere to be found in the Constitution
Although the filibuster existed as a practice- rarely used- “and the practice was so rare that it didn’t didn’t even have a name until the 1850s…there were only twenty successful filibusters between 1806 and 1917 - fewer than two a decade….where today it is ‘widely accepted that legislation of any importance requires at least sixty votes to pass.”
So many countries that became democracies after the U.S. and models themselves on us but learned from our mistakes- such as Norway making it easier to amend their constitution - 300+ times - and yet nearly impossible here.
And the example of someone first eligible to vote in 1998 or 2000 now having spent her entire adult life under republican presidents who do not win the majority of votes, who nominated conservative Supreme Court justices (for life: no age limit or term limit like other modern democracies), approved by republican controlled senates who represented far less than half the population (unlike other modern democracies who have done away with elite upper chambers); or whose potential nomination are thwarted by a republican controlled senate and undemocratically not given a hearing. How much faith should she have in our democracy?
And the House: why hasn’t the size of the House increased since the 1920s? Over a hundred years ago yet the population has grown by millions and millions.
“Commentators today frequently describe our national political system as stalemated between two evenly matched parties. Scholars and pundits alike tell us that a major source of America’s democratic ills - for example polarization and gridlock - is an unusual degree of partisan ‘parity.’ Presidential elections are determined by razor-thin margins; the U.S. senate is evenly split. But such claims obscure the fact that parity is manufactured by our institutions.” {I.e. the electoral college and senate disrepresenation}
My first experience with this book was an audiobook. But I wanted to look up specific passages, particularly those that dealt with what has changed since the founding of our democracy.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship and formal equality before the law. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited restrictions on the right to vote on the basis of race.
The 1875 Civil Rights Act extended the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment to everyday public places.
Each of the above were opposed by Democrats and passed exclusively with Republican votes.
A hundred years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were “backed overwhelmingly by both parties.” “Sixty years later, that Republican Party has become unrecognizable…unanimous in rejecting federal legislation to restore it [the Voting Rights Act] in 2021.”
“In 1982, the Senate renewed it (the Voting Rights Act) by a vote of 85-8. Even the former segregationist leader Strom Thurmond voted for it. In 2006, the VRA was renewed for another twenty five years by a 330-33 vote in the House and a 98-0 vote in the Senate….In 2013 a conservative majority on the Supreme Court overrode this bipartisan consensus…and struck down a key provision…in Shelby County v. Holder. “Ginsburg warned that ‘throwing out pre clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.’”
“The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was passed with strong bipartisan support, opened the door to a long wave of immigration, particularly from Latin America and Asia.”
The 17th Amendment ratified in 1913 mandated direct popular election of senators rather than selection by state legislatures.
The 19th Amendment ratified in 1920 extended voting rights to women.
The 1924 Snyder Act extended citizenship and voting rights to Native Americans.
“Between 1962 and 1964 a series of Supreme Court rulings ensured that electoral majorities were represented in Congress and state legislatures. Establishing the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ the Court rulings required all US legislative districts to be roughly equal in population.”
“The United States, once a democratic pioneer and model for other nations, has now become a democratic laggard.” - retains the electoral college* - bicameral legislature with strong upper body, severely malapportioned and with a minority veto (the filibuster) - lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices - first-past-the-post election rules (as opposed to ranked choice) - Constitution hardest to change (supermajority in both chambers plus three quarters of all the states) (*almost done away with in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, but the filibuster killed these movements)
“The early twentieth century American reformer Jane Addams once wrote, ‘The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.’”...more
I would not have come across this but for a conversation with a librarian who had noticed some of my selections, which included Dostoyevsky as well asI would not have come across this but for a conversation with a librarian who had noticed some of my selections, which included Dostoyevsky as well as Barefoot Gen and more about Hiroshima, and asked me what I was reading that wasn’t so dark, and I recall part of my response included The Oresteia; she excitedly said that she had a perfect recommendation for me, and took me to the center of the library where there was a shelf of “librarian recommendations” and this work of Doerries was hers. And I’m glad she recommended it; even if I had seen the title, I don’t think I would have added this to my TBR list.
What is most compelling about this is how right Sophocles got it when he wrote his plays, particularly Ajax (I had not known Sophocles had been a general). That Ajax still resonates so strongly when performed in front of military audiences - not only with the service members but also with their spouses - speaks volumes; or Prometheus Bound in front of prison audiences - for both the incarcerated and the guards.
Doerries discusses suicide as part of Women of Trachis and Socrates’ state-mandated suicide noting the Greeks “had a different relationship with suicide from what we in the West have today, where suicide is seen-often through the lens of Christianity- as a shameful act” which I found interesting having recently read Oe’s thoughts on this from a Japanese non-Christian perspective in his Hiroshima Notes; Doerries goes on to discuss euthanasia.
And thumbs up on the book’s jacket design (I don’t think I’ve ever discussed a book cover before): combining the figures from a Greek vase onto a modern US army helmet was brilliant.
I mostly listened to the audiobook narrated by Adam Driver; his delivery was ok; actually, where he excelled was when he delivered lines from Sophocles’ plays....more
The conspiracy theories encountered by Jim Eckles Osterreich shares, like multiple references to the number 33, are great.
“In his book You Take the SThe conspiracy theories encountered by Jim Eckles Osterreich shares, like multiple references to the number 33, are great.
“In his book You Take the Sundials and Give Me the Sun,…David Townsend makes the point that it is the people who saw the atomic bomb first who are rarely asked if the were victims (p 35). Those who went outside to see what had happened were treated- or condemned- to a view never seen before by man…then the silence came - an eerie silence where it seemed the air had died.” ( p 36)
“We went and watched it…all us kids along the river…we were about a half a mile away. There were fourteen of us kids. Father knew about the bomb because they told him to move his cattle and sheep and goats. We knew exactly where to go to watch. And we just saw this red cloud comes up, then it turns orange, then it turns yellow then a boom…and everything was as light as day. We weren’t watching for radiation or anything like that; we didn’t know about that.” - Flora Millfelt
“In a week or two the Air Base released a bulletin that told us that an ammunition dump had blown up…Who were we to question our own Government? We were fighting a terrible war and were very patriotic…After the news came out and we knew what really took place, my family never considered the fact that had anything gone wrong we would have been in danger. We simply trusted our Government. We believed that what they were doing had to be done to win the war, so our loved ones could come home.” - Floy ‘Bell’ Di Risio
“It was unfenced at that time. Trinitite was scattered about, and the visitors picked up the pieces…her son put some in his pocket and they ended up in a cardboard box in their house….’it amazes me they didn’t know enough about it keep people away from it. They didn’t have any idea how dangerous it was…They didn’t tell us. They didn’t tell us. We were just in the dark about the whole thing.’” - Elizabeth McVeigh
Chapter 8: Living Downwind discusses the effects over the years, family members dying of cancer at rates far, far above national averages. And that 1990’s Radiation Exposure Compensation Act provided restitution for Nevada test site victims, but New Mexicans who “got 100 times more radiation” were not included. (p 103). Henry Herrera talks about who they sourced their food locally, including hunting, and got water from cisterns, all of which were polluted from radiation fallout.
“A seven year study…by the National Cancer Institute…published in 2020 found…only small geographic areas immediately downwind received exposures of significance…no evidence to suggest trans generational effects…”. (p 108)...more
“Ordinary Japanese people were ignorant of, or willfully blind to, the atrocities being committed in their name.” (p 15). This tracks with what Nakaza“Ordinary Japanese people were ignorant of, or willfully blind to, the atrocities being committed in their name.” (p 15). This tracks with what Nakazawa wrote in The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen. (Barefoot Gen is a really well done description, first hand account, of the devastation of Hiroshima and its impact on inhabitants in manga format.)
“Anti-American articles and posters appeared every day: ‘If one considers the atrocities which [the Americans] have committed against American Indians, the Negroes, and the Chinese,’ fumed the respectable economic newspaper Nihon Sangyo Keizai, on August 5, 1944, ‘one is amazed at their presumption in wearing the mask of civilization.’” (p 19)
“Japanese children were prime targets of this propaganda. Throughout the 1940s, school posters urged children to ‘Kill the American Devils,’ boys and girls were instructed to attack images of Churchill and Roosevelt.” (p 19). Again, see Nakazawa also.
“‘Self-energized dislocation’…using a euphemism as callous as it was inexact*…’terror bombing’ - a phrase coined by German Propaganda Minister Goebbels - more accurately described the most efficient way yet discovered of killing human beings: ‘ it would be ironical,’ stated the British military historian Basil Liddell Hart, ‘if the defenders of civilization depend for victory upon the most barbaric and unskilled way of winning a war the world has ever seen.’” (p 52) *Feuersturm: firestorm
“The clearest manifestation of its {LeMay’s fire bombing of civilians} failure was the people’s resistance. They did not revolt. Insurrection was unthinkable to hungry, bombed civilians. Major de Seversky, an air-war expert, put it rather more brutally in an appropriately named chapter: The Fallacy of Killing People’: ‘The dead can’t revolt.’… De Sevenky’s opinion of civilian terror-bombing stands as its most clear headed denunciation: ‘in air battle, killing is incidental to the strategic purpose.’” ( p 66)
So there’s a lot of background provided before this book moves into discussion of the bomb: shogunate histories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman’s ascendancy to the presidency, germane discussion of bombing in Europe, so be prepared to read 80+ pages before Ham gets to discussing the bomb, and even then he goes into explaining the development of quantum physics from Rutherford to Bohr, and how to extract the necessary isotopes from uranium, but he provides interesting detail throughout. But there’s maybe two chapters devoted to information about the actual bombing of both cities and the aftermath in each; a lot about multifaceted things that led up to each event, followed by a lot of discussion about the complexities for surrendering, followed by nuclear proliferation, so from this context the title could be seen as emphasizing each city too much - but overall, a very informative read. And it drives home point that the two atomic bombings* had little impact on the thinking of the Japanese Imperial Command- though Russia’s entry into the war did, as did the preservation of the Emperor. {*in a way, what did it matter whether it was one bomb or a thousand bombs that destroyed a city? And the people - the commoners - didn’t matter to the samurai class}
“Stimson divulged the details of a secret organization larger than the biggest US corporation; tens of thousands working on an enterprise, the purpose of which they were ignorant; of huge factories and laboratories situated on mesas, deserts, and valleys; of swathes of American businesses given over to developing new and untested processes; of immense resources, deadly substances, and remarkable scientific advances; and of a cost to US taxpayers: upwards of US $2 billion (US $24 billion in 2020).” (p74)
“Black workers were segregated, paid little and housed in poor conditions; racial discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics did not pause for the war effort.” (p 128)
“The legal case of the ‘Radium Girls’ prompted new regulations to protect workers from radiation and other workplace hazards and ensured that American industrialists were well aware of the effects of radiation a decade before the use of the atomic bomb.” (p 90)
Ham confirms what I’ve read elsewhere: that early on some scientists advocated for the open exchange of ideas, in part to avert a nuclear arms race. This exchange didn’t happen and the nuclear arms race took off.
Unfortunate naïveté for people of Nagasaki, thinking since the city had been the hub of Christianity in Japan that they were being spared.
“The bed-wetters (younger children evacuated to the countryside), who lay in terror through the long, black nights pricked by starlight and comet, or perhaps the tail lights of American bombers flying home.” (p 139)
“Halsey’s precision raids demonstrated the strategic advantage of striking military targets over LeMay’s mass napalming of civilians: Halsey’s carrier aircraft sank eight of 12 huge ferries that transported coal from the Hokkaido mines to war factories on Honshu. The American historian Richard Frank described raid as ‘the most devastating single strategic bombing success of all the campaigns against Japan,’ crippling coal supplies to the main island.” (p 176)
“Oppenheimer had chosen the name ‘Trinity’ after the ‘three person’d God,’ …of John Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnet 14. The poem marries the self-flagellatory torment of the Old Testament with the devotional self-sacrifice of the New, and holds meaning for Christian and Jew: Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you/ As yet but knocke, breathe, shine and seek to mend/ That I may rise, and stand, and o’erthrow me, and bend/ Your force to break, blowe, burn, and make me new…/ Donne intended the poem as a plea for redemption from a tripartite God. Oppenheimer hauled the poem into the 20th century as an appeal to the god of atomic energy who would ‘break, blowe, burn, and make me new’ - that is purify me by threatening to destroy me. The theme of redemption through destruction possibly appealed to the scientist’s troubled conscience; and furnished hope that the bomb could yet redeem mankind and end war forever…the heathen Japanese, broken, blown, and burned, were, implicitly, not to participate in the peaceful rebirth of a post-nuclear Judeo-Christian world.” (p 219)
“Honkawa National Elementary School - the school nearest the detonation…was completely gutted; the principal, all 10 teachers and 400 children, killed immediately (two, behind a wall, survived).” (p 317). I wonder if one of these two was Keiji Nakazawa who went on to write “Barefoot Gen.”
“It is palpable clear from these events that the Soviet declaration of war made a deeper impression on Tokyo than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.” (p 354)
Nagasaki: “thousands of near dead staggered up the Urakami Valley towards the hospital. The wounded carried the fatally wounded; children dragged their dying parents; parents clutched their children’s bodies. They bumped and shuffled up the hillsides, glancing back at fires that drew closer, and one by one they collapsed from dehydration or exhaustion.” (p 375)
“A tedious debate about how to surrender…proceeded…fantasy vied with delusion for a claim on their minds…the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were scarcely mentioned.” (pp 380-383)
“During this time, one foreign journalist’s persistence undermined the US investigation, and put a spur in the side of the world’s press…it was the work of an intrepid Australian correspondent, Wilfred Burchert, a young man not yet sullied by his love affair with communism.” (p 425)
“Their fear of cancer - or confirmation of it- drove many to suicide…whenever he heard such stories the great Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe,* himself exposed to the bomb, felt relieved that Japan ‘is not a Christian country. I feel an almost complete relief that a dogmatic Christian sense of guilt did not prevent the girl from taking her own life.’” (p 441) (Author of “Hiroshima Notes”)
“…Oppenheimer confided, ‘Mr President, I feel I have blood on my hands.”…Oppenheimer meant that he wore blood of future casualties of nuclear war; not the blood of the Japanese.” (p 463)
“In Edward Teller we encounter…the utter rejection of any controls on nuclear arms….Teller, on whom Stanley Kubrick partly modeled the character of Dr Strangelove…”. (p 467)
“John Hersey’s article ‘Hiroshima’…had a huge impact on perceptions of the nuclear weapons (notwithstanding the reporter Mary McCarthy’s demolition of Hersey’s article as a ‘human interest story’ that treated the bomb as an earthquake or other natural disaster and failed to consider why it was used, who was responsible, and whether it had been necessary.)”. (p 469). [i think, but didn’t set down Ham’s and Hersey’s works side by side, they tell some of the stories of the same survivors; but then again, there’s was a limited pool of interviewable survivors,]...more
“As a child I did not believe the old saying that one’s whole life can be decided by the events of a few days. But now, recalling my summertime experi“As a child I did not believe the old saying that one’s whole life can be decided by the events of a few days. But now, recalling my summertime experiences some thirty-two years ago, I am forced to concede that such a decisive time is surely possible. And I do do with a profound sense of awe.” (1995 Introduction, p 7)
Epigram: “Who, in later times, will be able to understand that we had to fall again into darkness after we had once known the light?” Sebastien Castilian De arte dubitandi (1562)
“There are, of course, even sadder stories. One girl, for example, happened to see her hospital chart…and then hanged herself. Whenever I hear such stories, I feel fortunate that ours is not a Christian country. I feel an almost complete relief that a dogmatic Christian sense of guilt did not prevent the girl from taking her own life. None of us survivors can morally blame her.” (p 84)
This book completes the arc of my readings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, starting with American Prometheus, continuing with John Hersey, and then Barefoot Gen. Oe’s Notes is set twenty years later, primarily in the 1960s, and when it focuses on the victims he explores their psychological orientation, describing their courage as “interpreters of human nature”, “old A-bomb victims ‘people who do not pity themselves in spite of everything.’” With dignity.
And I think we tend to forget, as the 1960s recede into the past, how much testing of A and H bombs was going on at that time, and the protests against the testing.
“the Hiroshima survivors first began struggling to recover and rebuild.” I found this line of thought intriguing: that the effects of the bomb “was not as horrible” as it would have been had it been dropped on an area that didn’t have the means to rebuild and recover....more
“The New Yorker magazine devoted its entire August 31, 1946 issue to Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima,’ in he reported to Americans and the world the full, ghastly“The New Yorker magazine devoted its entire August 31, 1946 issue to Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima,’ in he reported to Americans and the world the full, ghastly realities of atomic warfare…it was a massacre of biblical proportions…however, until Hersey’s story appeared…the U.S. government had astonishingly managed to hide the magnitude of what happened in Hiroshima immediately after the bombing, and successfully covered up the bomb’s long-term deadly radiological effects.”
If you’ve read Hersey’s Hiroshima, this is a good follow up; if you’ve not yet read Hiroshima, read it and then come back to this.
“If our concept of…civilization was to mean anything,” he (Hersey) stated, “we had to acknowledge the humanity of even our misled and murderous enemies.”
Time, Inc owner Henry Luce had “rewrote and edited Hersey’s stories (from Moscow) so egregiously that Hersey…repeatedly told Luce to his face that that there was much more truthful reporting in Pravada’” (p 18)
“Upon hearing the news about Hiroshima, Hersey was immediately overwhelmed by a sense of despair. It wasn’t a feeling of guilt - or even, at first, compassion for Hiroshima’s victims - but rather an over arching fear about the world’s future.” (p 21). This reaction is similar to Neils Bohr’s and Oppenheimer’s. ( See American Prometheus)
“he felt ‘sure that one bomb would have brought Japanese surrender.’ The incendiary raids on cities in Japan - and Germany - had already seemed morally reprehensible to him.” (p 22). I’m trying to recall where I’d read that American’s were not upset about the incendiary bombings - even though the death toll of say the Tokyo fire bombing was as high as Hiroshima’s immediate aftermath.
“General MacArthur would likely have an additional personal reason for vigorously suppressing reporting on the bombed cities and downplaying the bomb in general: ‘[jealousy] of the fact that ‘his war’ of four years had been won by two bombs prepared without his knowledge and dropped without his command.’”
“Despite his noble goals with the Hiroshima story, Hersey had, during the war, harbored his own prejudices against the Japanese.” (p 53)
“In Hersey’s‘Hiroshima,’ Americans were about to be confronted with the realities of the wrathful, Godlike military actions conducted covertly in their name and what future warfare might look like…it would expose the extent to which those principals had covered up the less savory aspects of their handiwork.” (p 114)
“The editors chose to keep Martin’s summery picture on the ‘Hiroshima’ issue. After reading the story inside, this bucolic scene would likely take on unnerving connotations for readers…it could be seen as echoing the obliviousness of Hiroshima’s residents as they went about their business on the morning of August 6, 1945..(some might have found the cover especially sinister after realizing that a comparable public park…Asano Park- had ended up serving as an evacuation site for blast survivors, and within twenty-four hours was littered with scalded corpses.)” (p 122). I think keeping this cover was brilliant.
The editors did not mention, however, that the story would be the first to depict the Japanese victims as ordinary human beings - or human beings at all - a then-revolutionary approach to the subject of atomic bombings…”. (p127)
“Hiroshima had not been treated as a crime because it was a victor’s handiwork.” (p 129)
“A more solemn report also came in: one New Yorker contributor saw a group of Japanese American soldiers buying copies at Grand Central. The soldiers paid for the magazines, and there, amidst the bustle of rushing commuters and blaring train announcements, they sat down together and read the issue in silence.” (p 132)
“Upon its 1949 release, the Japanese edition…became an immediate bestseller…Japanese reviewers seemed to regard Hiroshima with a mix of sadness and cautious optimism. ‘It expresses a humanism which transcends the positions of victor and vanquished,’ wrote one Japanese reviewer…’it should be read seriously, with poignant hope for peace.’” (p 167)
“In 1985, the New Yorker published a new…story by Hersey…’it was quite clear that the shadow [of Hiroshima in the lives of his six subjects] was longer than the one year about which I had written in the original piece,’ Hersey recalled. ‘The shadow was much, much longer.’” (p 175)
My complaints about the book include that, in the early part, I feel that there’s filler to stretch the book to book-length along with some unnecessary repetition; and when it gets to the six survivors that Hersey wrote about, it includes too much of what Hersey already wrote about - I figure anyone who is reading this book has already read Hersey’s Hiroshima, so why repeat. There’s some (minimal?) direct quotation, but much more seems very similar to what Hersey wrote but without attribution....more
So the book starts out with a discussion of the Euro coin that depicts a bull with Europa riding it, and questions what message the Union was sending So the book starts out with a discussion of the Euro coin that depicts a bull with Europa riding it, and questions what message the Union was sending in depicting a rape scene…
Morales’s approach is more like a structured conversation rather than a lecture.
Regarding the ideological purpose of myths - to keep us in our place - Morales quotes lines spoken by a character named Sisyphus from a fragment of a 5th century play:
“There was a time when human life was without order and bestial and ruled by brute force, when there was neither any reward for the good nor any punishment for the bad. And then, I think, men established punitive laws so that Justice would be ruler of all <…> and have Hubris in chains. Whoever did wrong was punished. Then, given that the laws held people back from openly committing violent deeds but they still did them in secret, at that time I think <…> some man of shrewd and intelligent character hit upon the idea of inventing the gods for mortals, so that bad people could have something to fear even when they acted or spoke or schemed in secret.”
She presents an interesting theory of how psych-analysis could’ve would’ve been different if Freud had selected a myth other then Oedipus to base his theory on (Antigone? Cupid and Psyche? Or hadn’t ignored Jocasta’s fate? Or had selected the early part of Oedipus that involved Laius before meeting Jocasta?)
She also discusses that the Ancient Greeks and Romans had a different sensibility regarding rape - they differentiated between real life rape vs rape committed by a god. (Something I think that is lost with modern reading and retelling of mythology)
And she looks at modern links to mythology with the growth of New Age....more
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