Seth Halpern makes a good point in the discussion under my World War One review, and I’ve already conceded that I may have overdone the “what a pointless joke it was” theme, or anyway have underrated the historical and moral necessity of the war itself, but consider this post from yesterday, by blogger Jacob T. Levy, that got a fair amount of attention and linkage via Memeorandom on the political left:
There’s commemorative cannon-fire outside my office right now, and I’m more disgusted than moved. Yet more artillery fire seems to me to miss what should be the point.
A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake.
Not much more to the post. I think he kind of misses the point of the holiday’s “somberness” – which I think is the expression that most grown-ups choose over shows of “anger and horror” regarding great terrible events, especially ones that happened far away and a long time ago largely if not entirely to other people.
I also wonder if there’s a precedent in human history for the event he seems to be imagining – a mass orgy of whining, hand-wringing, pants-wetting, and gnashing of teeth – not a “somber honoring” of those who fought and died in our name, for instance, or a recollection of a culture’s own suffering, but a revival of anger at long-dead leaders, of horror over the travesties of another era?
Many religions do have something close to a “humanity sucks!” festival. To a misanthrope, it’s one of the paradoxically appealing aspects both of Christianity and of Shi’a Islam, for instance – the way believers torment themselves over their ancient failures of faith and courage, implicitly conceding that we of the present generation are likely no better, and in any event can never expiate the sins except by divine intervention.
I guess Mr. Levy is calling for a progressive, secular festival of self-mortification – but, if it’s going to be tied to WWI, shouldn’t it take place on the day the war started, rather than on the anniversary of peace? Can we get symbolically pissed off about the Taiping Rebellion, the Napoleonic Wars, and the 30 Years War, too? Should consideration of lesser acts also be included? What are the geographical, political, historical, moral cut-off points?
While we’re at it, I’d like to suggest that we balance out International Humanity Sucks Day with a version of the ancient Roman “all new people” holiday. In Rome, it was held every 125 years, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not entirely sure why the Romans marked the point at which it could be said that no one alive had also been alive the last time it was marked, but I see it as serving as a reminder both that no one lives forever, and also that the world is ours to make anew. If we celebrated it every year, we could at least symbolically relieve ourselves of all personal responsibility for all ills, but also relinquish credit for all accomplishments, originating 125 years before that day and earlier. Call it “International This Too Shall Pass Day.”
Comments 16
WWI was the major historical downer for the Left because the workers of the world happily enlisted to kill each other in the name of nationalism rather than boycott the conflict out of class solidarity. It signaled that true socialism would only be imposed by force (or some kind of force majeure), in defiance of popular instincts and loyalties. Even Stalin later implicitly acknowledged this when he billed WW2 as the Great Patriotic War. For most people WWI was a slaughter undertaken, for better or worse, for more or less conventional reasons. For the Left it was never supposed to happen at all, and thus represented a metaphysical sacrilege. You could say it was as close as Red theology ever got to a concept of Original Sin.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
@ Seth Halpern:
All true, but I tend to doubt that the emotionalism of someone like the blogger I quoted is as well-grounded as all that. There may be a subtext or a back-story, but I think that Levy is mainly just indulging in reflexive self-righteous anger at whatever evil conservatives and traditionalists happen to take seriously.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Am I the only one?
Chicago’s very ownMister Peanut (picture please) wrings his hands over corruption in Afghanistan.
Hello!!!
Mister Peanut and the lovely Michelle had no problem whatsoever getting their Hyde Park mansion through their slimy patron Tony The House Fairy Tony Rezco, and he can not make up his friggin’ peanut head about Afghanistan because Hamid Karzai may not be Abraham Lincoln. Back in Cheekago, the City that woyks on graft and juice, he backed the thoroughly stinky Todd Stroger for Cook County Boss, over a genuine reformer, Forest Claypool, and he can’t make up his brittle shell of a peanut mind over winning or loosing in Afghanistan.
Gimme a break.
0bie worries about as much about corruption as I worry about being too thin.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Back in my student days in Paris, my Marxist-Leninist-Maoist friends described the First World War as a war between two aggressors. I never asked for more detail about how it fit their historical narrative, but I’m pretty sure they saw it as a natural expression of contradictions in capitalism. And of course it led to the socialist revolution in Russia, so it all matched the Marxist narrative pretty well. I certainly don’t think they would have seen it as something that was never supposed to happen.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:04 am
@Peter: Fair enough, but after all Original Sin is theologically curable and so is the working class’s recalcitrant historical consciousness. A good Communist can always get there from here. As for the Workers’ Paradise arising in a backward, monk-ridden rural latrine like Tsarist Russia rather than in an industrialized bourgeois capitalist society possessing a highly self-aware revolutionary movement, as Marxist theory predicted, well, as the Church Lady would say, How Convenient. Then again, you never know what form the messiah will take. Anyway, although I agree that aggressive war was deemed a quintessentially capitalist thing, I really don’t think the comrades reckoned on just how eagerly the proletariat would play along. Thank the Dialectic for that party vanguard and the willingness of the exploiters to provide it with the hanging rope.
@CKM: Okay, okay, I was straining to give the guy an intellectual pedigree. For all I know he wrote his dissertation at Pelosi U.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:01 am
@ Seth Halpern:
Am I wrong in thinking that most of the Europeans fighting in WWI were conscripts?
November 13th, 2009 at 7:12 am
There was conscription, but there was also mass volunteerism and waves of nationalism. The best and the brightest of their generation flocked to the war. The total mayhem and destruction of the best and brightest was what helped propel the pacifist wave that provided Hitler and Stalin the time they needed (especially Hitler) to get ready for WWII. While Chamberlain was a complete idiot at Munich, if you consider the state theology and shock still in play from the massive death from WWI, his actions are somewhat more understandable.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:30 am
@fuster, I don’t know how universal conscription was in 1914, but assuming it was, the draftees don’t seem to have objected initially. And their aristocratic officers were especially anxious to prove that all that study of Homer hadn’t gone to waste.
I remember reading the letters of a German Jewish soldier rhapsodizing to his mother over the joy he felt at belonging to something so profound. Anecdotal to be sure, but more than mildly wrenching.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Marxism may not have a “humanity sucks” festival, but Marx felt humans had to be reshaped so that there would be no disagreement and so then the state could wither away.
Marx said that “national differences and antagonisms between people are daily more and more vanishing.” He was wrong. He said that the value of a product is the value of the raw materials plus the value of the labor. He was wrong; such a product is worthless if nobody wants it. He said that there had been no merchants in ancient times. He was wrong; he had never heard of the Solkj Road. In fact, as long as 2,600 years ago, merchants regularly traveled as much as 500 miles. Marx was wrong about everything.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Funny thing is, I also read somewhere that Marx was proud of his fraternity dueling scar. Go figure.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:52 am
World War One, cost a ton,
What great fun, missing sons,
Unoriginal sin, losing win.
World War Two, hellish stew,
Was the brew, our fathers knew.
It’s evil twin.
Quaffing those anew,
Even saucered and blown,
Yields inchoate moan,
Sets senses askew,
Makes mindscapes of rue,
Despite decades long run.
Under those twin burning suns,
Dried blood still runs.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:56 am
@Sully: Hitting “refresh” repeatedly and watching your ingenious verbalizing develop is akin to viewing time lapse photography.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:16 am
@ Seth Halpern:
I probably should write offline; but what you’ve noticed is the way I’ve always been. Tonight or tomorrow or next week during a drive or a walk my wife will ask me why I seem preoccupied.
I’m glad you wrote ingenious rather than any of many other words that come to my own mind after I’ve played with one of these kinds of things endlessly.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:32 am
@ Sully:
Dash it all, Sully. Dash it and darn! Let’s have no more of “evil twin” talk.
And don’t worry about writing and revising. Sometimes it’s of interest to watch the chef at work.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:54 am
@ fuster:
Thanks fuster. I really needed to get off that topic. Really.
Latest verse:
Shells infinite rammed,
Humanity be damned,
Ornamented lands,
Torsos, legs, hands.
I’m going to hulu for some diversion,
I need a thorough mind cleansing excursion.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:31 am
@ Sully:
Shouldn’t there be a last line, providing a rhyme for diversion?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Post a Comment