Known but to God

I've always had mixed feelings about the U.S. military. I want it to be the most lethal fighting force on earth, comprising terrifyingly efficient killers and destroyers like the Roman Legions. I also want it firmly shackled by civilian control. And, especially after the past decade, I want its mission to be a combination of deterrence and defense.

That's all. Not an armed priesthood bringing the gospel of Americanism to eagerly waiting Third World mud villages. Not a social engineering unit for putting uniforms on transsexuals. Above all, not a plaything for politicians' war games.

That said -- one thing I unequivocally like is military ceremonies. They proudly flaunt their tradition and gravitas. Intellectually the idea of people drilled to act in unison, in precise patterns, might be distasteful; but it is an aesthetic pleasure. Watching a disciplined group in ritual motion, whether it's a military drill team or dancers in a Balanchine ballet, produces an archetypal thrill.

Even those newsreel shots of Nazi or Soviet troops in the thousands goose stepping past the reviewing stand, while morally disgusting, tug at the emotions. That's what they were designed to do.

Military ceremonies are almost the last survival in our practical, bureaucratic world of the splendor attached to public life in times past. Every formal occasion was an opportunity to dazzle onlookers (yes, the impression created had a political purpose, but it was also the outpouring of confident elegance).

The opening of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August offers a glimpse of what they were like at their most extravagant:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun.   

Even ordinary parades and festivals were glorious displays of color and pomp. What few celebrations of civic pride we can muster today have degenerated into assemblies of souvenir and ice cream vendors, displays of bad amateur paintings, balloons for the kids, and maybe a few "antique" (i.e., pre-1980s) cars.

The armies of the world held onto their style, sometimes stupidly: less than a hundred years ago, at the outset of the Great War, French soldiers marched to their muddy deaths wearing dress uniforms with red-striped trousers. (The French and Italians still have a taste for cutting a good figure in uniform; I've watched delightedly as traffic cops in Rome stopped cars -- they have some kind of wand they arc toward the curb, unlike American police who crudely point -- snapped to attention and saluted the driver.)

Full-dress occasions are rare in the armed services today, but when they honor someone, it is a grand sight.

The high-voltage blogger Ann Barnhardt recently wrote about the changing of the guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery (dated May 28; I can't figure out any way to link to individual postings on her site). She said:

The soldiers are in full dress uniform, meticulously turned-out and maintained. They are not in combat gear that soldiers would use to walk a patrol in Afghanistan. The Tomb guards are doing something DIFFERENT, and thus their uniforms reflect that. Really, what the ceremonies surrounding the Tomb are is the highest form of ART. It is living ART, not consisting of a mere two-dimensional representation, not consisting of inanimate objects, but ART consisting of human beings in action. The uniforms, the gait, the precise rubrics, words, gestures and movements - these all combine into a perpetual work of art that not only moves and inspires the people who witness it, but also accomplishes the goal of making tangible a RESPECT for and a REMEMBRANCE of all of the fallen unknown soldiers. The Tomb Guards walk their patrol whether anyone is there to see them do it or not. It isn't a show. It is a service. It is a liturgy.

Barnhardt provides this video of the guard changing. Its technical quality is eh, probably put on YouTube by a tourist, but the essence and meaning shines through. If you can watch this without blinking back a furtive tear, something is wrong with you.

The fourth revolution

The New Criterion is a valuable publication, mainly for its arts commentary, which holds the fort for traditionalism even after the surrender. Someone posted an article from the June issue at Lucianne.com today. By James Piereson, it's called "Future tense, X: The fourth revolution." Subhead: "On the possibility of a forthcoming political revolution."

Pretty heady stuff from a stately, intellectually reactionary magazine. "... What the United States is now facing is not a gradual decline but a political upheaval that will reshape its politics, policies, and institutions for a generation or two to come," Piereson says.

Most of the article is not very original, especially his rubber-stamped description of the economic debacle of the past dozen years. And who doesn't look at the political and social landscape of the United States today and see gaping differences of ideology and an out-of-control financial system?

Still, Piereson offers an interesting observation about the United States:

Notwithstanding its reputation for stability and continuity, the U.S. political system seems to resolve its deepest problems in relatively brief periods of intense and potentially destabilizing conflict. These events are what some historians have called our “surrogates for revolution” because, rather than overthrowing the constitutional order, they adjust it to developing circumstances.

He believes the first three destabilizing and transforming events in American history were the Jeffersonian "revolution" (his word), the War Between the States (or "Civil War," his term), and the New Deal. Calling Jeffersonian politics a revolution seems exaggerated, but I am no specialist in the history of that era. For that matter, I don't profess to be an expert about the 1861-65 war (whatever you call it); but it can hardly be described as a "surrogate" for revolution; it was a revolution, just like the one that created the United States, and -- this is simply a statement of fact, not a value judgment -- it was repressed with savage brutality.

As to FDR's third revolution, or surrogate revolution:

The Democratic Party has gradually evolved into a “public sector party” that finds its votes and organizational strength in public sector unions, government employees and contractors, and beneficiaries of government programs.

The New Criterion cultivates an above-the-battle, anti-emotional writing style -- like The New Yorker and many English writers once did -- which is often a virtue, but this is simply too genteel. Piereson makes it sound like the Democrats' strategy has been little more than offering a helping hand to The People -- "beneficiaries of government programs." It is silent about one of the central results of a decadent, post-New Deal welfare state: the creation of a large population segment whose relationship to society is purely one of taking and being supported, while including a large out-of-control criminal element. America has never before had a purely dysfunctional class, resentful (especially in racial terms) and contemptuous of  its benefactors. That was obviously not the aim of the New Dealers, but it is part of their legacy.

Piereson is clear-sighted enough to admit that Republicans in power haven't seriously tried to reverse the federal-government-as-father-mother-and-nanny principle: "Republican governors and mayors, like their Democratic counterparts, continue to make their pilgrimages to Washington in search of grant money and subsidies for their states and cities, just as members of Congress from both parties run for reelection by pointing to the federal funds they have brought back to their states and districts."

But we've reached the two-minute warning. That game is about up, he says, and while hardly a new insight, he is almost surely correct. 

The regime of public spending has at last drawn so many groups into the public arena in search of public dollars that it has paralyzed the political process and driven governments to the edge of bankruptcy. These groups are widely varied: trade associations, educational lobbies, public employee unions, government contractors, ideological and advocacy organizations, health-care providers, hospital associations that earn revenues from Medicare and Medicaid programs, and the like. These are what economists call rent-seeking groups because they are concerned with the distribution of resources rather than with the creation of wealth. 

The skimming class is, or will soon be, without the traditional bottomless pitcher of the federal government to draw from. A longstanding way of life for millions is disappearing. What surrogate revolution gathers its arrows? Piereson maintains "there is every chance that the United States will emerge from this crisis with new momentum to develop its economy and provide leadership for the world," but perhaps wisely offers no details about how. He spends the last part of his article dive-bombing Obama. As much as I despise Buraq, he didn't invent The System, merely tried to game and expand it to its "inevitable" triumph. By precipitating instead its demise, he may -- after an unpleasant fourth revolution -- turn out to have done us a favor.

Lawrence Summers: The Business of America is borrowing

Here's a startling headline for you:

It is time for governments to borrow more

Our loan salesman is Larry Summers, whose CV includes a stint as Buraq's director of the White House National Economic Council.

His argument can be summed up as: interest rates are so low you need a microscope to see them; governments, especially the United States government, should take advantage of it by -- wait for it -- continuing their borrowing binge. (Our current national debt is -- well, I can't give you a precise figure, because its continuous increase outruns my ability to type, but call it $15.79 trillion, or $138,000 per taxpayer.)

Summers writes:

These low rates on even long maturities mean that markets are offering the opportunity to lock in low long-term borrowing costs. In the United States, for example, the government could commit to borrowing five-year money in five years at a nominal cost of about 2.5 percent and at a real cost very close to zero.

No, the real cost may be close to zero in the cloud-cuckoo land of the economists, but the real real cost is another step toward fiscal apocalypse. He wants the government to emulate the sucker who gets a new credit card at an ultra-low teaser rate and runs up a new batch of debt after he's maxed out the other cards. 

Ah, but the difference is, the government can issue its own credit cards to itself at a very attractive rate, and as many as it wants, at least till the whole house of credit cards collapses.

Summers seems to concede that minuscule interest rates have not motivated business to do much that would benefit the economy, like hiring people. So governments should use borrowed money for projects that money-grubbing capitalists don't believe are profitable.

Rather than focusing on lowering already epically low rates, governments that enjoy such low borrowing costs can improve their creditworthiness by borrowing more, not less, and investing in improving their future fiscal position, even assuming no positive demand stimulus effects of a kind likely to materialize with negative real rates. They should accelerate any necessary maintenance projects — issuing debt leaves the state richer not poorer, assuming that maintenance costs rise at or above the general inflation rate.

 Let's see. In the Through the Looking Glass world, borrowing more increases creditworthiness (as long as you're a government). It improves a country's future fiscal position, even assuming no positive demand materializes. Issuing debt leaves the state richer not poorer. 

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

What will this credit-improving borrowing be in aid of? Maintenance. Shovel-ready projects -- where have we heard that before? "Expanding the economy’s capacity or its ability to innovate." The last borrowed-money dump on the economy, the stimulus packages, got the machine firing on all one half cylinder. Hey, Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand? Here's a few billion bucks, go back to your garage and innovate!

Who, by the way, will buy this el cheapo debt? Not me, for a return of 0.001 percent. Probably not you. Suicidal financial institutions. Other countries, especially the ones like Greece and Spain that are being measured for the coffin. Let me introduce you to Uncle Sam, the loan shark.

Prosperity isn't just around the corner. It's ahead. Dead ahead.

I'm like woh!

Hey, y'know, I'm a fuckin' baby boomer, takin' all the money they're entitled to, just 'cause I've had jobs and I can collect like Social Security, y'know, even still workin' after I oughta be laid off so young persons, especially Persons of Color, can get aboard.

Y'know, it's fuckin' true, I mostly work with people pushin' it, like around my age, we oughta all be like dead, we're holdin' back the future, y'know what I'm sayin'? So I don't have too much goin' with the compassionate generation, Y or Z or whatever we're down to now, the ones who want me and my fuckin' colleagues to like die or something.

Once in a while when I do hear 'em, though, it's like a real shock, y'know? I've got used to, y'know, the ones with the 25 stickers on their cars, like Obama '08 The Messiah Is Here and Coexist With Islam Which Is Just a Social Construct and Fuck for Peace, y'know? But I hear 'em talk and I'm like woh!

Old waste of space I am, I've kinda got used to the girls, I mean womyn, with their "uptalk," y'know, ending every sentence on an upnote, y'know what I mean? I mean, like, "It's about social justice?" and "We've gotta do something?" and "They need to hear us?"

But it's the guys, y'know, the like 20-somethings, well fuck, I call 'em guys, y'know, as a how do you say it, horrific, honorific, whatever, y'know, that really make me like wanna hurl. 

It's not just the like, what d'you call 'em, words they use, all 50 of 'em, but the sound they make. Like produced way back in the throat, y'know? Like, they're gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). And these gays, sorry, guys, I mean, like, they do the uptalk thing too. They talk like, y'know, womyn. Everything that comes out of their throats, like way back, has a sort of tentative sound, like "I'm just sayin', y'know, but if a Person of Color is offended, hey, y'know, I didn't really mean it."

The old generation really like sucks. That's getting to be me, y'know?

Pretzel syntax

New York magazine carries a piece about management turmoil at the world's most dishonest newspaper, the New York Times. I'm not sure why I bothered to read it, except maybe Schadenfreude -- accounts of any problems, especially financial ones, at the Times and I'm over the moon. 

It's fun to read about Sulzberger Junior, the Times Company's old-money retard publisher, his new Mexican cookie and his firing of a long-time sycophant named Janet Robinson. That, however, is not what we're on about today. 

New York is only slightly less politically Marxist/feminist than the Times itself. The story includes this sentence:

It raises the question of what the next CEO of the Times will be running when he or she shows up, and how much authority and power he or she will have under the thumb of the family, led by Sulzberger, who, in the pretzel logic of the Times’ management structure, will be both his or her boss, as chairman, and his or her underling, as publisher—a situation that denies a leader any real authority. 

This is not simply bad writing, a sentence that stitches together too many thoughts with too many transitions. It is self-mockery of the kind that only insane political correctness is capable of.

When he or she shows up. How much power he or she will have. His or her boss. His or her underling. God (he or she) help us!

Leftism and feminism, in their crusade against the good, the true, and the beautiful, cannot even leave language un-battered. The feminista death squads' reign of terror in the universities has now descended -- if it was possible to descend further -- to the popular press.

Earlier generations, who actually had a warm feeling for language, understood that in English (unlike French, Italian, German, or Spanish) possessive pronouns do not change gender depending on the noun they modify -- nouns themselves have no gender in English. They went along with the commonsense use of "his" to mean "his or her." It wasn't "sexist"; it was simply a way of avoiding the awkwardness that the New York quote displays.

The article also says, with no sign of irony:

That has led to speculation, and not for the first time, that Mayor Bloomberg, a long-fabled white knight for beleaguered Times staffers, could swoop in and save the paper from itself, a kind of best worst-case scenario for the Ochs-Sulzberger family. Here, after all, would be the decisive leader the paper yearned for, a ­powerful and wealthy businessman who has shown ample commitment to the city that gives its name to the greatest newspaper in the world. In theory, this benevolent dictator could afford to lose money for the greater good of journalism in America.

New York and California should secede and form their own country. The states in between should sell gas to people heading from one to the other and tax all goods moving between East Crackpotia and West Crackpotia.

Classical beauty revisited

More than four years ago I published a photo essay on beautiful women who play classical music. I'm doing another today to cheer myself up on this Memorial Day weekend, because I'm feeling glum about the Third World dumping ground that the country our soldiers died for has become.

Beauty and high-culture musicianship ... I'll take that combination over movie stars.

Right, let's go:

Jennifer Koh

I saw her in concert a few years ago. She is ever so cute and has a charming stage presence.

Arabella Steinbacher

Those eyes, those lips, those tone colors. A celebrated younger artist. I have an SACD with her playing Dvořák and Szymanowski.

Simone Dinnerstein

Eyes like Alpine lakes. Plays the piano a bit too.

Sara Alice Ott

She is a pianist and Japanese-German hybrid. If we had lost World War II (God forbid!) there might be a few more like her.

Yuja Wang

Do not ask her to play "Chinatown, My Chinatown." Rachmaninoff is more up her street.

Ragnhild Hemsing

Norwegian, plays a Francesco Ruggeri Violin built in Cremona in 1694. She herself is of recent vintage, born in 1988. Oh, am I feeling old.

Well that's the lot, friends. I posted two shots of Hilary Hahn last time, so I can't include her again. ... Wait a minute. This is my damn blog. If I want to, and I do ...

Well, that's the lot, friends ... wait a minute.

Well, that's the lot, friends. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday.