Bad Karma

It isn't easy to understand this statute.  For me, at least.

Just what is Teddy Roosevelt supposed to be doing (besides riding a horse)?  Is he going somewhere?  If so, where? Why are an African and a Native American walking beside him?  Why would three such persons and a horse come together in the manner portrayed?

Obviously they wouldn't.  I suppose it would be possible they could meet together in some fantasy novel or movie (I think of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, where everyone who has ever died comes back to life on the banks of an incredibly long river and must interact).  But it's unlikely that's what the sculptor had in mind.

From what I read, the standing or walking figures are intended to represent continents, presumably North America and Africa.  That TR as he was called has a connection with North America, indeed with both American continents, is obvious.  It isn't clear to me what he had to do with Africa, however, unless he visited it to kill large animals with guns as I assume he did, or perhaps visit the Pyramids.  Personally, I don't think that merits a statute.  

The use of figures to represent continents or cities or peoples was once fairly common in art, and that was the case for a long time.  The Romans were inclined to do this.  Coins or reliefs showing figures representing Britannia, Germania, Judea etc., in chains or kneeling before an emperor or Rome personified were produced in response to many conquests.

Assume these figures with TR represent continents.  What then?  Why is TR riding a horse between Africa and, say, North America?  Is he supposed to unite them in some sense, or lead them?  Is he a bridge between them?

Probably not.  As I confessed, I don't really know what was intended.  I can't speak to the intent of the sculptor or whoever commissioned the statue.  I can merely speak to my impression of it and my impression of it is first that it is weird, and second that it seems to depict the standing or walking figures as lesser than the figure riding a horse between them for God knows what reason.  Indeed, subservient to the rider, in the sense that anyone on foot next to someone on horseback feels at a disadvantage; whenever one sees a person on foot and one on a horse in some movie, the person on foot is in most cases subordinate to the one on the horse.

I would have no objection to the removal of the statue solely because I think it's weird.  But the depiction of a white man riding a horse between a Native American and an African is of course particularly disturbing at this time.

At this time.  It should, of course, be disturbing at all times.  But if what is happening now in the form of protests and statue removal and the reaction to them is any indication, we can hope that this time many if not most of us are offended when others demean or oppress people merely because they exist and are not caucasian, or white.

No rational person, I think, can claim that this nation's treatment of the indigenous peoples and those taken from Africa to be sold and treated as property was not extraordinarily terrible, and remains immoral.  The reasons given for the extermination, oppression and discrimination in the past were always self-serving and incredible, and are being given less and less credence as time passes.  Read John Calhoun's defense of slavery, if you can, and, as they say, weep.

What will happen, this time?  One wonders if there's truth in the doctrine of karma.  As I understand it, karma is the belief that the sum of a person's actions in this and previous existences decides a person's fate in the future.  If karma may be applied to nations, we have much to worry about.  Other nations would as well, of course.  But we're here, and this is now.

Supremely Surprising?

   

There are moments when I feel I can take a certain pride in our legal system.  These moments become less and less frequent, it's true.  Whether this is the case because I grow increasingly jaded as I grow increasingly older, or there is some other reason, I'm not sure.  But regardless, this sense of pride, currently, is due to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court ("the Supremes") in recent cases addressing the efforts of the current version of the executive branch to abolish what's been called DACA, and the question whether disciplining or terminating employees for sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes sex discrimination.

The pride I refer to arises because the decisions represent, I believe, evidence of the fact that judges and lawyers are at least capable of making decisions without regard to politics (broadly defined), in some instances.  That's what renders the decisions surprising, as both cases seethed with political influences and implications. It was easy to assume that the decisions would be made in accordance with the perception of the conservative majority on the court and how it would act.  But that didn't take place.

Instead, the decisions were resoundingly apolitical in the sense that they were based on very basic rules of the interpretation of laws and regulations which have been in existence for quite some time.  We can't speak to the motivations of the Supremes given the rationales employed by the majority.  We can speculate regarding them, of course.  But it remains the case that the decisions are based on commonplace legal reasoning of the kind you can see every day in courts throughout our Great Republic.  

Where the language of a statute or regulation is clear and unambiguous, and the words used are not subject to technical definition or specifically defined, the language is to be interpreted and applied based on its ordinary meaning. There is to be no recourse to legislative history or the supposed beliefs or intentions of the legislators.  

The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination in employment based on race, religion, national origin or sex.  It's impossible to rationally claim that disciplining an employee because he/she is homosexual or transgender is not based on "sex" under that word's ordinary definition.  

The laws governing administrative procedure require that a reasoned explanation be given for the termination of a program such as DACA.  None was given.  

There is a certain irony in the fact that the decisions are based on the premise that the law says what it says, and therefore is to be applied based on what it says and not on opinions regarding what it was meant to say or should say.  Conservatives have claimed for years that what are considered liberal court decisions are not based on what the law actually says.  That argument is now made against the application of conservative beliefs regarding what the law was intended to say or should say.

One can delight in noting that some have been hoist with their own petard, and recalling that there are two-edged swords (and I confess to feeling something like delight).  But for me what is significant from the purely legal perspective (I am one of those who think the law is something different from morals) is that these decisions demonstrate that it is not necessarily the case that judges will decide cases based on personal preference or political allegiance.  Sometimes, they won't, suggesting a "higher" allegiance to the law.  In these times, that can be surprising.

Spiritus Mundi

The words "Spiritus Mundi," Latin for the Spirit of the World or World Spirit, are probably familiar to most of us through W.B. Yeats' poem The Second Coming.  In that poem he refers to an image out of it with the body of a lion and the face of a man.  I've never been sure what he meant by the reference.  In what sense does such an image arise "out of" the Spirit of the World?

Apparently Yeats thought Spiritus Mundi was the collective memory or spirit from which poetry derived.  Why such an image would arise out of such a thing is unclear to me.  The image is readily available from the Sphinx sitting near the pyramids.  Perhaps Yeats thought it was from Spiritus Mundi as well.

Regardless, Spiritus Mundi strikes me as an apt description of the divinity of the ancient Stoics.  But I read that according to Cicero the Stoics used the phrase Anima Mundi or Aninum Mundi--World Soul--which may be a more appropriate description of the physical source of order and generation immanent in the universe.

Was Yeats a Stoic?  In Sailing to Byzantium he refers to "God's Holy Fire" and sages standing in it, which certainly evokes Stoicism, but this is unlikely.  But one wonders (the "one" is me, I suppose) if the attraction to mysticism which seems to have been common to artists in the early twentieth century may resemble a Stoic view in mysticism's association with nature, or at least spirits of nature.  That association may not be with the Stoic's view of the deity infusing nature as being a rational spirit.  There seems to be little of the rational in mysticism, or sympathy for reason.  But how can Stoicism be said to be contrary to nature worship, which is often referred to as mysticism?

Other views of the divine as being spirits or powers of nature which can be found in the pre-Christian West and otherwise in the East can be seen as similar to Stoicism in that they have as their basis a belief that humans are a part of nature, dependent on it and subject to it, living in it with other beings, some more powerful.  Perhaps such a view necessarily arises from a belief in God or gods that are immanent in nature or natural, rather than transcendent or supernatural.

Which view has served us better, immanence or transcendence?  This can be a purely practical or pragmatic question rather than a religious or spiritual question.  If we look at the history of humans and their religious beliefs, what religions have caused more evil, regardless of their protestations against it?  The answer to that question seems fairly clear to me.  If it is possible to consider a religion in isolation, what religions qua religions are more or less likely to induce humans to violence against each other and against other beings, and nature itself?

I would say those that are intolerant of other kinds of belief, those which purport to be the only path to knowledge and salvation, to worship the only true God, those which think of humans as masters of the earth and all that's in it.  In other words, those that do not recognize a Spiritus Mundi or anything like it.

My American Dream

"You can dream the American Dream, but you sleep with the lights on and wake up with a scream."  Warren Zevon, Fistful of Rain 

It's likely that even cynical lawyers like myself have a certain regard for the rule of law.  I do, in any case.  Perhaps after so many years I've come to respect the vast and imposing system it is; I'm invested in it, in a sense.  Most especially, I respect those restrictions on the power of government, and others, meant to assure civil liberties.

I've always liked the film A Man for All Seasons.  In one scene Thomas More and Will Roper are having an argument regarding law and the devil.  Roper insists that he'd cut through the laws to get at the devil, and More replies:

"Oh?  And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and, if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then.  Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

I'm unconvinced of the devil's existence, but the deviltry of we humans is familiar enough to me, and I've thought much the same as does More in the film regarding the protection afforded by the law from the harms we delight in inflicting on one another.

But there are times, increasing in frequency, when the rule of law seems less and less a fact and more and more a dream here in our Great Union.  A rule of convenience rather than a rule honored and vigorously maintained.  A rule imposed in the service of money, and power, and repression; of the monied and powerful whose interest it is to repress those without money and power.  The protection of the law is granted selectively.  The devil in us is given the benefit of the law, assuredly, but we aren't unless the devil is in us.

We may have no aristocracy, but we have a plutocracy.  That plutocracy doesn't grow, but its assets and power do.  How many now believe in, or experience, what used to be called "The American Dream"?  It seems ridiculous to assert that there is equality of opportunity here.  There is instead none for most of us, or at best a lesser opportunity for some.

The regard in which the gluttons and hoarders that make up the plutocracy are held is astounding.  Our legal system and morality encourage acquisition and retention.  Efforts at providing a minimal degree of comfort, health and welfare to all are viewed with suspicion, decried as "socialism" while the plutocracy thrives.  The extent to which it has mesmerized the middle class, if one still exists, is remarkable.  The hoarding of the wealthy is guaranteed by the acceptance of the doctrine of rights by those who have far less that they are entitled to.  The concept of rights, inherently selfish, has overwhelmed the concept of virtue.

One can't help but wonder whether the have-nots have, or shortly will, have had enough.  The pandemic, so utterly ignored by the plutocrats, may ignite a resentment long suppressed as jobs and lives continue to be lost.  Then what?  Goaded on by malcontents, so influential in these times of limitless communication and little thought, to chaos.

In the Kingdom of Fear, my fondest hope is to be left alone by government, by everyone, politicians, pundits, police, people.  That's what has become my American Dream.