The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. —Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful
My poems "I Will Dream Cellos" and "Tango Girl with the Pale Green Shawl" appear in Otoliths issue fifty-seven, southern autumn, 2020. It is always nice when an editor sends a poem out into the world and gives it a chance to touch new readers, as may happen from time to time when fortune is kind.
There is no getting around mention of the allegations against Joe Biden. My bias is that I hope for the sake of the country they are false. For now I hold to the principle of presumption of innocence until convinced otherwise.
The right jumped on the Tara Reade story as a vehicle to waylay Biden and an occasion to excoriate liberals for hypocrisy on the issue of sexual violence. National Review was all over it from the outset. The story has also been pushed on the left in Jacobin, The Nation, The Guardian, and elsewhere by dead-enders who find in it an opportunity to derail Biden and open up a path for Bernie Sanders to claim the Democratic nomination.
There is a measure of poetic justice in the spectacle of Democrats who embraced an absolutist believe women, period, position now indecorously scrambling to backtrack on previous rhetoric. The better, by no means perfect, principle is to neither believe nor disbelieve, granting that we seldom if ever come at these things without bias or predisposition, investigate, gather as much information as possible, and make our best judgment, which might be flawed. If anyone can offer a better approach, I would be happy to hear it.
There are reasons for skepticism about Tara Reade's allegations (see Michael J. Stern, Why I'm skeptical about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Ex-prosecutor, USA Today, April 29, 2020). This morning Biden unequivocally denied them.
Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark believes that Biden will survive this:
Here's why: (1) There are too many problems with Reade's account, (2) his denial was unequivocal and despite some shaky moments he survived the grilling on live TV, (3) the accusation of sexual assault doesn't seem consistent with Biden's conduct (which is creepy but not rapey) (4) Democrats continue to rally around him, (5) the news cycle is likely to move past this pretty quickly and finally, because (6) Trump's record is so much worse. (Quick Hits, Cheap Shots, Deep Thoughts, May 1, 2020)
As those who come to this space regularly know, I am an eternal pessimist. We will see how it unfolds.
Out on the left a food fight has broken out over whether to endorse, otherwise support, or even vote for Joe Biden in November.
Democratic Socialists of America got the ball rolling with this tweet on April 12: We are not endorsing @JoeBiden. On April 14 Harold Meyerson, editor at large at The American Prospect and as he notes a member of DSA and one of its predecessor organizations since 1975, responded with a column provocatively titled DSA and the Threat of Moronic Rectitude. Two days later The Nation published An Open Letter to the New New Left From the Old New Left signed by eighty-one "founders, officers, and activists in Students for a Democratic Society between 1960 and 1969," some of them DSA members. They welcomed Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Biden and expressed grave concern "that some of his supporters, including the leadership of Democratic Socialists of America, refuse to support Biden, whom they see as a representative of Wall Street capital" and fear that "some on the left cannot see the difference between a capitalist democrat and a protofascist."
Bhaskar Sunkara, editor and publisher of Jacobin, got into the act with an April 22 tweet stating he will vote for Howie Hawkins for the Green Party nomination. The Nation and Jacobin published furious responses to Meyerson's column and the SDS letter on April 27 and 29, respectively (Responses to an 'Open Letter to the New New Left,' David Duhalde and Mike Davis; Socialists Shouldn’t Endorse Joe Biden).
This is all somewhat interesting and might be amusing if the stakes were not so high. Biden will need every vote he can corral in November. Rhetoric that provides a rationalization for the disenchanted to vote third-party or sit out the election altogether benefits the Trump campaign.
Even I might raise an eyebrow, maybe two, at the buckets of cash Congress is shoveling out the door in response to health and economic issues arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent article from Politico offers some perspective. I was especially struck by this remark by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist with solid conservative credentials and, as he says here, "a fiscal hawk from way back":
"I’m a fiscal hawk from way back, and all of my heebie-jeebies are going off when I see these numbers. But then I look at the scale of the problem, and I think, yeah, that’s that. Gotta do it." (Victoria Guida and Marianne Levine, Economists urge Republicans to ignore the deficit, Politico, April 29, 2020)
I concur. Gotta do it. For the record: I am skeptical about the motivations and underlying intent of some fiscal hawks, and I think the balanced budget amendment that gets floated periodically is a bad idea. I will spare you a full-blown rant.
Vox has a good article debunking the conspiracy theory that coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab: Eliza Barclay, Why these scientists still doubt the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab, Vox, updated April 29, 2020.
Yesterday Politico reported reported a statement from the Director of the Office of National Intelligence:
The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China. The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified. (Natasha Bertrand, Top intel agency rules out 'manmade' theory of coronavirus origins, Politico, April 30, 2020)
Politico also reports that "There is currently no evidence to support the theory that it came from a lab, said people briefed on the intelligence, but there is also no intelligence that would allow the agencies to explicitly rule out the possibility."
In the meantime wild claims to contrary continue to be trumpeted by our impeached president, Secretary of State Mike Pompous, and the Dunce Tom Cotton, senator from Arkansas.
Two recent blog posts (links below in the usual place). The first was prompted by my delight when I encountered a mechanical duck made by a French engineer named Vaucanson first in Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, then a day or two later in Jacques Barzun's intellectual and cultural history From Dawn to Decadence. Maybe it is silly, juvenile even, but I get a huge kick out of such coincidences. The post also includes brief notes on three films I enjoyed from home.
The April 27 blog examines a narrative that is common currency on the left holding that Bernie Sanders won the ideology and ideas primary even though he lost at the ballot box and thus Joe Biden must move leftward to appease Sanders' supporters and unify the Democratic Party. This narrative is not altogether wrong, but it is shaky on a number of points. A lot of spin and propaganda is being peddled by the usual suspects.
I close with apology for so much blather about politics and only the note about the poems to balance it out. Ah, "The world is too much with us; late and soon,/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—" (Wm. Wordsworth). But to ignore, for instance, the Biden allegations would be bad faith. My spirit sometimes flags, yet even up to my neck in this muck I gaze out the window at my desk with astonishment and maybe even sense of the sublime.
Keep the faith.
yr obdt svt