259. "Whack-a-mole" as Rhetoric and Strategy

Reflections after Reading Robert Gates' Memoirs

OK, you're at a meeting of the Security Council and the problem is terrorists.  You propose dealing with them one at a time, as they appear.  Somebody calls yours a "whack-a-mole" strategy.  Where does that put you?

In a game arcade, obviously.  Nob pops up out of one of the holes, whop with a mallet.  Faster, faster, whop, whop, whop, so many holes, everybody's laughing, you get all sweaty, and no matter how good you are you can't keep up.  Even if you win all you get is a stuffed panda.

Where are the guys who named your strategy?  At a lectern setting forth a "comprehensive plan," before a screen with a pointer, tracing worldwide contributions, or at a blackboard chalking in combined operations, ending with a Power Point listing of concomitant threats that must be removed.

If only your friend could have gotten in first with a different characterization.  Say "drill-a-lion" strategy.  You're in a weedy blind, with a 30-06.  The menacing beast leaves his lair, shows a flank, pow!  The gun bearer stands by with a reload, in case bwana needs it.  Meanwhile the other guys, with their shotguns, are blamming away at the whole savannah, with lines of trucks to keep the ammo coming.

No, nobody's going to pick up on "drill-a-lion."  They like the picture of you running around your yard with a spade, whacking  rodents.  Can you turn the tables?  "You guys want to tear up the whole yard.  With a lot of expensive machinery."  That won't fly, not until they discover that moles can move to another yard, which will also have to be torn up.

So the better strategy is rejected because, at the tipping point of the discussion, an effectively belittling expression is introduced by advocates of the worse strategy.

258. Tribal Loyalty and the English Language

 
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Linguistic clarity may be essential to moral clarity, as a subhead on yesterday's (9-6-14) Times' OpEd reminds us, but it's so hard, so hard, to maintain it.  As soon as you leave your neutral academic classroom and join (or admit that you are already a member of) a tribe you feel the muck sticking to your words.

I think I felt it when I recognized my membership in the Israeli tribe, through my attachment to the Judeo-Christian tribe of Western history (Post 225).  As soon as the Egyptian generals overthrew the democratically elected Egyptian government I began to fear clarity in describing their deed.  Why?  Because the generals would, in a pinch, help Israel and not her enemies.  (As, when the pinch came in Gaza they did, shutting off tunnels that the elected Brotherhoood president, I feel sure, would not have shut off..)

So, anticipating that, what do I want of the words describing what the generals have done.  Certainly not clarity.  This is the world, where words serve purposes.  Here the purpose, Israel's security, demands obfuscation.  So I, the lord of accuracy in my Composition classroom, wince at the accurate use of the word "coup" for the action that put the generals where they are.  "Couldn't we have a little muck on this one?"

If there were a tribal membership that Chrystia Freeland, author of the OpEd piece, might discover in herself it would be, through her mother, the tribe of liberal Ukrainians, with clan connections to the tribe of her father, the Liberal Party of Canada, through which Freeland has now become a member of the Canadian Parliament.

Freeland's voice in the beginning of her piece could be that of a colleague speaking in the next classroom.  She speaks up strongly for clear language, and exposure of obfuscation.  She reproaches Western leaders and journalists for their reluctance to use plain terms.  Russia's actions clearly constitute "an invasion," the term Ukraine's cyberactivists use, and are not "an incursion," the term favored by President Obama and accepted by journalists.  She appeals, as we all do, to George Orwell's faulting of slovenly language: "that it makes it easier to have foolish thoughts."

But what would we hear from that classroom if the rest of her piece were before it?  Here's the central paragraph:

We may decide we lack the will to stop this [invasion] or to more forcefully help Ukrainians to stop it, but in making that decision we need to be clear about what is going on.  The distinction between lies and truth matter here because this conflict started with the Ukrainian people's revolt against authoritarianism and in favor of the liberal rights and responsibilities Ukrainians call European values.  In the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, moral clarity is essential, but to get there we need linguistic clarity, too: Ukrainians decided to build a democracy at home and make a trade deal with Europe; Russia invaded.

Well-instructed students will go to the central statement that "Ukrainians decided to build a democracy" and the implication that Russians interrupted that building.  How does it fit what's being described?  A little research will show the student that Ukraine had a democracy.  Their president was voted into office by a majority of the Ukrainian people in an election the international community found to be well within "democratic standards."  What else is democracy, neutrally defined?  And that president was removed by action in the streets.  The word "interruption" fits that, and Russia had nothing to do with it.  What Russia is interrupting now is an interruption of democracy.

I don't know what other academics will make of this.  I suspect that, from the hum I hear, over in political philosophy they're retheorizing faith in the common man.  How can you trust the common man when in the Ukraine he overwhelmingly elects a mug like Yanukovich and then so overwhelmingly rejects him that he, the common man, can't hold himself back long enough to vote him out in the next election?  Same challenge in Egypt.  Give the common man a decent election, finally, and the winners are a bunch of fanatics.

I have no doubt that Chrystia Freedland would make a good Composition teacher.  Her heart, like mine, is in the right place.  She wants words to connect accurately with the world as it is.  But she is as much a tribe member as I am, and you can see it in her words about the Ukraine.

257. Toward a New Great Game. With Great Women Players?

 

The reason I get so worked up about male competitiveness is that it's what ruined my century.  Men around a table in London playing the Great Game in Africa, bristling when men around a table in Berlin tried to horn in.  Men so touchy about their honor and prestige that they send warships when one of their flags is insulted (China), or when one citizen's house, just one, is invaded during a riot (Greece).  Let no one think the British are lesser men than the Romans, who, by God, protected their citizens.  And the other Great Powers were just as bad, or, if they had the power and balls, would have been just as bad. 

And where did it all end?  With them going at each other in The Great War, which, causing so many deaths (20 million), pumped the winners with such a desire for revenge that they lost their heads and made such a stupid, vindictive peace that they couldn't (hell, wouldn't; when they got their senses back they knew it) enforce it and guaranteed a renewal of the war that would break all records for deaths (60 million) and horrors.  And when people look at my tombstone they will say, "Gee, this guy lived through the century that damn near ruined the human race.  Poor guy."

"And you would rather have them say, 'Gee, this guy lived through that century where God shut off the male hormone.  Merciful God.  Lucky guy.' ? You're talking about testosterone, my friend, and let me tell you something.  Even God, by now, this late in his creation, is not going to be able to shut it off.   There's too much of it, it's too hot, it comes from down too deep."

Alas.

"No.  No alas.  Alas shows that you don't understand testosterone, or whatever you want to call it.  It surges into many channels, and if you could shut it off at the source you'd have a lot of dried up ground, all around you.  Literature, art, architecture.  Why is it that conquering, warlike people, winners in a Great Game, produce, as ancient Athens produced, so much in so many fields?  Just contenders in the Game do, as in Europe when Britain and France were leading the competition, and had been leading it through all the period of European ascendancy (1750-1914), sciences and the arts advancing in so many European countries at such breakneck speed, taking over the world, taking over the calendar, the navigation, the mapping, the measurement of time (from Jesus' birth) and place (from a spot outside London), as they took over territory.  Territory from which, I might mention, now stream thousands of the once oppressed, or less endowed, to gain the benefits — wealth, medical treatment, science, technology — of their overflowing testosterone, their competition."

So the World Wars were just the climactic result of a burst of male energy that gave us all these good things.  And male energy is just what I saw so much of in Robert Gates' memoirs, all those Cold Warriors searching for the right grip on the balls.  Only thing, the brains at the other end had developed weapons that could blow up the whole arena.  Squeeze too hard and there we are.

"It's the old problem of testosterone management, the one you saw Elizabeth I solving so well (Post 157).  But I think Plato was way ahead of you.  According to Mark Edmundson (NYT 8-15) his word for the 'fundamental aspect of the human psyche' we are dealing with here was 'thymos,' and that takes us a lot deeper, to something we don't have a word for in English.  Edmundson thinks we come closest with 'spiritedness,' as in 'a spirited competitor.'  Anyway it, according to Plato, 'is a marvelous quality that needs to be developed and strengthened, especially in those who represent the community as soldiers.'

"But here's something that Plato also knew: that thymos can be dangerous. The spirited part of the soul can take control and turn what would have been an admirable man or woman into a beast. At one point in The Republic Plato imagines a state in which the ruling value is spiritedness. He calls it a timocracy, and he is fully alert to its dangers: constant battles for first place and ongoing war.  Edmundson believes that 'in paying close attention to both the promise and the peril of thymos, Plato learned something that we apparently have forgotten.'"

Well, when we think about what it is to be human now,I;d say that we too rarely take thymos into account. I know of no influential mode of modern psychology that takes up the Greek wisdom and treats spiritedness and the education of the spirited part of the soul as central aspects of human development."

"No, no book of psychology now, maybe no book at all now.  But once there was a book by an Italian, Baldassare Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, that taught Renaissance males how to be spirited, with humanity and learning and, above all, grace, grace which (while it attracted females) eased the relationship between males.  Il Cortegiano was translated into nearly every European language, coming out in England (where it produced Sir Philip Sidney) as The Book of the Courtier.  There ought to be enough copies around now for it to give us a start."

Grace isn't the problem.  William J. Casey had plenty of grace.  Grace and courtesy are just cover-ups for balls.  It's the balls you've got to change.

"Like maybe the way Jesus tried to change them? By holding out blessing?  Be poor in spirit, be meek. Get reborn.  All I can say is, lots of luck."

 I can't confirm any of your pessimism in books but in my own responses I certainly can.  There I am in the Gates book admiring the clever competitor, the good grip on the balls.  There I am in Katherine Graham's book at one of her dinner parties with "Hear, hear" when a smart Democratic-Party hawk speaks. "Good move."  Me, an ardent admirer of Obama's patience.  What am I going to do at such a dinner? Raise my glass and say, "Here's to a program of watchful waiting"?   What do I think the Soviet Union is, an enlarged prostate?  No, I'm "Go, Rusk. Go Bundy." 

"And if anybody wanted to know how to go, I, the resource person, would refer them to Machiavelli.  'Put down your Castiglione.'  I'm afraid I'm with you in the cheering section.  And I should have known I'd be, that all men would be.  I've read Housman, haven't I?  He knows where the lads are going, to death on distant fields.  But he also knows that when he hears the fifes and the bugle calling he will be helpless.  'Woman bore me, I will rise.'"

OK.  I see we're not going to change it.  And I see the only course of action left: We've got to give testosterone something else to do. 

"Like sports?  I know what you're thinking.  And my advice is: forget it.  You're on another hunt for the moral equivalent of war, and history says you're not going to find it.  Can you imagine Palmerston going back to his Harrow soccer field, satisfied, even when he's booting game-winners?  Can you picture our Casey, CIA Casey, tipping his hat to a few thousand in Mudville, and going home content?"

I was thinking of something much bigger, something never tried before: the whole world organized into different leagues, a pyramid of leagues in every sport, where you knew where each nation stood, and inside each nation where each town stood, and inside each team where (if the game were like baseball) each player stood.  With today's technology you could set such a thing up, and with today's communications you'd know instantly where each player, team, town, and nation stood.  A few morning minutes on the net and you could run around with your notebook in the air: "We're number 756! We're number 756!"

"What a laugh."

No, not a laugh.  Not a laugh if the rival you hate is 761.  Not a laugh if, having an average of your position in all leagues, your nation has the best.  You're cock of the walk!  That's where you have to put Palmerston's winning goal: it gains the point that puts England at the top.  Above Russia!  You think, in similar circumstances, Casey is going to underestimate his last of the ninth homer that sinks the Soviet Union?

"Fine, but only if the world is all jocks.  Some of us are nerds, you know.  Intellectuals.  And we design and use some pretty destructive weapons.  That's part of your modern world."

Your imagination isn't keeping up.  There will be a chess league.  New Yorkers spreading homeland dirt for Bobby Fischer to walk on as he approaches the payoff match in Reykjavík.  For the middle brains there'll be checkers, and cribbage.  The national colors on thousands of backs, at hundreds of tables, on scores of fields, doing or dying for their country.  And, since markets depend on them. every morning on Bloomberg and in the Wall Street Journal the most complete set of statistics and standings the world has ever seen, with condensed versions everywhere else.  And every year a great conference at the UN assigning weights to each sport, giving debaters, politicians, and diplomats their chance for glory.  "He got curling's weight lifted to .068.  What a man!"  It will be a super, super, super Olympics.

"Will you be offended if I ask for a Plan B?"

No, because I have a Hope B.  It's that when men can't manage this, women will take over.  Women haven't been in positions of power long enough for us to be confident of how it will go, but I'm hoping that a change, by removing the testosterone factor, will do something to remove that damn game board.  The one on which men have made so many dumb mistakes.

"You think women rulers haven't made dumb mistakes?  You think removing the male board will end game-playing?"

I don't know.  I just think that 'Don't do dumb things' is a great strategy, and just the one for our time.  And I think a woman could be a great player, heading the CIA, or calling the shots from the White House.   Maybe I think that for personal reasons.   Maybe it's because the women I have known have done fewer dumb things than the men I have known.  Maybe it's because in history I read Elizabeth I as a genius at not doing dumb things.  And Angela Merkel as a knockout.  Anyway, that's my fallback hope, labeled B.