Don’t know whether to laugh or cry?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a new drug for a syndrome that isn’t actually new, but that’s gotten a new name. The drug is Neurodex, and the syndrome is now known as pseudobulbar effect, or PDA.

The unsettling and positively creepy-sounding symptoms are as follows (as reported in the NY Times):

uncontrollable laughing or crying that can be caused by various neurological diseases or injuries….Pathologic laughter is devoid of any inner sense of joy and pathologic weeping of any feeling of inner sorrow….The cause of the condition is not clear. Scientists suspect it occurs when the brain stem, which generates laughter and crying, loses communication with parts of the brain that control emotional expression.

The article goes on to discuss whether this syndrome should actually be treated. Critics of the development of this drug say no, because those who suffer from the syndrome tend to have a whole host of other serious neurological problems, of which this one is felt to be relatively minor.

Talk about paternalism! I say, let the patients be the judge of that. It sounds like a terribly frightening experience, the divorcing of the expression of emotional affect from the actual feelings. Like something out of a horror movie, the sufferer must feel like a puppet, controlled by some alien force. Or like someone under a spell.

We like to think we are in control of things–particularly, of ourselves. Even when we do lose control–for example, bursting into tears when we’d rather keep a stiff upper lip–ordinarily it’s because we are in the grip of powerful emotions that we can actually feel. Brain injuries and brain disease can shatter that illusion of control, because the self and the will can now be at the mercy of random firings of the brain.

Why would anyone object to a medication that could help to restore some small measure of emotional control to the sufferer from such a grotesque and ego-shattering condition? My guess is that this represents a failure of imagination on the part of the critics; it simply doesn’t sound as though much suffering is involved. It’s a little bit like tickling, which might seem like nothing much if you were to describe it to someone who’d never experienced it. But, taken to extremes, it can be felt as incredibly noxious and almost unbearable.

In fact, now that I think of it, there’s some kindship between this syndrome and uncontrollable tickling. The person being tickled looks to all the world as though he/she is having fun–after all, the person is laughing uproariously, right? But the experience is often not only devoid of humor for that person, it can involve actual suffering–suffering, and lack of control, because the ticklee is being manipulated into exhibiting this fake emotion (joy, laughter) by the tickler.

You may have guessed by now that I’m a younger sister. And I’m beginning to have a theory about some of these critics of Neurodex. Could it be that they’re older brothers?

Happy Mother’s Day! (quotes, or lack thereof)

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you may have noticed that I like quotations. So far, I’ve done Orwell, Churchill, and war (hmmm, is there a theme emerging here?) So, in honor of Mother’s Day (and a break with that theme), I thought I’d compile a list of great quotations about mothers and motherhood.

I did some searching, and found a bunch of websites (here, and here , for example) that initially looked promising. But when I actually read the quotes, one by one, I discovered something interesting–or, rather, I discovered something uninteresting. It turns out there are very few quotes about motherhood worth calling anyone’s attention to.

That may seem a bit curmudgeonly to say, especially on Mother’s Day. I’m not dissing mothers (after all, I’m one myself). That’s far from my intent. But somehow the subject hasn’t inspired much in the way of trenchant thought or pithy statements. I don’t know why, since motherhood is an important (I might even say, vital and absolutely necessary) part of life, and people ordinarily have great intensity of feeling about their mothers.

But quotes about mothers tend to run to the banal–or, even worse, the anti-maternal claptrap of the idealogue. Of the former variety, nearly every site offers us Abraham Lincoln and his “angel mother.” The following, by someone named Alice Hawthorne, is also typical: What is home without a mother? Of the latter type, a representative example is Emma Goldman’s: Morality and its victim, the mother ”“ what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood? Yeah, Emma, I can come up with quite a few things, and I don’t even have to think really really hard.

Somehow, the topic of motherhood seems to banish wit and the felicitious turn of phrase. There is something so deep about the topic that almost anything one can say about it immediately turns into a cliche. And the poetry, the poetry (at least, the stuff online)! Yikes! Surely, I think, there must be some good poems about motherhood.

But the only one that comes to mind is rather sad, which seems inappropriate for Mother’s Day. I include it here, though, because I really like it, and because it so wonderfully describes the process by which a mother (or any parent) must let go as a child grows up. It also has the distinction of being one of the very few poems written by a man that is utterly and totally successful in capturing a woman’s voice.

THE LOST CHILDREN (by Randall Jarrell)

Two little girls, one fair, one dark,
One alive, one dead, are running hand in hand
Through a sunny house. The two are dressed
In red and white gingham, with puffed sleeves and sashes.
They run away with me. . . But I am happy;
When I wake I feel no sadness, only delight.
That, somewhere, they still are.

It is strange
To carry inside you someone else’s body;
To know it before it’s born;
To see at last that it’s a boy or a girl, and perfect;
To bathe it and dress it; to watch it
Nurse at your breast, till you almost know it
Better than you know yourself—better than it knows itself.
You own it as you made it.
You are the authority upon it.

But as the child learns
To take care of herself, you know her less.
Her accidents, adventures are her own,
You lose track of them. Still, you know more
About her than anyone except her.

Little by little the child in her dies.
You say, ” I have lost a child, but gained a friend.”
You feel youself gradually discarded.
She argues with you or ignores you
Or is kind to you. She who begged to follow you
Anywhere, just so long as it was you,
Finds follow the leader no more fun.
She makes few demands; you are grateful for the few.

The young person who writes once a week
Is the authority upon herself.
She sits in my living room and shows her husband
My albums of her as a child. He enjoys them
And makes fun of them. I look too
And I realize that girl in the matching blue
Mother-and-daughter dress, the fair one carrying
The tin lunch box with the half-pint thermos bottle
Or training her pet duck to go down the slide
Is lost just as the dark one, who is dead, is lost.
But the world in which the two wear their flared coats
And the hats that match, exists so uncannily
That, after I’ve seen its pictures for an hour,
I believe in it: the bandage coming loose
One has in the picture of the other’s birthday
The castles they are building, at the beach for asthma.

I look at them and all the old sure knowledge
Floods over me, when I put the album down
I keep saying inside: “I did know those children.
I braided those braids. I was driving the car
The day that she stepped in the can of grease
We were taking to the butcher for our ration points.
I know those children. I know all about them.
Where are they?”

I stare at her and try to see some sign
Of the child she was. I can’t believe there isn’t any.
I tell her foolishly, pointing at the picture,
That I keep wondering where she is.
She tells me, “Here I am”
Yes, and the other
Isn’t dead, but has everlasting life. . .

The girl from next door, the borrowed child,
Said to me the other day, “ You like children so much,
Don’t you want to have some of your own?”
I couldn’t believe that she could say it.
I thought: “Surely you can look at me and see them.”

When I see them in my dreams I feel such joy.
If I could dream of them every night!

When I sit and think of my dream of the little girls
It’s as if we were playing hide-and-seek.
The dark one
Looks at me longingly, and disappears;
The fair one stays in sight, just out of reach
No matter where I reach. I am tired
As a mother who’s played all day, some rainy day.
I don’t want to play it anymore, I don’t want to,
But the child keeps on playing, so I play.

An idea whose time has come: the VVLF

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve learned through Brainster that there’s a newly-formed organization called the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation. Their website is a bit sparse as yet, but this looks as though it could be a fascinating project.

A group of Vietnam Veterans, some of whom were members of the Swift Vets, have joined together and declare the following to be their mission:

to tell the American people the truth about what really happened in Vietnam. Our goal is to continue the work of countering more than three decades of misinformation and propaganda, and to set the record straight.

They envision using a multimedia approach:

The VVLF will serve as a national repository of related materials, information and records of the Vietnam War. We will make this information available and encourage people to learn more about the real history of the war and its impact on those who fought it. This material may include accounts from Vietnam Vets, sworn testimony, oral histories, and personal memorabilia. Specific packages of information will be made available to interested teachers, students and educational institutions.
The VVLF will create independent films and documentaries regarding the events and history of the Vietnam War. Exhibits and visual materials will be made available to museums, libraries and other public places.

They’re asking for donations. Sounds like a worthy cause.

One of the interesting ironies is that none of this might have happened had it not been for the candidacy of John Kerry, and his decision to base so much of his campaign on his Vietnam record.

It seems the wheels of history grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

The British election makes it three

The New Neo Posted on by

British politics is another of the many topics on which my expertise is virtually non-existent.

But I just wanted to say that, about a year ago, on the eve of the Australian elections, I was pretty pessimistic. The three major allies of freedom and the fight against terrorism–as I saw it, anyway– were all coming up for re-election within the next year: Howard in Australia, Bush in the US, and Blair in Great Britain. I thought it very likely that all three would be defeated, and I felt that result might be disastrous for the cause of democracy around the world.

Well, we know what happened with the first two. And now we’ve got the results of the third. And yes, Blair’s majority could have been greater. But with the relentless drumbeat of negativity that’s been pounding ever since the Iraqi war, I’m willing to call this victory a victory, rather than a defeat.

The Freedom Trifecta. Or maybe a better metaphor would be the Freedom Hat Trick.

Ivan Illych, now and then

The New Neo Posted on by

I know it’s not a real cheerer-upper, but I recently read Tolstoi’s The Death of Ivan Illych. Actually, you could say that I re-read it, since my first encounter with the novella was in a Russian literature course I took as a senior in college.

You may remember from Part 4A of “A mind is a difficult thing to change” that this was the year my boyfriend was fighting in Vietnam. Consequently, it was very hard for me to concentrate on anything. But that Russian lit course, and a history course I also took that year entitled ‘Russian Intellectual History,” grabbed me and caught my attention with tremendous force.

Both courses focused on works from the 19th century, which at the time I considered to be more or less ancient history. That’s why I was so amazed at the immediacy and relevance of both courses. Clearly, the Russians didn’t mess around when they wrote; they went for the jugular, the Big Issues, and they didn’t let go. The meaning of life, good vs. evil, that sort of thing. Perfect for a college student, and especially perfect for me at the time because I had no patience whatsoever with anything that didn’t deal with those Big Issues, since I was dealing with quite a few of them myself.

The history course was sobering. It turns out that those old Russians (Bakunin, Herzen, the Slavophiles are the names that now come to mind, although the details have become very fuzzy) had been wrestling mightily with questions such as what sort of society would be best for humankind, and how best to create it. Hmmm. In the 60s, that’s what we were doing, too.

So it seemed that we college students of the 60s were not nearly as unique as we thought we were, after all. Even I could see that, from reading these Russians. Their voices sounded suspiciously like those of the young firebrands who spoke at the local SDS meetings. Since I already knew the endpoint of the path those long-ago Russians had taken, often with great idealism and hope, this made me a lot more skeptical of the modern variety. This was actually the sort of thing that kept me a liberal rather than a leftist in those days.

But back to Ivan Ilych, which I also read that same year. Unlike the others, it’s not about politics, although Tolstoi can’t resist putting in a noble peasant (the only idealized character in the book), and mocking the bourgeousie. The story achieves greatness as a feat of psychological imagination, a relentless study of an “unexamined life.”

Tolsoi himself was an incredibly complex and contradictory man, a titanic figure, and one of the first literary superstars. He could be supremely idealistic and maddeningly cruel all at the same time (read about his treatment of his long-suffering wife, if you want to get an idea of the latter). But boy, could that guy write! Much of his writing in Ivan Illych has an immediacy and an almost brutal honesty, as well as a dry humor, that seems startlingly original and quite modern.

Here’s one of my favorite passages from the work; I recall it from college, and I noted it with a flash of appreciative recognition on my recent re-reading. Just as we students of the 60s had some trouble accepting that we resembled countless others who had come this way before us; so, also, does Ivan Illych have great difficulty giving up his belief in his own exceptionalism:

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.”

Such was his feeling.

Let’s talk about the weather

The New Neo Posted on by

The weather report for this weekend–Mother’s Day weekend–for virtually all of New England: in the 40’s (that’s the daytime figure, by the way), heavy rain and wind.

This isn’t funny. This is extreme, even for this part of the country. I have nothing intelligent or witty to say about it; I’m just venting my spleen.

There. I feel better already.

Part 4C progress report

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, here we go again. Excuses, excuses–I’m full of them! I thought I’d be publishing Part 4C of the “Mind is a difficult thing to change” series this week, but it’s not nearly ready, although I’ve been working on it.

I am pretty sure it will be ready by the end of next week. That’s not a promise, that’s a prediction–and, like second marriage, it may represent the triumph of hope over experience. But I have found I can’t rush it. It’s clear that these things always seem to require far more labor than I ever expect.

It is embarrassing to have to display so very publically the fact that my life seems to be ruled by Hofstadter’s Law. For those of you unfamiliar with the extremely useful and brilliant Hofstadter’s Law, here it is:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Simple. Elegant. True.

ADDENDUM: Of course, like anything, Hofstadter’s Law is not absolute. One glaring exception is eating–especially dessert, which always seems to take less time than you expect (or want) it to. No doubt you readers can think of other exceptions. But, in general, I stand by Hofstadter’s Law.

Vietnam revisited–again

The New Neo Posted on by

Vietnam’s been on my mind recently, for obvious reasons. I’ve been thinking and writing so much about it lately that I’ve only just gotten around to reading this article by Stephen J. Morris, which appeared in the Op-Ed page of the May 1st NY Times.

I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to reproduce the entire piece here. I figure that, since the Times is a registration-only venue, many people to whom it might be of interest will have missed it. The article is an excellent example of the type of thing I can’t recall reading at the time the events in it took place–certainly not in the NY Times, one of the newspapers from which I got most of my news for much of my life.

I wanted to present this article because it is a relatively concise summary of the sort of information I’ve been reading lately, information which represents another look at the history of the Vietnam War as it was told in the newspapers of the time. I am very glad–and, to tell the truth, surprised–that the Times saw fit to publish it in honor of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. As Morris himself writes, “out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970’s and why.” I second the motion.

I find the facts in this article and others like it quite compelling. You may or may not agree. Here is the complete text:

The War We Could Have Won
By STEPHEN J. MORRIS

Washington

THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war’s end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute.

The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers’ cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam’s leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, “our side,” South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular roots. Hence it could never prevail, not even with a half-million American troops, making the war “unwinnable.”

This simple explanation is repudiated by powerful historical evidence, both old and new. Its proponents mistakenly base their conclusions on the situation in Vietnam during the 1950’s and early 1960’s and ignore the changing course of the war (notably, the increasing success of President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy) and the evolution of South Vietnamese society (in particular the introduction of agrarian reforms).

For all the claims of popular support for the Vietcong insurgency, far more South Vietnamese peasants fought on the side of Saigon than on the side of Hanoi. The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972 – at the time the biggest campaign of the war – the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. The South Vietnamese relied on American air support during that offensive.

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight “a poor man’s war.”

Even Hanoi’s main patron, the Soviet Union, was convinced that a North Vietnamese military victory was highly unlikely. Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support. The former Soviet chargé d’affaires in Hanoi during the 1970’s told me in Moscow in late 1993 that if one looked at the balance of forces, one could not predict that the South would be defeated. Until 1975, Moscow was not only impressed by American military power and political will, it also clearly had no desire to go to war with the United States over Vietnam. But after 1975, Soviet fear of the United States dissipated.

During the war the Soviets despised their North Vietnamese “friends” (the term of confidential bureaucratic reference, rather than “comrades”). Indeed, Henry A. Kissinger’s accounts of his dealings, as Nixon’s national security adviser, with President Thieu are models of respect when compared with the bitter Soviet accounts of their difficulties with their counterparts.

In secret internal reports, Hanoi-based Soviet diplomats regularly complained about the deceitfulness of the North Vietnamese, who concealed strategic planning from their more powerful patron. In a 1972 report to Moscow, the Soviet ambassador even complained that although Marshal Pavel Batitsky, commander of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, had visited Hanoi earlier that year and completed a major military aid agreement, North Vietnamese leaders did not inform him of the imminent launch date of their Easter Offensive.

What is also clear from Soviet archival sources is that those who believed that North Vietnam had more than national unification on its mind were right: Its leaders were imbued with a sense of their ideological mission – not only to unify Vietnam under Communist Party rule, but also to support the victory of Communists in other nations. They saw themselves as the outpost of world revolution in Southeast Asia and desired to help Communists in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and elsewhere.

Soviet archives show that after the war ended in 1975, with American power in retreat, Hanoi used part of its captured American arsenal to support Communist revolutions around the world. In 1980 some of these weapons were shipped via Cuba to El Salvador. This dimension of Vietnamese behavior derived from a deep commitment to the messianic internationalism of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Vietnam today is not the North Vietnam of 1955, 1965 or 1975. Like post-Mao China it has retreated from totalitarianism to authoritarianism. It has reformed its economy and its foreign policy to become more integrated into the world. But those changes were not inevitable and would not necessarily have occurred had Mikhail Gorbachev not ascended to power in Moscow, and had the Soviet Union and its empire not collapsed. Nor would these changes necessarily have occurred had China not provided a new cultural model for Vietnam to follow, as it has for centuries.

Precisely because Vietnam has changed for the better, we need to recognize what a profoundly ideological and aggressive totalitarian regime we faced three, four and five decades ago. And out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970’s and why.

In 1974-75, the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Hundreds of thousands of our Vietnamese allies were incarcerated, and more than a million driven into exile. The awesome image of the United States was diminished, and its enemies were thereby emboldened, drawing the United States into new conflicts by proxy in Afghanistan, Africa and Latin America. And the bitterness of so many American war veterans, who saw their sacrifices so casually demeaned and unnecessarily squandered, haunts American society and political life to this day.

Stephen J. Morris, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, is writing a book on the Vietnam War in the Nixon years.

Looking like a thug

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes when an ordinary, garden-variety murderer is caught (or even a more-than-garden variety serial killer, such as Ted Bundy), I am struck by how normal he looks. Normal, as in “you would pass him on the street and not suspect a thing,” or even attractive, as in the aforementioned Bundy. It proves the truth that Shakespeare wrote so long ago: one can smile and smile and be a villain.

I flatter myself sometimes that if I actually looked into the eyes of such a person, I would see a deadness there that is said to be a giveaway. But that may only be wishful thinking on my part; it’s sobering to think that perhaps these people are simply undetectable by such means.

But those terrorists do seem to be something else, don’t they? Oh, not all of them, surely (in fact, I always think that Bin Laden himself looks rather genial and calm)–but many of them do seem to look exactly like what we would imagine such evil (yes, it is the appropriate word) should look. Mohammad Atta, of course, was one. And Al Libbi, the recent capture in Pakistan, is most definitely another. Take a look.

Fighting “liberal prejudice”

The New Neo Posted on by

One would think the term “liberal prejudice” would be an oxymoron–but then, one would be wrong. Liberals are hardly immune to prejudice, as this article, appearing, surprisingly, in The Guardian (courtesy LGF) concedes–that is, if the prejudice happens to be dislike of Bush and his merry band of neocons.

I applaud the author of the article, Max Hastings, as I applaud anyone who dares to consider giving credit where credit is due even if it might be due to someone he/she has been reviling lately. It takes courage to do this, especially if Hastings’ fellow broad-minded liberals end up extending their “liberal prejudice” to Hastings himself.(* see below) It’s been known to happen.

I can’t say that Hastings doesn’t flinch. He does; there are some hemmings and hawings and throat-clearings and caveats. But despite this (or perhaps because of it) he allows himself to get around to saying what needs to be said–which is that liberals should consider the possibility that Bush may have been right (in his hedgehoggy way) about certain “big things” in the Arab world and the Middle East:

….scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans’ grand strategy is getting somewhere….

It seems wrong for either neocon true believers or liberal sceptics to rush to judgment. We of the latter persuasion must keep reciting the mantra: “We want Iraq to come right, even if this vindicates George Bush….

We must respect American power, and also acknowledge that the world sometimes has much need of it. As Sir Michael Howard, wisest of British strategic thinkers, often remarks: “If America does not do things, nobody else will.”

* A caveat of my own is due here: after writing this, I decided to do a little research on the topic of the author. After all, although I am quite familiar with the ultra-liberal–even leftist, at times–slant of The Guardian, I really had no particular knowledge of the politics of Max Hastings. From the article itself, I assumed he was typically liberal (he certainly identifies himself as such), and had been against the Iraqi war from the start.

But when I started checking him out, it turns out that the situation got “curiouser and curiouser,” as another Brit might say. It turns out Hastings is a far more complex figure than that. Here is Hastings himself, writing on the topic of his own views:

I am more instinctively supportive of institutions, less iconoclastic, than most of the people who write for the Guardian, never mind read it. I am a small “c” conservative…

So, Hastings seems to be more middle of the road in his political stance, having once been editor of the Telegraph, and also, apparently, having been an early supporter of the war. As best I can tell, he is the British equivalent of Andrew Sullivan–neither stylistically nor sexually, that is, but in terms of a hyper-reactivity and changeability on the war when the going got rough. British journalism and journalists is a topic that is way way way outside any area of expertise I might be said to have, of course. But I still decided to publish this post, as an object lesson in the principle “things are usually not quite exactly as they seem at first glance,” and because I am impressed by Hastings’s (or anyone’s, for that matter) ability to say “Perhaps I was wrong.”

Like Norm Geras, I’m not a desperate housewife

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought perhaps I might get your attention with that title.

Now that Norm has come out of the closet as a “Desperate Housewives” fan (or at least, a viewer), I feel it’s only right to show solidarity (Solidarity Forever, Norm!) with him by confessing that I, too, sometimes watch (and enjoy) the show. Shh, don’t tell. I guess I’ve already ruined my reputation, anyway, by owning up to watching “American Idol.” But some would consider “Desperate Housewives” an even lower form of degradation (desperation?).

The reason I’m posting on the topic (other than the relief of being able to change the subject from the Vietnam War for a moment) is that Norm asks for theories on the most popular desperate housewife. Since I’m never one to shrink from conjuring up a theory, I offer the following: I, like Norm, originally liked Susan best, but as time goes on I have found myself far more interested in Bree. Unlike Norm, I haven’t totally turned on Susan or found her annoying (well, maybe just a tad), but she does get a bit wearing. I think it’s because she overplays the endearing vulnerable cuteness clutzy thing. Just as in life, this can get somewhat tiresome. But I still like Susan; she’s the sort of person who would make an excellent friend.

Bree is not, and that’s what makes her appealing as a character–her edge. In Bree’s case it’s rather more than an edge; she’s a bit knifelike. You never quite know what you are going to get with Bree, which is what makes her interesting. She’s not a total villainess, either–that would be boring, too. She’s given more than a spark of humanity and vulnerability, and so we find that, almost against our will, every now and then she makes us care about her. The best characters, both in literature and popular entertainment, have that dual quality, and Bree has it, in spades (not to mention her wonderful sense of color, and her somewhat fierce intelligence).

Those who are old enough to remember the original BBC Forsyte Saga series, the black-and-white one, might agree when I say that it was the relatively abominable Soames Forsyte, given tremendous complexity of feeling by the stupendous actor Eric Porter, who completely and utterly stole the show. Kenneth More as young Jolyon put me to sleep, I’m afraid, although I assume I was supposed to like him.

Oh, and one more thing–I seem to remember that the writers of “Desperate Housewives” have taken pains to inform us that the tightly controlled Bree is–gasp!–a Republican!! I guess they thought it was the perfect way to express the extremity of her rigidity.

War quotes

The New Neo Posted on by

I think my favorite quotation about war is one attributed to Trotsky: You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. It sums up the idea that you can run, but you can’t hide–sooner or later, you must confront the fact that war keeps coming round again, and that, eventually, it will affect every one of us, one way or another.

Pacifism is an emotionally attractive ideology, and condemnation of war is very easy. Temperamentally, I much prefer this stance. I have always had a deep wish that war could be abolished somehow–that it would go away, that the lion would lie down with the lamb in the Peaceable Kingdom. Anyone who does not see war as horrific is simply not confronting reality.

But I have come to see that sometimes war is a grim and terrible necessity and the lesser of two evils. It is a profound challenge to decide when this is the case, and when it is not.

Here are some quotes on the subject of war which I have selected as particularly interesting. Some are quite well-known; others were new to me. There are certain themes that keep repeating, although the speakers are from different eras. I find that interesting, too. Perhaps you will, also.

Right is more precious than peace. — Woodrow Wilson

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. — Edmund Burke

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. — Winston Churchill

You can have peace, or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once. — Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. — George Washington

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. — Winston Churchill

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget ye were our countrymen. — Samuel Adams

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. — Daniel Webster

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid. — President Dwight Eisenhower

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. — Alexander Hamilton

Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war!) — Flavius Vegetius Renatus (ca 390 AD)

Superior firepower is an invaluable tool when entering negotiations. — General George S. Patton

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence. — Woodrow Wilson

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. — Dwight David Eisenhower

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. — Herbert Hoover

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. — Margaret Thatcher

We know we can’t beat you on the battlefield, but we can beat you on the streets of New York Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. — North Vietnamese camp commander, Son Tay POW camp to Commander Paul Galanti, U.S. Navy, American POW.