Sure is a tough time in the world. I feel for the many innocent citizens of Ukraine, those who would prefer just to be left alone to live their lives. I feel for the many innocent citizens of Russia, who have no control over the actions of their government or their leader—they have no more more ability to stop their country's "neighbor abuse" than you or I have to stop any of the cockamamie things our own governments do. Imagine yourself, if you will, as one of the 1,800 Russians newly imprisoned merely for protesting. Your life probably isn't so bad by comparison.
I feel for today's teenagers, growing up with COVID-19, isolation from their peers, and the jumbled babbling fracas of the internet. But also, this latest—the abrupt resurgence of an articulated nuclear threat by someone with the power to carry it out—is reawakening long-slumbering fears in the generation just ahead of mine, whose childhoods were clouded, long ago, by the brooding threat of nuclear Armageddon in the early days of the Cold War. They used to have to do drills at school which had them getting under their desks to take cover from a nuclear attack, a gesture even five-year-olds could recognize as pathetic and futile, even if they didn't know those words. Some people of that generation find those old fears being unearthed again by the prospect of a deranged leader waving his weapons around. As a small boy I used to listen for the "booms" of the supersonic fighter jets high overhead—staring at the sky, hoping to see one. They were invisible.
I've posted this before, but it seems like it might offer a modest balm this Monday: the reverently joyful 50th-anniversary performance of "The Weight" by Playing for Change, performed by Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr, and more than 20 musicians across five continents. This took a year and a half to record and edit, everyone working together.
Dictator-types
This is just my opinion, but humanity, I feel, just has to get past its voluntary subjugation to the psychodramas of semi-demented single individuals. We regularly put our societies, often almost willingly it seems, into the hands of dictator-types with disordered personalities. It's always broadly the same, whether it's Alexander the so-called Great (I'd call him the Great Destroyer), Napoleon, Hitler, Idi Amin, Saddam, or Putin—we sure wish the list were that short. They're like a drug for us somehow. It might be the biggest recurrent problem of the human race throughout history. But we can understand it now, from a mental health perspective. Collectively we'll have to learn to act on what we know, to find some way to free ourselves someday from the inevitable Caesars, the inevitable Putins. Those assassins in the Curia of Pompey had something right, after all, on that ancient Ides of March. Although it's less well known that every one of them was eventually hunted or hounded to death, and they were on the losing side. The Republic they were trying to rescue by their shocking act was lost*.
May I just say I love Ringo's drumming, always have. Never a showoff, always in the pocket. He's not a great drummer, he's a great musician who happens to be a drummer. As someone once said, "most drummers play the drums. Ringo plays the song."
Enjoy the music, pray for peace.
Mike
*One of my unpedigreed theories, of which you know I have many, is that all modern Westerners should be schooled in the fall of the Roman Republic. Nothing in history offers greater relevance for our times and our own societies.
Book o' the Week
Ara Güler's Istanbul, one of the more amazing books in my collection. I'm also amazed it's still in print. Not only does it culminate a longtime habit and a vast body of work for the Turkish photographer of Armenian descent, one of the few world-famous photographers from Turkey—a labor of love—but it's a unique and wonderful example of bookmaking. If you don't buy this, at least see one sometime.
This book link is a portal to Amazon.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
David Miller: "Thank you Mike. I can't explain why that video from Playing for Change released the flow of tears that has been building up in me since the invasion of Ukraine began, but I'm grateful."
John Camp: "I was part of the under-the-desk generation. As the saying went, 'Get under your desk, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.'"
Kye Wood: "My brother Mike. I hear you. I really do. But we're all hardwired to find the best mate we can. To compete. To show potential mates that we can provide for them, better than others can. Thus, finite resources get shifted disproportionately, to those who compete the most successfully. Wealth inequality and all that flows from it is a consequence of our core programming. Ya can't patch the symptoms with laws and dreams. Our core unconscious programming is the problem. All we can do is be kind and be generous. Inequality is an uncrackable nut."
Mike replies: We'll always have Athens.
David Cope: "I often wonder, but can’t work out how, as a society, we afford one individual so much power. The power is not really with them, it’s given to them by others who cannot say 'no.' Fear of punishment from one’s peers for saying no is carried out, usually, by subordinates who, themselves, are not willing to say no. It’s easy to see why a chain of command is, psychologically, the instrument of the hierarchy, be it military, criminal or civil society. Are we genetically disposed to live in hierarchy or can we evolve into true egalitarian, flat structures where no one individual can dominate."
Albert Smith: "Love that song and this compilation video is so well done. I was in the military for 22 years; it doesn't define me, it's just what I chose to do. Every day from the '70s until the early '90s, we trained to take on the Russian bear. I was in SAC when we brought our bombers off of alert and, in a gesture of goodwill, Russia flew two Bear Bombers to our base and we flew two B-52s to Moscow. Everyone exhaled and could relax a bit. We were done with the cold war without the worst-case scenario happening.
"Now because of one guy that can't accept history we are in jeopardy of one mistake leading to some horrible consequences.
"My hat is off to the Ukrainians. Nothing motivates like things happening in your own backyard, and they are putting up a valiant effort to repel this unwarranted assault. I wish them well and hope for a quick resolution."
Charlie Ewers: "Cicero wasn't even a conspirator, just a Senator who loved the Republic and was willing to speak up when he felt it was being threatened by the autocrats. They cut off not only his head, but also his hands, which he had apparently used extensively to gesture while speaking in the Senate. In my mind a true hero, someone whom we might well need to emulate in our own time, the way things have been going lately."
Mike replies: And Fulvia, the wife of Antony, who was presented with the severed head of Cicero (which would have been pronounced "KICK-eh-roe" in his time) stuck pins in the tongue, to repay him for his sharp words. Now that's vengefulness, lest you think your neighbor is being vengeful by ignoring your request to borrow his snowblower because you were slow to return it last time.
Patrick J Wahl (partial comment): "What book would you suggest about the Roman Republic?"
Mike replies: That's hard to answer. Maybe Rome: An Empire's Story, by Greg Woolf, to start? On the grounds that it's a complete overview from soup to nuts, a sort of basic primer of the outlines of everything. Roman history, I suspect, is one of those subjects in which scholars write books from the perspective of their own theories as a way to communicate and contend with one another. And it's such a vast and sprawling subject that a lay reader can dip in here and there and come away with a partial picture that feels more complete than maybe it is. And finally, I don't know how little old me would know. I read Roman history for maybe eight months—it didn't feel like a whole year, whatever it was—and took in only a smattering of books. Personally I would not recommend Mary Beard, who comes in for a lot of praise but doesn't give me what I'm looking for. Her book SPQR struck me as commentaries on history rather than a history. She seems to be writing for people who are already well versed.
One thing I will say is that reading about Rome is damned entertaining. Lurid, vivid, larger than life.
Julius Caesar was the fulcrum point of Roman history, the hinge. Before even Greg Woolf's book, read the short Wikipedia article "Crossing the Rubicon." It's only a few hundred words, but you'll catch the whiff of all the drama implicit in it.
Rod S.: "I wondered whether I was alone in having my 'long-slumbering fears' resurface from childhood. I'm 65 and vividly remember the fear and chill that I, as a six-year-old, felt as my family listened during a car journey to a series of radio news broadcasts during the developing Cuban Missile Crisis. A nuclear World War Three was imminent. And here now, all these years later, we have cause to fear it all coming at us again."
Mani Sitaraman: "This was wonderful, Mike, though the theme song by The Band playing in our heads the last few days was probably 'The Shape I'm In'! Nice to see Lukas Nelson in that collaborative song—I like him.
"And a word offered in protest. It is 2022, and it is high time we retired the canard, originally likely proffered as a humorous aside, that Ringo Starr isn't a great drummer. He is—as any fresh listen to the Beatles albums and the perspective of time reveals to us. In my YouTube viewing of late, it is heartening to hear musicians of the younger generation wonder why we 'olds' would say that about Ringo. He just isn't a showy drummer, the type who hogs passages with long drum solos, but surely that's immaterial?"
Mike replies: I agree totally. The gag was, "Maybe Ringo wasn't the best drummer in the world. All right, maybe he wasn't the best drummer in the Beatles." Attributing it to John Lennon is what makes the joke a canard, "a false or unfounded report or story, especially, a fabricated report." The words were written by Geoffrey Perkins and broadcast on the Radio 4 sketch comedy "Radio Active" on October 6th, 1981, followed either by audience laughter or canned laughter. Lennon had no part in it it.
But, of course, you can't correct the internet.
Paul C: "On the Ringo front—there’s a short, fun TikTok video that was making the rounds last fall from a drummer illustrating what made Ringo so special. Twitter link to it."
Jeff Hughes: "What would you recommend to this modern Westerner who would like to learn more about the fall of the Roman Republic? Thank you for that musical inspiration."
Mike replies: See my reply to Patrick above, but my favorite of the ones I read is The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti. But this would not be an appropriate recommendation for everyone, because Parenti is a red-blooded leftist and unapologetically examines his subject in that light. I loved it—who wouldn't want to know that girl-children in ancient Rome were often given the same name and distinguished by descriptives? For example, the two daughters of Octavius were Octavia the Elder and Octavia the Younger. You'll know exactly where the author stands by the end of Chapter 1, which launches with an ice-cold, rock-hard appraisal of the class biases of Gibbon. :-)
