In The Valley of Elah

The Valley of Elah is one of the latest in a line of films about Iraq and the war there. The Valley of Elah was the location of the battle between David and Goliath in the war between the Philistines and Israelis- the title gives a clue to the real subject of the film. At one point in the film the main character, the father of a US soldier, investigating his son's murder, tells a young boy the story of David and Goliath and tells him that the moral of the story is that you should go down into the valley of Elah, get close to whatever scares you, the Goliaths of your life, and aim your slingshot right at them the moment before they are about to kill you. You have to confront life and take the utmost risks and in that moment you become a hero, its implied that in that moment you become a man. The father, Hank Deerfield, is an ex serviceman, ex military policeman whose son seems to have taken his advice, gone to Bosnia and then Iraq and confronted evil. The question that the film poses is what happened to him.

What it reinforces rightly is an important lesson in a society which is largely demilitarised: that war changes people and can often deform or reform them. The soldiers that we are shown coming back from Iraq are definitely altered by their experience. Driven to seek out cheap thrills whether drugs or strippers, in order to find relief from dreams of horror in the desert. Life around barracks in America is shown as depressing: soldiers struggling from drink to drink, men getting into the army who are basically criminals before they start, the experience of war turning others into criminals- the horrors of Iraq and the ways that it justifiably empties soldiers of trust for others and turns them from normal young men into killing machines whose first response is to go for their knives. 'Doc' the son of Hank, a young man we are led to believe of impecable character before he went to war, gets his name 'Doc' from the particular way that he mocks Iraqi prisoners when they are arrested.

The contrast between military and civilian worlds is deeply embedded in this film. There are moments when the ordinary police come up against the fact that not having fought, they do not understand the mindset of soldiers. Furthermore all the way through Hank uses his intuition as an ex-soldier to argue about who might have killed his son: he too is willing to deal in violence whenever he suspects. The whole film is filled with a confrontational atmosphere: people don't talk, when they disagree, they shout and scream. All the aspects of life here seem disfunctional: the police department is riven with sexism and favouritism, producing macho posturing and screaming rows. Everyone lives at a high level of tension- everyone lives on the edge of their emotions. Tommy Lee Jones's performance as Hank is particularly impressive because his face reveals in its wrinkles all the emotions he has to contain in order not to scream out loud in pain and anger.

But the film needs to go further. The ending is trite- we suddenly have a solution through a confession but we never get inside the heads of those that commit the murder: however important it is to understand the way that soldiers are changed, we don't see enough of what propels people into the army. We never understand these soldiers' earlier lives and consequently we don't know to what extent what they become is innate within them. The film could have been stronger by giving us more detail about them. Furthermore there are too many longeurs here: what I'm sure the film makers intended to create tension, little dialogue and lots of moody music, merely irritates. It doesn't create atmosphere, but slows the film down. A two hour film is a good effort, but could have been more powerful if reduced to one and a half hours instead. Moody music is also no substitute for scenes that often have only two lines of dialogue- and more often than not, scenes are missing. It would have been interesting to see a scene for instance in which the soldiers being interviewed by the police lied, interesting to see their reactions and their ways of expressing their lies. Afterall the way that soldiers react to coming back from Iraq is the core of this film: and that's what we are missing.

Having said all of that, the performances are strong and there is a point to this movie. The point comes back round to Hank Deerfield's speech about the valley of Elah: the film is all about the effects of confrontation. Hank's son goes down into the Valley of Elah with his comrades and he is changed by the experience: changed into a bitter and deformed young man, crippled mentally, sent to drugs and prostitutes by the experience. All his comrades too are vividly effected by the experience: reliving it. There is one wonderful moment when a soldier tells Hank that when in Iraq he hated it, but two weeks after getting back there is nowhere else he would rather be. The truth of this concept is reflected in most studies of what happens to soldiers after any war when they come back (one of my problems with this film is that it presumes that this is true only of Iraq: it isn't, plenty of young men were changed by World War One and Two). The film dwells on this idea though and it repeats it again and again: most evocatively in the way that Hank who knew and brought up his son, confronts the contents of his son's mobile phone, filled with videos of the torture of Iraqis and the tragedy of war.

But there is another valley of Elah here- and that is the investigation itself. Hank confronts the very issue of his son's death, the very fact of his murder and the existance of his corpse. Again the experience changes him. There is no question in my mind that Hank is deeply disturbed by his experiences, he lashes out often against those around him. But he also is humiliated by the truths that he finds out, he is blamed by his wife for his sons' deaths and he finds himself stymied at every turn by bureacracy. Ultimately the story is as much about his descent into the valley, his confrontation with the monster, the Goliath of his son's murder and what he gains from it and how he changes from it. The problem is that his gain might be negative, his change might be to the worse- the truth is hard to confront sometimes and the verdict delivered by Hank on life is not a positive one.

Its a message that sits uneasily with the film's aim which is to bring America itself to its own valley of Elah, to its own confrontation with the Goliath of what it has done in Iraq to its young men. The message is pacifist. But its also strangely a message for complacency- don't look too hard, don't confront too much because what you will find will disturb and upset and disorientate you. The film doesn't really raise sympathy for the soldiers because we know too little about them, it does create sympathy for the father but it shows the process of investigation as a futile one. It embodies exactly the nihilism that the soldiers have coming back from Iraq: in that sense this film is very much the product of its times- rather than being a post Iraq film, it is a film that is founded amidst realities shaped by Iraq. It is interesting, it is a cinematic failure, its worth seeing but it is also deeply problematic.

Biblical Curse Generator

Courtesy of Vino- I offer you the Biblical insult generator- my favourite so far is

O that thou wouldest be kicked by an incontinent camel, O thou bull of Bashan!

Take that you bulls of Bashan!

Boris in London?

One of the most interesting questions incidentally should these jubilent Tories over at Conservative Home see their wishes fulfilled, is what happens to a politician when his party are out of power who becomes London Mayor. As such he would represent more people than any other figure bar the leader in his party and possibly more than his leader. He would be a key figure in terms of any election campaign in 2009 as well. One of the most interesting things about this mayorality race is that you could easily end up either with Johnson winning (under Brown) or with Livingstone winning and then Cameron in as PM say in 2009 or 2010. I think that might have a very interesting effect on British politics. The UK has not really had politicians who have built up local profiles like US governors do since the Chamberlaines ruled Birmingham in the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries- it would be fascinating to see how the London Mayor fits into national politics should we see a mayor from the opposition party in charge at City Hall.

It took a couple of years for the full political implications of Scottish devolution to sort their way through and we are now seeing the first SNP government up there- I don't think we will see London devolution's political effects (which could be much greater given the fact that its the major parties who contend in the capitol, not one major party against a regional party) until we see what a mayor from a party not in power does- what position he has visa vis the government and visa vis his own party. The traditional route in British politics takes you through Whitehall and Westminster- it will be fascinating to see whether there are other routes to the top that say involve becoming mayor of London and establishing a powerbase.

The Weakness of Rudi

Having hammered Danny Finkelstein recently, its nice to see him return to form with a perceptive analysis of Rudy Giuliani's campaign strategy so far. Essentially Finkelstein rightly points out that Giuliani didn't abandon the early states, he did so after they all turned dark for him. The campaign strategy to avoid them was a neat way to say that he didn't mind about bad results there- it was a press strategy in reality to stop them running stories about him not winning those early primary states. Danny rightly points out that the implication of this in a wider way is that most political strategy is pretty adhoc, it runs to the moment and its success is often reliant totally upon the moment. One week's strategical genius (Gordon Brown last summer) can look like an idiot the next week (Gordon Brown last autumn) and vice versa. However such movements do reflect a kind of reality.

What do they reflect in Giuliani's case? In my view, and I say this as a longtime sceptic about Giuliani's potential as the Republican nominee, they reflect that Giuliani is a weaker candidate than he immediatly appears. America's mayor has nice bipartisan positions and a good record of government but as soon as opponents focus on him, other disquieting things emerge. His private life has not been unimpeachable- he has links with dodgy figures in New York Politics (Bernie Kerik anyone?) and also the Catholic Church. He divorced his wife on nationwide Television without telling her first. All these things are easily transformed into quick disadvantages especially in the remorseless environment of a Presidential election. Anyone who doesn't think that Mr Giuliani is a very bright guy is an idiot, but anyone who doesn't think he is very vulnerable is also struggling. Perhaps in Iowa, New Hampshire etc you were seeing that vulnerability emerge- it will be fascinating to see how Florida goes because should he lose there that could be the end of his campaign.

Gaslight

Why is it that Gaslight doesn't work? Its a fine film featuring one of Ingrid Bergman's best performances- she plays the slowly disintegrating Paula with all her charm and considerable acting ability. Charles Boyer playing her husband is a smooth villain- a seducer, a snake in the garden with a real sting. The supporting cast are fantastic- Joseph Cotton is as always a good actor- so is Dame May Whitty reprising her dotty old woman from Hitchcock's Lady Vanishes and Angela Lansbury also does well in her first role. But it still doesn't work- it feels contrived to modern eyes- it feels like there is less suspence than their should be. George Cukor even directs it well- filling rooms with objects in order to symbolise visually the increasing paranoia of his heroine- but it still doesn't work. Something doesn't come off- and many modern reviewers have that same sense that there is something missing, something that would be better in the film which isn't there.

The first thing you might think of is that it doesn't have the pace of a modern thriller- and that's accurate. It doesn't have much pace at all- the basic storylines are fixed pretty much as soon as we land in London around a third into the movie and from there on we merely follow them. There isn't much in the way of deceptive plot twist or new angle- the story is what the story is and most of the viewers watching it can see it for what it is. But again that doesn't really answer why the film doesn't work as it should work- the plot may develop slowly but the idea of someone being convinced that their mind is slowly disintegrating is a fascinating one. The idea that that lie might convince someone, that they might be persuaded that they were mad and hence be driven out of their mind is crazy but interesting. It makes you reflect on what the nature of madness is- and to some extent it happens with various diseases like depression that someone can be driven out of their mind by persistant taunting. In this case Bergman's character is driven out of her mind by her husband and her servants who play her husband's game.

So what is it that doesn't work? Ultimately I think what doesn't work in this film is the situation. Its hard to beleive that Bergman would or could have believed that her husband's lies were true. However much we believe her acting, the premise behind it seems unbelievable. Its unbelievable because of two things- firstly because the mood of the film at the beggining and the end is romantic and not mysterious. Its hard to switch Bergman's character from what she is to what she becomes. Secondly and more importantly the mind revolts at her submissiveness. This is love on bended knee, not love of equals and as such she is in a position to be convinced of her madness. She is swept off her feet and then forced into the position of a slave. That isn't love as I understand it- its not women as I understand them. The ultimate problem with Gaslight lies in the fact that its central character is not a human being but a fairytale, a princess. Perhaps the element of fantasy at its first showings worked, hence the wide acclaim, and Bergman could portray a woman under great psychological stress and subject to deceit, as Notorious demonstrates, but this film doesn't work because the drama of its central character is implausible.

The issue here is that the genders are drawn too stereotypically for me to believe the story. Bergman's Paula is too ready to collapse into male arms and heed her husband's seductions. Boyer's husband is too much the evil cuckold. Minor characters too are too stereotypical- Cotton's detective isn't given anything to do beyond look handsome and be virtuous. The whole scenario starts as an interesting idea but because all the characters are cardboard it ends up being less than what it could be. Gaslight's failure is interesting because it demonstrates the need for completeness and complexity within cinema- the later Notorious works so much better because the characters aren't as simple and don't conform as easily to gender stereotypes. Gaslight ultimately has an interesting concept but fails because it has no psychological core- and it lacks that core because of its inability to evade the world of fairy tale and enter the world of reality.

Civility

I found this post from Craig Murray rather surprising. Murray is rightly a critic of the ideas of the Times journalist David Aaronovitch- but he has gone further and stated that Aaronovitch is a "sleazy fat neo-con slob". Murray says in his defence of those words that

David Aaronovich is confused as to why I would wish to be impolite about him. The answer is quite plain. Supporting the Iraq War, and cheerleading for it, is not a legitimate policy choice. It is complicity in an appalling act of aggression and mass murder. The invasion of another country, resulting in the death of (literally) countless civilians, in order to seize control of natural resources, was an act of hideous criminality. Nazi "Journalists" stood trial at Nuremberg charged with propagandizing for illegal war.

I tend to have rigorously argued political views. I am, for example, strongly against the private finance initiative and other private provision in the NHS. I am opposed to state aid to Northern Rock. On those and other issues, many people have other opinions and I genuinely respect those views and engage with them, much as I may disagree.

But the Iraq war is not like that. Supporting the illegal invasion of other countries is a crime; it is no more legitimate than to argue that "The Yorkshire Ripper Was Right". It does not surprise me that Aaronovitch and other renegades of the hard left like Phillips and Hitchens have taken this position - ruthlessness and disregard for individuals provide the consistent thread in their odyssey around the unpleasant extremes of politics.

I am afraid, David, that decent people will look down on you the rest of your life. Get used to it.

Murray here equates some political choices with crimes whereas he says that others are just differences of opinion. To invade Iraq is to behave like the Yorkshire ripper, to demand that the NHS be left in inefficient public ownership is to have a political opinion. Nowhere does he define exactly what he means by any of this. Indeed the standard that Mr Murray adopts seems to be whether Mr Murray cares about a particular issue or not. Being opposed to state aid to Northern Rock risks for instance causing the decent into poverty of its depositors- no doubt Mr Murray would disagree- but you could say that to advocate that is to have that on your conscience. Again if you believe that (which I don't) the NHS is more inefficient within the public sector, to oppose its privatisation is literally to sign the death sentence of those who die because we have a worse health sector.

Those who argued for the invasion of Iraq argued that it would produce democracy within Iraq and replace a particularly nasty dictator with a democratic regime. They argued that the concept of international law that Mr Murray believes in, in which the invasion of Poland was a more serious crime than the Holocaust, is overwritten by a concept based on human rights law according to which Saddam Hussein's regime was illegitimate and ripe for deposition. You may agree or disagree with their analysis or their argument- but it isn't a criminal argument or criminal analysis no more than the prudential calculation about the health service or Northern Rock is. I am not sure that there are criminal arguments in politics anyway- though if there are they would one might think have to aim at criminal ends, like the extermination of a race, rather than aim at democratic liberation. Mr Murray's argument makes no sense.

Furthermore its also bad practise. Democracy is about different groups of citizens having widely different opinions on important issues. Freedom of speech allows us all to discuss those issues and come to a view. If we are to do that, we must be at liberty to make our views known and furthermore we must take our time to evaluate and consider views before dismissing them. We also have to take the fact that we are citizens of a comunity that has others within it too seriously- so for example we need to listen and attempt to persuade others to our point of view. Insulting people doesn't help persuade them that you are right- indeed insults prove to me that you have lost an argument because you aren't considering the possibility of persuading your interlocutor. We all occasionally lose our cool- and I am sure Mr Murray has on this occasion- these remarks are not aimed at him personally and there are some arguments which seem petty and ridiculous- but he has announced a principle and I disagree with him. Civility ultimately is neccessary for democracy to survive- something that eighteenth century theorists who crafted our modern notions of politeness well knew.

Amongst the blogosphere's major problems is this tide of invective: it doesn't help either those that manufacture it or those that are the recipients of it.

Plague

Plague is one of those diseases that most of us relegate to the history books. Great outbursts of plague have had a dramatic impact upon history. Athens in the Peloponesian war was heavily blasted by plague, medieval Europe suffered greatly from the disease as did 19th Century China. The disease is largely transmitted by fleas living on rodents- rats it is presumed in medieval Europe- and proceeds to infect human beings afterwards. Human to human transmission is possible but the key catalyst for an outbreak appears to be the presence of rodents in large enough quantities. Plague no longer severely threatens developed world countries and in the world at the moment there are only an estimated 1-5,000 cases per year over the last twenty years. Africa seems to be the main locus of plague cases with 90% of the cases in the last five years coming in Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Plague outbreaks though can have a dramatic effect on a country- in India in 1994 an outbreak killed 50 people in the city of Surat, an event which led to a nationwide collapse of trade and tourism and the loss of an estimated 600 million dollars to the Indian economy. Hence a recent study in the Public Library of Science's Medicine Journal calls for more attention to be paid to the disease and to methods of treating it- and also to studies of whether the disease may be able to evolve into new forms in order to further threaten humanity.

I don't consider myself as having the medical expertise to comment upon the development of plague as a disease- no doubt others are in a better position. But one thing that is interesting does arise I think from this analysis and that is that economic development tends to present new opportunities for the aspiring virus and to erradicate disease. It presents new opportunities because increased trade leads to increased human contact and hence the risk of infection. Nigerian truck drivers spread aids to South African prostitutes. It tends to erradicate diseases because it presents us with options to control and contain the disease in locations or by advancing cleanliness and healthiness amongst the general population. Successful public education campaigns in the US and Europe helped eliminate Aids through encouraging condom use for example. Furthermore a well developed health service can lead to diseases being spotted earlier and therefore dealt with more quickly. I wonder and this is just a thought that others can comment on, whether there are particular states of society in which epidemics are more likely to hit than not. Obviously in the events after the breakdown of sophisticated societies during wars- like say the influenza epidemic of 1918- we should expect massive dislocation and possible medical disasters. But are there other moments- for instance at the birth of capitalism where the structures of trade have evolved faster than the wider society- when we should look for epidemics. I wonder if anyone has plotted this data- if they have it would be fascinating.

The studies on plague are interesting and worth thinking about- the disease may not be a historical footnote.

I should say I've written a further post about plague and climate change over at the Liberal Conspiracy.

Advisors

Could I reccomend this Bloggingheads dialogue- Megan McCardle examines the economic advisors to the Presidential candidates, Spencer Akerman the national security advisors- its well worth listening too- particularly when it comes to the differences economically between Hillary and Obama.

Police Pay

I must confess to a personal quirck here- I am fascinated by how you effectively tie pay to performance in the public sector. The Institute of Public Policy Research this morning has announced that in February it will publish a report covering police pay, unfortunately as we do not have the report itself but only an executive summary on the website of the Institute there isn't much we can say. However the reccomendations on that website- which one assumes will be central to the report raise serious questions about its contents. The central reccomendations, reported this morning by the BBC, concern the introduction of performance related pay into the police service. The IPPR point out that the rates of crime detection per officer in the UK have hardly moved since 1997 despite huge increases in pay for officers and that furthermore pay within the force does not reward performance but rewards seniority. They want to shift the balance of pay to reflect performance and to get officers to train more effectively.

All of that is laudable as an aim but there are some serious questions about it that deserve to be raised. Firstly there is the obvious structure and predictability of performance related pay- how it fluctuates for individual officers year on year. No doubt the IPPR would be keen to argue that it should not fluctuate too much- uncertainty of pay award is just the kind of thing to drive talented and therefore useful people away from the police force just at the moment when we most need them. But the real issue is a second one. The problem with performance related pay is never the concept but the metric. Its the way that you measure performance. A classic case can be seen in the IPPR's own research. They argue that police performance should on their website be measured in terms of arrests per officer- but of course there are other ways of measuring police performance. As advocates of the 'bobby on the beat' will often tell you the provision of a sense of security to the public is another measure of police performance for example. The idea of performance related pay risks skewing the performance of police to reflect one or two or three different metrics. The IPPR imply that performance's definition will be decided locally- in which case one has to ask why they use a central figure of police arrests to demonstrate failure and in which case one has to ask furthermore are they willing to see the price of localisation (local failure) to be paid.

None of this is to say that their report is neccessarily wrong- we can't, its not out yet (and quite what the IPPR are doing in releasing to the press a report that hasn't been published, getting publicity for the argument before they get criticism for the research I'm not sure) but it will be interesting to see how the institute has managed to square some of these circles. In particular it will be interesting to see how they manage to derive a concept of performance that doesn't warp the performance of police away from things that we want policement to do. In general within the public sector- the problem is also there with teachers and doctors- there are two great problems. One is that pay doesn't advance much until you move into management and therefore out of the job in the field which if you are talented is the place you are most needed in, and the other is to do with how you measure performance. Just asking for performance related pay is the easy bit, working out how it works is the hard bit. It will be interesting to see what the institute thinks about that!

Obama and Political Correctness

Barack Obama's speech to the congregation of a church in Atlanta provided in full by Andrew Sullivan here are very inspiring. He says in that speech something that is very important to say- that the basis for the way that we treat other people lies in empathising with them, in creating community with them. One of the most illustrative and interesting examples he draws upon in the speech is right at the end, in describing a campaign meeting, he describes how one of his workers Ashley got everyone who joined the campaign to sit down and describe why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

That speech explains why Obama is a viable candidate but it also explains exactly what politics ought to be based on- the sense that it isn't my greivance that matters but yours. Politics can often and does often become a matter of shouting insults at each other- trading blows. Indeed when for instance politicians ramble on about the threat from x social group- often what they are doing is encouraging the rest of us to join the mob and start throwing blows- you can see it in discussions of immigration particularly. Obama's principle is more interesting and more important- because it encourages in us a truly moral ideal of politics, not morality in terms of codification of a set of principles for others to follow, but morality in terms of an outward looking benificence.

This struck me today as I read Jonah Goldberg's recent comments on political correctness. Goldberg rebukes both conservatives and liberals when it comes to political correctness- and made the crucial point in an earlier article that

The reality is that much of political correctness — the successful part — is a necessary attempt to redefine good manners in a sexually and racially integrated society.

Goldberg is entirely right. The problem for conservatives on the issue is that they are paranoid about the Orwellian dimensions of political correctness- and that they become interested in their ability to be rude to others. For liberals its the other way round, attempting to catch others out in conversation is the classic nit picking academic parlour game (you see a different specimen of the same thing on blogs when people take others up for their spelling and typos.) History afterall has nothing to do with the male possessive noun- but refers to the Greek word for story historia and when academic idiots start writing about herstory all you observe is their ignorance! The point is that political correctness ought to be something that we do voluntarily in order to make others feel comfortable- its a code of politeness, intended as the original codes of politeness were partly for political reasons to bind society together and partly for purely social reasons, to make civilised conversation possible.

It is a real sign of hope that two such individuals as far away from each other as Obama and Goldberg though get this central point- that a key part of politics is other regarding action. And that whether its a call to moral rearmanent based on charitable impulse or a call for good manners and political correctness, the point is that that political society is based upon empathy and the more we think about that, the better.

Fate and America: history according to the Coen Brothers in No Country for Old Men

Fate or fortune has been at the centre of our understanding of human history for so long that sometimes it is easy to forget. Minds as subtle and interesting as Thucydides, Polybius, Machiavelli and Tolstoy have sought to understand how fortune governs human history. How it elevates the humble and humbles the proud. The Bible in some of its most interesting book is a mere account of the control of fate by Jehovah- for St Augustine fate was a servant in the evangelical mission of Christianity- for Hegel it was the process which drew out synthesis from thesis and antithesis- for Marx it was the turning of the screw of class conflict. Fate or fortune might be explained but humans could never master it- they could never govern it- they might never as a character at the end of this movie complains meet God.

No Country for Old Men is about fate and its workings through history. Symbolised by a remorseless and brutal killer, whose dress cinematically hints at that other remorseless slaughterer Ingmar Bergman's Death in the Seventh Seal, its impact is truly devastating. It rips families apart and confounds the confident in their search for safety in a world where you get what is coming to you. His victims live in the slipstream of history- they live in the tides of events which sweep them off course and belie their confident plans and predictions. He is seemingly invulnerable- even when wounded he can treat himself with ease- he is not a homicidal maniac according to the voice of wisdom, the local sheriff, he is fate itself. And his victims respond with fear to him- the fear that they would award to fate. From the first frames of the movie, where a man in a bar tosses a coin for his life or for his death- the killer moves according to seemingly arbitrary choices made by his victims. Should you get in his way there is no need for him to kill you, but he has to kill you because of your failure to submit to inevitability. Your death in No Country for Old Men is absolutely inevitable- it is fated and almost all the characters accept that template.

Almost all- because one of the characters doesn't. And the key exchange of the film revolves around this character's decision. When she is confronted by the mysterious killer, instead of taking his gamble, instead of agreeing with him that her death would be accidental, she confronts him with the fact that this is his act. No matter whether she lives or dies, she wants to make him feel his moral responsibility. Throughout the film the murderer is reduced- to a madman, to an epitome of modern society where robbers walk in the street naked apart from dog collars to get attention, to a force of history ('things are always the same' says a friend of the sheriff at one point) but at one moment he is confronted with his own moral agency- with the fact that it is his decision not that of fate as to whether she lives or dies. Interestingly that is the only death or possible death that we don't see (we don't know if she lives or dies) because its the conversation before that matters. Whereas with the other deaths, they have become part of the story- the story of fate- in this case moral responsibility is the story and hence the exchange is more important than the event.

The film flips its attention- the Coen brothers are keen to leave motivations out of the film for the most part. Their characters are taciturn and live in a world where an eyebrow moving conveys the fall of the Berlin Wall- perfectly acted though by the end of the film these are not marionettes but human beings. The film starts with a sequence of characters who gradually grow into a story- but the organisation of the film is such that whereas at the beginning one feels the effects of fate, by the end one feels the effects of choice. Choice is of course unpredictable in its effects- and everywhere through the film choice becomes unpredictable. Taking money doesn't often lead to slaughter, taking on your murderer doesn't mean that he will seek out, pointlessly, to kill your wife. Staying in a hotel doesn't always lead to a massacre. As the film begins the murderer is an anonymous expression of the power of chance, by the end he has a moral character, he does things because he wills them not because he has to do them. What the Coen brothers create is a world that depends on lots of people taking different choices- whose set of choices add up to the events we see on the screen. No fate intervenes just the movement together of hundreds of little choices which chart a way to destruction. This story has an explanation.

But its explanation is not based on class nor is it based on some Hegelian progress of ideas but on the action of individuals. A great story develops out of small choices- moments of decision. It recalls C.S. Lewis's perceptive comment that your descendants could include a Hitler or an Aristotle without you intending either by your choice to have children. Randomness is a consequence of the vastness of the world and the way that your choices interfere and interact with other choices. It is not part of any plan- there is no one in control, no God manipulating things, no secret power behind the scenes- there is just human choice and all its unpredictable consequences. There is no way in No Country for Old Men to say that any particular moment leads to the outburst of violence- and we do not know what ultimately the violence stemmed from nor do we know why a large suitcase of money is sitting in a field somewhere in Texas. We don't know why the killer is involved- though we can assume that some debt of honour is involved- all we know is the series of choices which take people into the road in front of the juggernaut and the series of decisions taken by the murderer to murder. Decisions for which he is accountable ultimately.

The world of choice is ultimately more terrifying than a world controlled by even a mystical power. The killings in this film have no meaning as far as we can see- they don't need to happen. None of this film needs to happen. All of it is consequential upon some voluntary act. The Sheriff's depression which leads him to give up his job is precisely because of this. The United States is No Country for Old Men because an old man understands how arbitrary the process is. He understands that there are no guarantees even when shooting cattle- its always possible for the gun to slip, no one is invulnerable, no principle is sacred, no group all powerful. What if is not a purposeless question but is the heart of human history because there always could be another what if. And stories of course which suggest these conclusions to us are lies because they are just good stories (like the story with the bull) they are stories which indicate to us the fragility of telling stories. The stuff of history is too vast to know and appreciate in all its arbitrary glory- all we know is that we are alone, as if on a darkling plain, and we have choices to make- choices whose import we have no idea about.

Film as an art form is most appropriate to do this- to rip away the veil from human freedom and leave us exposed 'naked before the throne of God' (to quote Francis White), naked before our conscience. The Coen brothers in the film show the evolution of a historical understanding- showing how vast impersonal forces can be imagined by the historian as event piles on event. Showing how our search for explanation becomes a search to avoid the arbitrary nature of human freedom, how we attempt to govern anarchy through the imposition of rational ideas like fate. The point is that at the beginning of the film any viewer believes that there is some reason, some rationality behind the moments of savage slaughter. We believe that something could have stopped it, something could have prevented it, that if only we could think it out we could avoid it. The film doesn't imply that there are forces beyond our control- but shows us that there are no such things as certain ways out because ultimately we cannot be certain of the interior of other people's heads. And it is in other people's heads that we find either our salvation or our sorrow. Film, an art which marries together on screen story and characters (in a sense every actor is an author of his own character) is the perfect way to express this truth about the world and the Coen brothers have presented it wonderfully in this film.

The United States may be No Country for Old Men- but its also No Country for those who have watched this film- the view from the heights of experience and understanding is terrifying because it is so arbitrary. Yeats talked of a terrible beauty being born- its our privilege to watch it on screen.

Kevin Keegan Newcastle United Manager

Here he is in all his glory.

Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War does what it says on the tin. It is a film about the maverick Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson (for maverick read drunk on Whisky for twenty four hours a day, and fornicating for all the 24 he wasn't asleep during). The film portrays Charlie, a Texan charmer with a southern drawl, as an instinctually good man: sure he may employ women only in his office because you can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to have tits but only a fundamentalist Christian would object. Sure he may use his power as a member of the Defence Sub Committee for Appropriations with unchecked arbitrariness- but then again he uses it for good. Good ol Charlie has a bleeding heart, underneath the whisky, and can see through the thighs of a stripper to the agonies of Afghanistan. He can see it and once he sees it, he uses every ounce of his corrupt charisma to get Washington to see it.

For Charlie was not merely a maverick, a drunkard, a womaniser and a charmer: he was also the Congressman who took the United States to war in Afghanistan. Convinced by a sexy Texan socialite (played here with Cruella de Vil looks by Julia Roberts) who is happy to fuck him and wear scanty bikinis for him and by a renegade CIA man with undoubted anti-communist credentials, Charlie goes to war in Washington. He faces obstacles- some of the human obstacles (Rudi Giuliani and John Murtha) will be familiar to any students of today's American politics. (Incidentally Giuliani was trying to prosecute Wilson for taking drugs whereas Murtha was a colleague that our Charlie saved from an ethics investigation and so helped our Charlie on the sub committee). Charlie expanded the US covert ops budget in Afghanistan from 5 million to 500 million and set up an alliance spanning Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Just think about that alliance for a moment- as one of the Isreali characters in the movie says- Pakistan has never recognised us, Egypt invaded us ten years ago and every single assassin coming to kill me has been trained in Saudi Arabia!

The point is though that noone is invincible to Charlie's charm- not even General Zia the dictator of Pakistan. Charlie twists and turns through meeting after meeting- calling in Julia's bikini and the smile of a good ol boy doesn't work. And we see in working there on the screen. We see the guns arriving in Afghanistan. We see the missiles coming in. And we see the mujahadeen hitting helicopters with missiles- shocking the Russian soldiers who are sailing oblivious of the work of the US Congressman until their helicopter explodes in a new form of Texan fireworks. Afghanistan becomes a constituency of Texas- we even see Charlie take out a friend from Congress and both of them rouse a crowd the way that they would in Austin. The point is that through intrigue and through battling in Committees you can do as much as any agent in the field.

The history here is simplified beyond belief. There really can't be any question about its accuracy or not- because the reality was just more complicated. Of course the US weaponry ended up in the hands of the Taliban eventually. And the explosions in Afghanistan were a prelude to those in New York and London. Charlie Wilson though it has to be said bears little responsibility for that- he was responsible for funnelling money and not for the overall strategy. Furthermore Wilson wanted the US to reconstruct Afghanistan. To rebuild it and to build schools and hospitals there- for some reason, unexplored in the film, his reconstruction requests fell on stony ground. The old southern charm didn't work so well and it all failed. The film's story is one of triumph- though its tinged with sadness, towards the end of the film many characters make references to what followed- to the failure of the reconstruction effort and the rise of the Taliban. If the film has lessons for today- its in precisely that and for Afghanistan. Afghanistan once again has fallen and once again the world is turning away in frustration- Charlie's lessons still aren't being learnt. We heed his life and live in luxury- we don't heed his efforts to help the Afghan people.

Of course the film is simplistic in its political analysis- but at 97 minutes it could hardly not be. The performances are all good- even Julia Roberts does well here, exploring her evil side. She should take on more of these kinds of roles. Tom Hanks is brilliant- really demonstrating that ability to take on southern charm and give it an extra shot of Scotch. Hoffman is as always excellent and the script by Aaron Sorkin who wrote the westwing is quotable and amusing. This is not a great film- its not up there with such great political films as Citizen Kane or Nixon- but its a very good film and you'll definitely enjoy it. At times it is cloyyingly patriotic but that's the American style and boy does this film have style!

I'd reccomend Charlie Wilson's war- though with this last proviso- no matter how bloody and heroic those battles in committee in Washington were, just think about the battles in Afghanistan. And lets remember this time, we shouldn't desert these people to another round of tyranny- we need to make Afghanistan work and I'm sure Charlie with his hookers and his liquor will be cheering on from the sidelines should we do so.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Impossible Politics

Danny Finklestein suggests Al Gore as a possible VP pick for Barack Obama. Its not an implausible pick for Obama to wish that he could make- but there is a reason that noone has done three terms as Vice President- the job frustrates and infuriates its occupant more often than not. Furthermore having run for President once and turned down a good chance of the Democratic nomination this time, why would Al Gore want to run for Vice President again? If he really wanted a career in Washington he would have run for President- it strikes me that the chances he will run for Vice President alongside Obama are minuscule. Equally implausible is that John McCain (who don't forget needs to shore up his Republican base and whose health will be an election issue) would risk picking a liberal Democrat (on some issues) Joe Leiberman as his running mate.

There are people who look credible VPs at the moment- Jim Webb, Evan Bayh might be good Democratic names- but the paucity of good coverage in the UK press is reflected by the fact that when British journalists do talk about the possible VP picks of Presidential candidates they tend to suggest people like Leiberman and Gore who realistically are unlikely to be the second name on either ticket in November.

Undecided Voters

I didn't read this when it came out- but this is one of the most depressing articles about why people vote that I have ever read. Chris Hayes campaigned for John Kerry in 2004 and found that very few of the undecided voters knew anything about the issues- or even understood what an issue was. His record of his discussions with them is here and is equally depressing for the right and the left.

The Political Theory of Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarentino is a director that I wonder about and find difficult to work out: as this review will demonstrate his work alternately frustrates, antagonises and confuses me. To some extent I see him as the most conventional film maker around- he perfectly mirrors the kinds of angst that fill society today and in that sense his films are very interesting- even if because of that they are imperfect and almost unconsciously make points that their director doesn't intend. Reservoir Dogs is a film without much of a plot- there isn't much tension- a heist has gone wrong and about half way through the film we know who has made the heist go wrong. Its characters are deliberately emptied of anything apart from vagueness- in the service of the heist they lose their real names and become Mr White, Mr Orange, Mr Blonde, Mr Brown, Mr Blue and Mr Pink and they lose their identities. We never see the actual heist- we see blood drenched episodes after it, we see the escape from it, we observe the planning for it but the heist takes place off stage. Tarentino wants to frustrate us- he wants us to be 'fucked' with as he said in an interview- he wants us as strangely disorientated as his own character confesses he is by the song Like a Virgin (a point I have stolen from a review by Robin Gleason). He wants us emptied by the gaze of cool and turned in on ourselves reflecting on the hell of being abandoned in a warehouse with five thugs and five guns.

But its hard to get at more than that. Reservoir Dogs is not a gangster film- it is not a film about gangsters, nor about violence. There is violence in it but violence is not examined. Rather it is a film about the experience of being abandoned with a group of people alone and suspicious. It is about loneliness and suspicion. It doesn't really debate the idea of suspision as much as it could because these are characters deprived of their insides- they are characters bleeding their identities out- all of them in a sense are undercover. Rather its about the position of identity and identification within a world filled with isolation. It works by announcing that its main characters have no names, dispositions but no characters, and desires but not identities- they have actresses they fancy but no wives they love. The characters therefore within the movie are characterless, they are deprived of context, abandoned to each others' gaze and abandoned to each others' fear. The film is less a testament to the hell of other people, than to the hell of a state of nature. Its point is not about society- as here there is no society, noone has a role- as about society without social function, society without the state. The criminals abandoned feel the fear that Hobbes argued they would feel and go out in a blaze of gunfire.

There is something postmodernist about this vision- and I take it that Tarentino intends it that way. The dialogue is fractured and the speech doesn't reveal the direction of the plot (a conscious directorial decision on Tarentino's part). Anyone who reveals the truth is penalised by the logic of the plot and by the heist. The undercover policeman is the only good character and yet his raison d'etre is his equivocal relationship with the truth- the fact that he can inhabit and even convince himself of his own lies. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is deceived and the only real truths are found in murder and being murdered. But that postmodernist point leads to a very odd conclusion- because we are back in the world of Hobbes, where words have no meaning but those given them by a sovereign. The kind of epistemelogical anchoring that the boss, Joe, performs when he gives the gangsters their names, their colours, seems essential to the plot. Indeed to take the point further, one notices an echo of Genesis- Joe like God names the entities that he sees in front of him, like God he gives them meaning and when Mr White questions those names, like Lucifer, he brings the whole world down tumbling upon him (only in this case we are talking post Nietzsche so God too can be a victim).

That I think is one of the things that is so dissatisfying about the film- because it demolishes every structure in order to prove that all structure is artificial and that without structure there is only endless violence. In that sense, the film is profoundly conservative. Tarentino's argument is that without roles, human life is nothing but an endless struggle of murderer against murderer- roles and definition give us purpose and life. Its a counter enlightenment point- civilisation cannot be defended because its right, it must be defended because without it everything else collapses. Having said that Tarentino is aware of the fact that every role hides a disrespectful interior- the Gangland boss sits in an old world office and runs numerous businesses. The gangsters themselves laud their own professionalism. Everything that we know and love can be and is expropriated by evil- every role is corrupted but without that corruption, he implies, we cannot exist. The horror of confinement is better than the terror of equality- because equality leads as Hobbes argues to a suicidal desire for self preservation.

Reservoir Dogs attests to the unease of modernity- an unease that we have not dispelled. A central monument to being cool, its politics are deeply reactionary and its message is disquieting. If you are happy to surf on its dialogue that's fine- but sift beneath it and the vision is disquieting, the reality uncomfortable and the vision incredibly bleak. Yeats talked of a long sleep being stirred to nightmare by a rocking cradle- I wonder if Reservoir Dogs is another swing of that cradle.

The Balance of Power 2007

There is nothing particularly wrong with Policy Exchange's latest report on the balance of power between the left and the right across the OECD in 2007- however there are real questions about how much you can infer anything from it. Policy Exchange argues that the majority of the OECD is under the control of the centre right- a fair piece of analysis- though one has to add that were the United States to have gone Democratic in 2004 the majority of the OECD would be controlled by the centre left and don't forget how close the 2004 election was. In truth the US is evenly balanced between left and right. Furthermore there are real questions about whether this means anything- for instance a large number of citizens of the OECD live in Turkey where the big issue in the recent election was about secularism in Islam, an issue which few of the voters who will vote in November in the US will be concerned with. Local issues are often more important than people give them credit for: in South Korea for example relations with the North are very important. Governments like Aznar's in Spain often lose power thanks to miscalculations or like John Major's in the UK thanks in part to sleaze. Furthermore left and right mean different things in different places: many British conservatives would back the Democrats in the States and have always been hostile to Irish nationalism, many US Republicans would not have backed Erdogan in Turkey, and so on. Furthermore all this discussion doesn't reflect the other battle- that of ideas- between the left and the right. Leftwing governments as in New Zealand in the eighties can be very rightwing in practise- and no British Tory needs too much reminding of how leftwing conservative governments can be after listening to an old tape of Harold Macmillan!

Policy Exchange have provided a useful parlour game- I'm not sure its more than that!

Blogpower Roundup

A roundup chosen by the bloggers themselves of Blogpower's best posts of year is up here- I chose a post about the Robert Bresson film L'Argent, in part because I think its a good review, and in part because I think Bresson is one of the most important artists and film makers of the century and that he is deeply underappreciated.

As a bynote I should also say that the Carnival of Cinema is back- and there are some good posts especially complaints about Yahoo's list of the best movies of the last year.

Read both- in particular the Blogpower one- a fine collection of posts!

Agreeing with Dizzy

Just a quick note- I have published an article on the Liberal Conspiracy agreeing with Dizzy about the fact that MPs should not have allowances to pay for rubbish collection in their London properties.

Otto Preminger

This is an important article and well worth reading about the great Austrian director Otto Preminger.

Cricket illustrates Life

The recent events in India illustrate an important rule for politics as well as sport: that process is often more important than outcome. That once a judge has given a decision, no matter its justice, you have to accept it. The Political Umpire makes the point in a cricketing context well here- but when you read his post, remember it applies to much more than just cricket.

Reading Class: The Talented Mr Ripley

The Talented Mr Ripley is Patricia Highsmith's first novel about the psychopathic murderer Tom Ripley. For those who don't know it the plot is as thus- Ripley is a poor ne'er do well in New York who is sent by an old acquaintance's father, Richard Greenleaf, to go to Italy and find Greenleafe's son Dickie and persuade him to come back to Italy. After going there and meeting Dickie, Dickie's girlfriend Marge and his friend Freddy Miles, Tom becomes increasingly enamoured of Dickie's lifestyle- to such an extent that he eventually murders Dickie and later Freddy and spends the rest of the book evading the Italian police. As Debra Hamel pointed out at Normblog the point of the novel is to elucidate and describe Ripley's character: the title provides a clue to that. Ripley not the murders nor the investigation is the centre of the novel and the reveal is about Ripley's character: slowly inch by inch Highsmith shows us Ripley the man and reveals to us his anxieties, paranoia and his thoughts.

When reading it therefore you get a very precise idea of Ripley's motivation. Why then does he do what he does? Murder normally is mystery: here it is the end of the mystery and in order to discover the real mystery we need to discover why Tom murders Dickie Greenleafe. In truth Tom murders Dickie because he envies the other man's class and sophistication, his money and easy living lifestyle. He murders Dickie because Dickie is slowly growing tired of Tom: because Dickie sees Tom in part as a sponge and possibly a homosexual sponge at that. Tom decides he has to become Dickie- he has to reinvent himself as an aristocratic young man about Italy, as a classy cool individual. Even his posture we are told changes as this process unfolds. Tom's hesitant slouch becomes Dickie's confident and assertive pose. Dickie's class though isn't all money- its also savoir faire. Its a certain style- a magnetism that Tom is forced to acknowledge and wishes he has. Dickie is someone- and throughout the book Tom lives in his shadow. In reality Tom seeks not to murder Dickie as to merge with Dickie, Tom seeks suicide not slaughter.

Poverty and wealth come together in this novel- and what we see is the way that the poor man sees the rich man. Not neccessarily as the owner of the accoutrements of money- but as the owner of the parephenalia of civilisation. Tom aspires to Dickie's culture, he is disappointed by Dickie's vulgarity (especially the poverty of Dickie's painting- Dickie reminds me of Vronsky in Anna Karenina, forever attempting to be an artist, forever failing) but he likes the carefree indolence of the young American. He has insecurity which is founded on poverty but not described by it. Tom's insecurity is fed into by other things: his possible homosexuality, his own poor family life, his anxieties about being a dependant. That insecurity leads him to murder and to various other things: but it remains the focus of the novel. It is what ultimately makes Tom's character sympathetic- and it makes you wish that he will escape, because all the time you are alone with his fears. None of the other characters comes alive in the same way as Tom does- because none of the others are given an internal voice and none of the others are in motion. In a curious way, murder becomes a means to social advancement in the novel.

I don't think I have captured the flavour of the book well- there is much more in it, including a really good read. But I think the way that it describes the experience, the total experience of social anxiety and its complexity- the way it derives from sexual, social and cultural signs- is perfect. Tom's anxiety is not all class based. But part of its structure depends on his class. It is not all based on his homosexuality and his idealisation of Dickie and rivalry with Marge: part of it though is. It isn't all based on his fear of being dependent both socially and monetarily on Dickie: part of it is though. Throughout the novel we see Tom grow and change- a haunted hunted man becomes even more haunted and hunted, but he gains respectability through murder.

Conservatism

An interesting post from Iain Dale this evening on rural theatres. Iain wants to know why their funding is being eroded- the answer it seems is that with money tight, the Arts Council are focussing on the 2012 Olympics. What's interesting though is that Iain considers this worthy of blogging- I completely agree with him. One of the sources of strength for conservatism is the notion of organic little platoons which come together to grow civil society- Iain wants those little platoons which cultivate localism and peculiarity to be strengthened and reinforced with public money. I think we should facilitate their growth as well- a small amount of money to a village theatre is something that produces immeasurable goods for a community and fortifies society- its something any real conservative ought to support.

Dirty Tricks

This is a really interesting interview with a former Republican Dirty Tricks man. I should emphasize that what is interesting is the techniques he describes- they are international- they were used for example in Australia by the liberals and they are used by all sorts of people from the right like the interviewee to the left. It is interesting though to see some of them being rehearsed and its quite an eye opener- some of the techniques- pretending to be the other side and phoning people during the Super bowl are very subtle and clever. All of them tend to make democratic decisions harder- as there are upcoming elections in the US and the UK and other places, we should know about these techniques and beware of them.

The Relevance of Rigour

The Taxpayer's Alliance has come in for some criticism on this blog occasionally- however yesterday their response to the rumours that Cambridge and the LSE might rethink their attitude to some A-Level subjects was just right. It was just right because it restated what I think is an important principle- that the A-Level should not be degraded. However the TPA's analysis brings back to my mind at least the important difference between academic and vocational qualifications- a distinction that needs making again and again- though it is between two things which do blend into each other.

The point about academic subjects is that they are a different type of training to a different type of vocation than vocational subjects. They are trainings in rigour and reason. The harder academic subjects- physics, maths, history, philosophy, literature, chemistry- require years of study and intense thought. They also require learning a discipline- evaluating evidence or preparing chains of reason- in a field in which many intelligent men and women have worked before. To study one of those subjects at university is to acquire a flavour of what it means to be a scholar and consequently of what it means to reason, analyse and discuss results. Of course the subject matter is to some sense extrinsic to that- but all those subject headings really describe not so much an area to be studied, as a discipline to study that area with. They involve the use of rules which tell you how to evaluate and use reason in a particular context- as such they have a universal validity. They don't tell you how to be a good anything- but they do train you in how to reason effectively, how to analyse ideas and data and evaluate them.

If we turn from that model to look at a vocational qualification- we can see that some such ie law or engineering share that quality of being a training in a discipline of thought. Other vocational qualifications aren't training so much in a discipline of thought as they are in training another kind of discipline- physical activity for instance may not require much thought but may require a lot of skill. Take the art of cooking- cooking requires a certain degree of skill, an ability to see what should happen at a particular moment to the dish you are preparing. It does require analysis- but more instinctual analysis- the ability to see for instance when a spice is needed or a herb is required to give the dish more taste and when it isn't. You could put other crafts into that category too- from the precise moulding of a pot by a potter to the construction of a painting. They are crafts. They do not require or exemplify the same skill as say a degree in history does- not because they are inferior but because they are not that type of training.

This isn't to say that we require one type of qualification or the other to be available- its just to say that one isn't the same as another. I wouldn't trust a mathematician or a historian with a resturant kitchen, but I would prefer them to a cook when it came to being an accountant. There is no metaphsyical sense in which one profession is 'better' than another: and yet the key point here is that there is a real difference in the kind of skill that is being used and cultivated through their study. And that is precisely the reason why many people want to leave the academic subjects and do vocational qualifications- they don't want the same experience as they have at school or university, they want to do something which has more external results than the products of analysis do. Its vital to keep that distinction in mind- because it reminds us that if we try and make vocational study academic we will lose the attractiveness of the first and the rigour of the second. Rather we should look at tailoring vocational studies more precisely to the actual needs of people in jobs- looking for example at apprenticeships and other things- and we should open both kinds of study to people throughout their entire lives. Most of us afterall will have to retrain during the fifty years that we can expect to spend in the workforce now- and the government since the foundation of the Open University has recognised that fact.

Vocational and Academic qualifications are ultimately different but equal ways to acheiving different careers- reason won't knock nails into walls, a knowledge of construction won't solve a third order differential equation- its time we were realistic about education.

The Oddities of Ron Paul

Ron Paul has some questions to answer. It appears that his newsletter sent out for over twenty years has published racist, anti semitic, homophobic material. The most shocking moment to me is that he apparantly has allowed a publication in his name to go out which compares Israel to the Nazi State of the 1940s. Paul may not have written these newsletters but they all went out under his name and regularly contained these attacks- if he read them he must have been aware of their content. Either he has had a change of heart- or he is an inappropriate candidate to be in a position of high office, such as that he aspires to. Its time he made a statement to clarify whether he thinks all blacks are just after welfare, gays contaminate heterosexuals with physical contact or that Israel planned the World Trade Centre bombing.

The Saragossa Manuscript

The Manuscript found in Saragossa is one of the great monuments of 19th Century culture- written by Jan Potocki it tells the tale, supposedly through a manuscript discovered in Saragossa, of Alphonse Van Worden and his attempt to get from France to Spain in the mid 18th Century. Van Worden's journey is delayed and obstructed by a group of gypsies, Moors, scientists, occultists, a set of sexy lesbian princesses and the spirits of two hanged men. These individuals engage him and tell him stories which parallel those of Boccacio or Chaucer- there are baudy stories, erotic stories, exotic stories, bizarre stories, ghost stories, tortures, rescues, deaths and duels, treatises on science, treatises on the Kaballah and accounts of the history of the wandering Jew, Ahaseurus. The tales are amazing- better than the tale which contains them all- they contain all sorts of life and love and mystery and magic. The Manuscript is an almost unfilmable book because of its extent- almost anything you could desire to read about and write about is here- from the gentle pains of remembering lost loves in old age to the glory of feeling it in the first flush of youth.

Putting it on to a screen is therefore not easy. Particularly that's true because the Manuscript works on a very imaginative level. You have to for example imagine two beautiful Moorish princesses, draped over each other and over the hero and how they seduce and play with his mind, making him into their tool whilst they entice his senses with sisterly caresses. You have to do this in your own mind- and to have it rendered in flesh and blood women is bound to be disappointing. The same goes for so much of this incredibly intense book- you have to not be there in order to impose your own images of horror and delight upon it. This is a world crafted in such humane colours that we all have met its characters- and we can all appreciate the bullying Busqueros, so much so that we all put a face to him as we read. Putting a cinematic countenance in there deprives the book of its personal impact.

The version put out by the Polish director, Wojciech Has, in 1965 though does manage to entice you in. It surprised me. In that I didn't think anything could give me the same mixture of horror and delight as the book does. It does. There are some wonderful sequences- especially when our hero reaches out his hand to caress the face of a lesbian princess only to find he is stroking the countenance of a hanged man. There are some really good comic moments as well- as characters climb up ladders and terrify other characters in the middle of the night- or as servants laugh at the misfortunes of their stupid masters (of which more later). The film captures some of the burlesque of the original- its sheer joie de vivre, its appreciation of the eccentricity of normal human life and the wonder of that eccentricity- its praise (to borrow an Erasmian phrase) of folly.

Where the film doesn't cope so well though is in conveying some of the book's deeper reflections. The book contains characters- a Kabalist and a scientist- which the film contains but does not exploit. The hours of commentary that these two men supply- by way of explication of the situation that Van Worden finds himself in and of the wider world- vanishes and is replaced by their mute presence. They sit and listen but they are not as crucial as they are in the book- this leaves their presence rather moot. You wonder why they are there- what their characters are doing- you wonder why the Kabbalist has a sister and what her relevance is. In the book she is a crucial character- in the film the line of decolletage is low cut but the purpose of her character is unclear.

This means that the film loses something of the quality of the book- which is that its anchored within the enlightenment. It loses something of the nature of the book as a fictional encyclopedia of the eighteenth century and instead changes into something else. The film includes many more revelations of the soundness of the working classes- many more revelations of the way that they unlike their more privileged masters they do understand. They think that duelling is silly, that absurd honour is silly etc etc. Of course that message is absent from the book- but its been placed there by the director. A twentieth century message about class has replaced an eighteenth century obsession with the bizarre intellectual movements of the age- this diminishes the film in my eyes.

Its worth saying as well that not everything does work here- for moments of beauty and there are many, there are also moments of clumsiness when you regret that the director wasn't more in control. At points the story veers away from him, at points the plot is lost. Having said this this is a worthy effort to film an unfilmable book, to condense 700 odd dense pages into 2 hours of film. That it doesn't quite work is not a surprise, that Has got it anywhere near to working is.

The rising tide of hatred

The 90s and 00s have been the years of vitriol. Whether its Anne Coulter accusing Democrats of 'treason' or its Michael Moore accusing George Bush of being a Saudi puppet, whether its the mad bloggers of the right rounding on appeasers or its the mad bloggers of the left rounding on chickenhawks, its open season on the internet and in the newspapers. There is perhaps something peculiar about the times that we live in: George Bush has been a uniquely divisive President in US history partly because he has been so ambitious. In the UK, the parties have begun to alternate for much longer periods of time in and out of office- the stakes are therefore higher in any election. Though we shouldn't overrate it: Nye Bevan afterall said in the 1940s that Tories were lower than vermin and fights in the House of Commons are not de rigeur as they were when Hugh Cecil confronted the Irish MPs in the 1900 and 1906 Parliaments. In the US, duelling politicians contend on the airwaves- not as Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton did at sixty paces. Nobody at this election looks like doing what Lee Attwater did or even repeating Karl Rove's antics in 2000. Its easy to get overexcited and assume that today's events are novel- when they are merely repetition.

So why then are such notable bloggers as Ashok and Ruthie worried about the state of conversation on the internet? Are they wrong? The real answer to that question is that they aren't wrong. Because something has changed and its brought more of the gutter out into public view than ever before- that is the invention of the internet. Effectively whether its Guido in the UK or Drudge in the US or those commenters making death threats against Dick Cheney or those columnists who revel in the facile comparison of George Bush to Adolf Hitler, they are only out there because of the creation of this medium. Blogging can do many good things- but it can also do some things to retard political conversation and even education. If academics can use it to hold virtual conferences in which someone from Utah can speak to someone from the Ukraine about their research, then so too can nutcases and fascists, conspiracy theorists and loons. Imagine the joy that you get when you suddenly discover that someone else is interested in the mating habits of the millipede- and then imagine the joy you get when you realise that you aren't the only one who feels that Bush is Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin rolled into one and multiplied together. Lunacy is profitable on the internet because the lunatics can gather into communities and support each other, reinforce each other, leave comments on each others' posts telling themselves they are all great and be happily ignorant of the fact that they are morons.

In a broader sense- one of the key and best insights of conservative thinkers down the years has been the power of convention. Convention not law moulds the way that we think and behave and the ways that society is generated. Convention exists in regular life- so that for instance certain things are conventionally rude, if you say them you are shunned. It is conventional not to think in most communities about assacinating the President of the United States: but on the internet you have more choice. You can shape your community to reflect your prejudices and thus the prejudices of the community become its conventions. Weird behaviour like over exuberrant political hatred or unthoughtful vitriol can become conventional habits. The internet ressembles thus nothing so much as a vast student union societies fair, where you chose your society and end up singing about Stalin in the Labour society and Hitler in the Tories. Most people grow out of university though and realise that they have to fit into the conventions of wider society which preclude talking about how 'they' control the world (in language reminiscent of the third reich) and about how liberals or conservatives are evil- but on the blogs they can loose those aspects of themselves, they can regress to the student hack hurling hate and use the fact they have an audience as validation. Just look at some of the worst blogs and how they use their stats as an alibi for instance.

And they do it in public. As a blogger you put forward your most objectionable side to the world. Lets take another simple example. Readers of this blog will know Matt Sinclair. Matt Sinclair is a really good friend of mine- yet we often disagree about politics. On our blogs the disagreement about politics is the central thing about our relationship- though we both try to keep it civil- in real life its not the central thing at all. And that goes for many of the regular commenters who I actually know here. Writing about politics is not the be all and end all of anyone's life and most bloggers to exist in society have to have friends with other opinions, workmates etc. And yet on the net we are reduced to argument- so consequently we sometimes look and sound much worse than we are. Allow as well for the fact that whereas when in conversation with someone I can say with a wry smile, oh you just are interested in fleecing the poor to pay for the lusts of the rich- with a blog you don't have the luxury of tone or the ability to catch someone as they listen to you and moderate your thoughts to their sensitivity. All you have is the brutality of the written word- a word which is sometimes more stark than you want it to be and consequently more offensive. As Ruthie says there is also the fact that anonymity liberates us to become much nastier- I wouldn't dream of saying to someone's face that they are an idiot, I might say it on a blog though.

All those things combine and they drag the traditional media with them- afterall the traditional media always want to sell papers. That and the increasing popularity of tabloids leads to a perceptive coarsening of public debate- a coarsening that Ashok and Ruthie have spotted. In my view there is some coarsening going on, but there is also a lot of stuff that is happening because of technological change- because the gatekeepers have gone away, the long tail is triumphant and therefore the conventions that hold society together have less force. On the internet I have no need to socialise with those I disagree with- unlike in real life!

Iowa Tealeaves

It is difficult to read the results of the Iowa Caucuses last night with any precision. On the Democratic side Obama has been strengthened, on the Republican side Romney has been weakened. It may be that Obama is heading now to New Hampshire, a possible win in South Carolina and the nomination- but there are many slips ahead. As for Mike Huckabee- it should never be forgotten that in 1988 Iowa was won by Pat Robertson and that Huckabee will be significantly weaker in New Hampshire than he was in the midwest. Having said all of that, I do think that the results in Iowa are interesting- in particular four results are interesting, firstly the fact that Obama and Edwards beat Clinton, secondly that Huckabee beat Romney, thirdly that Ron Paul got double the vote of Rudi Giuliani and fourthly that on the Democratic side of the aisle the minor candidates were not merely blasted away, they were wiped out.

What does that mean? Well the last piece of information tells us something very interesting- personal charisma mattered in Iowa more than personal politics did. A good communicator with a good CV like Biden or Dodd was flattened as the Democratic caucus goers sought the established candidates. Furthermore the large turnout in the Democratic party meant that the minnows were effectively destroyed and flung out of the race- in the Democratic party established figures lost to media figures- something that you would expect in a race largely driven by independents (who voted overwhelmingly for Obama) and young people (ditto). Media momentum must lie behind Ron Paul's 10% as well- which ecclipsed Mr Giuliani's 4%- but behind that lies the other and perhaps more interesting story of the primary.

The victors of this primary were the populists. On both sides of the aisle, populists triumphed over establishment candidates. On the Democratic side, John Edwards had a good showing- though possibly not enough to keep him alive. On the Republican side though we saw something fascinating. Because there was no perfect conservative candidate running- none of the alternatives looks particularly appetising to most conservatives- you saw the conservative coalition splinter. Huckabee's victory reinforces the old historical trend that the Midwest supports populists and actually reinforces to me the idea that this could become a new battleground in American politics- where the politics of John Edwards and the politics of Mike Huckabee contest states like Iowa and Montana and all the rest. In a sense the lesson of Iowa is a lesson about the retreat of Republican orthodoxy into the south. But its also a lesson about the functioning of American politics- part of what drives the Huckabee campaign is class. Huckabee appeals on the basis of class and social morality- in that sense he is a warning shot to both parties because he undercuts both of their traditional coalitions. Ron Paul likewise is in the position of mounting an insurgency particularly against the war in Iraq- again the isolationist impulse in American politics should never be underrated.

Not all states will be as populist as Iowa. I'd reckon now if Super Tuesday comes up and Obama maintains this level of support- he is odds on for the nomination. As for the Republican race, its still wide open. But the hint of populism reemerging is an interesting one and perhaps the longest lasting lesson of these events.

Dizzy thinks about the internet

Having myself written about the comparison of UK and US blogs- I was interested to see that Dizzy had looked at the issue- and more interesting than that he has a really good article about it. I don't have much to add- save that I think the institutional distinctions are more important than funding limits because of the potential for out of campaign spending by inexplicitly politically aligned groups- but the article is well worth reading and I reccomend it.

The NHS and lifestyle choice

Matt Sinclair thinks that the NHS reduces the sphere of private accountability to a minimum because all risk is pooled together in one pot. If your healthcare is not something which costs me any money, I don't feel interested, in Matt's view as to whether you smoke or not or take drugs or not or do whatever you wish to do. If your healthcare is something that costs me money, then in a Millite sense (that any action which is other regarding we should have the ability to regulate) I have the right to regulate your conduct. Its a worthy argument- I think though that its wrong- partly because it overestimates the actual strength of the Millite position on liberty.

Let me explain with the use of a couple of empirical points:

a. It is true that the age of healthcare has been the age of increased regulation of what we put into our bodies- opium in the form of laudanum was legal in the nineteenth century but isn't today. But there isn't much evidence to connect the fact that drugs are illegal with the survival of the NHS. Those who support the NHS and support drug legalisation today often overlap. Whereas those who want to privatise the NHS and support drugs being illegal often overlap as well. Homosexuality is not under threat from those worried about STDs, its under threat from those worried about the Bible. The 'yuck' factor and not the abstract Millite argument is what really motivates bans. Look at the distinction between the discussions about banning fatty food and stressful jobs- there is a discussion in the one case for aesthetic reasons, there isn't in the other because an overworked lawyer is more attractive than a fat slob.

b. Matt misunderstands wilfully Mill's argument and consequently misinterprets the zone of Mill's freedom. Mill's concept of freedom is very tricky to understand- but if it were as Matt suggests inclusive of all actions that affected others in any way, the area of free rights would be tiny. Afterall all our actions in some ways effect others- even actions taken in complete privacy- a choice of job afterall effects others sometimes more than a choice of lifestyle does (even in a system with an NHS). This brings me to another point, what Matt neglects is that of course other regarding actions don't require a state to be other regarding- my health has more profound implications for many than those required to pay for it. It has ramifications for my family and for my friends (including Matt) which go far beyond its ramifications for the state. Matt states that public healthcare makes everyone's health a 'public good'- sorry my friend actually everyone's health is a 'public good' whether you have a healthcare system or not.

c. Matt's preferred solution is that,

individuals, rather than taxpayers, are paying for their health insurance it should be possible to allow adjustments in their premiums for healthy behaviours.

His preferred solution though creates many other problems. Genes matter as much as environmental factors- would Matt accept a system in which companies were allowed access to our genetic code and set different premiums based on that for various people, sometimes prohibitive premiums. What about such premiums actively discouraging people for example from performing various important jobs- take for example those who volunteer to be part of the royal lifeboat association (something that involves them in great risk for a real public good and for free)- that would incur them a higher premium is that fair- the same thing might be said about special constables. The concept of splitting the insurance pool for healthcare could take us down some very dodgy paths.

Healthcare isn't an easy issue- but splitting up the insurance pool doesn't seem to me to be a good way forward in tackling it. Nor does a strict adherance to a particular concept of Mill's argument for liberty. Matt Sinclair is one of the most intelligent bloggers on the right and raises an interesting issue- but I don't think he manages to provide a good answer to his question nor to frame his question in an appropriate way.

The Children's Crusade and Media

I have written an over academic article over at the Liberal Conspiracy on the way that the Children's crusade worked and what it tells us about the way that we react to information. I think its interesting-noone else does which is why noone else has commented but I think it probably was too academic for that forum- and should have been posted here. So that's an encouragement to regular readers- get across and take a look! I think it also comes out as too postmodernist- I don't endorse the fully relativistic position on this!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone- especially Welshcakes who got in to comment before I could put this post up. I really enjoy writing this blog so thanks for reading it- I hope its as enjoyable to read as it is to write it. And I hope everyone who reads this blog has a great 2008 and had a great time last night whether curled up watching a DVD in bed or out on the town somewhere or anywhere in between!

The Legend of the Holy Drinker

Joseph Roth is a novelist who is less appreciated in the English world than he ought to be. Roth's fine novella- the Legend of the Holy Drinker- is the story of Andreas, the drinker of the title, and his miraculous progress towards death. Roth himself was an alcoholic, meandering like his character through the streets of Paris as he wrote this novella- and knew that whereof he spoke. The novel though accomplishes two things- one less profound but which lies in a tradition which runs backwards through Oscar Wilde of using the lives of the poor, reconfigured as fairy tales, to reinforce lessons for the rest of society. The other more interestingly adopts the point of view of the poor saint to remind us of the ugliness of human kind and the redemptive quality of a good soul. Andreas is cut off from human society, served a prison term for a murder in defence of his mistress, is a drunkard, unwashed and with a torn shirt and yet he is a saint- without malice or forethought- who lives in a present generosity, a figure of true amour de soi, he aims for his own good without attacking the good of others and he is, as he constantly says a man of honour.

This trope has been used before- Dostoevsky's idiot, Prince Mishkin has some simularities to the artless drunkard Andreas. But Roth wants us to see how Andreas's story relates to our own stories, our own thoughts- fairy tales have meanings and we need to understand Andreas at a deeper level in order to appreciate what Roth is saying. Andreas's drink frequently we are told drives his memory away. Memorylessness is a key feature of his character- Andreas doesn't change though the world around him does and drink is his instrument to drive his memory away. In Roth's story drink is the weapon that the saint uses to obliterate his own memories- his sense of self. Furthermore it obliterates his artfulness- Andreas is not artful and loses money to wasters and to theives- he is easily diverted by a pretty face or ankle and easily conned. He is so easy to con, so easy to deceive and persuade though precisely because of his attitude to life. He does not act but merely flows through life- like a river he can be diverted but he follows the course that the valley sets for him. And he uses drink to control any temptations not to follow it.

Consequently the unnatural aspects of the fairy tale- the fact that Andreas keeps accidentally coming across money which sustains him is a feature of the character examined. Like everything else, sudden riches just crop up in Andreas's wake. He is improvident- but is so because he just expects more to pop up and to generate a life for him. Life for him is not something that is thought through, examined and analysed but something that just happens to him. That perception of life means that he avoids all kinds of comparisons (though not jealousy of the girl he loves)- he is natural and unaffected. Roth portrays him as such but also leaves us in no doubt that Andreas is incapable of living in modern society- like a Skimpole without the lie he leaves a trail behind him of destruction and improvidence. The point is that because he is a saint he cannot be a citizen- because he is a Christian, he cannot be a consumer. Roth's tale takes place in a dreamingly Catholic Paris- St Therese is central to it and at some point I will return to this tale to discuss its theology. But at the centre of it is this character and ultimately this character's strength which is also his flaw- his saintliness which leads to his inability to live as a modern citizen. Roth though leaves us in no doubt that this failure to survive in modern society is not a downfall- for Andreas events all have the same character- even death. When he dies, he goes to sleep without concern- the consequence is that whereas he has lost everything that we might think matters- none of it does matter to the Holy Drinker.

Like Mishkin he points out to us the illusion of society and the difficulty of living a moral life within the world- the Holy Drinker is a standing rebuke to the way we live now.

Apologies

Apologies for slow posting- I have a tempramental internet connection at the moment and am sorting it out- I've got a post to go up right now but for the next few days things may be slow.

The Children's Crusade

In Chartres, amidst the calls for knights and noblemen to go to Spain to fight against Islam, a group of shepherds led by Stephen of Cloyes one of their number, got up and started marching to deliver a letter from Christ to the King of France. Months later in Cologne Nicholas of Cologne set off with a group of German adolescents to take ship to the Holy land and recover the true Cross and with it Jerusalem. The movements may have been related- we don't know. We don't know though we can guess who took part, we have little knowledge of what happened to those that did take part- and we know only three people's names who were on the expeditions- Stephen and Nicholas referred to above- and an Otto who petitioned the papal curia in 1220 to be releived from his vows to crusade. And yet these crusades have become famous, passed from chronicler to historian, from poet to philosopher, from novelist to children's novelist, until they became part of the common currency of our times. The Children's Crusade is one of those events that shocked Europe at the time- yet had almost no consequences- it survived as a myth- a rumour- a disquieting revelation about human nature that kept the leaders of the Church and the doctors of the enlightenment awake at night.

What were the Children's Crusades? Well firstly there were as I said two of them. On both medieval chroniclers say that 'pueri' (latin for 'boys') took part. Some historians beleive that those pueri were a social group- marginalised young men on the edge of medieval society- some beleive that they were an age group- the young. Gary Dickson who has produced the most authoritative modern treatment suggests a mixture of the two- that the pueri were most likely shepherds and the dispossessed- young men before their marriage who left their homes and went to join these movements. The crusades happened in the Chartres region of France and in Germany. At our best guess, the crusade around Chartres developed after a request was sent out to the churches of the Chartrain to furnish soldiers for Christian armies under pressure in Northern Spain. The Chartres crusade arose out of processions around the great cathedral at Chartres- our best guess is that Stephen of Cloyes, mentioned by a chronicle from Laon, went home and was inspired by those processions to mount his own procession to bear a letter from Christ to King Phillip of France at St Denis. We know that that excitement led to perhaps hundreds and maybe thousands (numbers are hard with our limited information) to go south to St Denis. After St Denis, for some reason the remnant of the crusade headed off into the Rhineland- we have them recorded in a document at St Quentin, 140 miles north east of St Denis and a possible eye witness account by Renier of Liege at Liege in the first fifteen days of July 1212. From there they went onto Cologne where the movement seems to have grown in size. Dickson comments that fewer shepherds and more young people seem to have been present because the references in the chronicles emphasize the youth more. Nicholas of Cologne's group passed from Cologne southward- over the Alps and into Italy heading for the meditereanean- before attempting to board ships at various ports down the coast, culminating we think at Brundisium on the southern coast of Italy.

A spontaneous popular movement like this is not something that passed without comment. Monastic chroniclers were terrified of its implications- angry at the outburst of enthusiasm and fearful of the ways that the pueri had deserted the authority in particular of their parents. But nor was it unusual in the medieval world. There were movements before this- that behind the crusade launched by Peter the Hermit in the 1090s for example (though his movement did attract aristocratic support which the Children's Crusades didn't) and later movements like the Shepherd's Crusade of 1251 for example also had a popular nature. Popular revivals of religious sentiment were a feature of European religious history right up until the reformation and beyond: in 1457-9 thousands of French youths headed for Mont Saint Michel to pray and chronicles talked of the countryside emptying, similar things happened in the sixteenth century for example John of Leiden roused his supporters behind a manifesto of equality and free love based on the scripture. Such upheavals were the price society payed for a surplus of young men who were unemployed and ready to be roused to a biblically literalist interpretation of Christianity. They had other effects too- Dickson the author of the latest study of the Children's Crusade argues that one of those effects was mass migration. Effectively the pueri moved from Germany down to Northern Italy and many of them stayed behind within Italian towns- legends still connect many families in Genoa with the families of pueri who stayed behind, and Otto our petitioner to the papal curia was himself an emmigrant to Italy. Furthermore Dickson argues the effect of the crusade was to popularise the discourse about Crusades and hence about identity within medieval Europe: the call to crusade, made by Pope Innocent in 1213, was the first to address the people of Europe as well as its princes.

The Crusade has passed latterly into fiction and fairytale. Many of whose elements are unreliable- we have little evidence that there were mass sales into slavery at the end of the crusade- its not that likely that babies took part as one rather inspired chronicle has it. Nor that as medieval writers asserted the whole thing was a dasterdly plot by the Old Man of the Mountain or by Stephen of Cloyes's father who had sold his soul to Satan or for that matter by anyone else. Protestants in the 17th Century accused the Pope of selling out the crusaders and loved the self inspired nature of the movement. Voltaire in the 18th Century thought of it as a testament to his new doctrine of a socially contagious mental disease- religion. Victorians imagined it as the march of the innocent- H.G. Wells thought it was a 'dreadful affair'- Bertolt Brecht saw it as an analogy for wartorn central Europe and even a historian whose credentials were as impressive as the British Byzantist Sir Stephen Runciman couldn't resist gilding the history. The truth is though that the movement was a revivalist movement- launched from within the lower classes. We don't know an awful much about it- but what we do know makes it more fascinating than any myth would have it- we have a group of people marching away from their homes in the service of a living God, a God who breaks up authorities and family. The God of truly radical religion- not radical in our sense of the word- but radical in a much more profound sense- the God that destabilises.

The Children's Crusade is a useful marker in that sense- and Dr Dickens's book a useful testament- to the power of religion.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas everyone, I will raise a glass to you all this afternoon over my Turkey and Christmas Pudding, I hope you have a really good day and loads of great presents! Sorry about the shortage of posting- too much shopping for presents!