Along the lefthand road to Toryism

I have always suspected I’ve been a Tory at heart. My first inkling was when I was in eighth grade, taking Mrs Angela Abbott’s American history course – when, for contrariness’ sake with regard to the rest of my classmates, I enthusiastically took up the Loyalist position on the War of American Independence. But it has been a long and winding road in the Tory direction, and I’d like a chance to see if I can’t retrace my steps.

I think a significant part of my left-Toryism may be attributed to my fascination with history and with old ways of doing things. I learned from my parents to have a deep respect for the Navajo and Puebloan peoples of the American Southwest, who proudly kept their traditions alive and who took pride in having done things pretty much the same way for eight hundred years, despite the disruption caused by the Spaniards and later by the Americans. I learned to respect for my own Germanic-influenced culture when I lived in Wisconsin: Midwesterners take care of the people in their neighbourhoods, and have a community ethic which other parts of the country sometimes lack – they take seriously their roles as their brothers’ keepers. I think I saw this as being very much a transplanted Old World phenomenon rather than a truly New World one, and that may have shaped much of my future leftism.

And I loved the aesthetics of European high culture. Thanks to my best and closest friend in elementary school (a self-described hopeless romantic and frantic half-Greek geek), I was introduced to the Moomin books by Tove Jansson – or at least, the Farrar, Straus and Giroux translations of them – and the British spelling and grammar rubbed off considerably on me, turning me into a staunch Anglophile. My list of favourite authors of fiction has consistently featured some fairly prominent Englishmen and -women: Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, William Blake, Edith Pargeter, Jane Austen, Jo Rowling, Dorothy Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett. I was even an honest-to-God monarchist for a long while, and routinely defended the aesthetic merits of the Anglo-Catholic high-church tradition to my parents when we were members of an Episcopal church after moving to Rhode Island.

This may seem like a bit of a strange retrospective, but I think it has a significant bearing on my current political proclivities. What frightens me most about the Republican Party and the right in this country is precisely that they are not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word, but rather, they are radical. George W. Bush pursued policies which were actively and blatantly disruptive to the social order at home and to the global order abroad. He prided himself on his vulgarity and his anti-intellectualism, and he cultivated a politic of disrespect, impropriety and incivility which has carried itself into the current Republican Party and into the Tea Party movement – the current standard-bearers of this flaunted incivility are former governor Sarah Palin and representative Michele Bachmann, and its lasting icon is likely to be Senator Joe ‘You Lie’ Wilson. The language and tactics with which they rally their supporters are increasingly crude, increasingly ugly and increasingly bellicose. Those who promote respectful, meaningful debate, professional courtesy and fact-driven policy are dismissed as ‘thought police’ and doctrinaire agents of ‘political correctness’ and are routinely compared to fascists.

This should be nothing new. David Neiwert and the people running the blog Crooks and Liars have done an admirable job researching and reporting on the growing radicalism of the modern right. But sadly, the responsibility for this state of affairs in American politics lies also with the modern American left of the late 1960’s. I was not around during the 1960’s, but my father was in Washington while it was burning due to the riots that had replaced the civil, composed and courteous demonstrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Something went wrong – a polarising lack of civility and respect crept into American politics in the 1960’s that we still haven’t been able to dislodge. The vital centre politics of Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy had been shattered. The radical left-wing Trotskyites for whom the ends justified any means transformed into neoconservative war-hawks while the advocates of the hedonistic, individualistic counter-culture suddenly became born-again neoliberals and Reagan supporters. Both have carried forward this total disrespect for expertise, for the rule of law and for legitimate authority which have gotten us into such deep trouble now in our foreign policy, in our environmental policy and in our economic policy.

This disrespect now runs rampant across all levels of society. Children don’t feel obliged to respect their parents. Parents don’t feel obliged to respect educators or academics. Teachers and professors don’t feel obliged to respect school administrators or parents. The society thrives on confrontation, promotes narrow self-interest and thrill-seeking at the expense of the environment and the community, and panders to the most vulgar and aesthetically unattractive aspects of our consumeristic drive with teenybopper music, Transformers and Twilight.

What we need is a new kind of socially-responsible, affirming communitarianism, analogous to the One Nation Conservative school among Great Britain’s Tories, as articulated by Phillip Blond. I think President Obama is on the right track in this regard, opening up discussion about civility, community and volunteer service, civic tradition, real family values (meaning: not thinly-disguised homophobia or misogyny), organic society and what T S Eliot called the ‘permanent things’. He may not get very far in implementing policies which will help bring about the kind of society we want, but I think the ideas he’s bringing forward may be enough to build a platform for a new kind of Democratic Toryism.

Happy new year! + Nothing to write Holmes about?

Many happy returns, gentle readers, for the upcoming new decade. My prayers are that it will be more enlightened and sensible than the last.

And one of the things that I did since the new year has been to watch Guy Ritchie's newest film, an original take on the Holmes Mythos. I had been steeling myself for the worst, but the one Guy Ritchie movie I've had the privilege of seeing (Snatch.) was incredibly entertaining, with an ingenious caper plot, a dry and morbid humour and plenty of action sequences. Ritchie definitely knew how to bring the best acting he could out of Brad Pitt and Jason Statham in that work, even though the range of both actors is fairly limited.

The same cannot be said of Robert Downey Jr, whose range is quite wide, but whose performance as Sherlock Holmes I did not find wanting. Devastatingly brilliant yet lacking in social graces and patience for civility, Downey brings to Holmes a highly authentic intensity. Jude Law's Dr Watson was similarly authentic and convincing, and I enjoyed what they did with the dynamic between Holmes and Watson. The screenwriters (and Law, I suppose) interpret Watson as the primary humanising force on Holmes, kept around not so that Holmes can feel superior but so that Holmes can stay sane. (This was the interpretation Laurie R King brought to the Holmes Mythos, but 'Uncle John' was quickly replaced in her rendition by her character Mary Russell.) True enough, this does have some basis in the books, but what I did not particularly enjoy was the interpretation of Holmes as a brash street fighter / action hero.

(I can understand why they did it, though. I don't think critics like A O Scott give Ritchie due credit for his reading of Holmes - I think he saw in Holmes the self-destructive tendencies brought about by his cynicism and ennui, which Ritchie expresses in the boxing matches, but which were expressed in the novels through opiate abuse and lack of sleep. I can imagine that these would be difficult to express visually, and our culture being what it is the MPAA might have increased the rating due to the presence of drugs... but this is not an excuse, more a postulation of the screenwriters' thinking more than anything else.)

Rachel McAdams' femme fatale interpretation of Irene Adler was likewise entertaining, though she seemed at parts to be channelling a Helena Bonham Carter character. I'm a bit surprised and vexed at what they decided to do with her, making her a love interest for Holmes and a pawn of 'The Professor' rather than a worthy adversary in her own right - but again, it seems to be what a modern movie-going audience would expect.

I enjoyed what they did with Mark Strong's character, Lord Blackwood, and the story they put him at the centre of was remarkably well-done. I greatly enjoyed the steampunk-influenced aesthetic of the whole thing, two parts Verne and three parts Dickens. Though I appreciated the little steampunkish in-jokes (‘Radio-wave transmitters! That’s the future, Watson!’) it seemed like the movie couldn’t decide which side of the Crisis of Modernity it wanted to represent: siding with the triumphalists or the sceptics of Victorian industry and empire. (Sometimes, it did both simultaneously, as with the climactic scene atop the Tower Bridge.) Despite its stylistic indecision, the theme of the movie was nevertheless highly political, and had a lot to do with the political power of fear, and how easily it can be exploited by those with imperial ambitions. In that, it reminded me of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (and even V for Vendetta), but on the other side of the coin. This may be a bit of a stretch, and probably not what the Holmes writers intended, but I read Lord Blackwood as a Bruce Wayne gone terribly, terribly wrong. Rather than using his reputation, his knowledge of engineering and chemistry, his mastery of subterfuge and the power of fear against those who prey on the fearful (as the Batman of the Nolan re-boot does), he uses them all to manipulate and exploit his peers and the greater British populace. The difference is that he does not share Bruce Wayne's agony and moral ambiguity, already having chosen his way and willing to sacrifice anything and anyone in it (a missed opportunity on Ritchie's part, maybe?). Sherlock Holmes represents (however imperfectly) the powers of rational inquiry against his adversary, a larger-than-life agent of fear and superstition. In that, I think, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have taken pride in this interpretation.

Was it a faithful interpretation of the beloved character? Perhaps; I am not the best to judge, having at best a passing familiarity with the original Holmes canon. Did it do justice to him? I’d say it did, at least part-way – as might any interpretation which saves Holmes from becoming a perennial detective-fiction cliché. Was it enjoyable and entertaining? Certainly – it’s a movie I could very well watch again.

Human rights and the legacy of imperialism

Here's a case I have mixed feelings on - the execution of Akmad Shaikh in Xinjiang yesterday is indeed a thorny problem involving international politics, social justice and the continuing fallout from the bloody legacy of imperialism in East Asia. Some background on the case may be found here: at People's Daily, Auntie Beeb and MSNBC.

On the one hand, I am - as a Christian and Friend - philosophically opposed to the death penalty in any form. The execution of a man who had a history of mental problems and whose responsibility for his actions under the law may be gravely doubted is doubly heinous on the Chinese government's part, and I deplore the cavalier attitude they displayed toward not just the man's life and dignity but also the complexity of the legal questions involved.

But speaking of complex questions, there is also the long and sordid history of western imperialism in China to contend with - and the fact that this case concerns a Briton smuggling opiates into China alone changes the flavour of the entire discussion. Note the editorial use of language in the People's Daily article as compared to MSNBC or the BBC: while we in the West are concerned with the individual human rights of the accused (and now departed), the Chinese government spoke of 'judicial independence' and interference in what it considers its 'internal affairs'. Interesting choice of words. Even more interesting when one considers the argument to the effect that '[h]ow could a criminal be exempted from the death penalty only because he was British?' (an argument made by legal professor Wang Mingliang of Fudan University).

This mode of argument is meant to evoke the historical memory of the humiliating Treaty of Nanjing, with the implication that Britain is now again trying to impose not only its legal system and values upon China but also a new form of extraterritoriality for its citizens. It is unquestionably reprehensible for the Western media to ignore the historical wrongs the nations they represent have perpetrated upon China and, in so doing, prevent any meaningful discussion of a sensitive and accountable response to the government's actions in this case. But the reaction to the Shaikh execution is merely symptomatic of a larger problem - the West's collective amnesia with regard to its imperial projects, particularly when it comes to dealing with third-world nations like China and India. I touched on one form of this amnesia / deliberate naivete previously in this post (with regard to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). In order to build the kind of trusting, communicative relationship with China and India that we need right now, as a nation we must come to grips with the realistic argument that we are not morally superior to other nations merely by our exceptional virtue or our values, and that we cannot escape the consequences of our own history through wishful thinking.

We are still paying for the sins of our fathers; they have certainly been visited upon Akmad Shaikh, at the cost of his life.

A promise

Can the prey be taken from the mighty,
or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?
But thus says the LORD:

Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken,
and the prey of the tyrant be rescued.
for I will contend with those who contend with you,
and I will save your children.
I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
Then all flesh shall know that I am the LORD your Saviour,
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

- Isaiah 49:24-26

Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

- Isaiah 53:1-6

Good tidings of hope and of liberation to all!

Christmas double feature

Yeah, it’s that time of year again. I got to see two recent openings at the local cinema these past couple of days: Disney’s Princess and the Frog and James Cameron’s Avatar (in IMAX 3D), and I’d like to share my thoughts on both. A warning to the reader: this post does contain some spoilers.



The Princess and the Frog was the first Disney animated feature film I’d gone to see in theatres in a very long time, given my troubled relationship with the corporation. Eventually, my ars gratia artis side won out over my inner aesthetic Stalinist, and I allowed myself to appreciate again the artistic value of Disney animation, particularly that of the 1990’s renaissance beginning with The Little Mermaid. Artistically, I was impressed with The Princess and the Frog. It’s not daring or groundbreaking or revolutionary the way Beauty and the Beast had been, but it was a fun story with a genuinely strong, sensible and sympathetic heroine. I was glad to see the classism and redemptive-violence problems of previous animated Disney features completely gone. And Tiana is a remarkably dignified working-class heroine, facing down all the problems working-class black people had to live with daily in the postbellum South: minimum-wage poverty and entrenched racism chief among them. In an interesting twist, she isn’t saved by marrying a rich man; the Prince she ends up with starts out as a highly-problematic, frivolous spendthrift who’s been disowned by his parents (and Tiana, thankfully, sees straight through him), who is redeemed by his growing affection for Tiana and his eventual willingness to labour alongside her and share in her dream. It’s a Disney script informed more by Bruce Springsteen and Soren Kierkegaard than by the Brothers Grimm.

The animation quality is polished (but that’s to be expected) and the characterisation is good even for the minor characters (Louis, Ray and Mama Odie) who would otherwise have been bit gags. The musical numbers were delightful, drawing heavily from the cajun, jazz and gospel traditions (though I wasn’t that great a fan of the pop number during the end credits). I enjoyed the delightfully slick villain, Dr Facilier, with his tarot cards and magic cane, though the highly-stereotypical treatment of voodoo (almost, but not quite reminiscent of 1970’s blaxploitation films) was perhaps the most insensitive aspect of the whole movie. All in all, there’s not that much more to tell – it’s fairly optimistic and benign, with a ‘hard work, love and hope pay off’ -type moral, but one which somehow manages to avoid a Pollyanna treatment; even if it isn’t the flashiest or most daring of entries in the Disney animated canon, it is still solid work.



James Cameron's James Cameron's Avatar (by James Cameron) was far more awe-inspiring than Disney’s new film; though flawed, it affords rich food for thought as well as plenty of CGI eye-candy and popcorn action. Story-wise, there was nothing original about Avatar; it is essentially H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds told from the point-of-view of the Martians, and it basically plodded steadily along the trail blazed by movies like FernGully, Stargate, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Star Trek: Insurrection and most importantly Dances With Wolves. We are introduced to a mining project in the Klach D’Kel Brakt on an alien world, Pandora, which is about to displace the indigenous people, the Ba’ku Na’vi. Human agents are sent into the wilderness around the human base by remote-controlling replicant bodies called ‘Avatars’, which resemble Na’vi and can breathe the otherwise deadly (to humans) atmosphere, in order to learn their language and facilitate their displacement diplomatically. One of the researchers was killed in a mugging, so his identical twin Jake (played by Sam Worthington) is sent in his place, since his genome makes him uniquely suited to controlling his Avatar. Jake suffers a crisis of conscience as he begins to interact with the Na’vi (particularly Neytiri, his guide and eventual love interest, played by Zoe Saldaña) and understand their religion and way of life, and ultimately has to make a choice between his mission and the Na’vi.

Okay, so it’s been done before. That’s perfectly fine by me, because Cameron tells the story with relish and aplomb, and turns it into an amazing technical spectacle that puts even the new Star Trek movie to shame in terms of mastery of special effects and computer animation. The world Cameron created was something straight out of a Miyazaki movie – floating mountains, awesome landscapes, exotic insectoid and reptilian life – and he even included a breathtaking flying scene which ought to make Miyazaki-sensei proud. The Na’vi themselves are given their own physiology, language, culture and religion – though this religion is basically a revamped Lovelock hypothesis. Not a minute of the two-and-a-half hours is wasted; the film is gripping and adventurous within its own world.

This film deserves the most positive reaction I can give it. While I applaud the political message (which is stridently anti-militarist, anti-imperialist, anti-corporatist, pro-conservation and often driven home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer), I felt it could have been far more nuanced. It’s very well and good to turn the lens upon ourselves and ask us the tough questions about our own imperial projects and environmental impact, but even beyond the problematic stereotypes of the noble savage and the sympathetic occupier becoming the leader of the resistance, the way in which Cameron explores these issues seems over-simplistic at points.

SPOILERS in next paragraph

For example, Jake’s eventual rejection of his own humanity in favour of his Avatar seemed like something of a cop-out. Jake suffers a crisis of conscience about the displacement of the Na’vi – as any red-blooded human being ought to in his place – and it’s even understandable that he might have in addition a crisis of identity as a result of spending so much time in his Avatar. But this crisis of identity is given pretty short shrift: what allows Jake to step back and tell himself that the imperial project in which he’s caught up is wrong is precisely the humanity that he casts off by the end of the movie. The decision he ends up making is the direct product of an ethic that arises out of his own culture, not that of the Na’vi; there’s no way it can, given Jake’s superficial understanding of their culture. Yet this question is either completely ignored or glossed over in a series of one-liners between him and the evil Colonel Quatrich.

End spoilers

So: Avatar and Princess? Both recommended, but for different reasons. Princess is good, clean fun with an admirably well-adjusted heroine. Avatar is a big, hulking CGI spectacle with a brilliant, if naïve, soul.

Snow, and updates

Winter is here. Officially. Behold.


What you are looking at is a solid 15 inches of snow, which looks now like it's let up a bit, but no guarantees. At Meeting today I was one of seven people who showed up - and nearly half of the people talked, as the snowstorm whipped about us.

I am currently in the part-time employ of Ivy League Consulting, which helps Japanese prospective students apply to American schools, largely by editing essays and resumes for grammar, spelling and organisation. A lot of these students are applying to graduate and professional programmes here, so essentially I am being paid to do for them what I am currently doing myself. I have already applied for master's programmes in international studies at Syracuse University and the University of Washington, and am a stone's-throw away from applying to Tufts University and George Washington University.

Hopefully I will get to a more extensive blog post later, but for now, this is what I'm up to.

I'm still alive

Sorry I haven't been posting recently; I've been working pretty intensively on grad school applications. I'll get back to serious blogging soon, I hope.