The Republican Maliization of the Poor

1.
Jimmy Kimmel, the popular comedian and talk-show host, dispensed recently with his comedic monologue with which he usually opens the show.  The story he related brought him to tears.  His wife, Molly, gave birth to a son on 4/21/2017.  Everything appeared normal at first; however, a few days later little William became cyanotic, that is, his lips and other areas of his body “turned blue.”  Something had gone very wrong.

The baby was born with a heart defect called Tetrology of Fallot. In this condition, among other defects, there is a narrowing of the pulmonary artery which transports blood to the lungs so that the blood can be oxygenated, a process essential to life. Kimmel’s son received state-of-the-art treatment, which included emergency surgery to ensure that more blood is delivered to the lungs.  He will need further surgeries as he grows. 

Over the past decades, the treatment of this condition has greatly improved.  Most affected babies will grow into adulthood, and lead fairly normal lives.  Continued medical coverage, however, is essential.

“A Happy Ending!,” Mr. Kimmel told the audience while spectators cheered. The new father thereupon asserted that he has enough means to assure that William received, and continues to receive, proper treatment, but what if he hadn’t?  Under proposed Republican "health care reform," millions will lose their health insurance.  Cutbacks in Medicaid, the health insurance for the poor, will put the so-called lower classes at serious risk. 

States would be able to opt out of covering pre-existing conditions, which will undoubtedly occur, since taxes that help cover Obamacare would be  very significantly reduced.  This means that a baby born with with a severe medical problem would be designated as having a pre-existing condition, since it existed in the womb!

This is unethical.  Mr. Kimmel pleaded quite eloquently for universal health care insurance: "If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make…I think that’s something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that right…This isn’t football.  There are no teams.  We are the team—it’s the United States.  Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”

Do we all really agree on that?  Apparently not.  A few days later, Joe Walsh, a conservative talk-show host and former congressman, gave the following reply: "Sorry, Jimmy Kimmel, your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care."  He later reinforced his position with a tweet; "It’s not compassion to forcibly take the money I make & give it to somebody else.  It is compassion for me to voluntarily help someone else.”

 Many were shocked by this callous response.  It represents, I'm sorry to relate, the views of a goodly percentage of Republicans. This is not a majority view, (on a global scale that is), since every wealthy country with the lone exception of the United States assures that all its citizens receive health care. Most Americans want universal coverage as well.

This article is an attempt to understand the opposition to health care for all.  Are Republicans monsters?  No, they are human beings.  If Mr. Walsh’s attitude is indeed monstrous, liberals, on a far larger scale, in fact, are (albeit to a far lesser degree) guilty as well.  How so?

2.

I will try to help explain those who oppose universal health care by using Mali as a metaphor.

Mali is a poor, arid country situated in Western Africa.  The current population is approximately eighteen million.  The fertility rate is about 44 births per thousand, which comes to about 792,000 live births per year.  The incidence of Tetrology of Fallot is about one in 2000 births, yielding about 400 Malian babies born with this birth defect per year. (This is the rate for this condition only; the incidence of serious birth defects is, of course, much higher.)

If a Malian baby is born with this type of heart disease, what happens?  Sometimes an agency such as Doctors Without Borders intervenes, that is, if the baby is lucky, but I imagine that most of these infants will not live into adulthood.   What about the thousands of these infants who are born in poor countries throughout the world? Do Jimmy Kimmels think of them?

The duty of every country is to take care of their own citizens first. Indeed, a good criterion to use in the judgement of countries is how a specific country treats its most vulnerable citizens. If one seriously tries to take on the burdens of the entire world, that country would soon cease to exist.   Every rich country has the obligation to allocate significant resources for foreign aid, but that, of course, is not the same thing as providing health insurance to every person in the world.

To become a model world citizen, one must first become a model citizen of one's own country.  No argument about this, right?

Wrong again. My point is this: for many Republicans, the poor might as well be citizens of Mali.  They are the other; members of the Freedom Caucus do not feel in any way responsible for their welfare.  What if Jimmy Kimmel demanded treatment of children suffering from birth defects in Mali? Walsh’s statement quoted earlier might then be as follows; “Sorry, Jimmy Kimmel, your sad story doesn’t obligate me to pay for the health care of the citizens of Mali.”  Few would argue with that, although a little more—well, a lot more—empathy would be in order.

In the modern world, however, no country is an island—America must be concerned about the welfare of Malians, but this is not her primary concern.  She must see to it that minimum standards—which would include health care—are met for all U.S. citizens. When this is accomplished and maintained, considerably more funds and efforts to improve the living standard of the poor all over the world should follow.

3.

We live in communities that are mostly segregated by class.  It is far easier to ignore or even demonize groups of people with whom one has minimal contact.   Such people become de facto foreigners in the eyes of those who do not see them.  “Let those shiftless, lazy, good-for-nothing Mali-Americans fend for themselves, to us they’re not really Americans at all.”

Now you understand the basic Republican position regarding health care, something, we, members of the richest country in the world, still, to our shame, refuse to provide for all U.S. citizens.  Such an attitude, however, is not only selfish and cruel, but self-destructive as well.

Remember what Jesus of Nazareth and Abraham Lincoln famously repeated?  A house divided cannot stand. It is very much in the interest of the elites that the poor don’t become too poor.  If inequality continues to increase, we will be a land of slums and gated communities.  The Mali-Americans would eventually revolt; the moneyed Americans would then support militias of thugs to keep them in check by force.  The great American experiment will have come to an end.

Let us end this essay with an example of what happens to a severely divided society.  Many of us, in India and in countries all around the world, wonder how a tiny country like England could have ruled the Indian subcontinent for so long.  I think the house-divider of Indian society—the caste system—had a lot to do with it.

I had heard of the Indian mutiny of 1857, during which many, Indians and British alike, were killed, but I didn't know much about it. I thought that the Indians must have gotten fed up—rightly so—with Europeans lording over their countrymen. How could Indians have endured this shame for so long?

After reading the excellent book by Christopher Hibbert, “The Great Mutiny—India, 1857,” I found out. The mutiny had almost nothing to do with patriotism and a lot to do with caste.

Shortly before the mutiny, the British had introduced the more efficient, so-called Enfield rifle.  The inside of the muzzles of these rifles had to be greased in order to facilitate the passage of a cartridge.  The fat used to accomplish this was rumored to contain beef fat and/or pig fat. 

As Hibbert wrote, “Since beef and pig fat were the cheapest available, the sepoys’ (Indian solders’) suspicion that they were used instead of mutton or goat fat was far from unreasonable."  A request was made to issue the new weapons to British troops only; this was ignored.  The sepoy army consisted mainly of upper-caste Hindus and upper-class Muslims.  If the brahmins came in contact with tallow, they would feel defiled and would "lose caste"—that is, become outcasts.  The Muslims would feel defiled as well if pig fat were used.  This was the primary cause of the rebellion.  

The lower-caste Hindus that became servants to the British were certainly treated badly; the brahmins, however, treated them far worse.  Thus, the servants felt more loyalty to their British masters, rather than to their Hindu ones.  For this reason, several servants warned the British about the coming mutiny.

The rebellion had nothing to do with an abused common identity.  Indian nationalism would come much later. This is why the British conquered India so easily; there was no sense of belonging to an entity called the people of India.  As long as the British let brahmins be brahmins, they didn’t mind British rule.  The keys of the divided house of India were then easily pocketed by the British.

Take heed, Republicans.  If morality doesn't compel you to do the right thing, take a cue from Indian history and consider your long-term self-interest.  If you let the health of some of your fellow citizens deteriorate, the health of your way of life will eventually deteriorate as well.  

Think of your country.  Think of the world.  Your greedy, egregious refusal to address climate change, Republicans, is more than enough evil for one party.  Will you ever mend your ways?  Will conservatives become reasonable again?  There are no foreigners in an undivided house! 

How can those who live in an unjust house controlled by rapacious landlords ever make room for an undivided world, which should be everyone's ultimate goal? Will the American people vote the oligarchs out of office, and vote the true patriots in? Let's hope so, before it's too late.

Music of Transformation: An Analysis of a Spiritual

When my ability to look inward and outward is darkened by sorrow, I turn to music—music in a minor key.  Not the self-pitying kind, of which Tchaikovsky was a master, but the kind that indicates a way to overcome it. The best minor-key spirituals accomplish this: they provide emotional, intense expressions of sorrow; since there is almost never any trace of egotism, they also lead the listener toward the center of reality where suffering is transcended.

One of the best minor-key spirituals is the traditional “I Told Jesus.”  The words of the spiritual vary; a basic version follows:

I told Jesus it would be all right if He changed my name, 

Jesus said that I would go hungry, if He changed my name,

Jesus said the world would turn against, (or hate), me, if He changed my name, etc.

The meaning here is not something simple such as, “If I do the right thing, people are not going to like it”; it goes much deeper than that.   “Change my name” implies the complete surrendering of one’s identity, so that one becomes, well, One.  Individual comforts, individual greed, individual hates, individual delusions, individual sorrows--and even individual joys—all  these must go.  A thorough giving up of one’s hold on oneself is, as far as the individual is concerned, death.  Evolution, however, has provided all animals, including humans, with a strong instinct to do all they can to avoid annihilation.  That the protagonist of this spiritual is ready to give up individuality is an indication of the almost unbearable suffering that preceded this decision.  Egotism must go; turning back is no longer possible. (Powerful dictators, for instance, not only want to keep their names, but desire to see them writ large on signs and statues as well.)

Some branches of Hinduism teach that the result of giving up is bliss. A well-know term for this is Sat Chit Ananda—Knowledge, consciousness, bliss. Having Jesus change one’s name would result in bliss as well—if the world were just.  All sensible adults know that greed, hate, and delusion are very powerful forces both within oneself and the world.  When the powerful are challenged to the point of feeling threatened, the challenger will be viciously attacked, and, sometimes, even murdered. 

In the Eastern tradition, Gautama Siddhartha gave up his individuality and became the Buddha, after which he taught the dharma, the path, for many years.  In the West, Jesus gave up his individuality, became the Christ--and was crucified shorty thereafter.  Why? Siddhartha was subsumed into Nirvana and became as moral as a mountain.  This was a sublime and majestic transformation; mountains, however, do not fight for the little guy.  Jesus could not become a mountain if every valley weren’t raised as well—for him, the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself always remained supreme. 

Jesus taught that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.  Simone Weil’s addendum: But he who puts down the sword dies on the cross.  In the real, that is, fallen world, the chances of David defeating Goliath are slim--especially when David puts down his slingshot.

Whoever wrote the lyrics to the spiritual was able to express wisdom with very few words—a true mark of genius.

2.  Three Recordings of the Spiritual

The first recording we shall briefly analyze is by Roberta Flack. Ms. Flack has a beautiful voice, but this recording doesn't work very well for me.  It lacks the emotional depth that the words imply. Giving up one's personal identity entirely is similar to suicide--the difference being, a major difference indeed, is that one is giving oneself up in order to be subsumed into a reality far, far greater.The singer doesn't take the consequences of this action seriously.  To use Christian mythology: there will be a Resurrection, but there will be a crucifixion as well.  The crucifixion element, which is essential to a condign rendition of this spiritual, is almost entirely absent in this recording.  It is a too smooth version of an intense song.

What a beautiful voice!  Ms. Simone sings here with great musicianship and with great emotion as well.  (The effective pianist must be a Schubert fan--the accompaniment sounds very similar in parts to that of Schubert's song, Der Tod und das Mädchen. Schubert, by the way, as everyone familiar with his music knows, was at his best when composing in the minor key.)  

I love the way Ms. Simone extends notes to add to the emotional impact.  Her phrasing is impeccable. This is a wonderful recording, no doubt about that.

A musically intense, dramatic illustration of what happens to you when you give up your identity for Jesus, is, however, missing in this recording.  This is not Ms. Simone's fault; for this you would need an arrangement that gives justice to the consequences of always turning the other cheek.  This aspect would be very difficult to express in a solo; you would need contrasting parts, you would need an ensemble.

 This is the best recording of this spiritual I know.  The two elements of the existentially fraught dialogue between the soul and the world are addressed in an appropriately intense fashion, namely,  Soul: "I can bear it any longer.  I give up.  Jesus take over." World: "Just try to become truth to power; once challenged, power will use all things it controls--which are indeed a lot of things--to destroy you." The voices, albeit very good indeed, aren't of the same quality as Nina Simone's, but for me that even adds to the effectiveness of this performance; one gets the impression that we are hearing the voice of everyman or everywoman, in each case an individual who is at the point of going under, with the possibility of rising from the depths forever.
The pianist deserves special praise.  How well he does what only music can: articulate what can't be put it into words, thus perfectly reflecting what is going inside the person who is about to be transformed.  The greatest praise, however, is due to the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, whose members composed the arrangement of this piece.  How well these musicians have expressed the difficulties that lie in wait for the anyone giving up one's name!  Notice how the piece becomes agitated when the music turns to the inevitable ostracism that is to follow. (How poignant is the use of the "blue" note, the augmented fifth, on one of the times the soprano sings "be," from the phrase, "be all right!"  This blue note indicates to me that the singer is painfully aware of the coming consequences of her decision.)
The contrast between a momentous decision and the trouble that inevitably follows is repeated with increased intensity.   By the end of this wonderful music, we know that the singer, despite everything, is not going to be deterred. At the very end, the singers, now fully realizing what lies in store, and feeling somewhat subdued by this realization, nevertheless assert an inexorable determination, as the music slows, to do what shall be done.
A harrowing performance!


3.

Sometimes spiritual music is convincing for only as long as it's heard. (In my case, I'm a true believer while listening to a Bach cantata; however, if I could travel back in time and attend a service at Bach's church in eighteenth-century Leipzig, Faithful Thomas would again become Doubting Thomas immediately, once the music stopped and the minister started talking.)
While listening to the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble recording, one may think that such a transformation is possible.  But it isn't--few people are able to walk down the very narrow path indicated by this spiritual.  
Absolute redemption that sometimes, albeit very rarely, follows suffering, reminds  me of the first stanza of a poem I wrote long ago, "Homage to Mahalia Jackson":

At the very height of suffering,
most are destroyed; the wounded rest
survive to limp toward nothing
on paths short or long; lost
except for very, very few
who become immortal song.


Jesus is said to have been able to change his name from Jesus of Nazareth to Jesus Christ; Buddha is said to have been able to change his name from Gautama Siddhartha to the Buddha; Ramana Maharshi is said to have able to change his name from Venkataraman Iyer to Ramana Maharshi.  Such transformations might indeed occur, but, as my poem indicates, they are very, very rare.
When a visitor told Ramana Maharshi that he couldn't decide whether to give everything up, that is, change his name, or to continue to live in the world. Would the sage kindly advise?  Ramana smiled and informed him that if he were ready for such a transformation, it would occur naturally as a leaf falling from a tree.
Nearly all of us would be unable to endure such a transformation; there's something in me, for instance, which intends to keep on living in the world and is not ashamed of this decision.  I am in no way advocating solipsism; living in the world does not in any way exclude working to make it better. 
Music such as this is much more than beautiful; devotion to, and acting upon, living truth is an essential element as well. Many are able to respond to the spiritual we've discussed musically; yet if a careful listening thereof doesn't result in our becoming at least a little less self-centered and a little more loving, we might as well be listening to Muzak.

Baltimore Online Book Club: A review of Martin Amis's Novel, "Time's Arrow"

Time's Arrow or The Nature of the Offense
Vintage books
New York, 1991
165 pages
by Martin Amis

In a recent meeting of the offline version of the Baltimore Online Book Club, the topic of discussion was Martin Amis’s novel, Time’s Arrow, which was first published in 1991 to mostly positive reviews.  Five out of six of our members liked it as well, with various degrees of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t agree.  Time’s Arrow, despite some positive qualities, is, in my opinion, a failed novel.

The title is a term used in physics.  According to Einstein’s equations, time can either proceed forwards or backwards, but this never happens in the phenomenal world. In our universe, or at least in our section of the universe, time’s arrow always hurls into the future, and thus toward greater disorder.  It’s easy to break an egg; it’s impossible to perfectly reconstruct it.

A novel is a work of the imagination and need not obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, (which it, of course, does, just like everything else—we age as we read it).  In this work of fiction, the arrow of time shoots exclusively into the past. We begin with a doctor’s death in America, presumably around the time the novel was written, (it was first published in 1991).  He recovers, gets younger and younger, until we reach the period of his life--his past—that is, his future—which he had been trying his best to conceal.  He  has a lot to hide: he was a “doctor” at Auschwitz and assisted “Uncle Pepi,” a monster based on the notorious Dr. Mengele.    In Auschwitz, the antihero, who will adopt /has adopted various names in the future/past to hide his identity, returns to the one he was born with, Odilo Unverdorben.

A lecturer in Germany once said, “Der Holocaust verjährt nie”—the Holocaust always remains contemporary.  I never forgot that sentence.  The genocide against the Jews was so horrible that it has become a huge black hole in the center of civilization’s galaxy.  However bathed in light we are as we revolve around a star at the periphery, we know now that an ominous singularity exists at the very heart of humanity, a fact which has torn the naive optimism of the Enlightenment to shreds, from which it can never fully recover. Reversing time, in order to return us to the now of the Holocaust, thus illustrating its contemporaneity, is an original and potentially very effective concept.

But Amis doesn't realize this potential.  We do not return to a black hole; here Auschwitz is just another shade of gray.  There are no characterizations in this novel, no Ann Franks, no Primo Levis.  Everything is anonymous and dream-like; if a reader is unaware of the scope of the Nazi genocide, the novel might appear as little more than a bad dream from which he could wake and read something else.

The writing of the novel was inspired by a book written by a friend of Amis's entitled, The Nazi Doctors.

Since Amis’s novel contains no memorable characters, the originality of the book must lie elsewhere.  We have already mentioned the reversal of time.  At first, this reversal seems to be a brilliant device, but it gets tedious after a while.  For instance, reading conversations from the bottom up wears the reader down after the first couple of examples.  (Actually, if Amis were consistent, not only the sentences of dialogue would be reversed, but the words themselves would have to be reversed as well, thus reducing dialogue to gibberish.)  Since his target is not the creation of vividly drawn characterization, Amis aims his arrow at originality of language and symbolism; I think he tries too hard.  His model was apparently Joyce, but Amis is no Joyce—the latter had an exquisite ear for the music of language.  There are, however, some fine images throughout the book.  An example: when Unverdorben examines an emaciated inmate, the bell of the stethoscope is said to bridge the unfortunate man’s ribs, since his flesh has receded due to starvation.  This is a memorable image.  My favorite sentence by Amis so far, however, occurs in the afterword: “The National Socialists found the core of the reptile brain, and built an autobahn that went there."  True, and well said.   There are, however, unfortunate sentences as well.  This one occurs on page 155: “I am excoriated by erotic revanchism.”  I’m not sure what Amis wished to convey by this sentence; it is, however, jejeune and ugly.

The novel is narrated by someone or something inside the antihero.  (We never hear from Unverdorben directly.) This entity might be his soul or his conscience; it is never really clear.  I think it is mostly just a narrative device.

On page 125, this inner being, presumably born in Germany along with the body it inhabits, says the following:

It’s a funny language, German,  For one thing, everybody shouts it.  All those very long words: the literalism, the tinkertoy accumulation.  It sounds pushy, beginning every sentence with a verb like that.  And take the first person singular: ich. “Ich” Not a masterpiece of reassurance, is it?... It’s like the sound a child makes when it confronts its own…

No it isn’t Mr. Amos.  It’s not pronounced ick or isch.  It must be spoken softly high up on the palate.  English speakers have a hard time getting it right, tending to pronounce it in a harsh, hissing or guttural manner; Mr. Amis has apparently never seriously tried.  He’s wrong about the literalism as well—German is one of the most imagistic languages of  all. I give one example: Vorstellung, composed of the prefix, before, vor, and the verb stellen, to put or to place.  The image conveys to a German speaker something put before one.  This single word must be translated into the much more literal English, as a performance (something put on stage); an introduction, (that is, a person brought to the attention of another during an introduction), and as something that the mind puts before itself, an idea.  Literalism?  In addition, German nouns can be constructed from basic nouns, suffixes and prefixes that, once combined,  can provide a new and readily understood meaning; this is why Germans hardly need to consult a dictionary, except, of course for borrowings from another language.  In German, it is perfectly permissible to be creative and coin your own words using hitherto unknown combinations of smaller parts of speech—I have done this many times myself.  Amis's phrase for this process, "tinkertoy accumulation," is merely an indication of his utter ignorance of the language of Goethe, Kafka, and Schiller.

What I especially object to, however,  is the injection of Amis’s anti-German prejudices into a narrator who, as a speaker of German, would not have been able to share them.  In addition, Amis makes mistakes that one with a knowledge of German would instantly recognize.  (For instance, it’s “Inhalationsraum” not “Inhalationsraume.”  Shouldn’t the author have found an editor who could have corrected errors such as this?)

This novel, as we have already mentioned, totally lacks vividness in its portrayal of that horrible period.  For this we need to turn to other authors, such as Primo Levi.  I would also include two German works; the first is a novel, "Jakob the Liar," by Jürek Becher, who survived the camps as did Levi.  The novel takes place toward the end of the Second World War in a ghetto that has become a prison for Polish Jews; Nazis treat them like swine.  Jakob claims he has a radio and that he has heard that the Russians are victorious and will soon liberate them.  This is not true, but his fellow Jews, desperate for good news, believe it. The suicide rate diminishes.  There are many aspects of this novel which I will never forget. (It was made into a so-so movie starring Robin Williams; the original East German/Czech version is, however,  vastly superior.)  The second work is "Amon,” in which a young, mixed-race (white and black) German woman discovers in adulthood that her grandfather was the notorious Amon, who served inhumanity as the Kommandant of Auschwitz.The subtitle of this true account is “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me.”  It tells a harrowing story with, however, a happy ending.  Jennifer is fully accepted by her many Israeli friends, since she is completely innocent and philo-Semitic to boot.  The book gives us hope for the future.

I have reviewed both books, in German; they can be found on my blog. It is no exaggeration to claim that both of these works are much more memorable than Amis’s novel.

You are welcome to read past book reviews of the Baltimore Online Book Club by googling the title of the novel along with my full name, Thomas Dorsett.

1. The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
2..Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
4. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
5. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan
6. Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Pierre or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville

Our next meeting will take place on June 28, 2017.  On that date, the six members of our group will discuss "The Wapshot Chronicles" by John Cheever; I will post my review shorty thereafter. You are invited to read the book and to post your comments onto the comment section of the review.   I wish you pleasurable reading!