Just So You All Know, I’m Switching from noitartst.wordpress.com to noitartst.com

I don’t want nobody to be unaware about this, but I am no longer posting from this address; noitartst.com be my new one, and this will be my final post here,   Repeat:  I’m switching sites, and you have been duly notified.

See yas there.

Ah, Syria: You’re an Idjit, Mr. Obama

Pardon my thinking so poor of you, Mr. Obama, but you’re probably label me a racist for what I’m about to say.

Mr. President, your Syrian policy is a joke.  You may be following some internal plan, or know some insider facts I ain’t privy to, but best I figure, your logic here has led you, us, and Syria–off the rails.

And here’s how.

Alright, at the dawn of the Arab Spring,  in in 2011, after Russia’s row over Libya, and as protests in Syria were breaking out, you chose to support the dissidents there, like you did in Libya, even if you didn’t get the UN support there like you did in Libya.  Trouble is, you weren’t prepared to use force sans a UN resolution.  

Alright, if you effectively treated Russia’s UN veto as a veto, you shouldn’t have kept alienating the Russians as partners, even as they ostensibly tried to work in what you agreed.  You were being clearly disingenuous with them, and why wouldn’t they feel frustrated?

You were mostly trying to avoid looking like Bush, but guess what?  That’s what you wound up doing, didn’t you?  By using the “weapons of mass destruction” gambit, you followed in his exact footsteps, and nobody bought it.  

You should have followed the positive example of Clinton in Kosovo, in 1999, and not worried about negative ones, as much.  Had you chosen to take military action in 2011 in lieu of Russian actions, you would have had emotional momentum at your back, but in 2013, you had none, plus you were catering to recent history in the worst way possible.

Newsflash, Barack:   Legitimacy, ultimately, is about hearts and minds, not rules and laws.  After all, that’s why Abraham Lincoln, another lawyer, no less, is seen as a great man, and not some abuser of the constitution, given how he suspended the constitution in part.  

It seems the UN agrees with you about nerve gas in Syria, but don’t you see how small you were?  Everyone knows why you were doing it, namely to end an abusive tyrant, but you never really framed it like that, did you?  After all those months of in action, it seemed like you were arbitrarily taking action, and it just felt like an excuse.  

Following the Russian veto, you effectively told America and the world, “Well, everyone, I guess Syria isn’t worth doing anything about.”  Let’s forget your words sir–action, or inaction, as the case depends, speaks louder, and that’s the message received, full stop.  

For all his shortcomings, your pal Erdogan is a great example of what you’re supposed to do, namely lead the public to your point of view.  Erdogan’s creation and manipulation of the Mavi Marmara incident may not have been welcome, but it still shows how a leader can make something happen, out of the blue.

Well, Mr. President, you need to follow Erdogan’s example, make something happen in Syria, given you’re still mulling military options, and aren’t truly serious about working with Russia, if I read you right.  

You deeply gall me, sir.  Yes, Assad has a lot of blood on his hands, and yes, Putin does, too, but have a hand in that bloodbath, also, because you; as they will no doubt tell you, you egged them on, and totally refused to clasp palms and work with them (within their lights) to end it.  

Obama, you resorted to half-measures, infuriating everyone, and to little effect, you know?  You can’t please everyone, but pleasing none, alas, whilst being totally ineffective in the process, is unforgivable.  

And so, Mr. President, do you think me a racist?  If so, I guess that would explain your lack of interest in following whose example might be otherwise encouraging.

National Capitals Indicate Where the Tension Is

I blogged about the importance recently of Israel’s strategic geopolitical location, and that seems to have been my best-received article to date.  Along those lines I will continue with something else I think I’ve noticed, namely the placement of capitals.

They normally don’t happen by random, folks.

Capitals have historically been placed where the are due to some sort of military-political calculus, with emotion thrown in for good measure.  Hey, Jerusalem itself became the capital of David’s Israelite kingdom after he conquered it, and by doing so, he was sending a message, not just to his people but his enemies, staking out recaptured territory, and establishing dominance.

The Middle East sure hasn’t changed, much.  During the Iraq War, I recall reading an article where a Shiite militant told a Western reporter, about a rival Sunni neighborhood, that one day, they would capture it, and make its mosque their headquarters.

Same principle, same instinct.  Now, when we see the Palestinians demanding eastern Jerusalem as its capital, it’s the ancient instinct of fighting for a statement, an emotional symbol of a struggle for dominance they have already largely lost.

In this way, capitals can become markedly accurate predictors of future conflict; think of Washington and Richmond, facing off in the Civil War.  Those capitals didn’t make any rational, military sense, but they emotionally spoke volumes.  Washington was pointedly placed where it was as a compromise twixt the Northern and Southern states, and when the Confederacy was formed, it just answered back symbolically, though much to its chagrin.

Capitals have a way of pointing in some direction, think of Texans’ Washington-on-the-Brazos one during their War for Independence.  The bulk of American Texans were East, but the their borders were south, and to the west, so they chose a headquarters better situated to control a land they numerically dominated, but not so geographically.  IN essence, they were compensating.

Think, too, of the Ottoman and Russian empires, reaching into Europe.  The Ottomans took Constantinople, situated twixt Europe and Asia Minor, in 1453, and then used the thus-renamed Istanbul as they expanded into the Balkans.  Peter the Great, for his part, ditched Moscow, and built Saint Petersburg as his capital to give his nation a Western orientation, not just because it was the future, but also because that was the area of greatest threat.

Post-WWI, what happened?  the Turks, in face of the the threat of being divvied up into fractious states ala Arabia, formed a new state, Turkey, and proceeded to pick a new capital, Ankara, back in their heartland, their imperial dreams vanished, and refocused on holding what was left.  In Russia, their holdings in disarray, and facing internal revolt the Bolsheviks returned to the Kremlin, also focused on keeping order where they could.

Russia really hasn’t shifted its mood from that changed its capitals, yet, and that’s a pity for the whole world.

I’ve barely studied this topic, folks, but I find it fascinating.  Just like tree rings, capitals tell a tale, and a very interesting one it is, all priority, prudence, and ambition.

Putin: A Big, Growling Bear Atop a Melting Piece of Drift Ice

Just know, that if I sound like I’m repeating myself from previous posts, I probably am. I’m human, and despite my best efforts, I retread.  That said, I try to keep it fresh.

And if not?

Nya, nya.

Putin’s behavior, best I can tell, is not of one who feels aggressive, but threatened.  The West may not feel much threatened by him these days, but he does feel threatened by us. I think he probably feels very statesmanlike announcing he’s ready to launch tripartite talks withe the West over Ukraine, but he doesn’t get it.

Putin’s last-year offer to the Ukraine carried not just a bigger loan-carrot, but also a bigger military stick, and yet he lost totally to the West in terms of influence, and must now resort to coercion.  The EU won without even managing to match Putin’s terms, and that says volumes.

Putin’s coercion is a sign of weakness, folks.

And desperation.

Putin may be able to carve a buffer area out of neighboring states, but he’s doing it at an increasing cost to his international stature, even as he whines to his aides about how he’s not “respected.”  Well, if he wanted our respect, he’s sure not trying hard, is he?

The real problem is that Putin sees Russia as an equal to the West, whereas the West sees Russia as just another Great Power that has yet to be absorbed in the trans-national mesh of mutual treaty obligations, and its refusal to do so is what’s causing tensions.

China is a bigger threat to the West than Russia, if you want to go there, but Russia makes a worse mess because not only does it resist enmeshment, it actively works against the smaller countries that are willing.  China is at least acting with growing self-confidence, preventing it from lashing out in a rash way even as it flexes its muscles in the South China Sea, but it cannot be said of Russia.

Russsia doesn’t want to become a Western sattellite, so it’s trying to compete via creating its own satellites, but it’s competing with gravity by way of electromagnetism, which is a huge power drain.  Yes, electromagnetism is strong force, and gravity weak, but in the long run, staying power wins, and while Russian elites may fear becoming the West’s satellite, they fear becoming China’s also.

Putin is stridently avoiding having to choose because he doesn’t want to, but I truly think he’s postponing reality.  Sooner or later, Russia’s going to have to make nice with its neighbors, just like another Great Power on the European periphery is, namely Turkey, over Armenia and Cyprus.

By the time Russia does, though, how big a mess will he have left?

Viktor Yanukovich, Putin’s Douche: What an Em-bear-assment

There are lessons to be gleaned from Kanukovich’s fall from power, and chief among them is:  Don’t convince your country you’ve sold your foreign policy to the highest bidder.  Foreign policy=sovereignty, and if you’ve sold that, well, you’re little more than governor of the Ukraine, not the Ukraine’s President.  Mr. Yanukovich’s political career now is pretty much finished–unless, of course, Moscow invades the western half, and is need of a puppet legitimizer.  

That happens, and the douche for the job is quite apparent.

Another lesson is that the West wins in the long by being more than military force, but also a set of values that endures a legion of reversals.  Kanukovich made a rational choice between the disinterested  maid astride her languid bull and the aggressively pursuant bear, but outrage came because it was a choice out of duress, not genuine appeal.

Ever wonder how the wind blows, friends?  It blows from high pressure to low pressure, and the West’s tolerance for upheaval gives it a distinct advantage over places that aren’t–say the whole Eastern World.

Europe’s always been written off as a spent force, you know?  Back when Rome was collapsing and Europe was absorbing all those barbarian Germans pushed their way by the burgeoning Han Chinese, it seemed that all those immigrants were the coup de grace to the Western Way, when in fact they’d in time prove an extension.  

Ukraine, in the end, hasn’t turned West out of love, but necessity, out of self-preservation, and an urge to maintain the breath of sovereignty that the Kremlin so widely espouses. Putin sensed a  breeze blowing Ukraine towards the EU, and tried to counter it, but couldn’t seem to fathom that his own decisions were causing it.

And thus the breeze became a whirlwind, losing him a (very) loyal ally.

Europe, a spent force?  Ha.  After Rome’s fall, Europe was a spent force.  During the Bubonic Plague, Europe was a spent force. If Europe was a spent force back then Europe’s in great shape, now–isn’t she?  

If Europe was such a spent force during the Eurozone crisis, why didn’t it break up as a result?  If the notion of Europe is so weak,then why didn’t the crisis dissuade any nation seeking membership from doing so?  And why, pray tell, why did Putin need to overtly bribe Yanukovich from following the crowd?  

Ah…and why, if Europe’s weak, does Mr Putin fear the West moving East?  

Because tyrannies fear good governance and rule of law like a witch water, that’s why.  If not a full  tyrant himself, Yanukovich could be bought because he was at least authoritarian, and at least sympathetic to Putin’s fear’s, leading to a literal buy-in.

Ukraine, on the other hand was not sympathetic, and when it discovered its leader was, both in his joining the Customs Union and shooting protesters, they rejected him, root-and-branch.

To his credit, Yanukovich showed his people the way forward, and it wasn’t East.

The Ukraine: Ah, to Feel the Tear Twixt Da Bull and Da Bear

Pity the Ukraine, caught in a squeeze between its past (Russia) and its future the (EU).  In metaphorical terms, though, the issue is all about the pull and appeal of bulls and bears.

Does the Ukraine really want to share an ursine’s offer of shelter in a cold, dingy cave instead of the bull’s lush, green pasture lands? Sure, Boris may offer the proper socialist pleasantries, but who’s bigger, and who, push to shove, is first among equals?  Caves aren’t spacious, and it could get claustrophobic.

No, neither bulls nor bears are without their moods, but consider: Bears are omnivores, but bulls are not.  Boris may eat you in time of famine when his oily honey-wealth dries up, but a bull cannot.  Thus, in time of danger, bulls can at least huddle with the herd, but bears are on their own.

Nationalist Ukrainian citizens may feel heritage with Russia, but they’re coming to sense the bruin’s playing a protection racket, and it comes at their expense, isolating them with the wider world, and they aren’t alone in the rising chill.  The Armenian president, in need of Russia’s military support, signed onto that Customs Union, and yet he can’t bring himself to defend the pact on his home turf, and that augurs poor for this Customs shtick in the long.  Armenia may endure it for now, pragmatically, but when the nationalist backlash inevitably erupts, guess what the result will be.

It will be a lot like what’s happening in the Ukraine, and that’s despite a lot of ethnic Russian-speaking citizens.  Ukrainian nationalism may not be the strongest, but it’s only getting stronger thanks to Boris’s badly overplayed hand.

As long as the bear-in-chief thinks he can re-fight the Cold War, he’s sadly mistaken, and that’s the problem.  If you act anti-social, and pride yourself on not playing well with others, well, what do you think will happen?  Trust is out, and suspicion is in.

Let me just tell you, Mr. Boris:  Avoid your little party over the West disrespecting you.  You’re still a power, but not a superpower, yet you still ask to be treated as such, and therein lies the issue.  Not too long ago, when you complained about certain Arab Gulf states “hitting above their weight” you inadvertently hit upon the crux of the matter.

You’re not real economies, but rather just economies floating on oil, and in the long run, mineral wealth betrays its masters’ ambitions.  For now, though, it just gives you an opportunity to strut along the world stage, and makes you think you’re stronger than you really are, becoming part of the problem in the process.  Sooner or later, the world economy’s going to crash, and you with it; rather than bolster your military in an unsustainable rush, I say:  “Prepare your den.”

You’re gonna need it.

Where We Are in the National Cycle

I don’t think history repeats itself, but it does run in cycles.  I’ve been reading about demography’s impact on economics, and have as a result given this some thought.  It just seems so common sense to me to start in economics from the most quantifiable (demography, technology & productivity) to the least, but that’s not my main point.

I blogged earlier about how things were going to shift in our current political divide in the US, and after looking at history in the light of history, it gives me confidence to hazard a speculative guess via pattern recognition, or a stab at it thereof. Since the the Civil War, there have been two full political cycles with one party dominating, and are now in the first half of a third.

In each cycle, the ruling party can boast two main achivevements, namely progress in social advancement, and economic reform. In the first cycle, the Rebublicans gained national control at the start of the Civil War, and did not relinquish their grip on it until the Great Depression, basically–a good seventy years at the helm.

When a cycle starts, it always starts with reform, and enfranchisement of the ruling group’s followers, who, in the case of the early Republicans, was the rising tide of Western settlers.  The Party of Lincoln brought us the 13th Amendment, which, though it is thought of as in moral terms, was also economic.  In one fell swoop, it did a lot to even the playing field, making the country both socially–and economically–modern, knocking down the Southern aristocracy in the process.

Well, now we come to the cycle’s midpoint, And what happens around this time?  The lifting of the Gold Standard, and the Progressive Movement.  By now, the Western settlers had pretty much settled down to farming, and their agrarian needs were served via this increase currency flexibility.   Around this time you also had the Suffragettes, increased voting rights, and cultural shifts that put the first half of the cycle to shame.

By then, though the forces of Western Expansion that brought the GOP to power had petered out, and ended as it started–in a crisis, started by a crash. Urbanizing forces had been on the rise for a while, now, but the New Deal brought them, and the Democrats, to the fore, passing a whole raft of legislation with them, as is typical of a fresh cycle’s beginnings.  Their focus was enfranchising the unionized, working underclass, largely immigrant, and bring them into the system.

The New Deal’s aspirations may have been dandy, but they saddled us with the welfare state, directly leading to resentment that has helped fuel our succeeding cycle.   Despite losing their grip briefly following World War II, they sailed on to the  cycle’s midpoint, with more reforms, more enfranchisement (I use this term loosely), and of of course, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Also, like the previous cycle, this one’s second half brought far more socio-cultural shifts than its first half, dominated as it was by depression, a world war, and McCarthy.   Second half was also dominated by the blight of hangover in the form of crime, inflation (a lot of folks say it’s nigh-inevitable when a whole lotta folks enter the workforce, as happened with the Baby Boom), and let’s not even sart about Vietnam’s aftermath.

More-conservative uburbaners, tired of their cosmopolitan urban elites who kept on catering their decaying union base, revolted, and in 1994, thirty  years after the liberals’ greatest achievement, they revolted, engendering a new cycle in the process.  This third cycle came with the typical wave of reforms, but was not as extreme as its predecessors, which rose to vogue in the face of real crisis, and most of the reforms didn’t get enacted.

Also, white suburbanites are already ostensibly quite elected, but that’s not how conservatives, if their behavior’s any indicator, is there?   Beyond that, despite the conservative swing the enfranchisement momentum that predominated the first two cycles has continued in the pursuit to marry the same gender, but I think it’s running out of steam, and liberals have yet to accept this fact.

Misreading statistics like Obama did to justify feminism in his State of the Union is just what conservatives are all about, and the sooner liberals start appreciating this, the sooner they’ll start to de-energize their foes, but this they don’t get. Enfranchisement has limits, and if that point were ever accepted by liberals, I can’t see how their wouldn’t be cultural ramifications.

No, it wouldn’t be a return to the fifties, but it wouldn’t be quite as secular, either, a place where being PC and the push for “Xmas” has ebbed.   Liberals don’t want this, and as a result push back, obligiging conservatives to return the favor.  And thus the pressure grows, fueling a culture war that will eiter climax this decade, or in the 2060’s.

Given we’re approaching this cycle’s halfway point in 2024 presuming this be a sixty-year run, I think I know what the midcycle achievement will be, and that’s the reform of the welfare state.  It’s been long said that it can’t be sustained, but until now it has, yet we’ve barely waded into the pool of bad demographics.  We’ll soon be in over our heads, though, and that should trigger some action.

Well, there be my conjectures, folks.  May be wrong, or right, but I dunno. If you want t tell me I’m up a creek, and explain why, though, I’d love to hear from you–ego deflation’s good for the soul, as is debate.

The Trouble With Intellectual Women

Now don’t get me wrong, but intellectual women can be just a little annoying. and this comes from someone who likes smart women, and this goes beyond issues of feminism.

Now I have great admiration for my (staunchly non-feminist) mother, and consider her in a class of only three I’d deign to call “friend,” but at the same time, there’s a bit of a snob to her intellectually, I’d say.

It came out, once, at an extended family reunion, where there was a wife of one of our blood-relations around, her and her oversized lab-rottie mix.  SHe was  a lot of fun, I thought, in terms of sheer energy and enthusiasm, I thought, but I’ll never forget how she mentioned how she had almost certainly never gone to college like it was a class distinction.

Such never even crossed my mind, but to her it’s a very real denominator, dating from childhood, being raised by my hard-charging grandmother, a woman of great energy, but less thoughtfulness, let’s just say.

I always liked her, obnoxiousness and all, but out of all my immediate family relation, I was probably the only one that could see why Grandpa wed her.  Had I been raised by her may well not be so sanguine of her, as my mother was, but still.

I’ve always viewed people as interesting or uninteresting, without any real judgment involved in the process.  That way, I’ve never really gotten involved in looking down on people, but I’m afraid others do.

My mother’s judgmentalism comes out in my squealing nieces, too; as a tomboy, she just doesn’t have much in common with them, which is a shame; me I find ’em kind of cute.  Yes, one is really antsy, and can get way too worked up, but that hasn’t turned me away from happy little girls playing around.

Were I a schoolteacher like my mother, I might have less patience, too, but I actually like girls that act feminine, and she doesn’t.  And that, folks, speaks to a common trouble of intellectual dames–lack of feminine instinct.

Intellectuals lack instincts in general, but with women in general, it’s especially pronounced.  It tends to make them more judgmental towards their own kind, and I just don’t see the need.

Feminism came from college campuses, and I dare say it’s an ideology forged in large part from a deep-seated alienation with their less-scholarly females.  As I see it, if you have low instincts and don’t like folks who do have them, then it’s easy to judge, and I think that’s what has happened.

Humanity as a whole, though, is a lot more instinctive than intellectuals and feminists think it is, and and anytime there’s an ideology at odds with reality, there’s a-bruisin’ in the wings.

In the end, though, true smarts is not to read books and talk about them, but instead to be self-aware.  If constant research furthers that goal, then your efforts are not in vain, but if otherwise, beware lest you’ve become a nuisance.

The Top 20th Century Authors (According to Google)

You know, last year, I started noodling on Google, to see what Google’s search engine had to say about 20th century poets.  It’s not a very big crowd, and their collective import isn’t that impressive, but even so, I thought I’d take their measure, anyways.

Robert Frost: About 50,000,000 results.

Ah, Frost…widely purported to be the most popular of the century.  My uncle liked Frost, keeping a record of his works read by Frost, himself.  He’s not very post modern, though, which means he was none-too-influential with those who came after him.  Which brings us, though, to:

T. S. Eliot: About 24,600,000 results

T. S. is generally deemed the most influential poet of the century, yet for all that,  I’ve never really studied him, which I probably should.  He’s the one that first depicted our socio-cultural world as a wasteland, and it’s pretty much an accurate observation, if you ask me.  I don’t buy into despairing aznd world-weariness, though, hear he’s into some of that.

Eliot seem to stand at some sort of (dismal) highwater mark of poetic influence during the century’s interregnum period. Compared to recognition of Eliot, the bards that come up after him just seem to reflect the obscurity that poetry as an art form was becoming. The Google searches reflect this:

W. H. Auden: About 845,000 results

Ezra Pound: About 3,610,000 results.

Pound was an experimenter, which is fine, but was also hard to read, which predictably limited his reach to intellectual and academics (and certainly not folks like my uncle).  Serious poetry, dare I say, was becoming too serious, and the result was ossification.  In the fifties, though, the art form found one last opportunity make a large, cultural splash in the Beats:

Allen Ginsberg:  About 5,140,000 results

Jack Kerouac About 2,940,000 results

WIth with impassioned societal frustrations, the Beat not only managed to be heard, they imparted even a stylistic imapcty to the mainstream, but that was just it–poetry wasn’t mainstream, anymore–at least not like Eliot, a few decades previous. ANd, being no longer mainstream, they capitalized on it with applying the shock value of being foul-mouths, and the like.  Ginsberg’s  Howl typifies this.

So where are the “great” poets of today?  Banished to academia, where they belong..relatively speaking, of course.  Most of the poetic talent that would have competed the Blakes and Coleridges in another era have gone the way of :

Bob Dylan: About 84,000,000 results

He’s the successor to the Beats, as I see it, and given he preferred their kind of company to musicians, I think that confirms it.  The line of poets, which had run for generations, was dying out, to be replaced by floks like Like Dylan and Leonard Cohen who could straddle the divide between hardcore peotry and the lyricism necessary to at least survive, if not thrive within the current rock era.

Literary acclaim was increasingly coming through forms other than just poems, and Kerouac, though a Beat typifies this; in all fairness, he’s probably better known for being a novelist than for anything he wrote in verse.

WHich brought up an intriguing question, I thought:  If Google hits in any way reflect influence (and I think they do), how do popular and influential novelists of the 20th century stack up?  Hm….

E. M. Forster: About 1,900,000 results.

H. P. Lovecraft: About 3,450,000

L. Ron Hubbard: About 3,460,000 results.

Forster came up with the well-read Horatio Hornblower series which maintains a fan following, but ranks well-below all of the poets cited, save for Auden.  What does that say in terms of imapct…?

Hubbard and Lovecraft are both scifi-fantasy types who seem to have fared better.  Lovecraft’s stock  which was pretty obscure in his own time, has risen in cultish popularity, whereas Hubbard, who literally has his cult, and had pretty high recognition in his own day, barely eclipses him.

Power to you, Mr. Lovecraft, but moving on…

William Burroughs: About 7,760,000 results.

Guy who played around with narrative sequencing, opium, and psychedelics, all of which had an impact in his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. (Why he’d want to call it that is beyond me, but such is nary here nor there, is it?)  Rather remarkable, though, that he beat out:

Ayn Rand: About 6,600,000 results.

She seems extremely well-talked of, today, and her books keep dominating polls taken of the most influential books on readers. After having read, her, I can certainly see why, but as she eclipsed by Burroughs, who doesn’t seem to be, well, I truly wonder. It’s a puzzle, but this blog post is getting long–again, moving forward….

J. R. R. Tolkien: About 8,580,000 results.

Ah, Tolkien…in an era where “outstanding” writers were mostly praised for playing tricks with the story sequencing, or else flooring the jaw with gritty realism, or at least stories sharing contemporary “moral” lessons, Tolkien’s power stems from the premodern, demonstrating the appeal of sheer fantasy without having to be “current.”  No, his writing may not be as sophisticated as others on this list, but he took ownerhip of his work like none other.  I might wish he were higher on this list, but so be it–the works of the other writers upstream from him can’t light a candle to his box office–nya, nya.

George Orwell: About 12,500,000 results.

When we’re talking “moral” lessons, we’re talking Orwell, and, after having read 1984 and Animal Farm, well his besting Tolkien seems fair.  The 20th-century was either dis-illusioning, or illusion-shattering, bepending on your take, and none captured this better than Orwell.

Ernerst Hemingway: About 13,000,000 results.

Dunno much about him, but his writing’s supposed be very bleak.  And masculine.  CLearly he’s left his mark, but what’s so great about him, I cannot say.

Call me lazy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: About 16,800,000 results.

Never read The Great Gatsby, but my siter did, and last year I saw the movie by DiCaprio, which impressed me.  From what she said it’s true to the tale, and what a tale.  Still, I would’ve thought Fitzgerald would go lower on this list, just  by how critics today talk about him, damning with faint praise.  The Orwells and Hemikngways are still lionized, and yet, measured by the searches….

C. S. Lewis: About 26,600,000 results.

My main man.  When I first read Mere Christianity, as a naive teen  coming of age, his words hit like a revelation.  Contemporary critics may find him retrograde, but as the only Christian thinker from times with any import, I like to think of him rising above Eliot’s wasteland (Lewis hated Eliot, by the way) liike a mighty stroghold.

Lewis is well known for more than his Chronicles of Narnia (whose allegorical weight irked me to no end), yet they are seen as his masterwork, and as it’s fiction, decided it fair to put him on the list.  As to the criticism that it’s only a children’s work, well, consider who we’re dealing with.

After having read some of his densest non-fiction like the Problem with Pain, it’s remarkable that he could write children’s fiction at all!  FOr its preaching, Chronicles is one one of the most influential children’s works in and out of Christian circles, and more I think of it, more of a walking dog it becomes. (Either that, or I just didn’t have the right appreciation for Aslan’s death.)

As I grew older, I’ve come to realize that in terms of sheer prose, Lewis can’t hold to Rand, or even far less, to:

Friedrich Nietzsche: About 3,330,000 results.

Thing is, while they may have burned both brighter and hotter, Lewis burned warmer, and whereas they burned out ,and are now remembered as much for the excesses of their fanatical followers as for their ideas.

Rand used her fiction to advocate “new” ideas, and Lewis, “old” ones, but who aged more gracefully?  Rand’s vision was riddled with hate, scorn, and ridicule whereas Lewis’s work’s were not.  Such shows in the long run, and I think the Google numbers bear this out.

Much as I wish, though, Lewis ain’t no. 1.  That, my friends, goes to:

James Joyce: About 81,200,000 results

James Joyce? I thought?  Why him?  His fame rests on just two main novels, and while he’s cited as an influential author, Google sure was giving far, far greater credence than anyone I knew.  He was just another author among great authors, but not much more.

After having read Ulysses, though, I can only compare him to:

William Shakespeare: About 35,900,000 results.

And Bob Dylan.  They all tossed around metaphors like hand grenades,  and while it’s not not exactly my style, it’s clearly an absorbing taste.

Dylan is the only one the trio I like, but they all have the power to stagger the mind with imagery, and such is not to be under-estimated.

So says Google.

Why Israel Matters: Location, Location, Location

Ever wonder why Israel matters so much?  For that matter, why does Egyptian Civilization?  It’s not the oldest, eclipsed by both the Sumerian and Indian ones, and yet Western Civilization, the heritage that transcends the globe, traces its origins to it.

The answer, I posit, is location, location, location.  It held good water routes to both the Mediterranean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the land route twixt Africa and Eurasia.  Egypt’s power faded, but its memory didn’t.  It left a a big impression on the Greeks, who really got the ball rolling in in terms of The Western Way, and ironically, they did it head- quartered in Africa.

Yes, Africa; a truly dark continent, indeed, given that for all those thousands of years of dynamism of Eurasia, all those wandering ethnic groups fighting and influencing each other, leaving a rich historical legacy, Africa, by comparison, has little to report.  Yes, it had advanced cizilizations and cities, but they just came and went, not leaving much historical impact beyond their own existence.

You’d think that Eurasia would have influenced the subcontinent more than it has, or at least I do.  What happens in the Mediterranean does echo East, and the East echoes back (and vice versa), but it’s like the Savannah just swallows the noise.  For the longest time, if you were a Western power, and wanted to trade laterally, you’d simply do it through the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, and Africa was irrelevant.

You’d still think Africa, along the Mediterranean’s rim, would eventually be drawn into the spiral of trade, but no.  You’d think Africa might become more relevant after trade to the Far East was blocked by a nearer Eastern one, but no.  That momentary blockage in the Eurasian feedback loop led to the discovery of the New World, expanding Wertern power and prestige beyond all recognition.  The Horn route was always a secondary affair to Egyptian trade lanes, and Africa proper didn’t even seem like much of a prize to Western empires until there wasn’t anything left of more value to fight over, really.

I don’t think anyone’s gonna stone me when I say that Africa’s the most backward place on the planet, and I would venture to say it could have used more colonization, and for a longer time, with South America as an example.  (Hey–Britain and America both started out as colonies, so please don’t lambaste when I evoke the long view of history.)  Instead of participating in the long, epic melee that Eurasia started, Africa sat it out, and look what happened, which as history in silence reports, was in comparison very little.

No, only Egypt, crossroads to all, is where Africa’s value to world history lies, and it wasn’t even of value to the native Africans, but rather to the Semitic traders of the Eurasian north who did, forming a kingdom.  I must say, though, that even so, Egypt’s impact feels much more mystical than as a trade linchpin.

Egyptologists (or pyramidiots, depending on how high you value them) keep talking about how Giza is the geographic center of the world, but while that may not be true, it’s  ground zero for something else, and that’s monotheism.  While Egypt was the regional power, the tiny state formed by some of their escaped slaves on the opposite side of the Sinai land bridge  managed to export something of their culture to the world from the same basic pressure point, as well.

It remains a sore spot to the present day, doesn’t it?  The world has changed a great deal, and flight among other things have much undermined the import of old sea lanes, but here we are, with the capitals of the world’s mightiest nations hundreds and thousands of miles away on other continents, and yet, despite all that, despite not being a resource haven, it still matters.

Ah, sweet mysteries of the ages.