They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 
by 

Milton Sanford Mayer

 

They Wanted It; They Got It; And They Liked It

Milton Mayer was that rarest of writers: a journalist who knew his job was to create interesting facts; and a philosopher who knew that facts are meaningless without a theory, a coherent narrative, that connects them. His phenomenological analysis of ten Everyman Nazis was remarkable but largely unremarked when it was first published in 1954 during the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The book may be even more relevant today in understanding the Red Scare of a different sort: Trumpism.

Mayer's central conclusion is profoundly simple: "Nazism was a mass movement and not the tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions." It is easy to forget that Hitler was democratically elected and that his regime was a Rechtsstaat, a constitutional state in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law. But perhaps few know what Mayer discovered in his year of interviews in post-war Germany, that the 'average' German working stiff not only welcomed the rise of Hitler but looked back fondly to the rule of National Socialism as the best days of his life. Nazism was what most Germans wanted - or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it."

In the same way it's easy to forget that Donald Trump has been elected by a people, perhaps not by a majority but by enough of them. And despite his demonstrated racism, misogyny, narcissism, vulgarity, and incompetence, he still demands the loyalty of those who elected him and even of those who have been humiliated by him. As Mayer points out, "Responsible men never shirk responsibility, and so when they must reject it, they deny it." This is precisely what the American people are doing at the moment, rejecting responsibility for a situation that they created and want still.

They Thought They Were Free is a prophetic book in an authentically biblical sense: it articulates a fundamental flaw in democratic society, namely that such societies, like every other, from time to time embrace pure evil without even becoming aware of it. Perhaps William Burroughs was right, the evil in North America was there waiting before the first European settlers, even before the first inhabitants. It has now become part of the national character. The self-absorption of the American people ensures that this evil can only fester and grow until it bursts like a boil. God help the rest of us when it does. Americans will undoubtedly find someone else to blame.

The Titan by Theodore Dreiser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why Swell'st Thou So?

Trump is a perennial American type, the coarse outsider who is driven to succeed at all costs. And he does frequently win. The paradox, however, is that his measure of success, his criteria for what constitutes winning, are supplied by others. Thus Trump and his ilk are the least free of human beings, constantly striving to become what others value.

Frank Algernon Cowperwood, Dreiser’s protagonist, is proto-Trumpian in all the type’s frightening details. Dreiser was a contemporary of Edmund Husserl, the philosopher of Phenomenology, the study of how things appear to human consciousness. Although there is no evidence that Dreiser knew of Husserl’s work, The Titan is best described as a phenomenology of the peculiarly America search for power, written without judgement but in overpoweringly accurate detail.

Probably since its founding, certainly since its Civil War, America has been dominated by a culture of unconstrained acquisition of wealth and influence. Dreiser knows the psychology, the sociology and the politics of this perennial urge, which seems endemic to democracy. The desire for power, at least for some significant portion of American residents, is driven primarily by its possession by others rather than its necessity for achieving anything with it.

No amount of wealth, security, or reputation is sufficient to allay the need for more power because this American power has no objective but itself. As Dreiser puts it, “It is thus that life at its topmost toss irks and pains. Beyond is ever the unattainable, the lure of the infinite with its infinite ache.” One can never achieve the power one desires as long as others have any as well.

“[Cowperwood’s] business as he saw it was with the material facts of life, or, rather, with those third and fourth degree theorems and syllogisms which control material things and so represent wealth.” It is the first and second degree theorems, however, that establish why wealth is important at all; and Cowperwood has no knowledge of these.

Like Trump, Cowperwood is “temperamentally... in sympathy with the mass more than he was with the class, and he understood the mass better.” But this sympathy has nothing of real concern in it, “He could, should, and would rule alone... Men must swing around him as planets around the sun.” Both are consummate egotists, “The truth was he believed in himself, and himself only, and thence sprang his courage to think as he pleased.” Or that is his conceit as he obviously attempts to fit in and rise within the commercial and social establishment of Chicago.

There are consequences, however, for this type of phenomenological consciousness, perhaps the most important of which is a complete lack of self-awareness. Cowperwood confronts “...the unsolvable mystery that he was even to himself—to himself most of all.” I suspect Trump is also a similar enigma to Trump.

Like Trump, Cowperwood likes to buy talent, “He wanted the intellectual servants. He was willing to pay.” With this talent, particularly legal talent, he can intimidate and dominate. ‘“Let them blow,” said Cowperwood. “We can blow, too, and sue also. I like lawsuits. We’ll tie them up so that they’ll beg for quarter.” His eyes twinkled cheerfully.’ He knows how the world really works, “Don’t worry. I haven’t seen many troubles in this world that money wouldn’t cure.”

He also knows the reality of American politics, which in its Republican variety operates primarily on greed. This means a limited but effective set of standard political tactics: “...robbery, ballot-box stuffing, the sale of votes, the appointive power of leaders, graft, nepotism, vice exploitation—all the things that go to make up the American world of politics and financial and social strife.”

So Trump’s braggadocio is not an aberration, it is the epitome of the perennial American character, a character that swells without limit... until it bursts. It is without purpose but not without effect. And that effect is always detrimental. Trump’s journey from the New York suburbs to the national capital is very much like Cowperwood’s from Philadelphia to Chicago, “How different, for some reason, from Philadelphia! That was a stirring city, too. He had thought it wonderful at one time, quite a world; but this thing, while obviously infinitely worse, was better.” And he could make it worse still.

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Two Solitudes 
by 

Hugh MacLennan, 

 

Robert Kroetsch

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jul 29, 2017  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: canadian 

To Live Is To Change - But Not Entirely

In the 1950's my family would spend several holiday-weeks every year in Northern Vermont. Part of the annual ritual was a trip to Montreal and Quebec, only a few hours drive across the border. McGill University and the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre were the unexceptional tourist standards. But what a shock to me - a country in which people could understand English but wouldn't speak it; a country of some vague but pervasive hostility; perhaps most remarkably a Catholic country which wore its religion as a weapon, whether defensive or offensive I could not tell. But it was certainly different; and yet the Appalachian Mountains of New York were visible from the skyscrapers of Montreal.

Two Solitudes is about the tension between French Canadians and their English-speaking compatriots at just about the time I became inarticulately aware of it. Little known to me at the time, matters had reached such a state as to threaten the national unity of Canada. Ten years later, secession of Quebec from the Confederation was a real political prospect until at least some of the issues MacLennan touches - official language, ethnic discrimination, the role of the Church in politics, for example - had been addressed.

I took an extended camping trip through Eastern Canada, mostly the Gaspe peninsula and the Acadian shore of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island in 2002. My expectation was, given the absence of international news about Québécois separatists, that the reforms of the 1960's had been more or less effective. I was therefore shocked to discover overt hostility to English-speaking visitors and the frequent presence of Acadian independence flags all around the coast.

This experience reminded me of one of the most remarkable traits of Canada that isn't shared with its neighbour to the South: cultural continuity. Like the United States, Canada of course is a country of immigrants, and therefore to some degree a 'melting pot'. But in Canada what's in the pot is much less homogeneous and maintains much more of the national flavours of its first white settlers.

MacLennan's characters are often frustrated by the Canadian penchant for resolving a problem, specifically the inequity experienced by French Canadians, by ignoring it. Canadians, the reader is led to believe, tend, in a very English way, to muddle through, to make small, incremental, half-hearted attempts at social change. But these same characters despise the absence of cultural continuity and its substitution by greed and ideology in the United States. 

Given my experience on the Acadian Shore, it strikes me that Canada has indeed found a middle way between the ideological destructiveness of the United States and the political stagnation of pre-WWII ethnic relations in the country. The French-English problem isn't 'solved'. But it's not meant to be. It is too complex to even attempt to fix permanently. Since it evolves, in this case by catalysing isolated French-speaking settlements, it can only be addressed incrementally with enough national energy to keep the whole together without destroying the smaller wholes within it. 

I don't know if this kind of national social strategy has a name but it appears to be in play in a number of policy areas - First Nation, international relations, immigration, to name only three. And it seems to be a rather effective way to keep the country away from the obvious distress of social trauma and disintegration of its larger neighbour. 

Appropriately, therefore, while brilliantly describing the existential reality of a multinational country, MacLennan doesn't provide what has come to be called a 'global solution'. Canada, it would seem, has the rare and precious virtue of humility - in its writers as well as its social policy. Or put another way by one of MacLennan's characters, "Its an odd thing about this country - there are few outright villains."

 

Slaughterhouse-Five 
by 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 

The God of Accidents

Only God knows all of time as if it were the same instant; only God can annihilate the Universe; only God knows our innermost thoughts: so contends Judaic, Christian, and Muslim theology. For God, therefore, there is no cause and effect; everything just is. And because there is no cause and effect, there is no issue of free will. Free will is an idea created by human beings who can't imagine any other way to escape the mechanical inevitability of causality. 

In Slaughterhouse 5, the alien race of Tralfamadorians are not just god-like in their ability to transit the Universe, they are collectively God in their power over time and existence itself. The book is a subtle and very clever theology that has fundamental implications for morality and ethics.

Billy Pilgrim is the recipient of important revelations from the divine Tralfamadorians. The first revelation is that although death is a real certainty, it doesn't matter because one can revisit moments in one's life ad infinitum; resurrection is part of existence. 

Second, God is neither external to the Universe, nor pantheistically distributed throughout it; rather God is a very discrete presence in the Universe, as well as in charge of it. Importantly for the fate of everyone, God is also as hapless as human beings; he can't change himself or his fate.

The most significant revelation is that Kilgore Trout, the famous science fiction writer and newspaper delivery boss, is God's prophet, whose every pronouncement is sarcastic.

It's difficult to say what portion of these revelations come directly from the divine source and what portion comes through Kilgore Trout's explorations into Billy's consciousness. Nevertheless the bottom line is clear: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” In other words, life is so screwy that it can neither be analysed nor rationalised. Not the best of all possible worlds, but the only one possible. Accident willing.

 

World of Wonders (The Deptford Trilogy, #3) 
by 

Robertson Davies, 

 

Wayne Johnston (Introduction)

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jul 18, 2017  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: canadian 

Canadian Gothic: The Uses of Illusion

If the first part of the Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, explores the bare facts of rural Canada on the turn to a more civilized and ethnicly diverse culture; and if the second part, The Manticore, suggests the fundamental ideas that shape these facts; then this third part, World of Wonders, provides the parallel universe of feeling that is the substrate of both facts and ideas. World of Wonders retells the previous stories, filling in the missing material necessary to understand the comprehensive illusion that Davies has created.

Is there a definable boundary between fictional, or for that matter everyday, illusion and the truth? Illusion demands extreme attention to detail in order to work. If truth is in the detail, then illusion is at least a kind of truth, a truth of feeling perhaps rather than a truth of facts or ideas. It is a truth about what we want to be true. Not all illusion therefore qualifies as truthful. Truthful illusion must be willed by both the illusionist and those who experience him. This is what makes illusion an art form rather than a lie. The highest expression of this art form is theatre, a place where feeling expressed and feeling perceived meet to create an illusory but authentic world.

World of Wonders is about the art of theatrical illusion and how it is produced. It takes an incredible amount of experience as well as talent to touch the unexpressed desires of an audience. Dexterity, timing, memory, and courage are the minimal skills involved. But these personal skills are only a foundation. Theatrical illusion requires sharply honed coordination among a cast that includes at least as many in back of the stage as in front of it. Creating truthful illusion therefore is a social, even a managerial, task of dense complexity.

What is sought by an audience to illusion is wonder, the feeling that there is living mystery in the most mundane of things. Wonder is a spiritual state, an awareness of the transcendent, most thoroughly investigated by the Austrian-American theologian Peter Berger. Berger's book, The Social Construction of Reality, touches precisely the same themes as Wonders of the World: the nature of reality, the feeling of truth, the desire for the 'beyond'. Oswald Spengler called this the Magian World View; Max Weber called it Enchantment. Berger's death earlier this year emphasizes for me both the importance of these themes as well as their datedness in today's Trumpian loss of culture, including its banal degradation of religion.

Davies knows how to keep his fictional illusion about the creation of illusion going at just the right pace. He knows the details that are essential to its credibility. And he knows from experience how his audience will react. In the final section of World of Wonders, Davies has his symbolic protagonists from each of the three books in bed together arguing the merits of facts, ideas and feelings. He is, in short, a master of illusion and its truthfulness, a literally wonderful writer.

 

The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2) 
by 

Robertson Davies, 

 

Michael Dirda (Introduction)

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jul 11, 2017  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: canadian 

The Foreigners We Deserve

A remarkable journey of Jungian psychoanalysis. Manticore will therefore appeal to Platonists (as myself) who recognise the limits of language but also its necessity in figuring out what we are. Aristotelian scientific types are likely to be disappointed. Freud thought in terms of flaws in the psyche brought about through trauma, Jung in terms of psychic purpose and its adaptations. There is no rational way to choose between the two perspectives; the facts fit either. Aesthetically, however, Jung takes the upper hand; and Davies knows why: human beings are remarkably elegant creatures even at their least attractive. Understanding this basic principle makes life interesting as well as bearable. We are all full of foreigners, alien psychic beings, vying for attention and supremacy. The more we reject their presence, the more power they exert. A possible lesson here for Trump in his policy formulation as well as in his personal l

 

Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1) 
by 

Robertson Davies

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jul 10, 2017  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: canadian 

Canada behind the gloss

For me Robertson Davies is Canada: its gentleness and its snobbery; its reserve and its smugness; its inherent democratic attitudes and its bourgeois provincialism; its multicultural diversity and subtle ethnic prejudices. It is the US without the fanaticism and England without inherited nobility. It is also much more than either. Davies ability to describe Canada's uniqueness is unparalleled and itself unique. Fifth Business is a sort of representative history of the country from 1910 to 1950 from the point of view of the Ontario elite, roughly the equivalent class of the New York nouveau rich at the turn of the 20th century. Davies ability to sense the peculiar mores and foibles of this now declining culture is remarkable. Few writing in the English language can beat Davies prose. He is as smooth as John Banville and as captivating as Louis Auchincloss.