THE UNITED JEKYLL AND HYDE OF AMERICA PART II

But even the social aspect of Man alone (our second example of split personality, which is different from the opposition of man of God versus man of Caesar, raised yesterday in Part I), as it is expressed within the American society, is schizophrenic. Whereas a “normal” social morality may be represented as a standard mix of good and bad attitudes of the majority of citizens, it looks like American society is now being defined by its fringe minorities, with the majority at a severe handicap, and losing its defining stamp on the character of the American nation.

Some artificial categories have now been promoted as definitive categories, while the traditional categories have been neglected, and outright ignored. But how is it possible, one may ask, to ignore certain traditional elephants in the room, such as, say, the opposition of  wealth versus poverty? It is hard to imagine a team of social engineers suppressing such natural dichotomies as that of the rich and the poor, which is supposed to trump all artificial ones, and bring national consciousness, no matter how badly brainwashed, back to social commonsense.

But no, American society may be too affluent for such normal things to matter, and to take center stage. It is a fact, no matter how strongly it may be disputed, that the American poor, even recognized as such by the sociologists, will never be poor enough to form an effective dichotomy against the American rich. Forget social revolutions in America: she has enough bread and circuses for everyone to take care of a real social crisis from below, whereas everything from above is closely  controlled by the social engineers.

And now we are coming to the basic incongruence of the American Jekyll and Hyde: his cultivated outward belligerence and extreme inward insecurity, resulting in an anti-social hands-off-government psychological resignation. At issue here is a pathological conflict between modern American Superpower chauvinism and its self-destructive alter ego: the iconoclastic effort to undermine the foundations of national tradition and basic cultural commandments, leaving the nation with a lot of gung-ho and a dramatically diminishing substance. It seems as though the authorities in charge of America are most eager to exploit the morality of the Strong outside the country, while inside the country they are eager to promote the morality of the Weak, in order to subdue, rather than to cultivate the native American spirit, which I have been regularly referring to as “the Spirit of 1776.” This is done domestically, I repeat, by trying to cultivate the notion of a superiority of the weak over the strong. The colorful gays and lesbians more powerful than the lackluster straights?.. The handicapped more privileged than the able-bodied?.. Etc., etc… Don’t get me wrong, please: I am all for protecting the disadvantaged; but not for empowering them beyond reason; not for turning them into role models, paragons of society.

To summarize this, while intent on inflaming the master morality of the nation in its outward reach, to project America’s superiority over the rest of the world, the same people in Washington are doing everything to undermine it at home, substituting it with an implicit presumption of inferiority of the healthy mainstream majority of the nation vis-à-vis the allegedly underprivileged social minorities and the physically and mentally handicapped (an ironic twist here: who is really “handicapped”?), which results in yet another triumph of the split personality in American society. Violence abroad and submission at home,--- such is the social prescription for the American twenty-first century. Tragically, though, the supposedly outward-directed nationalistic violence does not stay outwardly-directed for long, but comes back home from America’s wars now inwardly-directed, degrading and further destroying the cohesiveness of the American nation. A bizarre and disturbing social trend indeed of blending blind obedience to authority with senseless violence for violence’ sake. The terrifying atmosphere of deadly domestic violence out of control has now taken hold of the national American psyche as, literally, an everyday occurrence…

(This is the end of Part II. Part III will be posted tomorrow.)

THE UNITED JEKYLL AND HYDE OF AMERICA PART I

Idealism from afar isn’t worth much, unless what you later see at close range does not force you to change your mind.

Having ventured to explore the roots of my ill-fated yet understandable idealism in the Spirit of 1776 series, extolling the greatness of the American nation, the time has come for the much more difficult, and terribly unrewarding, task of putting under a microscope all that is wrong with this nation in general, in terms of its mores and attitudes, both inwardly and outwardly directed.

Recognizing the enormous complexity of this subject, it is virtually impossible to do it in one breath; going about it in careful circles is therefore the only feasible option. The first stage for me here would be simply to group together strings of previously written entries in this section, united by a common thread, or subject matter. It goes without saying that in this process I shall endeavor some necessary revisions, but I will resist overdoing it and will leave much of the previous material intact, so that none of the more delicate thoughts, sprinkled throughout the ore of the earlier efforts, get washed out by my zealous cleaning.

The very first entry in this subsection looks at American society, and finds not one, but several personalities within it, each possessing a separate morality of its own. To make matters worse, some of these “moralities” are already in internal conflicts against themselves!

In simple terms, the main trouble with American society lies in its inability to overcome its divisive multiculturalism, in the absence of a unifying force, the proverbial melting pot, supposedly bringing all the citizens e pluribus into a single American culture. The problem of the latter, in my view, is that the desired and traditionally expected Unum is in reality not an Unum at all, but a split personality in its own right.

So let us journey through the identity crisis of American society, seen here as the existence of several “split” personalities, accounting as a result, for a complex, inconsistent, and thus internally irreconcilable, multiple personality. The journey starts with the more generic, moving towards the more specific.

The first instance of our split personality is of such general kind. We know that God and Caesar can easily coexist within one psyche, as long as they are clearly separated along the dividing line of common morality and political-economic practicality. Practicality in this case is amoral, as there can be only one type of recognized morality, customarily tied to religion. The trouble starts when what is supposed to be mere practicality is infused with a “morality” of its own, immediately creating an irreconcilable conflict with religion, and woe to them who are confused and unable (or unwilling!) to recognize and remedy this problem right away: this incompatible cohabitation of two distinct moralities within one psyche creates a split, or dual, mind, which is the textbook prerequisite of schizophrenia. Now, there can be no doubt that religion plays a huge role indeed in the lives of the majority of Americans, much greater than, say, anywhere in Europe, yet the national addiction to the essentially immoral mindset of financial capitalism perpetuates what I call “a contradiction in terms.” I once described American society as “morally and spiritually schizophrenic, without ever suspecting it,” because of its subconsciously hostile and obviously irreconcilable in any meaningful way conflict between the religious morality of God (which is yet to be liberated from its denominational-sectarian bigotry, to be philosophically sustainable and socially implementable), and the man-made morality (which is in essence amorality, or, seen from the religious angle, immorality), or, to put it in stronger terms, outright worship of capitalism…

(End of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

WELTMEISTER RIDES THE BUS

The tragic story of how America wasted the fragile genius of Bobby Fischer provides an illustration to the earlier commentary on the nature of heroes and the lack of their appreciation in American society.

Being a chess player myself, I can knowledgeably attest to the fact that Fischer was much better loved and valued among the Soviet chess-playing public (which characteristically encompassed practically the whole of society) than in America, despite the fact that he single-handedly (helped mostly by his own prodigious talent, nurtured by Soviet chess literature, which he was reading in Russian) demolished Russia’s international chess monopoly.

Here is some instructive paradox. By the standards of normal littleness, Fischer was supposed to be Russia’s enemy, a cartoonish villain in the employ of the forces of evil… But such was never the case. On the contrary, he was exalted by the nation he defeated, while the nation on whose behalf and in whose behalf he delivered the great cold war victory, brought him down.

Fischer was a genius, in Russia’s eyes, and, therefore, a genuine hero, with all the trappings of heroism, that included his rebellious, controverted nature. In America he was initially hailed as a political cold-war hero who succeeded in defeating the Russkies, but as soon as that predictable, politically correct mold broke up, to reveal the unpredictability of a genius, it was only his propagandistic legend, that was allowed to march on, while his reality soon turned into the nightmare of a complete and extreme incompatibility.

Fischer was financially drained of every penny he could generate, by a crowd of unscrupulous callous users, gathered around him, like some ugly greedy leeches; and by the end of his life in America, he was left with nothing for himself, reportedly forced to ride the bus in Los Angeles (literally here, whereas the title of my entry is figurative), and making his living by ‘throwing pearls before the swine,’ that is, by selling his game to wealthy, but otherwise unworthy amateurs.

The great Nietzsche, in one of his superlative observations, said that one of the greatest responsibilities of any great society is to take good care of its geniuses who always have a problem with fitting in. And, by the same token, the measuring stick for the greatness of all societies is the way how they treat their geniuses. In Bobby Fischer’s case, the American society has not passed the test of greatness, but failed most miserably. “Free society” in general understands freedom too stereotypically, and thus hypocritically, “protecting” generic categories of officially recognized “endangered species,” yet carelessly letting unlabeled exceptions fall through the cracks.

…Weltmeister Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008 at the age of sixty-four in Reykjavik, Iceland, formally a naturalized citizen of Iceland, but effectively homeless.

TO BE FAIR TO JOHN DEWEY PART II

...What follows now is an apparent quarrel between Russell and Dewey, which has to do with how the former assesses the latter in the socio-economic context of an emerging American industrialism, condemned, as we know, by Adorno, Marcuse, and many others. I doubt that Russell was totally unaware of the implications of his identification of Dewey with what has thus been condemned as a highly negative phenomenon, therefore his surprised reaction to Dewey’s alleged overreaction may have been not a little bit disingenuous. But the following two paragraphs from Russell’s Dewey chapter are so wonderfully revealing, in the context of this section’s Americana theme, that I have no choice here but to quote them in full:

Throughout this book [History of Western Philosophy] I have sought, where possible, to connect philosophies with the social environment of the philosophers concerned. It seemed to me that the belief in human power, and the unwillingness to admit stubborn facts, were connected with the hopefulness engendered by machine production and the scientific manipulation of our physical environment. This view is shared by many of Dr. Dewey’s supporters. Thus George Raymond Geiger in a laudatory essay says that Dewey’s method “means a revolution in thought just as middle-class and unspectacular, but just as stupendous as the revolution in industry a century ago.” It seemed to me that I was saying the same thing when I wrote: “Dr. Dewey has an outlook, which is in harmony with the age of industrialism and of collective enterprise. It is natural that his strongest appeal should be to Americans, and also that he should be almost equally appreciated among the progressive elements in countries like China and Mexico.” (Honestly, I can sense an element of British-superiority sarcasm in Russell’s last sentence, and I am not at all surprised that Dewey took offense.)

To my regret and surprise, this statement, that I had supposed completely innocuous, vexed Dr. Dewey who replied: “Mr. Russell’s (observe the academically disrespectful Mr. in Dewey’s ‘title’ for Russell: he knows how to return an insult!) confirmed habit of connecting the pragmatic theory of knowing with obnoxious aspects of American industrialism is much as if I were to link his philosophy to the interests of the English landed aristocracy.”

Was Bertrand Russell right about John Dewey, at the top of this last argument? Sure he was. Dewey was not some ivory-tower egocentric meditator. He was a preeminent social activist of his era, and a very successful one, at that. A free society may allow a person to say whatever he wishes to say, but it does not necessarily adopt his (or her) ideas on the national level. In Dr. Dewey’s case, America embraced him wholeheartedly, not only on the domestic social scene, but also in foreign policy, which acquired an unmistakable quality of Dewey-esque pragmatism. Thus, to deny a direct and mutually rewarding connection between a successful social activist and the society that has ensured his success would be disingenuous.

Was John Dewey right about Bertrand Russell? No, his retort was argumentative, but hardly as legitimate as the comment that sent the ball rolling in the first place. Russell, like Dewey, was a political activist, but his activism was oppositionist, rather than conformist. Naturally, he was not successful with his pacifism, and such, and although his political views had many supporters in England, English landed aristocracy was hardly on his bandwagon as a rule, as opposed to exception…

But, anyway, this is an entry on Dewey, and not on Russell, and in so far as this fact is concerned, I think that its limited purpose has amply been served. I repeat that this was only a beginning of our conversation about Dr. John Dewey. He will be featured fairly prominently in my philosophical sections.

TO BE FAIR TO JOHN DEWEY PART I

I confess to having oftentimes been unfair to John Dewey (1859-1952), the preeminent American educator and many other things, mainly on account of the horrific educational system in America, for which horrible calamity I hold him partly responsible. But of course he needs a fair assessment in this section, as a distinct American phenomenon, and although this entry does not provide it in the way I am hoping to have it in the future, still this is a good start. Dewey’s assessment in this entry is provided by Bertrand Russell, his close associate in a variety of projects, and although Russell admits that in many respects his own views coincide with those of Dewey, there are some serious philosophical disagreements between them, too, and if there is anyone, to be found, with a dispassionate opinion of Dewey, I expect it from Russell.

John Dewey, Bertrand Russell writes, is generally admitted to be the leading living philosopher of America. In this estimate I entirely concur. He has a profound influence not only among philosophers, but on students of education, aesthetics, and political theory. He is a man of the highest character, liberal in outlook, kind and generous in personal relations, and indefatigable in work… With most of his opinions I am in almost complete agreement. Owing to my respect and admiration for him, as well as to personal experience of his kindness, I wish to agree completely, but to my regret I am compelled to dissent from his most distinctive philosophical doctrine, namely the substitution of inquiry for truth as the fundamental concept of logic, and of the theory of knowledge.

He has never been what might be called a mere philosopher. Education especially has been in the forefront of his interests, and his influence on American education has been profound. Perhaps he hasn’t always been satisfied with the practice of those who professed to follow his teaching, but any new doctrine in practice is bound to be subject to some extravagances and excess. This, however, does not matter so much as might be thought, because the faults of what is new are more easily seen than those of what is traditional. (I wish!)

Here now comes the most important portion of this entry concerning the essence of Dr. Dewey’s theory of truth and inquiry. Here it is, in Bertrand Russell’s summary:

…Formerly it would have been said that inquiry is distinguished by its purpose, which is to ascertain some truth. But for Dewey truth is to be defined in terms of inquiry, and not vice versa; he quotes with approval Charles Sanders Peirce’s definition: “Truth is the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate.”

As I noted in the previous entry on Peirce, Russell strongly objects to such a definition of truth. This leaves us completely in the dark as to what the investigators are doing, for we cannot, without circularity, say that they are endeavoring to ascertain the truth. (In other words, paraphrasing the movie Enemy of the State: “and who is investigating the investigators?”)

…The difficulty of Dewey’s theory lies in the severing of the relation between a belief and the fact or facts, which would commonly be said to verify it. Let us consider the example of a general planning a battle. His reconnaissance planes report to him certain enemy preparations, and he acts upon them. Common sense says that the reports, upon which he acts, are true or false regardless of whether the general subsequently wins or loses the battle. This view is rejected by Dr. Dewey. He does not divide beliefs into true or false, but he still has two kinds of beliefs, which we will call satisfactory, if the general wins, and unsatisfactory if he loses. Until the battle has taken place, he cannot tell what to think about the reports of his scouts.

(As an aside, it is easy to see that modern American foreign policy does not take the side of either Dewey or Russell in this argument. The general does not really act upon reconnaissance reports: he is simply told what to do, by opportunistic agenda-driven ideologues. Philosophy and common sense are sidelined spectators here, and I am afraid that even the severest critics of Washington’s policies are contemptuously dismissive of the said spectators.)

The main difference between Dr. Dewey and me is that he judges a belief by its effects, whereas I judge it by its causes…

Here is your basic difference between a moralist (Russell) and a pragmatist (Dewey). As for my take on it, I have previously laid out my theory of truth, which allows a multiplicity of truths, as long as they are free of internal contradictions. What Dewey and Russell are engaged in here is the question of truth as fact versus truth as opinion. The end result of an inquiry is opinion (belief), whereas to Dewey this end result is a fact. Thus, whatever appears satisfactory wins over what appears unsatisfactory, and the judgment is made on that basis. But what if the general’s victory is a short-term satisfactory result, but a long-term disaster, that is, a Pyrrhic victory? That obviously creates several levels of judgment, and the borderline between satisfactory and unsatisfactory may become if not erased altogether, then at least disrupted to the point of making any sound judgment difficult or even impossible.

Having put it this way, it is easier to agree with Russell, who appeals to more reliable, more independent criteria of judgment than Dewey, who appears guilty of pure and unadulterated relativism. This does not mean that I agree with Russell outside this particular argument, that is, with his emphasis on the” causes,” which may be found even more difficult to ascertain than the “effects.”

As for Russell’s indirect criticism of Peirce in this context, I find it unfair, as it fails to consider the absolute nature of Peirce’s statement, which negates all charges of relativism that can be raised against him on this occasion. “…Ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” explicitly contains two absolutes: the finality of the “ultimate” and the absolute inclusiveness of the “all.” In other words, assuming that Bertrand Russell is also involved in the investigation (otherwise, he has no business to comment on it), no collusion between Peirce and Dewey can convince anybody as to what the truth is, unless Russell and all other investigators of the opinion in question come to exactly the same conclusion. Ergo, in a number of cases where the truth of an opinion can indeed be established through the investigation, we do arrive at Peirce’s destination point, to his credit of course, whereas in a large number of cases where universal agreement cannot be reached after exhausting all available tools of investigation, Peirce’s method is found inapplicable, just as he says it in his definition, which obviously does not prove him wrong…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

(My subject here is once again Charles Sanders Pierce. For more on Pierce, see my entry Deduction, Induction, Abduction, from the Philosophy section, already posted on my blog on January 30^th, 2012. It would have been nice to have them posted together, but it did not happen that way.)

I first learned the name of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) from Bertrand Russell, who briefly mentions him twice in his History of Western Philosophy--- first in connection with William James (“The principle of pragmatism, according to James, was first enunciated by Charles Peirce, who maintained that, in order to attain clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve.”), then in connection with John Dewey. (“Dewey quotes with approval Peirce’s definition: Truth is the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate.”) Russell is critical of this last definition: “This leaves us completely in the dark as to what the investigators are doing, for we cannot without circularity say that they are endeavoring to ascertain the truth.” Apparently, at the time of writing his History, Russell had little idea of who Peirce was, as both references to him are indirect. It would be only in 1959, in his book Wisdom of the West, that Russell, having read some newly discovered works of Peirce, was able to refer to him directly, acknowledging that: “Beyond doubt, [Peirce] was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever.”

Peirce was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, chemist, founder of pragmatism (he called it pragmaticism, in order to avoid any terminological confusion) and semiotics. (He defined “semiotic” as the “quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs [that abstracts] what must be the characters of all signs used by… an intelligence capable of learning by experience.” Locke, and a few others, had been using the term semiotic before Pierce, but not in its modern meaning.) Modern German philosopher Karl-Otto Apel is of such high opinion of Peirce that he has called him the “Kant of American philosophy.”

Tragically, Peirce was unappreciated, and even maltreated by his detractors, being able to hold just a single position as an untenured lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins University for less than four years, and dying in poverty. His sole friend and supporter in his misfortunes was William James, who however died before him, leaving Peirce in dire straits. As a result of his neglect and open persecution, Peirce’s philosophical legacy, constituting a large, but disorganized and scattered body of work, was grossly mishandled. Nothing of it had been published during his lifetime. His only publications before his death was his monograph on astronomy and a collection of Studies in Logic, published in 1883 during his short stay at Johns Hopkins, where a few chapters were written by him, and others by his students. After his death, Peirce’s manuscripts were bought from his widow by Harvard University, but subsequently they were mislaid, none of them even microfilmed until 1964. There were altogether some 1650 manuscripts (totaling over 100,000 pages) eventually accounted for, but it is now sadly understood that an unknown number of manuscripts have been lost, probably, irretrievably.

The first “edition” of Peirce’s works appeared at intervals in the 1930’s under the general title The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Unfortunately, it was incompetently put together, with the editors taking a lot of liberties, apparently “explained” by the great difficulty of taking the time and effort to organize the randomly perused manuscripts, or at least to arrange them in their chronological order. It was only since the 1980’s that a more responsible edition of Peirce’s writings began to appear under the auspices of Indiana University Press, but this project has been lagging, and as of today (2013), only seven of the projected thirty volumes have been printed in a ridiculously small number of copies, many of these works for the first time ever.

So, this is how America has been treating her geniuses, in this case, her “Kant,” and “certainly, the greatest American thinker ever.” Theodore Dreiser’s fiction? Not exactly!

DOKTOR BIRKENAU

In the wake of Watergate, the newly-reestablished, in the limelight of the Brezhnev-Nixon summitry, Soviet respect for the American presidency had precipitously plummeted. It already badly suffered under Gerald Ford, to which the rather miserable 1975 Vladivostok Summit had been a witness, but it certainly reached a particularly low point during the Jimmy Carter Presidency, thanks in large part to the special credentials of President Carter’s National Security Advisor Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Of Polish birth, and virulently anti-Russian, Dr. Brzezinski could hardly pass off as Moscow’s Nietzschean “noble enemy,” and his grotesque bias was matched by an even more hostile Soviet reciprocation. (I have always suspected, though, that the Russians were rather disingenuous in their negativity toward Dr. Brzezinski. It is much easier to control a predictable ideologue than a cool and calculating political artist, and I would say that Dr. Brzezinski’s easy predictability must have suited Moscow just fine.)

Not just in retrospect, but as a matter of normal principle, no policy, whether foreign or domestic, ought to be entrusted to a bigot. With all his human decency and a desire to do the best he could, President Carter’s judgment must be called into question, and his incompetence for the job really stands out in this matter of his National Security Advisor. But, to be fair to him, his later successor in the Oval Office George W. Bush fared even worse, and showed a far greater depth of personal incompetence by allowing bigoted ideologues of the neoconservative movement to take America hostage on his watch…

As for Dr. Brzezinski, having left office, and particularly after his anti-Russian dream had come true with the collapse of the USSR, he somehow acquired more balance in his judgments, and these days he can even pass off as an elderly statesman. But this is all too late, three decades too late, to be precise, and the harm of his erstwhile bigotry had already been done then and there…

Curiously, a very popular nickname for him in the Kremlin was “Doktor Birkenau,” which was a clever (if I may say so myself!) play on the original Polish name of Oswiecim-Brzezinka, translated by the Germans as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Very conspicuously, Dr. Brzezinski’s last name is technically impeccably translated into German as “von Birkenau,” hence the biting sarcasm. Not that he deserved it vis-à-vis Nazi Germany, although he was not untouched by a whiff of that traditional Polish anti-Semitism which gives an additional shade of meaning to such a nickname, if one is prepared to go that far, but the fact that the name would become so popular in Moscow’s high places reflected a high level of ill-will toward the man directly, rather than toward the Jimmy Carter Presidency per se, which never merited such an elevated level of personal animosity.

Even more curiously, if you haven’t guessed it yet, the source of the nickname Doktor Birkenau happened to be none other than… your humble servant.

THE LAST AMERICAN PRESIDENT

(See also my larger Nixon entry ‘Russia’s Greatest American Hero,’ which was second in the series of four Presidential entries published together on my blog on January 18^th, 2011, under the joint title Assassination Of The American Dream.)

In my younger years I used to be well-known for my numerous quips, rhymes, and impromptu one-liners. Thus, in 1972, as I had just become Fellow of the USA Institute in Moscow, I was asked my opinion about Richard Milhous Nixon, to which I replied:

“RMN is our man.”

This was not merely a funny joke, though. It pretty much reflected the general view of the thirty-seventh President of the United States in Moscow, among the foreign policy professionals and the political elite.

As a result of the 1963 assassination of JFK, Soviet-American relations suffered a huge setback. Kremlin’s reluctance to deal with LBJ in good faith was a perhaps unfair but humanly understandable reaction to the death of the most promising leader of the Western world, with whom the USSR expected to develop a constructive and mutually beneficial rapport. President Kennedy’s assassination dealt a dreadful blow to that optimistic outlook, which could have been even worse, had America not delivered Nixon in 1968.

Richard Nixon was an experienced politician-statesman, an intellectually brilliant student of world affairs, a great American patriot, and a notorious cold warrior. Moscow applauded all these characteristics of her not-so-new antagonist-in-chief. She had an equal resentment for hardboiled hawks and soft-boiled doves. Her ideal was the Nietzschean noble enemy: a respectable and respectful sparring partner who would never pull the punches, but always offer a healthy joust in the best traditions of Western pageantry.

Nixon offered the Soviets a good game, fearlessly throwing in the thrilling challenge of Communist China. His presidency can be rightly described as the Golden Age of superpower chivalry… His downfall was all the more painful…

I have called Richard Nixon “the last American President” for a reason. Not only was he the last consummate professional in the art and science of world affairs; he was also the last American President who could stand his ground against domestic political pressures and intrigues. At the end, he did not lose his ground: it was, rather, blown off from under his feet…

As I quipped in 1974, following President Nixon’s resignation:

“I hate Watergate!”

ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ

President Lyndon B. Johnson came to the presidency under tragic circumstances still shrouded in mystery, and a lingering cloud of suspicion over his possible role in the assassination of JFK still darkens his legacy, as the mystery of that assassination, investigated during his presidency, has never been solved to anybody’s satisfaction, further aggravated by the 1968 assassination of Kennedy’s brother RFK, who had been eagerly expected to reopen the JFK assassination investigation on assuming the presidency in 1969, which outcome had been assumed to be a sure bet.

Aside from this dark cloud, the heavy burden of the war in Vietnam had become an almost defining part of LBJ’s legacy, actually forcing him in 1968 to withdraw his bid for a second full term. There are indications that LBJ himself hated the war and wished he had never been drawn into it, but felt that he had no choice in this matter.

Lost behind all these image disasters was Johnson’s arguably outstanding role as the father of Great Society. Later presidential historians have tried to establish their credibility as “objective judges” by giving Johnson a higher set of marks for his performance, which now ranges from the extra-high #9 to the “more-like-it” #23, as his personal historical ranking among the presidents of the United States.

In the area of U.S.-Soviet relations, LBJ gets a very generous “satisfactory” mark from me, which is a “C.” After all, he probably did the best he could under the circumstances, only the circumstances were not good for the superpower relationship. The Russians didn’t like him at all, to put it mildly. President Kennedy had been regarded all over the USSR with great affection, taking the cue in this from Comrade Khrushchev himself. Now, JFK had just been assassinated, and everybody in the Kremlin suspected that he had been the victim of a powerful conspiracy, prominently involving the US Government. What strongly supported this US government conspiracy theory was the persona of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, especially considering his bizarre “Russian” connection. Oswald had been a most puzzling American “defector” to Russia, who had subsequently returned to the United States, and now had become, the Russians feared, a perfect scapegoat to lead the public suspicion toward an invisible Russian hand in the Kennedy assassination. Khrushchev was furious that this would be the case, from the instant he had been told about Oswald, and the level of his personal animosity for the new American president had gone through the roof. His successor Brezhnev openly resented President Johnson, and also had no doubt that poor LBJ had had a hand in the assassination…

It goes without saying that President Johnson never took the dangerous path of implicating the Russians, but they did not like him anyway. Still, they agreed to one “summit” meeting with him in Glassboro, NJ, in 1967. On the Soviet side they put up Premier Alexei Kosygin, rather than the actual number one Leonid Brezhnev. The American side’s decision to allow such a “markdown” of their president may not seem like a big deal, in practical terms, but it had a huge symbolic significance, showing the Russians and the closely watching world how dispirited and desperate Washington was in those last years of the Vietnam war, to try to score a foreign policy achievement on such humiliating terms.

The peculiar choice of the meeting place says something about the unpleasant taste of animosity permeating this one and only superpower summit of the Johnson presidency. Kosygin happened to be in New York at the time, attending the ongoing session of the UN General Assembly. On a crafty Soviet initiative, the two sides decided to have their meeting “halfway” between “Johnson’s” Washington, DC and “Kosygin’s own” New York, NY. Glassboro, NJ, just happened to be that geographical spot, equidistant from both.

Needless to say, no superpower breakthroughs were either expected or even planned throughout the Johnson Administration. All the way with LBJ in this context meant going nowhere. It would be the next president’s opportunity to establish normal summitry on his watch, and President Nixon would rise to the occasion in a spectacular manner.

Meanwhile, we are back to LBJ, and, finally, to his best achievement in office, which was of course his Great Society program. Here is the famous and much-quoted excerpt from his “Great Society” speech in May 1964. He delivered it during his election campaign against the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. (See also my entry Great Society, posted on this blog on July 4, 2011.)---

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to rebuild and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

As a comment to this excerpt, I can only say that it is heavily poetic and naively impractical, and it does not agree with my mental picture of LBJ. There is no doubt that he could not have written something like this himself. But it is certainly to his credit that he read this speech, imbuing it with the power of the presidency, and that he also followed through with very significant practical steps.

AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL RANKINGS

(Although the first impression of this entry may be that it is informative-technical, rather than substantial, it would be wrong. This entry is certainly original, as its table of Presidential Rankings is of my own making, and I am not sure that, despite its apparent simplicity, a similar table exists anywhere.)

Later on we shall have an entry on the hundred most influential Americans in history under the amusing title Greatest American Century. This is a different kind of entry: to begin with, it fully belongs in this series on American Presidents and makes sure that none of the highest-rated of them have been cheated of a separate entry of their own.

The reader knows already that I have a particular affection for the first six American Presidents. It is much more difficult to launch a good ship of state than to keep it afloat and therefore those first six must be given special credit for being the launchers, as opposed to being the maintenance crew. It was for this reason that I had an original plan to name this entry, with some Biblical allusions, And The First Shall Be The Best. On a serious note, however, this ought to be a more or less formal entry and so must be its title, which now it is.

And so, what follows next is the complete list of American presidents from number one to the current forty-four. Each name is checked against its rank in a broad variety of polls of such nature. The two figures that accompany each name (i.e. 01-04) reflect the highest and the lowest ranking of the particular president in all these polls. Next, the presidents are grouped in the order of their ranking importance, but without breaking their consecutive numbering. I do this by color-tagging each in the following manner:

The presidents whose rankings put them consistently in the top ten receive the dark-blue color-code. Those who consistently stay in the top twenty-two receive the green code. Those who never enter the top twenty-two receive the orange code. Those fluctuating between the upper and lower echelons are colored in lilac.

I do realize, of course, that I have to write separate entries for each president in the highest two groups. But I reserve the right to give separate entries to my sentimental favorites or those important enough, negatively speaking, to require such separate entries for political and historical reasons.

After this preamble, here is my complete list of the forty-three presidential entrants. (Grover Cleveland has the special historical privilege to be counted twice in this list, as #22 and #24.)---

01. George Washington. -------1789-1797---01-06.

02. John Adams. -----------------1797-1801---07-17.

03. Thomas Jefferson. ----------1801-1809---03-10.

04. James Madison. -------------1809-1817---06-15.

05. James Monroe. --------------1817-1825---07-21.

06. John Quincy Adams. -------1825-1829---16-19.

07. Andrew Jackson. ------------1829-1837---06-14.

08. Martin Van Buren. ---------1837-1841---23-40.

09. William Henry Harrison. -1841-1841---35-39.

10. John Tyler. -------------------1841-1845---31-42.

11. James K. Polk. ---------------1845-1849---09-36.

12. Zachary Taylor. -------------1849-1850---28-37.

13. Millard Fillmore. ------------1850-1853---33-41.

14. Franklin Pierce. --------------1853-1857---31-41.

15. James Buchanan. ------------1857-1861---32-42.

16. Abraham Lincoln. -----------1861-1865---01-03.

17. Andrew Johnson. ------------1865-1869---24-43.

18. Ulysses S. Grant. -------------1869-1877---06-37.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes. -------1877-1881---25-31.

20. James A. Garfield. -----------1881-1881---26-34.

21. Chester A. Arthur. -----------1881-1885---22-28.

22. Grover Cleveland. -----------1885-1889---19-29.

23. Benjamin Harrison. ---------1889-1893---29-34.

24. Grover Cleveland. ------------1893-1897---19-29.

25. William McKinley. -----------1897-1901---17-27.

26. Theodore Roosevelt. ---------1901-1909---02-08.

27. William Howard Taft. -------1909-1913---18-29.

28. Woodrow Wilson. ------------1913-1921---05-19.

29. Warren G. Harding. ---------1921-1923---34-43.

30. Calvin Coolidge. --------------1923-1929---26-31.

31. Herbert Hoover. --------------1929-1933---22-36.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt. -------1933-1945---01-05.

33. Harry S. Truman. -------------1945-1953---07-11.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower. ------1953-1961---06-14.

35. John F. Kennedy. -------------1961-1963---02-11.

36. Lyndon B. Johnson. ----------1963-1969---09-23.

37. Richard Nixon. ----------------1969-1974---12-37.

38. Gerald Ford. -------------------1974-1977---13-28.

39. Jimmy Carter. -----------------1977-1981---13-32.

40. Ronald Reagan. ---------------1981-1989---05-18.

41. George H. W. Bush. ----------1989-1993---09-22.

42. Bill Clinton. --------------------1993-2001---07-23.

43. George W. Bush. --------------2001-2009---28-39.

44. Barack Obama. ----------------2009-2017---14-15.

One last note before I end this entry. The last entrant here, President Obama, is a work in progress and he is not supposed to get a ranking yet. However, some polls have included him, and even the presumably high-falutin’ Nobel Committee has awarded him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, virtually sight-unseen. With these rather odd developments, we cannot but take serious notice, although, even without these, we would never have withheld from the current President of the United States a most intense and scrutinizing consideration.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SECOND INAUGURATION

President Obama is now officially in for the second term, and I wish him and the American nation well. It is considered elementary civility to be upbeat and gracious on a day like this, and I will reiterate my previously made point that, no matter what, I find Mr. Obama the most deserving of all aspirants of America’s latest election cycle to hold the office of the President of the United States. I also give him credit for serving as a singular positive force in uplifting and energizing the spirit of the Black community in America. Yes, under normal circumstances, this ought to have given an incredible boost to the American national morale as such, and made a giant leap toward the ultimate goal of uniting the country, thus creating a favorable climate for productive bipartisanship in Washington.

Mr. Obama comes across as a personable and thoughtful man, and the epithet “academic” (often used as a term of opprobrium, but in his case a reflection of his dignified, culturally refined presence) ought to have contributed to his favorable image abroad, breaking certain unfavorable stereotypes of America, which had regrettably been reinforced by his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Yes, with Mr. Obama in office, America could have regained the moral capital she had possessed during the Cold War, both among her numerous friends and among her secretly admiring enemies,-- but squandered over the two decades of “shock and awe” of unrestrained hubris and greed.

Yes, with Mr. Obama, America could have regained her lost moral authority and her likability on the global scale; and by playing the role of an honest broker in the Middle East, could have minimized the threat of the ongoing “war on terrorism.” Generally speaking, a lot of good things that now appear impossible could have become possible under the two-term Obama Administration.

But the effort has not materialized, and the great expectations have been squashed. Instead of being united, the American nation is dangerously split, and the level of domestic political hostility is unprecedented. The world is at nonstop war, and America is seen by too many not as a leader, but as an obstacle to peace. The shaky foundations of the international financial system continue to tremble, threatening an earthquake, and America is being blamed for this too…

To be fair, I do not see Mr. Obama’s fault in this. He is a victim of the degenerate political system that has established itself in America, promoted by very powerful people who obviously do not have American national interest at heart. Otherwise, why would they be trying to outdo each other in smearing their elected President and making him pitifully ineffective; why would they sow discord and hatred within American society; why would they keep bankrupting the nation, putting the fate of her future generations in dire jeopardy?...

…President Obama is now officially in for the second term, and I wish him and the American nation well. But I very much worry about his efficacy in Washington. I very much worry about the destructive forces unleashed upon America from within, which appear beyond his control…

…“Only Americans can hurt America.” --- President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

FROM CANDIDATE HOPEFUL TO PRESIDENT HOPELESS

(Here is another “dated” Obama entry, written back in 2010. It contains my mid-first-term “verdict” on Mr. Obama’s performance as President, and this verdict is pessimistic. I am not hopeful that by the end of his second term this verdict will undergo any change, for the prospects for his Administration and for America are bleak, in my judgment. The saddest irony here is that Mr. Obama has no credible rivals on the American political scene, and he may in fact be the only one today, capable of governing the country with some tiny shred of credibility, and with an equally tiny prospect of improvement.)

Well, it is the year 2010 now, and my Candidate Hopeful has by now fully established himself as President Hopeless. Apparently, American Presidents do not amount to much these days. The last credible Presidents, Kennedy and Nixon, were both destroyed, one by his physical assassination in Dallas, the other by political assassination, known as the Watergate Scandal.

Alas, Mr. Obama, who was once billed as a new JFK, has not risen to the occasion. He is completely in the power of his handlers; and his foreign and domestic policies, once appearing revolutionary, when they were still in the stage of promises, have all lost their freshness, blending in with Washington’s business as usual, and leaving Mr. Obama with just one signature characteristic left: that of a quickly faded demagogue.

As for the hopeful dreams of the 2008 campaign, they all have been trampled into Washington’s dirt by the hopelessness of waking up to reality.

(This personally saddening, but brutally honest entry is immediately followed on my blog by the third part of the Obama triptych: President Obama’s Second Inauguration.)

OBAMA AND THE NEW HOPE

(This is a “dated” entry, written during the 2008 American Presidential Campaign, before I started posting entries on this blog. In the present posting, it becomes the opening entry of a short “Obama” series, and, as such, it regains its currency, especially considering that it is being posted on the day of President Obama’s second official swearing in ceremony. It will be followed tomorrow by another “dated” entry, written two years later, in 2010, and lastly by a 2013 update, thus creating a chain of historical continuity.)

Preamble of a wishful thinker…

Some people advise us never to put all eggs in one basket. Others warn not to seek our source of happiness outside ourselves, which means beyond our control. Both are right, but in real life, things do not work that way. What if there is just one decently looking basket, to put the eggs in? What if in our Quest for the Holy Grail, our happiness is inextricably linked to the Quest, whose object is conspicuously outside us and realistically beyond our control?...

As a professional man, endowed with certain unique qualities, that under perfect circumstances would have allowed me to make a profound difference in my field of study, which is world affairs, I have by now come to terms with my abject failure to achieve my professional objectives, and have semi-retired from an active pursuit of practical opportunities, reconciling myself with the status of an outside observer, satisfied that I may still be able to make a difference by privately commenting on the unfolding events in such writings as these.

But in my capacity of a private observer, which is presumably moving the gravity center of my effort from the outside to the inside, the focus of my attention still remains outside me, and also hopelessly beyond my control. A giant game is being played out there between the forces of a senseless, self-destructive reality of the “new American century” and my risky investment in the American ideal. With such treasure at stake, I cannot pretend to be a neutral spectator, in fact, I am, by far, one of the most interested parties, with a stake second to none in the game, which will decide, at least in my mind, whether the Physician is still capable of healing himself, or else, the Twilight’s last gleaming bears no prospect of a new dawn.

And here is where the Obama phenomenon comes into the picture. Nobody understands the essence of the so-called old thinking better than I do, and both Senator McCain and Senator Clinton alike are objectively two salesmen of the same snake oil.

But with Mr. Obama, this may be very different. Knowing the world as much as I do, it is surely ready to give Obama a new chance, a new promise of a lease on leadership of the free world. Conversely, no such lease will be given to either Ms. Clinton or Mr. McCain. Without the wishful thinking of idealizing a potential Obama Presidency, he alone has the chance to raise this nation above its racial and ethnic squabbles to the healthy sense of nationalism, which is glaringly absent from the Globalist/neoconservative ideologies of the past few decades. This rebirth of nationalist consciousness may then awaken this nation to the appreciation of nationalism as such in all its particular manifestations among the nations of the world, and thus will provide a giant impetus to international understanding, cooperation, and coexistence, in other words, laying the foundations of a new, better world order.

There are no guarantees, of course, that the fresh face of Barack Obama will be enough to overcome, and to subdue, the forces behind the “neoconservative,” but in fact “neobipartisan,” Project for the New American Century. But, at least, he has a chance to succeed, whereas the others, on both sides, both in the field and on the benches, have none at all.

ARCHON OF THE THIRTY-YEAR EMPIRE

With regard to the title, the word Archon, as used here, is not so much a specific Athens-related historism as a general borrowing from the Greek, to mean the first, or the ruler, thus being a very appropriate parallel to the position of Pericles (to whom this entry belongs) at the top of the Athenian hierarchy. Pericles was the democratic choice of the Athenian citizenry, but, as his story illustrates, the power of one extraordinary personality here incomparably surpasses the powers of democratic government. His subsequent democratic dismissal, and then almost immediate democratic restoration to full power, prove him indispensable to the survival of the Athenian power as such, and his unfortunate natural death from plague was to inaugurate a historical decline of Athens as the preeminent political entity, which status it had previously enjoyed as the direct result of the Greek victory under the Athenian leadership in the two Persian wars.

“…Agariste the daughter of Cleisthenes, having been married to Xanthippos, the son of Ariphron, and being with child, saw a vision in her sleep, and it seemed to her that she had brought forth a lion; and then, after a few days, she bore to Xanthippos Pericles.” (Herodotus, Histories, I-131.)

This was the sole mention of Pericles by Herodotus, Pericles’ contemporary, who had even outlived him by a good fifteen years. The fact that Herodotus was not a citizen of Athens could probably give him a certain advantage of detachment from the contemporary Athenian scene, but, even more probably, Herodotus may have been uncomfortable with writing a history of his day, thus setting a good example for later historians to keep away from the contemporary subject matter, which advice, alas, so many have failed to follow!

The supremacy of Athens, as opposed to the greatness of other Greek cities and regions, has a remarkably short history, considering her chief role in the so-called Golden Age of Greece, which seems to have lasted forever. It begins with the end of the two Persian Wars, against the Persian king Darius (490), and his son and successor Xerxes (480-479). Athenian leadership in these victorious wars gave Athens more than just prestige. The city of Athens emerged as the dominant force in a Greek alliance against the foreign invader (notably, Sparta was not a part of it), and, in the absence of any strong competition, it quickly succeeded in transforming the alliance into an Empire.

This remarkable rise of Athens is largely attributed to the wise leadership of Pericles, general and statesman who governed by the free choice of the citizens for about thirty years, until his fall in 430 BC, followed by a brief restoration to power, cut short by his death from plague in 429 BC. (Oh, the dangers of democracy! The mob is fickle, easily susceptible to the agitation of the loud demagogues with a well-concealed agenda. Yes, it does come to its senses on realizing its folly, but frequently this realization comes too late... But it is never too late to learn historical lessons from such misfortunes. Unfortunately, though, today’s free society is far too afraid of longterm “dictators,” and would rather settle on short-term nonentity “leaders.”)

Although the “popular” choice, Pericles was essentially a refined aristocrat with a keen aesthetic sensibility and an appreciation of art and science, but lacking none of the practical qualities of a great political leader and military commander. Similarly to Alexander the Great, later to be tutored by the great Aristotle, Pericles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, which, in retrospect, sticks another feather into his hat. He became a beloved father of his people, despite a dogged opposition from the more utilitarian brand of the democrats, led by a certain Thucydides (by no means to be confused with his great historian namesake!), who resented the fact that the money of the Greek League, now transferred from the neutral Delos to Athens, was being spent on luxuries, such as the use of marble, gold, precious gems, and ivory, in the construction of Athenian temples, statues, and public buildings.

“Greece appears to be the victim of monstrous violence and manifest tyranny,” Thucydides argued, “when it sees that with the money contributed under compulsion for the war we are gilding our city like a wanton woman, adorning her with extravagant stones, statues and thousand-talent temples.”

Here was a classic ‘utility’ argument that resonates today with an even louder impact. Curiously, Stalin was following in the footsteps of Pericles, when he ordered the creation of the magnificent Metropolitan subway system in Moscow, turning each train station into a work of art, and sparing no expense in doing that. Stalin was, of course, not so much an aesthete and elitist himself, as a self-fashioned symbol of the Russian State, and an authentic manifestation of the aestheticism, elitism, and mysticism of the Russian Intelligentsia. Not in the same mold, but with a similar outcome, Pericles was himself an unapologetic elitist and aesthete, and, fortunately for him, in his refinement, he was not facing the Thucydides democrats alone, but ostensibly, he found for himself a support system among his rich and powerful Athenian constituents, who luckily shared his expensive tastes and a keen appreciation of beauty.

As to the question who are more in the right, the utilitarians and the consumerists, or the aesthetes and the elitists, it is the latter kind that creates the face of any nation. We judge the greatness of nations not by the frugal wisdom of their spending habits, but by the glorious splendor of their extravagant luxuries, be that the great Pyramids of Ancient Egypt, or the sculptures of Phidias and Praxiteles in Ancient Greece, or the great works of thinkers and writers of poetry and prose, or the bronze and marble masterpieces of Moscow’s old subway system. Mind you, such splendid extravagance is by no means “dollars and nonsense.” There is an enormous element of public psychology in it, the uplifting of the national spirit through its daily contact with immortal art and beauty, while taking the people’s mind away-- upwards-- from the unavoidable drabness of their everyday lives.

And last, but not least, it is Pericles’ stubborn dedication to his Aspasia, the scandalous Miletian foreigner of his, the association with whom came at a huge political cost to Pericles. “Behind every great man there always is a great woman,” they say, and it was, apparently, very true in the historically famous case of the two Athenian lovers, Pericles and Aspasia. Generally speaking, the Athenians of the Golden Age were not quite as generous toward geniuses, as we would like to imagine them. Aside from Aspasia, they persecuted Anaxagoras for alleged impiety, and Phidias for alleged embezzlement of funds, both Pericles’ protégés. It may be added that the same Athenians and their sons would, a generation later, persecute and condemn the great Socrates. No wonder, then, that the Athenian shallow democracy was doomed without the leadership of men like Pericles, even though the genius of Greek art and thought could not be so easily extinguished in the darker ages to come.

CYROPAEDIA

Unlike certain conspicuous ancient civilizations, losing their world-historical connection with the nations of today, modern Iran, for a number of reasons, racial-nationalist continuity being foremost amongst them, has retained the right to claim the heritage of ancient Persia, and because of that, the great Persians of antiquity have a permanent link to the Iranian nation of today. This unbreakable link is of key importance in the understanding of what makes today’s Iran tick, and yet Washington’s foreign policy, while virtually declaring Iran America’s enemy number one, appears to be utterly insensitive to the cultural-historical peculiarity of Iran, treating it, instead, as a generic backward authoritarian regime, whose oppressed population just yearns for an American-style democracy. As though the only thing that distinguishes Iran from the rest of the third world is the inordinate nuclear ambition of her leaders, who have grown too big for their spats.

…As though the humiliating lesson of 1979 had been entirely lost on the American superpower, except for a lingering subconscious anti-Iranian bias nurtured ever since.

I am by no means suggesting that America ought to abandon the present-day extreme of hating Iran in favor of the other extreme of loving Iran, but for the sake of very pragmatic objectivity America must make herself understand that Iran is not some smalltime psychotic thug threatening the world with a big-time game, but an authentic world power with over two-and-a-half millennia of major-league history, and a legitimate great-power mentality. She has no intention to allow others to order her around, as to what she is or is not allowed to be, by bullies a tiny fraction her age.

In other words, she must be treated with respect. I see a vicious circle here. Disrespect causes defiance, and defiance is interpreted as a threat and treated with extreme prejudice, at the core of which lies... disrespect!

The title of this entry recalls the Xenophon title, meaning Instruction of Cyrus. In this case I am interpreting it more explicitly as Instruction from Cyrus. In the light of what I said earlier, a lesson of this nature is long overdue.

…Not that it is some foreign concept to America. Instruction from Cyrus was actively sought by her founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson owned two copies of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. In his time, the book was required reading for all aspiring politicians and a bedside reference book for established statesmen. Granted, Jefferson was not reading it in order to understand how America should be dealing with the Persians of his time. But I am confident that, having read about Cyrus the Great, he would never treat the Persians with the kind of disrespect characteristic of his culturally semi-literate successors in the twenty-first century.

So, who was this Cyrus, whose 2,500^th anniversary of founding the Persian Empire was celebrated in 1971 (that is, under the Shah) throughout Iran as a great national festivity, and who is still regarded today (under the Ayatollahs) as The Father of the nation. Whom the Jewish Prophet Isaiah, in the Bible, calls Hashem’s Mashiach, that is, the Lord’s Messiah. (Isaiah 45:1). Whom most historians rank well above Alexander the Great…

Thus, British historian Charles Freeman in his book The Greek Achievement makes this comparison of Cyrus to Alexander:

“In scope and extent, his achievements ranked far above that of the Macedonian king, who was to demolish the empire in the 320’s, but failed to provide any stable alternative.”

Britannica makes this last point clear: “It is a testimony to the capability of the founder of the Achaemenian Empire that it continued to expand after his death, and lasted for more than two centuries. But Cyrus was not only a great conqueror and administrator. He held a place in the minds of the Persian people similar to that of Romulus and Remus in Rome, or of Moses for the Israelites... The sentiments of esteem or even awe, in which Persians held him, were transmitted to the Greeks, and it was no accident that Xenophon chose Cyrus to be the model of a ruler for the lessons he wished to impart to his fellow Greeks. In short, the figure of Cyrus has survived throughout history as much more than a great man who founded an empire. He became the epitome of the great qualities expected of a ruler in antiquity, and he assumed heroic features, as a conqueror who was tolerant and magnanimous, as well as brave and daring. His personality, as seen by the Greeks, influenced both them and Alexander the Great; and as this tradition was transmitted by the Romans, it may be considered to influence our thinking even now…”

In the Western cultural tradition, Cyrus’s historical reputation rests essentially on his enormous prominence in the Bible as God’s Anointed Servant, who returned the Jews from their Babylonian captivity to the Promised Land. A second, Gentile, Moses, if you like. But his legacy is obviously larger than that iconic identification. Cyrus was a military genius who conquered many strong nations, using revolutionary methods of warfare. He was a genius administrator, creating an elaborate and effective system of governing a vast multicultural empire. He was also a genius ruler who was fair and generous to his subjects, native and foreign, allowing the latter a freedom of following their traditional way of life, retaining their religion and a certain autonomy, which all emphasized the advantages of staying under the wing of the Persian power, enjoying its mighty protection from potential outside threats, and minimizing the downside of their loss of national sovereignty. He is also described as” the first champion of human rights,” and his Imperial Charter to that effect used to be, albeit disingenuously and shamelessly self-servingly, the pet boast of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. As for his great empire, it was in itself an unimpeachable tribute to Cyrus’s genius: lasting a full two hundred years after his death in 530 BC, until Alexander’s conquest of Persia in 330 BC.

Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is admittedly “a political romance describing the education and rise of an ideal ruler, a benevolent despot ruling over his admiring subjects” (quoted from J. Hereford’s Introduction to an English translation of Cyropaedia, London, 1914), yet its insight into the character of the man whose actual life is inextricable from mythology has become our definitive source of knowledge about Cyrus the Great, whose legend is immeasurably more credible than most “lives” of historical figures, gleaned from nothing better than “reliable documentation.”

And it is the indestructible legend of Cyrus that forms the historical consciousness of the Iranian people and makes them a nation to reckon with.

ARCHITECT OF THE LAST GLORY

While the glory of Nineveh is inextricably tied to the name of Ashurbanipal (it must also be clear from the previous entry that the whole glorious history of ancient Mesopotamia owes him a large debt of gratitude, on account of his library), the glory of the city of Babylon proper goes hand-in-hand with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II. This last great king of Mesopotamia, before Babylon fell, first to the Persians, and then, to Alexander and the Greeks, owes his fame to two sets of circumstances. His fateful role in the history of the Jews has one curious dimension, which I am particularly eager to discuss in this entry. On the other hand, his role in the history of Babylon and Mesopotamia proper, is a gem in its own right, and, considering the fact that this is also the final entry in my Mesopotamian series, it is the latter aspect of his significance that I have focused on in its title.

Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled from 605 to 562 BC), considered the ablest Babylonian ruler since Hammurapi, inherited the neo-Babylonian Empire from his Chaldaean father Nabopalassar (meaning “son of nobody,” or, as we call them today, “a self-made man”), who had rebelled against Assyria in 626 BC, conquered and destroyed Nineveh, and founded the aforesaid Empire. An able warrior since an early age, Nebuchadnezzar, while still a young prince, defeated the army of Egypt, and secured the control of Syria for his father. Crowned as king, on his father’s death, he felt secure enough at home to continue his relentless campaigns abroad, culminating in the historical conquest of Judah, several sieges of Jerusalem (it took some twenty years to reduce the city to dust,--- not for his inability to do it sooner, but due to his initial reluctance to go beyond exacting tribute from Judah, which was not coming, as Judah defected from him again and again, tying her fortunes to a succession of losers), the destruction of the First Temple, and the deportation of the Jews into captivity. Meanwhile, the fate of Jerusalem, in the wake of his outrage, was to become for more than a century what Isaiah had promised as the land of briers and thorns.

Despite his terrible role in Jewish history, Nebuchadnezzar is viewed by the Jewish tradition in a generally favorable light. He was the protector of the Prophet Jeremiah, much kinder to him than the Jewish kings of Judah were to their own, and he also became a friend to the Prophet Daniel, seeking his advice and acting upon it. Jeremiah was quite tolerant of him, seeing him not as a bloody aggressor and tyrant, but as God’s own instrument, whom it was a sin to disobey. A similar attitude is expressed by the Prophet Ezekiel. In the Book of Daniel, and in Bel and the Dragon, Nebuchadnezzar comes out as a champion of Truth, welcoming God’s vindication. (In a way, one may draw a parallel here between the attitude of the Bible’s Jews toward Nebuchadnezzar, and a similarly favorable attitude of the Hasidic Jews, not long ago invited to a Holocaust Conference in Teheran, to their host President Ahmadinejad. Even more ironic in this “Iranian” respect, it was the Persian King Cyrus who would end the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews and would allow them to return home after his own conquest of Babylonia, just a few years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death. Incidentally, how does a certain Evangelical pastor from Texas, named John Hagee, fit into this picture?...)

This astonishingly positive attitude toward one of their worst oppressors in history, on the part of the Jews, is already enough to mark Nebuchadnezzar as one of the most interesting personalities in world history. But as I have suggested, there is another aspect of his story, which I am now eager to point to.

Inasmuch as Ashurbanipal was the great benefactor of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar was the great rebuilder of Babylon, giving it all the splendor of the world’s foremost capital. The rebuilding effort, lasting throughout Nebuchadnezzar’s long reign, was so extensive that it is practically impossible for modern archaeologists to find any traces of structures at its site predating his time. Herodotus’ florid descriptions of Babylon are, of course, all a testimony to Nebuchadnezzar’s architectural genius.

His Babylon was by far the largest city in the world, surrounded by a 60-mile-long wall, which was often counted as an “alternate member” among the seven wonders of the ancient world. The wall itself was 300 feet high, 80 feet thick, going down 35 feet below the ground, so that the enemy could not tunnel his way under it. The city had fifty-three temples and 180 altars to Ishtar. The Great Temple of Marduk (Bel) was known as one of the world’s greatest sanctuaries ever. Its golden image of Bel plus a massive golden table weighed a good 50,000 pounds. In the prophetic words of Isaiah, Babylon was truly a city of gold.

Associated with the Temple was a ziggurat, popularly known as the Tower of Babel, with seven stages, the base one hundred yards on each side, all reaching a height of 300 feet. Although Nebuchadnezzar’s famed hanging gardens (allegedly built to please his Median Queen Amuhia, but commonly associated with the name of the mythical Assyrian Queen Semiramis) did not survive the fuga temporum, they are universally counted as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, second after the Egyptian Pyramids.

Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace in Babylon was yet another magnificent structure, whose vast ruins were dug up by the archaeologists a hundred years ago. Unlike the beautiful Nineveh, completely destroyed in 612 BC, the city of Babylon was spared by the Persian King Cyrus, and long remained one of the greatest cities of the world as the capital of Persia’s richest satrapy. Alexander the Great had ambitious plans for Babylon’s major restoration, but, cut short by his death, they remained unfulfilled, and the city eventually declined in the next few centuries. As the new capital Baghdad of the Abbasid Caliphate was ordered to be built, since 762 AD, the builders, with complete disregard for the Babylonian history, used Babylon’s hallowed bricks to build Baghdad and repair the canals, reducing Nebuchadnezzar’s last glory to a desolate heap of mounds, as if in fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of Isaiah 13:17-22 and Jeremiah 51:37-43.

So much for modern Iraqis and their Arab ancestors, claiming ownership of the Babylonian glory. The fact that the memory of Babylon survives in the history of human civilization owes no thanks to those who used its ancient structures for bricks, and back in 762 AD discarded Babylon’s antiquity in favor of a brand-new construction called Baghdad. As for the historical legacy of Nebuchadnezzar himself, aside from his unique place in the Bible, his monument as the architect of the fairytale city of Babylon is aere perennius, built not so much out of brick and gold, as out of the hylos of the historical memory of the human race.