Anti-Vaxxers 0 Vaccinated 0. At half-time

People appear to come in two broad categories: they are either 'more conservative' or 'more liberal'.

'More' is an allowable description here because there are no certain or hard and fast dividing lines that mark differences clearly for us. People are complex and varied, with values, views and convictions that overlap and often contradict one another. Thank goodness for that.

However, people who are 'most' conservative or 'most' liberal share tendencies, views, prejudices, beliefs - use whichever term you wish - that bunch together even if they are not exactly predictable. And it seems you cannot argue radicals of either persuasion out of what they believe because you cannot argue people out of what, at root, they are.

Hence the 0-0 draw in this deadly contest so far. One side base their defence on stronger immune systems and the survival of the fittest, trusting they are exempt thereby from personal harm; the other side's attack is that if those advantages are genetic and not cultural, then many among the unvaccinated must still be doomed. 

We await the final result. For now, we can only be sure that conviction will lead the 'most' conservative to mostly accept their fate and that the 'most' liberal are mostly convinced they need not accept theirs.

A big Thank You to Jonathan Haidt

 May 4 2004

On May 4 1954 I heard the Prelude to Tristan and Isolde and the Liebestod for the first time. Words remain as helpless as they always were to describe the shattering effect it had on me. After some more fruitless runs at it as a way to start off this postscript, I give up on all attempts for good. I should have known better by now than to try.

But lying awake several nights recently, I have found myself with enough words at last to tease out from that overwhelming experience strands that are intelligible, at least to me. In with my soaring wonder at this totally new music, the tumultuous onrush of feeling that swamped and swept me away, there mingled a sense of something fathomless and frightening happening to me: an intimation that everything was changing, would not be the same again. I was hearing all there could ever be and nothing you could ever have.

This intuition was uncannily in accord with Wagner’s intention but it worked in me the other way round. When my reason reassembled I had not learned that Bliss lay elsewhere. I concluded that the world was full of wonders and that I enjoyed special privileges, even special powers, to come by them. Unable to express or share it, but never doubting it, I lived in expectation that ineffable beauty would recur, be there for me, not often perhaps but as a matter of course, throughout life. The thought that I would be looking for it in the wrong place never crossed my mind. 

As the busy years went by, I came to know that May 4 1954 would not repeat. When I thought of it I felt no sense of loss. Rather I felt a tinge of guilt, mild unease at something lacking in me, that the highest point of all had been this music one night alone. I see now those feelings were more mistaken than if I had felt loss. My out-of-this-world experience changed and magnified my life in this world. It does not relegate any part of it, even though it is more than any part of it. It is not unfortunate that you never have the moment again. It is supremely fortunate that you have it at all.

There is nothing on earth like Tristan and Isolde. Wagner composed it after he came to see ‘the world’s nothingness’. But to see the world as nothing means he must have also seen it as everything - and his to create. On May 4 1954, unprepared, uncomprehending, I shared in with the rest that frantic intensity of need to exist and exist for - that if this, this, were the only thing the world is to offer, you would live and die to get in to have it. 

           *********            

One mystery at least is solved now, October 2021. More than seventeen years after I wrote the closing piece above, this passage from Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind explains and confirms for me, a lifetime later, my epiphany on the evening of May 4 1954:

The emotion of awe is most often triggered when we face situations with two features: vastness (something overwhelms us and makes us feel small) and a need for accommodation (that is, our experience is not easily assimilated into our existing mental structures; we must "accommodate" the experience by changing those structures). Awe acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns. Awe opens people to new possibilities, values, and directions in life ... shuts down the self and gives people experiences they later describe as "religious" or "tranformative". (My emphasis, as they say.)

                                                                  

Are we being fair to President Cyril Ramaphosa?

People hold different, sometimes mistaken expectations of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into state capture in South Africa. They hear the courtesies and thousands of measured words differently and take different meanings from them, some fiercely condemning as artful evasion what others will accept as guarded admission. 

Whatever his official role in this ANC disgrace, however, there is no doubt Cyril Ramaphosa personally had an uncomfortable time with the probing of the evidence leaders on issue after issue: about the failure of State Security; about the questionable work of the ANC's Deployment Committee; above all, about the failure of the party and its leadership to act against flagrant malfeasance and corruption that went unchecked for years.

It is all in the record now and due for coverage and comment in the commission's report scheduled for October. Meanwhile President Ramaphosa's testimony is widely disparaged and charges of personal escapology continue, resting on the one inescapable fact that what happened happened on his watch: that even if he was not actually responsible for it, he did nothing to stop it. 

The charge carries weight. Cyril Ramaphosa is morally compromised by remaining part of the Zuma administration and is not freed from it by appearing to claim it was someone else's job to take action against corruption, as he did in the case of Popo Molefe, Chair of the Passenger Rail Agency, Prasa.  Doing the right thing is not the sole responsibility of a few positioned to act. It is a duty, met or not, placed on each and every one of us.

As sentence is pronounced, are there any mitigating circumstances? It depends.

This is President Ramaphosa's second appearance before Zondo and former president Zuma went to prison rather than continue with his first. This could mark a difference between the two men that may be more than a fancy in the eye of the beholder. Even the Jacob Zuma Foundation acknowledges Cyril Ramaphosa is not the same man as their founder. If moral judgments are always to be made, one may be in order here.

It is worth pointing out also that when you are in a badly managed or, far worse, crooked business or institution, it is not a simple decision to leave, especially if you have a position of responsibility. You may feel things will improve or that you can help them improve by staying in there; at the very least you have your loyalty to colleagues to consider, along with all the implications that quitting your post has for your family, friends and your reputation.

It is not a 'defense' of Cyril Ramaphosa to say he was in that position and to add that it wouldn't have changed things if he had quit, nor does it confirm he was somehow exonerating or condoning ANC corruption by staying on as he did. 

It shows what is obvious: quitting would simply mean Zuma had won. Whereas now Zuma has lost.

 

 

Did Mitch McConnell do the right thing?

As I was impressed with Mitch McConnell's apparent position in the days leading up to Donald Trump's Senate trial,* am I surprised, disappointed, devastated, at his decision yesterday to acquit? 

Millions will be, and not just US Democrats. Ardent Trump supporters will be infuriated by McConnell's outright condemnation of the former president, at his damning words at the end of the trial that there was no doubt Trump was guilty as charged, a betrayal of their champion. McConnell showed he is one of the 'weak' Congressional members Trump had warned them about and mustered his cavalry against on January 6, a RINO, a traitor who will certainly not save himself by his hypocritical vote. 

But there is more to consider here than the passion on both sides to fault Mr McConnell. Trump's trial can be looked at as a legal, moral, constitutional or political case. On the moral case, McConnell was unequivocal: Trump is a disgrace. On the legal case, he was clear Trump was still open to prosecution under the law, notwithstanding his acquittal by the Senate. Indeed, his final remarks seemed to be advocating that as the proper way to go.

McConnell then took the view that for the Senate, and each US Senator, impeachment demands the strictest constitutional duty. All were agreed to follow and safeguard the Constitution and, under the Constitution, impeachment is a political not legal process. No penalty, no punishment follows a verdict of guilty in the Senate. The House prosecution team had themselves pointed that out.

Still less, McConnell argued, is the Senate appointed moral guardian of 'the president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States' who alone may be impeached for 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors'. The Constitution provides for those impeached to be removed from office and 'disqualified to hold and enjoy any Office of honor under the United States', but not in any other way judged. Donald Trump was already out of office, immune as a private citizen.

It seems a harsh limitation in face of the justifiable outrage at a democratic president's shocking conduct and the horrors of January 6 at the US Capitol. McConnell admitted it made it a very 'close' decision - his word - relying on a narrow interpretation of impeachment under the US Constitution. But how can it be inadmissible or 'wrong' as a Constitutional reading, or as an explanation for Mr McConnell's otherwise inexplicable vote?

Except that a nagging question remains, undoubtedly forever now. Was it an unalloyed decision, absolutely inescapable from the Constitution's written words? Or did the political case, the Republican case, in the end decide the matter?

*Mitch McConnell's Moment, January 13 2021

Will the US Senate vote to convict Trump?

 

Mitch McConnell’s speech in Congress this week was the finest a Republican could make, suspending fears that individual conscience and honour are unable to work under liberal democracy's party system that mainly turns representatives into servants.

Calmly and decently, without grandiloquence or political carping, he showed, with examples, that Democrats have no moral superiority, no right whatever to sermonize, but only that democracy cannot side with Donald Trump. If principle is involved here at all, that is the principle.

A day or so later, the news was Mitch McConnell has thought further; he feels Republicans should 'purge' the party of this president and his legacy. 

All of a sudden, the solution seemed obvious, a clear and undeniable duty: House Republicans must vote to impeach their rogue president. It was not an argument, not even difficult anymore. It is democracy to do so. And so they decided.

But a week is a long time in politics.

Now there are at least three objections and serious concerns on both sides: conviction will exacerbate not heal divisions in the US; a vindictive reaction is inherently undesirable and itself undemocratic; and if the Senate fails to convict, Trump will be vindicated and his supporters and cause encouraged, the worst possible outcome.

President-elect Biden and Mitch McConnell are said to have a sound working relationship. The best solution now could well be a political deal that saves the Republican Party's face and allows the new administration to get on with its monumental task of building America back from Covid and a threatening period of civil unrest.

No doubt talks are going on through multiple channels. The wise will wait and see. 

 

 

 

Mitch McConnell's Moment

Having addressed readers on Trump more than once over his four degrading years, I write at this eleventh hour about Mitch McConnell, so that you - and I - have a record of my thoughts before he proves me right or wrong. If right, I will not be content after this moment in history with knowing that I was and didn't mention it.

I thought his speech in Congress this week was the finest a Republican could make, suspending my fear that individual conscience and honour are unable to work under liberal democracy's party system that mainly turns representatives into servants. Calmly and decently, without grandiloquence or political carping, he showed, quoting examples from his thirty six years' experience of it all, that Democrats have no moral superiority, no right whatever to sermonize, but only that democracy cannot side with Donald Trump. If principle is involved here at all, that is the principle.

Last night, as we watched, the news was Mitch McConnell has thought further; he feels Republicans should 'purge' the party of this president and his legacy. 

All of a sudden, the solution is obvious, a clear and undeniable duty: House Republicans must vote today to impeach their rogue president. It is not an argument, not even difficult anymore. It is democracy to do so.

If Mitch McConnell is reported accurately and gives the lead when the Senate votes, he is not a traitor as many will assuredly claim. Donald Trump will lose his power and future chance of it from the right decision made for the best of reasons: that what he stands for never was democracy and democracy gives everyone the means to defeat it.

We will see if that is dreaming.

Two days later

Though a week is well known to be a long time time in politics, I have not already changed my mind by Friday. I believe Trump should be found guilty by the Senate and face appropriate penalties. I hope sufficient Republican Senators will vote accordingly.

At the same time I understand the objections we hear from both sides and share the serious concerns. There are at least three: conviction will exacerbate not heal divisions; a vindictive reaction is inherently undesirable and itself undemocratic; if the Senate fails to convict, Trump will be vindicated and his supporters and cause encouraged, the worst possible outcome.

President-elect Biden and Mitch McConnell are said to have a sound working relationship. The best solution now could well be a political deal that saves the Republican Party's face and allows the new administration to get on with its monumental task of building America back from Covid and a threatening period of civil unrest.

No doubt talks are going on through multiple channels. The wise will wait and see.