by Holly A. Case

Alen R. (left) and Arkan (right)

Is there a relationship between politics and madness? The history of the legal strategy known as the insanity defense offers some clues. One thinker, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, was so haunted by the moral confusion of the insanity defense as to wonder whether there is a way to tell right from wrong without reference to right and left.

Last month before a packed courtroom in Graz, Austria, a man stood trial for three counts of murder and 108 counts of attempted murder. The defendant, Alen R., appeared each day in a white suit. His face, like his last name, was obscured in the Austrian media, but the case was such a high-profile one—all seven days of the proceedings were broadcast live and it was front-page news in every one of the Austrian dailies—that Alen R. became something of an anti-celebrity.

On June 20, 2015, just after midday, Alen R. ran down pedestrians and cyclists with his SUV along a route stretching more than a mile through the city center of Graz. Witnesses estimated his maximum speed to be over 60 miles per hour. At one point he stopped to attack two people with a knife. Over the five-minute duration of his “mad driving spree,” he killed three people and injured thirty-six, many of them seriously.

The focus of the trial came down to one question: “Is Alen R. so mentally ill that he can assume no responsibility for the apocalyptic drive in his SUV through the pedestrian zones of Graz?” At issue were the conflicting expert assessments of psychiatrists and a psychologist regarding the defendant's sanity: one had concluded that he was “of unsound mind” and should therefore be referred for psychiatric treatment rather than given a prison sentence, and another believed Alen R. to be very much “of sound mind” and said he should stand trial as an accused criminal. To break the tie, a third (German) psychiatrist was called in who diagnosed him with schizophrenia. In the end, the jury deferred to the testimony of a fourth expert, a psychologist, who declared Alen R. to be of sound enough mind to be criminally responsible for murder and attempted murder. He was given a life sentence (though it is not yet binding) along with a referral for incarceration in a facility for the criminally insane.

Read more »

by Hari Balasubramanian

There are interests that lie dormant within us, waiting to take hold some day. If someone had said ten years back that I'd be into birds, I would have been skeptical. It's true that I always had a fondness for animals: in high school, I spent a lot of time following neighborhood stray dogs and watching cheetahs chase gazelles on National Geographic. After moving to Arizona for grad school, I sought out every opportunity to hike and visit the famous national parks of the American southwest. But despite all the time spent outdoors, birds had never intrigued me. I used to be puzzled, even amused, by people who showed up at a trail with binoculars.

For many, it's the sighting of a particular species, usually a rare or colorful one, that sparks an interest. In my case, it was a very common North American bird – the cardinal. This was in 2011. I'd been living in Amherst, Massachusetts for three years. I had heard of cardinals, mostly as the name of a football team, and had never spotted one.

But in March that year, I suddenly starting seeing them: outside my apartment, during my walks in the woods around Amherst and while driving (they would often fly across the road). The crested bright red male was a thrill to watch. I felt privileged every time I saw one. Something was being revealed just to me! I asked others if they had seen any and would feel proud if their reply was negative. There was probably a simpler explanation of course. It snowed and rained a lot that year, and the population could have spiked for some ecological reason. Or the sight of the first made me look for more every day, with the result that I had simply begun to see what had always been there.

Whatever the reason, cardinals sparked a wider interest in birds and indeed all other species. It all seemed a tremendous mystery.

Read more »

by Richard King

The late Alexander Cockburn once suggested – mischievously, as was his wont – that the principal reason The New York Times published a “Corrections” column every morning was to convince its readers that everything else in the previous day's paper had been 100% true, morally as well as factually. In this way The Gray Lady maintained her reputation as America's premier clearing house for “All the News That's Fit to Print”: by reminding the world that she, too, was ever-so-slightly fallible.

Observing the meltdown in the US media in the weeks since Donald Trump became the GOP's man, it is hard not to think of Cockburn's zinger. Faced with the prospect of a President Trump – now highly unlikely, post-the Access Hollywood controversy – the media has moved from shock to repentance: Grub Street is jumping with journalists eager to take their share of the blame for the elevation of the Orange One. Nor, I think, are they wrong to do so, though the terms in which the mea culpas are currently being offered in the press manage both to miss the point and to highlight the very attitudes for which they should be apologetic. I'll get to those a little later. Suffice it to say, for now, that the media's self-flagellation in this instance smells strongly of self-aggrandisement.

The self-flagellation was discernible even before Trump's nomination. The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg, for example, suggested as long ago as May that the media was failing in its duty to voters, so wide of the mark had its predictions been. But it is only in the last few weeks that the sound of hats being dutifully chewed has yielded decisively to the rustle of sackcloth. Nicholas Kristof, also writing in the Times, struck an especially masochistic note: “Those of us in the news media have sometimes blamed Donald Trump's rise on the Republican Party's toxic manipulation of racial resentments over the years. But we should also acknowledge another force that empowered Trump: Us.”

Read more »

by Emrys Westacott

Donald Trump epitomizes extravagance. Not the imprudently living beyond one's means sort of extravagance criticized by Ben Franklin, but the kind that spares no expense in the quest to gratify one's desires and impress people.

Gold-gilded towers, marbled mansions, emblazoned private jets: all of them scream out, “Look how f____ing rich I am!”

There is a paradox here. You'd think that Trump flaunting his wealth so unabashedly would turn off the majority of voters. You'd expect it to especially turn off the ones that the polls say make up his base–men without a college education who feel they are losing out in a changing world. After all, most people aren't rich. That's why politicians like to present themselves as commoners: so that voters can identify with them. Even those who ate baby food off silver spoons will typically tell stories about some parent or grandparent who was dirt poor and worked their way up.

There is also a deep strain in American culture that has always been highly critical of luxury, extravagance, boastfulness and pride. These are, after all, the opposite of: simplicity, frugality, modesty and humility–the traditional Christian values taught by Jesus, practiced by the Puritans, and associated with the rural homestead.

Furthermore, a preference for frugal simplicity and related values is not just a Puritan prejudice. It's supported by a rich philosophical tradition, from Socrates and Epicurus in ancient times to Thoreau and Wendell Berry more recently. Like our religious heritage, this tradition has left its mark on our thinking. According to these sages, frugal simplicity is the path to both virtue and happiness.

Now some might argue that these traditional values are out of fashion. But that's not entirely true. Simplicity is still respected. When the current pope was chosen in 2013, his simple lifestyle was hailed on all sides as a sure sign of his moral integrity. Warren Buffet, “the sage of Omaha,” has a reputation for wisdom that is decidedly enhanced by his choosing to live in the same unexceptional house that he bought in 1958.

So how is Trump able to turn not just his wealth but his showy, extravagant lifestyle into political capital?

Read more »

by Humera Afridi

On a recent weekend morning, I spoke with eminent writer and intellectual Gündüz Vassaf at his home on the island of Sedef in Turkey. I was calling from Manhattan, New York, via Skype, and the distances of space and time between us collapsed to make way for a conversation that felt like a natural continuation of a felicitous meeting earlier in the summer.

Vassaf, the author of 14 critically acclaimed books of nonfiction, fiction, essays and poetry, had just returned from a brisk swim in the Sea of Marmara. It was a chilly 20 degrees Celsius on the island, the sun suspended low in the late October sky, but that did not deter him. I sense there is not much that can restrain Vassaf from following his heart. His is a quest for freedom—in work, in life, in mind, in body—a right that he asserts not just for himself, but, judiciously for all sentient beings, and does so with a rare ebullience, one balanced with wisdom.

In his 1987 bestseller, Prisoners of Ourselves, Vassaf writes:

“This book is about freedom. It's about freedom we avoid, freedom that we fear to have in our everyday lives. Even with our simple daily acts we subject ourselves to a totalitarian order of our creation and subservience.

My first idea was to write a book about our accommodation of totalitarian regimes. Throughout history, millions across the world have experienced changes in regimes from a relatively democratic state to a totalitarian order.

In the end and over time, we acquiesce to these regimes. We internalize the new norms. The very few who don't, become martyrs, unknown patients in mental hospitals, forgotten prisoners of conscience.

I did not write a book about the above because I realized that also in “democratic” regimes we can become prisoners of ourselves.”

Prisoners of Ourselves explores the psychology of totalitarianism in every day life and is a profound elucidation of human consciousness. It sold over 70,000 copies when it was published and quickly rose to the stature of a contemporary classic in Turkey. Vassaf has written many other works in between this astute and marvelously prescient book of lyrical essays—one which I find illuminates the present historical moment—and his most recent, What Can I Do? that was released, serendipitously, a week after the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey.

Read more »

by Carl Pierer

Much has been written about Zeffirelli's adaption of Romeo & Juliet, in particular its focus on the themes of youth and beauty. A neat narrative lends itself to explain the films popularity and immense success: Zeffirelli catered for a teen audience (choosing unknown, very young lead actors, exploring themes of sexuality) in a time where precisely this teen audience was preoccupied with similar explorations – the film was released in 1968 – need more be said? Today, it seems, Zeffirelli's once progressive interpretation has become canonical. The film, to a modern audience, seems a trifle antiquated: the romance, the costumes, the operatic acting all add to its heaviness. Yet, beneath this striking opulence, the film is a subtle and skillful interpretation of Shakespeare's text. It is a nuanced study of the consequences of patriarchal structures based on a phallic conception of masculinity, which has not lost any of its actuality. More so, it treats women as agents by painting them as complicit supporters of the patriarchal hierarchy.

*

In a brilliant essay, Peter Donaldson has explored some alternative themes dominating Zeffirelli's adaption. One of them is its treatment of the homoerotic undercurrents in Shakespeare's text. Donaldson reads Zeffirelli's film as visually underscoring Shakespeare's social criticism of the patriarchal structures which form the social context of the play. The feud, which produces the tragedy, is understood, on this reading, as a symptom of a much deeper illness: “misogyny and its corollary, male fear of intimacy with other men.” (Donaldson, p. 153)

Read more »

by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Interviews and dates begin thus, “Tell me something about yourself”. In that moment, I balk. After all, what among a dozen different things might this question demand? Must I confess? Shall I tell all? Shall I say everything there is to say? Do I even know? Come to think of it, is who I am right now tantamount to who I will or want to be? Breathing deep, I brush away the doubts. I condense. I offer caveats. I make self and knowledge palatable to my interviewer. Eyes shining, legs crossed, smile wide, back straight, I produce all of the everything that must mean so little.

There is so much I'd like to say. But I fear incomprehension, and derision, and the walls between people that render them interested mainly in self. And yes, I know. This essay. But surely, things about self are also things about the world? In David Szalay's recent work, “All That Man Is”, one of his protagonists is dismayed that the world he knows ends with him; there is only one person capable of knowing this world, and he is afraid of mortality and how it will destroy this world. I wonder that he didn't ask the other question; if this world even exists. So in hopes that it does, and in trying to grapple with its ultimate destruction, let me tell you some things about myself.

Most times, I am not even sure I exist. I am wholly and entirely the Descartian subject, however. I walk around with a body from which I feel an arm's length distance. We live together, my body and I, in a tenderly choreographed dialectic. I marvel at it sometimes, so full in its materiality and definitive weight. I wear it like raiment; other times, it wears me. And some very rare times, like when I manage to hold a tree pose, we are one.

Read more »

by Hirsch Perlman

The name of the street I live on is Bargen Way and The Battle at Bargen Way is the term I long ago gave to my studio practice. So, let me tell you about the battle at Bargen Way.

I had a mind to make a mechanical, articulated joint, perhaps for an unknown figure. And for some reason (because this is what artists do— close down the infinite possibilities, the infinite freedom we have to reveal a set of seemingly random finite possibilities) I would have to do this with no hardware, no glue, no fittings, just wood.

Two years of tooling up and experimenting followed and I arrived at an odd daisy chain design of interlocking wooden axles, nuts, and bolts. These parts were infinitely adjustable and could be locked in any orientation. I toyed with a variety of uses, placement, attachments, and configurations of the joint. Many kinds of wood were put to the test. The best wood, lignum vitae (wood of life), comes from South America. It's an extraordinary wood, with a resin that acts as a natural, built-in lubricant that has a lovely smell. Believe it or not, it's used to make large bearings in hydro-electric generators (I purchase the cut-offs from the manufacture of those bearings). It lasts longer than steel in that application. One of the first mechanical clocks was made out of lignum vitae.

Another year of toying and the real meaning of the joint unfolded. It's a mechanical schematic of thinking, the brain as an versatile tool. These parts were too flexible to be regular joints, they were “mind,” not body.

I built a number of prototypes. 10-12 foot tall “stick person” bodies/limbs with my adjustable joint as neurons/hair/headdress, each thinking itself.

If I'd managed to properly anchor any of the them to the ground, they might still stand. I missed the storm and the battle, but not its aftermath. I would need to draw this out, look at the carnage for a long time, before I knew what it meant.

Read more »

by Paul North

Fate is a conspiracy between past and future, a compact, mostly secret, that forbids us to deviate from what was decided ages ago. Fate is a keyhole through which you glimpse the secret compact. Fate is also a feeling. Out of a series of little glimpses arises an overwhelming sense that there is nothing to be done.

The last person we would associate with a predetermined future, oblique glimpses, and a feeling of paralysis is Charles Darwin, who liberated natural history from a pre-existing plan. In a certain sense, after Darwin, nature becomes a zone of freedom. For a quick comparison, some of the most forward-thinking of his contemporaries, the geologist Charles Lyell for instance or anatomist Richard Owen, believed in fixed species—despite their commitment to evolutionary ideas considered radical in the day. What separated Darwin from many of his contemporaries was the inkling that became his theory of “natural selection.” The theory says that little has been decided in advance. A “species” is a complex, contingent negotiation between a generation and its environment, as well as between the species and its past, not to mention between that species and its ongoing possibilities for transmutation—its future. At any moment the environment could find itself at a turning point, and the species could find itself, without the inherited resources, unable to transmute sufficiently in order to survive. Then the species goes extinct and an unanticipated form of life takes its place.

“Natural Selection” does sound like a force beyond our control, a force that, although we can't see it, nevertheless controls us. Say “Natural Selection” and the three Greek old ladies, the fates, appear before us, laying out our destinies on their great loom. It also sounds like the “invisible hand” in laissez-faire economics. “Invisible hand” was Adam Smith's phrase that became a popular metaphor for the orderly distribution of wealth without any external source for that order. Isn't it odd? To describe a situation without an external force governing events, we use a phrase that means precisely an external force governs events. In economics as well as in biology, when we want to say there is no such thing as fate, we name an intractable, invisible authority, an economic hand that orders, a natural hand that selects.

Read more »

Of Enlightenment

clicking buttons of a remote I dream of enlightenment
of crammed refugees in boats I dream

in flickering glow of screens I dream of enlightenment
of history that still careens I dream

hearing sirens in the dark I dream of enlightenment
of popping guns in parks I dream

seeing new corpses in the street I dream of enlightenment
of black men beaten by blue I dream

tasting the sky of a hard rain I dream of enlightenment
of earth recoiling from human stain I dream

feeling the blast and bite of drones I dream of enlightenment
of streets of blood and bones I dream

seeing skeletal forms of girls and boys I dream of enlightenment
while surfeit banquets cloy I dream

while glittering glass cubes burn and fall I dream of enlightenment
while no one seems to learn at all I dream

.
Jim Culleny
10/11/16

by Michael Liss

Sixteen. That was the percentage of respondents in a snap CNN post-second debate poll who said that they had heard about Donald Trump's “sex tape” and that it made them more likely to vote for him. 16 Percent. One in six voters surveyed, likely one in three (or more) of Trump supporters. Here's another number–Eighty-Three. In a WSJ/NBC News Poll, again, taken after the release of the tape, 83 percent of Republicans believe that the party should back Trump through the election.

Perhaps that is just circling the wagons–a later Washington Post/ABC News Poll showed the number of “mores” evaporating, but still had 83% of Trump voters saying it made no difference to them–and they were backed by a number of Evangelical leaders. A reasonable person might ask, why? Why would anyone with a girlfriend or a wife or a daughter or a mother (everyone has a mother) ignore the coarseness, to say nothing of any of the other controversial and even inflammatory things he's said and done? Their answer is that are with Trump, come hell or high water, and they aren't going to let any pointy-headed, liberal MSM pollster (or sanctimonious Establishment Republican) tell them otherwise. Trump is their guy, and there is nothing further to discuss.

That odor you are detecting is from the dumpster outside RNC Headquarters. It already had a distinct bouquet, but now is accompanied by occasional puffs of smoke. It's not the only dumpster in town—there is one near virtually every conservative think tank in America. What you are witnessing, in real time, is possibly the final death blow for Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, and Ronald Reagan's Conservative Movement. When this election cycle is over, win or lose, there will still be a Republican Party, and there will still be a Conservative Movement, but Donald Trump may very well have vandalized the two into unrecognizability.

Read more »

by Dave Maier

I had not intended to return to the issue of marijuana legalization so soon after my last such post, but this will be my last post before the November election, and there are ballot initiatives about marijuana legalization in no fewer than nine states – four medical marijuana (Arkansas, Montana, Florida, and North Dakota), and five “recreational” (California, Nevada, Arizona, Maine, and Massachusetts) – so here we go again. I won’t give a general argument for or against, but just give a sense of the wide variety of relevant issues. If you live in any of these states, please be sure to read the particular initiative carefully before voting.

Marijuana users constitute a small minority of the population, but recent polls have shown consistent majorities in favor of legalization. Not surprisingly, older voters and Republicans are less likely to support it, although not by large margins. More surprising is the opposition to the various legalization initiatives by those otherwise in favor. Why would one want to legalize marijuana but oppose an initiative which does that very thing?

For an answer, let us direct our browsers to noon1.me (“No on [Maine’s ballot proposition] 1”). Again, one might expect a site with that name to argue that it would be horrible to allow our citizens to freely take drugs to get high on drugs, and no doubt there are such sites (for a refresher on prohibitionism, see my previous post). Instead, its focus is mainly on the various regulations involved in, as proponents of the initiative put it, “regulating marijuana like alcohol”. These regulations are necessary, proponents believe, in order to sell the idea to non-users, and indeed the only successful initiatives to date (in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, and DC), as well as the various initiatives likely to do well this year, have a whole laundry list of regulations on public use, home growing, DUI limits, possession limits, and so on. This is especially true in California, where the tag line for this year’s effort (“Let’s get it right”) alludes to the apparently overly lax nature of the failed legalization initiative there in 2010.

Read more »

by Genese Sodikoff

For thousands of years, people on every continent (save for uninhabitable Antarctica) have recognized the behavior of rabid animals and seen the ravages that rabies inflicts on the human mind and body. While the biological symptoms of rabies are universal, it, like many global diseases, manifests in different places with unique cultural markers and histories. These include everyday etiologies, or the ways people trace the origin of a disease or condition. They include the specific images or emotions expressed by victims in a feverish state, or the treatments applied to rabid animal bites. Beyond the cultural ideas and practices that shape any illness, rabies' origins and unpredictable incubation period, which can range anywhere from a week to months (or years!) before symptoms appear, invites the human imagination to fill in the blank.

In Madagascar, where I do anthropological fieldwork, rabies has been around since at least 1896, when the French colonized the island. Historian Eric T. Jennings writes that by 1899, a Pasteur Institute was established to forcefully combat human rabies, known as hydrophobia, but the virus was never eradicated. Jennings writes that to French colonial scientists experienced in treating rabies, Madagascar appeared to have a particularly acute and fast-spreading strain, requiring “more frequent injections of more active virus.” Rabid dogs in Madagascar appeared more ferocious than elsewhere, aiming right for the face.

Given the prevalence and history of rabies in Madagascar, I was surprised to learn that many Malagasy people (including doctors and veterinarians) attribute the viral source to a wild species that has only recently appeared on the landscape: a creature they call “little big chest” (kelibetratra). I refer specifically to people in the region of Moramanga District, about a three-hour drive east of the capital, Antananarivo, but knowledge of the kelibetratra as the rabies source extends far beyond this district.

The creature was described to me as a furtive wild dog from the rain forest that only roams late at night. It is built like a pit bull, but with shorter legs and a bigger thorax. Because of deforestation, they said, the animal has been scared out of its natural habitat into villages and towns, where it attacks pet dogs and cats, infecting them with rabies.

Read more »

.

by Leanne Ogasawara

On the day of the second presidential debate, my mom and I decided that it would be just too lewd for my son to watch.

I suppose I should mention my son is 14!

Never in my life, have I seen anything like the insane circus that is surrounding this presidential debate, have you? With 24 hour a day coverage and the wild reaches of Internet, it feels like the election is going to take down the entire country with it. I mean, I was just walking my poodle this morning, and I heard two guys in spandex shouting about Trump's latest outrages as they screamed past me on the their bikes.

You can't get away from it. Not even in the days of Bill Clinton was there this level of lechery.

And so I totally agree with John Oliver, when he said we have reached a point so low in this election that we are now breaking through the earth's crust, where drowning in boiling magma will come as sweet, sweet relief.”

Yep.

Of course, Oliver had taped his show before the world had started gleefully repeating “that word” over and over again. All of a sudden, “that word” was everywhere, to the point that the detestable Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hugh was seen demurely asking CNN's Ana Navarro to, “Please stop saying that word, because,” She explained, “My daughter is listening…”

Suffice it to say this did not go over well with Navarro, who angrily responded,

“You know what Scottie? Don’t tell me you’re offended when I say ‘pussy,’ but you’re not offended when Donald Trump says it!” Navarro shouted at Hughes. “I’m not running for president. He is.”

The CNN panel –along with millions of viewers– sat there stunned, because TRULY, you just can't make this stuff up!

Read more »

by Bill Benzon

Jamie is a young man in his early twenties. He has Down syndrome and is the son of Michael Bérubé and Janet Lyon, who teach at Penn State. Michael has just published Life as Jamie Knows It: An Exceptional Child Grows Up (Beacon 2016). Here’s how Michael characterizes his book (p. 16):

In the following pages, Jamie and I will tell you about his experiences at school, his evolving relationship with his brother, his demeanor in sickness and health, and his career as a Special Olympics athlete. And we’ll tangle with bioethics, politicians, philosophers, and a wide array of people we believe to be mistaken about some very important questions, such as whether life is worth living with a significant disability and whether it would be better for all the world if we could cure Down syndrome. (Quick preview: Yes. No.) But we will not tell you that Jamie is a sweet angel/cherub whose plucky triumphs over disability inspire us all. We will not tell you that special-needs children are gifts sent to special parents. And we will definitely not tell you that God never gives someone more than he or she can handle, because as a matter of fact, God dos that all the time–whether through malice or incompetence I cannot say.

That’s a fair characterization of the book. There are stories about Jamie, lots of them, and some stories by Jamie in the Afterword. But there is also philosophy, especially the final chapter, and discussions of disability policy, health care, education, and job-related. The stories about Jamie, his family, and friends, both illuminate and motivate the more abstract discussions. Here and there, as you might already have deduced, Michael slips in a zinger, sometimes mild, sometimes hot and spicy.

In the interests of full disclosure I should tell you that Michael is a friend. While I’ve only seen him face-to-face once, I’ve known him online for sometime, interacting with him through his now defunct blog, American Airspace, where Jamie was a frequent topic of conversation, and through email about this and that, mostly recently about Jamie’s art – a topic we’ll get to in due course. Thus this is not an arms-length review. It is simply a discussion of issues raised by a thought-provoking and well-written book.

Read more »

by Matt McKenna

Having watched the second presidential debate three days after watching Deepwater Horizon, it was difficult to know which ninety minutes of entertainment showcased the greater disaster. Sure, Deepwater Horizon depicts the worst human-caused environmental disaster in United States history, but then the debate was something of a disaster itself. While both Deepwater Horizon and the debate were compelling to watch in a glad-that’s-not-me-on-screen sort of way, isn’t it strange that a movie about an oil rig fire caused by greed and avoidable mistakes somehow inspires more confidence in humanity than a debate between two people vying for the most influential job in the world?

Deepwater Horizon follows Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) and Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) as they chopper in to start a three-week rotation working on the eponymous oil rig. When the two men finally reach the work site, they’re greeted by a smug BP suit named Vidrine (John Malkovich) who sends home the safety-check crew before they can perform the tests that would have precluded the upcoming catastrophe. And thus, the film’s protagonists and antagonists are quickly established: Mike and Jimmy are the heroes just trying to do their jobs, and Vidrine and the BP stooges are the villains willing to risk the safety of the workers for money. A bit of Googling reveals that the lead-up to the disaster in real life wasn’t quite as simple as the film portrays it, but the depiction of the disaster itself nonetheless seems pretty accurate: something goes wrong on the Deepwater Horizon, and it explodes.

Read more »