The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 6 Sep 2024Join us as we unfold the post-WW2 history of Korea that resulted in political escalation and eventually a military conflict in 1950. Stay tuned for the remaining parts of this mini-series!
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September 7, 2024
A Nation Divided, Part One
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Trump’s visit to Arlington broke all the norms – no President has ever done this before!
Not being an American, I didn’t realize that sitting and former Presidents were banned from the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, so Trump’s norm-obliterating visit has attracted widespread vilification from all corners of the nation:
If you read the news, Donald Trump recently did something so shocking and unprecedented that observers are staggered by his descent into evil:
He went to Arlington National Cemetery and brought a photographer, so the only possible comparison is to Literally Adolf Hitler. It was so outrageous for Trump to perform the Nazi maneuver of being photographed at Arlington that the son of the late Senator John McCain was forced to make an announcement to the world, revealing that the horror of the event had forced him to change his party registration and support the Democratic presidential candidate:
Sample framing from that story:
Jimmy McCain, who has served for 17 years in the military and is an intelligence officer, said he was angered by Trump’s conduct at the cemetery last week, adding “it was a violation.”
“It just blows me away,” he told CNN. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” about being in a political ad.
See how evil Donald Trump is? No McCain man would ever stand for some bastard shooting a political ad at Arlington National Cemetery. Also, you can click here to watch the political ad that John McCain shot at Arlington National Cemetery.
[…]
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S&W M1917: A US Army revolver in .45 ACP
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jun 3, 2024When the United States entered World War One, it had a significant shortfall in military handguns. The M1911 pistol production was expanded as much as possible, but more guns were needed. Both Colt and Smith & Wesson adapted revolver designs to Army standard .45 ACP ammunition, and both were accepted into service as the M1917, despite being different guns with no interchangeable parts.
The most interesting mechanical element of the M1917 is the development of half-moon clips to allow easy extraction of the rimless .45 cartridge. The clips were designed by S&W, but also licensed to Colt for use in their M1917 revolvers as well.
The S&W M1917 began as Smith & Wesson’s Triple Lock design, which was simplified a bit (by removing the cylinder crane lock and the barrel lug) and rechambered for .455 Webley to sell to British and Canadian forces before the US entered the war. About 75,000 were sold like this, and it was then rechamberewd again for .45 ACP for US military sales. The first US deliveries were made in October 1917, and about 163,000 were produced by the time production ended in 1919. Only about half of them actually got to the front lines by the end of the war, and many of the guns went into storage. They were actually brought back out and used in significant use in World War Two as well.
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September 6, 2024
Climate catastrophism in a phrase – “The sky gods are angry and we’re all gonna pay”
Relax, weather-panic true believers — this is a post from Jim Treacher who gets paid to write funny stuff. This means you can mock everything in it as “fake news”:
I’m pretty old at this point, and for my whole life, the media has been predicting the weather will kill us all.
When I was a kid, the news was all about the coming Ice Age.
Brrrrr! Iran was a bunch of terrorist assholes even back in the ’70s, but the existential threat to America hadn’t been updated yet. They thought the cold was gonna get us.
And that dumb magazine was only $1.25 an issue! Everything might be more expensive 45 years later, but at least we haven’t all frozen to death.
Then the big threat became “global warming”. But when people noticed it wasn’t getting any warmer outside, despite the climate models that were supposed to horrify us, the scare tactic became “climate change”. They didn’t think we’d notice, I guess.
And through it all, there was one constant refrain: The sky gods are angry and we’re all gonna pay.
Do you leave your phone charger plugged in when you’re not using it? Do you drive a gas-powered car because it actually works? Then you’re destroying the planet, according to a pack of millionaires with yachts and private jets.
But now the celebrities and other climate supplicants are in dismay. The weather is letting them down again! Yet another of their predictions hasn’t come true, and they want to know why their climate deities have abandoned them.
Halfway through an Atlantic hurricane season that forecasters expected would be one of the most active on record, there has been a considerable interlude in storms during what is typically the busiest portion of the season, leaving observers to wonder if the forecast was a bust — or if the worst may be yet to come.
Often, at this time of the year, it isn’t uncommon to see two, three or even four named storms occurring simultaneously. But on Wednesday there were no current storms, and there hasn’t been one since Hurricane Ernesto formed, beginning as a tropical storm, on Aug. 12 …
Despite the reprieve in recent weeks, though, “it is too early to dismiss the seasonal hurricane outlook as a bust,” said Dan Harnos, a meteorologist at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
You got that? We haven’t endured as many deadly, destructive hurricanes as the scientists predicted. And they’re worried about it. They want people to suffer and die, but they’re hopeful that nature will still unleash its fury on us.
There’s still time for the worst to happen. Fingers crossed!
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September 5, 2024
Is the DEI tide finally receding from corporate boardrooms?
At the Foundation for Economic Education, Jon Miltimore explains why many major US corporations are reconsidering their earlier “all in” approach to lecturing their customers about progressive causes:
Bud Light’s brand ambassador, Dylan Mulvaney, whose antics triggered a consumer boycott that cost the company over a billion in lost revenue.
DEI is just one form of corporate social activism, which comes in various forms and includes its cousin Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). Both ideas fall under, to some degree, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the idea that corporations have a duty to take social and environmental actions into consideration in their business models.
If you’re wondering why Burger King has commercials on climate change and cow farts, and why Bud Light’s commercials went from featuring Rodney Dangerfield and Bob Uecker to trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, it’s because of CSR.
The idea that corporations should fight for social causes has skyrocketed in recent years to such an extent that activism is inhibiting companies in their primary mission: generating profits by serving customers.
“Firms leveraging situations and social issues is not new, but showcasing their moral authority despite a disinterested consumer base is,” Kimberlee Josephson, an Associate Professor of Business at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, has observed.
Bud Light’s decision to feature Mulvaney cost them an estimated $1.4 billion in sales, and it revealed the danger of corporations leaning into social activism, particularly campaigns and policies that alienate their own consumer bases.
Not very long ago, companies like Chick-fil-A faced backlash from progressive activists for supporting traditional marriage. Culture war advocates on the right have responded in similar fashion.
Conservative influencers have made a point of raising awareness around “woke” corporate initiatives — white privilege campaigns, climate change goals, LGBTQ events, etc. The most successful ones, such as Robby Starbuck who pioneered the campaign against Tractor Supply and John Deere, made a point of targeting corporations with conservative consumer bases.
“If I started a boycott against Starbucks right now, I know that it wouldn’t get anywhere near the same result,” Starbuck recently told the Wall Street Journal.
One can support Robby Starbuck’s tactics or oppose them. What’s clear is that corporations increasingly face risks for participating in social activism campaigns, and the threats now come from both sides of the political aisle.
Respectful neutrality on cultural issues used to be the default way for companies to avoid insulting the general public and potentially alienating customers. Under the influence of DEI/ESG/CSR advocates, corporations were persuaded that they could offend half of the population without suffering any meaningful financial losses. That turned out to be untrue.
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September 4, 2024
The Korean War Week 011 – Destroy the Perimeter! – September 3, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 3 Sep 2024The North Korean forces launch a huge new offensive against the entire Pusan Perimeter, hoping to break through at least somewhere along the line. They are aware that time is of the essence, for the UN forces grow in number daily, while they are losing a battle of attrition. Some new UN arrivals this week are the first British ground troops in Korea for the fight. Meanwhile, Douglas MacArthur’s plans for his upcoming surprise counteroffensive hit all sorts of snags thanks to Korean geography.
Chapters
00:51 Recap
01:26 The British Arrive
03:47 New KPA Strategy
06:49 The New KPA Offensive
12:26 More Incheon Issues
15:16 The US and China
17:12 Summary
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The History of Barbecue
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published May 28, 2024Slow-cooked molasses barbecued pork with a vinegary sauce
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1839 | 1879“Barbecue” the cooking technique has been around for a lot longer than “barbecue” the word, but it has always been a delicious way to prepare meat. This is the earliest recipe I could find for something called barbecue, and I paired it with a sauce from 40 years later that seems to me to be a precursor to vinegar-based Carolina style barbecue sauces.
The meat is super tender and falls apart. I ended up needing to cook mine for about 12 hours, but it was worth it. You really don’t need anything besides a bit of salt to go with it, but the sauce is a delicious pairing. It packs a spicy, flavorful punch, but it’s surprisingly not too vinegary.
To Barbecue Shoat.
Take either a hind or fore quarter, rub it well with salt, pepper, and a small portion of molasses, and if practicable, let it lie for a few hours; then rinse it clean, and wipe it dry with a cloth, and place it on a large gridiron, over a bed of clear coals. Do not barbecue it hastily, but let it cool slowly for several hours, turning it over occasionally, and basting it with nothing but a little salt-water and pepper, merely to season and moisten it a little. When it is well done, serve it without a garnish …”
— The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan, 1839.As the housekeeper is sometimes hurried in preparing a dish, it will save time and trouble for her to keep on hand a bottle of meat-flavoring compounded of the following ingredients.
2 chopped onions. 3 pods of red pepper (chopped). 2 tablespoonfuls brown sugar. 1 tablespoonful celery seed. 1 tablespoonful ground mustard. 1 teaspoonful turmeric. 1 teaspoonful black pepper. 1 teaspoonful salt. Put it all in a quart bottle and fill it up with cider vinegar.
— Housekeeping in Old Virginia edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, 1879.
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September 3, 2024
The End of World War Two – WW2 – Week 314B – September 2, 1945
World War Two
Published 2 Sep 2024The Japanese sign the official document of surrender and the Second World War is over. There are still some Japanese garrisons yet to surrender, but they begin doing so one after the other. However, war is not over — and there is serious foreboding for future events in places like Vietnam and China — where Mao Zedong is meeting with Chiang Kai-Shek, even as Josef Stalin lurks in the background to secure Soviet interests no matter which Chinese regime comes out on top.
00:00 Intro
00:59 Vietnam Declares Independence
04:04 The Importance Of Manchuria
06:28 Japan’s Surrender
11:22 The Final Surrenders
13:18 Casualties
15:50 The End
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Second Amendment case involving switchblades in Massachusetts
J.D. Tuccille summarizes a (surprising) court decision in Massachusetts which struck down a state law banning switchblade knives:
“IMGA0174_tijuana” by gregor_y is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution undisputedly protects the individual right to own and carry firearms for self-defense, sport, and other uses. But the amendment actually says nothing about guns; it refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, of which firearms are just one example of what dictionaries define as “a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense”. In Massachusetts, last week, that resulted in a decision by the state’s highest court striking down a law against switchblade knives.
Protected by the Second Amendment
“We conclude switchblades are not ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons falling outside the protection of the Second Amendment,” wrote Justice Serge Georges Jr. for the court in an opinion in Commonwealth v. Canjura that drew heavily on two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Bruen (2022) and Heller (2008). The decision found the state’s ban on switchblade knives unconstitutional and dismissed charges against the defendant.
The case involved a 2020 dispute between David E. Canjura and his girlfriend, during which Boston police officers found a switchblade knife on Canjura while searching him. As is often noted, “everything is illegal in Massachusetts” and “a switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device” is only one of a long list of weapons proscribed under state law. Canjura was accordingly charged.
Such absolute prohibitions on arms aren’t permitted in the wake of the Heller decision, so Canjura and his public defender, Kaitlyn Gerber, challenged the ban on switchblades, citing the federal decisions. They also relied on Jorge Ramirez v. Commonwealth (2018) in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned a similar prohibition on stun guns on Second Amendment grounds.
“We now conclude that stun guns are ‘arms’ within the protection of the Second Amendment. Therefore, under the Second Amendment, the possession of stun guns may be regulated, but not absolutely banned,” the court found in that case.
Canjura required similar analysis based on the same earlier decisions, this time with Ramirez in the mix.
The Second Amendment Protects All “Bearable Arms”
Citing Heller, Justice Georges pointed out, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding”. Importantly, though, knives and other bladed weapons have a long history, extending back well before the birth of the country.
“A review of the history of the American colonies reveals that knives were ubiquitous among colonists, who used them to defend their lives, obtain or produce food, and fashion articles from raw materials,” commented Georges. Folding knives, in particular, grew in popularity to the point they became “almost universal”. The court saw no significant difference between the many types of folding knives used over the centuries and spring-assisted varieties developed somewhat more recently, finding “the most apt historical analogue of a modern-day switchblade is the folding pocketknife”.
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QotD: The Libertarian Party clown car
Why are libertarians like this? I see no reason why people who value liberty in the social and economic sphere must also be weirdos who probably eat the silica packet in a beef jerky pouch because it says “DO NOT EAT” and they don’t like being bossed around. I have some sympathy for libertarian positions: I’m socially more liberal than basically every Republican, and I like markets more than most Democrats. But I also know a fully stuffed clown car when I see one, and the Libertarian Party is very much that. And lest you think that this week’s convention was a rare foray into Crazytown, here are some events that establish the Libertarian Party as a tenth-generation Crazytown family whose antecedents are featured on the city crest.
Jeff Maurer, “Why Can’t the Libertarian Party Be Normal?”, I Might Be Wrong, 2024-05-28.
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September 2, 2024
“Queering Nuclear Weapons” … no, don’t laugh because it isn’t funny
At Postcards From Barsoom, John Carter looks into what at first seemed like a less-than-brilliant headline from The Babylon Bee, but is actually a much more serious concern:
Nuclear security is, I’m sure you do not need to be convinced, a deeply serious matter. Ever since we cracked the atom over Hiroshima our civilization has been walking a tightrope over an abyss. A single misstep could mean annihilation – hundreds of millions dead within minutes, billions within days. Doubtless there would be some survivors, but it’s doubtful that industrial civilization would survive. We’ve come within a hair’s breadth of this a few times, not only in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but on other occasions, when radar mulfunctions or computer glitches left launch officers in the USA and the former USSR unsure whether or not to press the big red buttons they were entrusted with. Fortunately for everyone, they didn’t. If they had, none of us would be here.
Nuclear power plants can be almost equally dangerous. We saw the consequences of mismanagement in the 80s, with Chernobyl. Political officers who had no idea what they were doing covered up one screw-up after another. The results horrified a continent and poisoned the good name of the nuclear energy to this day.
Nuclear security, of civilian infrastructure and especially of the strategic weapons reserve, is the kind of thing that you want deeply serious men in charge of. The kinds of guys who wear impeccable grey suits, didn’t laugh because they don’t think your joke is funny, and have multiple degrees in military history and nuclear physics.
[…]
And now, here we are again. The Department of Energy’s new Special Assistant for National Nuclear Security Administration, one Sneha Nair, is also the author of an article titled Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semi-autonomous alphabet agency responsible, as its name implies, for maintaining the security and efficacy of the USA’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Its remit also includes preventing the proliferation of WMDs, overseeing the provision of nuclear propulsion for the US Navy, and responding to radiological emergencies.
These are not small things to be responsible for, and one of their newly appointed senior administrators is apparently obsessed with painting rainbows on the warheads.
Let’s have a look at her.
Unlike Brinton, Nair doesn’t obviously look like a spiteful mutant. No aposematic hair colouring, no facial piercings, no obvious tattoos, nor any other obvious signs of mental illness. Her Xitter account doesn’t even proclaim her pronouns.
So unlike Brinton, there’s no obvious evidence that she’s a sexual deviant. By all appearances, she’s merely another overly earnest head girl, looking to burnish her virtue via demonstrative allyship.
Most of the media coverage was just lol’ing at the woke absurdity of the title of Nair’s article – what could adult diapers, dildos, bugchasing, and Monkeypox possibly have to do with preventing the fiery nuclear annihilation of the human species? Aside, that is, from keeping the observably mentally ill as far from the big red button as possible? What fresh madness is this? But we’re all inured to the regime’s infinite absurdity, these days, so after having a sensibly cynical chuckle we all moved on. I shrugged and moved on myself, until a few days ago when Stelios Panagiotou of Podcast of the Lotus Eaters took the time to actually read Nair’s work. What he found wasn’t lolcow fodder. It was deeply sinister.
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QotD: Yes, yes, but does it work in theory?
I told y’all a while back about a friend of mine in grad school, who did his dissertation on an aspect of the Vietnam War. I’m making some of this up, of course, to protect various anonymities, but it’s at least as “fake but accurate” as the Rather Memo. Anyway, he had a long section on how Colonel So-and-So’s actions while attached to MACV-SOG only made sense in the light of his belief that his ARVN counterpart, Maj. Long Duc Dong, was a Communist infiltrator.
To my buddy, this appeared to be a completely unproblematic assertion. After all, he had reams of paperwork from Col. So-and-So, asserting his categorical belief that Long Duc Dong was a communist. Please note that it was absolutely irrelevant, for dissertation purposes, if Long Duc Dong actually was a Communist. It only matters that Col. So-and-So thought he was, and acted accordingly — which was a 100% true fact, about as “proven” as anything gets in the Liberal Arts. It’s actually extremely rare in the History Biz to find someone saying something like “I, Colonel So-and-So, believe X, with all my heart and soul, and I’m staking my entire professional reputation, not to mention the very lives of my soldiers, on this belief,” but that’s what my buddy had.
One particular prof on my buddy’s defense committee had a problem with this section. Oh, the evidence was fine, and the conclusions reasonable, and well written, and all that jazz. It was just that my buddy didn’t have enough Theory. That’s how it came back through the mark-up process: “Needs more Theory”.
This is where you need to understand academia’s weird argot, as it’s a window into the Smart People’s world. Normal folks would be scratching their heads at this point. Didn’t my buddy already have a theory, a really robust one? “Col. So-and-So only did thus-and-such because he thought Long Duc Dong was a Communist.” My buddy unearthed literal reams of evidence pointing to exactly that. QED, time to move on dot org …
… but that’s not how “Theory” works in academia. I’ve been very careful to capitalize it, because to them, it’s nothing so grubby as “a hypothesis which can be verified or rejected on the basis of evidence”. No, “Theory” is that highfalutin’ Frog shit. What my buddy really needed was an analysis of Long Duc Dong’s subalternity (or “subalterity”, despite years in grad school I’m still not sure which one is “correct”) vis a vis Col. So-and-So, an examination of the colonial and postcolonial discourses of power between the two of them, a long explication of the Colonel’s hegemony and Dong’s resistance. In other words, a shitload of buzzwords, simply for the sake of having buzzwords.1
That‘s how Smart People operate. The real world of actions and consequences, real people doing real things, is completely irrelevant. If you can’t fit it into Gayatri Spivak’s work on “strategic essentialism”, it doesn’t matter.
That’s why Smart People’s decisions seem so randomly stupid, yet planned, simultaneously. They’re not interested in examining actual facts in the real world. Most of the time, they’re not dealing with what we’d recognize to be “facts” at all. Regarding Long Duc Dong’s “subalternity”, or “subalterity”, or whatever, normal people’s normal response is: Who gives a shit? He himself surely didn’t, not having his PhD in Grievance Studies, and neither did Col. So-and-So. Those dumbasses, being so very very NOT-Smart, were only concerned with irrelevancies like “staying alive” and “winning the war”.
But to the Smart, Long Duc Dong’s subalternity (or whatever) isn’t just a real thing, it’s the only thing. When they’re forced to confront actual facts in the real world, they will put all their mental energy into shoehorning those facts into their paradigm, their “Theory”. Hence, Afghanistan. Did the Totally Legit Joe administration really believe that handing a list of our people to the Taliban was a good idea? Did they really think the Taliban would help them get to the airport, rather than marking them down on their rapidly-growing kill list?
You’re damn right they did. Despite all evidence, despite all reason, because the Afghans are “the subaltern” in the Smart People’s Theory — they have to act in thus-and-such way, because Postcolonial Theory insists they can do no other.
Really. I know it’s mind-boggling, but it’s nonetheless true.
Severian, “Mail”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-08-27.
1. After talking my buddy down from the ledge — he had, after all, spent years on this, including several trips to frickin’ Hanoi — we got blind drunk together and had great fun writing the “Theory” section of that chapter. My friends, you’ve never seen such incomprehensible polysyllabic buffoonery. The Postmodern Essay Generator itself couldn’t have done better. To this day I have no idea what any of that shit meant — not one word — but it sailed through committee, and my buddy now has tenure at Big State. When he went to publish his diss as his first book, even the editors — no mean SJWs themselves — confessed to being baffled by it, and suggested taking it out.
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September 1, 2024
Can Chiang and Mao Unite China? – WW2 – Week 314 – August 31, 1945
World War Two
Published 31 Aug 2024Mao Zedong takes his first ever journey by plane to go and meet with Chiang Kai-Shek. They begin what will be several weeks of talks and negotiations. However, Chiang is not aware that Josef Stalin is lurking in the background. And the Soviet Red Army is lurking in Manchuria, having defeated the Japanese there, and are giving tacit support to the Chinese Communists, whose power base is very strong in the north. As for Japan, a motley collection of Allied fleets arrives in Tokyo Bay, for Japan’s surrender document is to be officially signed two days from now.
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August 31, 2024
Kamala deigns to speak to the loyal, pantingly eager sycophantic press … briefly
At Spiked, Brendan O’Neill seems somehow underwhelmed by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz descending from Olympus to grace poor mortals as they appeared on CNN on Thursday night for their first big media appearance:
Yesterday, finally, the kween deigned to engage with her subjects. Yes, Kamala Harris did her first sit-down media interview since replacing Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket nearly 40 days ago. For more than a month she’d maintained a monarchical distance from the grubby presses, flat-out refusing a one-to-one with any of its probing hacks. Now she’s relented and had an exclusive chat with CNN’s Dana Bash. The end result? Only one word will do, and it’s a word normally aimed at the other side: weird.
Seriously, can we talk about this shitshow? It is hands down the oddest “first big interview” I’ve seen with a candidate for high office. It took place at Kim’s Cafe in Savannah, Georgia and none of it made sense. Even the lighting was off – it’s the first time I’ve seen Kamala look bad. The angles were all wrong, meaning Harris, the supposed colossus of joy who will transform America, looked scrunched and tiny between Tim Walz and Ms Bash. And what was VP pick Walz even doing there? Chaperoning? “Strong, Capable Woman Asks Man To Come With Her To Job Interview In Case They Ask Any Hard Questions”, quipped the Babylon Bee.
They had no worries on that front. There were no hard questions. The ass-kissage was off the scale. Bash didn’t only give Harris easy questions – she gave her the answers, too. The most extraordinary moment was when she gently prodded Harris on her flip-flopping over policy. Finally, I thought, a tricky query. But then she told Harris what to say. “Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information?”, she wondered. The way Harris’s face lit up when she was handed this oven-ready excuse for her chameleon-like politics – even in the bad lighting you could see her glee at CNN’s servility to the Kamala cause.
A more objective broadcaster – hell, a kid with a camera fresh out of journalism school – would have dragged Harris for her vagueness. She issued flat platitudes. She engaged in Orwellian gobbledygook about how her policies might have changed but her “values” haven’t – eh? She spoke in tongues about climate change – it’s “an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time”, she said, like a schoolkid padding out an essay with superfluous adjectives. And Bash just sat there, smiling. Maybe everyone in DC speaks like this?
Some of Harris’s volte-facing really is extraordinary. She once said she would ban fracking, now she says she won’t. And how on Earth did she go from comparing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the KKK and saying “an undocumented migrant is not a criminal” to now saying we must sternly enforce our nation’s borders? “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed”, she said. There’s that padding again. Sixteen words in that sentence are unnecessary. And the remaining five – “My values have not changed” – are not true.
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August 30, 2024
The urge to power
At Mindset Shifts, Barry Brownstein explains why the urge to gain power over other people is particularly strong in those who don’t have meaningful lives of their own:
King Louis XIV, the “Sun King”.
Portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) sometime in 1700 or 1701 from the Louvre via Wikimedia Commons.
One of my more memorable exchanges with a student came in a principles of economics class. Part of the assignment for that week was chapters from Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. Ridley compared the living standards of an average worker today with those of The Sun King, Louis XIV, in 1700. Some of my more ahistorical students were incredulous at Ridley’s description of the grinding poverty of the average person just a few centuries ago.
The King had an opulent lifestyle compared to others. Louis had an astonishing 498 workers preparing each of his meals. Yet his standard of living was still a fraction of what we experience today.
Ridley outlined the miracles of specialization and exchange in our time — an everyday cornucopia at the supermarket, modern communications and transportation, clothing to suit every taste. If we remove our blinders and see how many individuals provide services to us, Ridley concludes we have “far more than 498 servants at [our] immediate beck and call”.
Then, the memorable exchange occurred. One student shared that he would prefer to live in 1700, if he had more money than others and power over them. My first reaction was amusement; I thought the student was practicing his deadpan humor skills. He wasn’t. For him, having power was an attribute of a meaningful life.
If only my student’s mindset were an aberration.
During the reign of Louis XIV, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal diagnosed why some lust for power. In his Pensées, Pascal wrote, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room”. Pascal explained that, out of the inability to sit alone, arises the human tendency to seek power as a diversion.
Pascal asks us to imagine a king with “all the blessings with which you could be endowed”. A king, Pascal told us, if he has no “diversions” from his thinking, will “ponder and reflect on what he is”. Pascal’s hypothetical king will be miserable because he “is bound to start thinking of all the threats facing him, of possible revolts, finally of inescapable death and disease”.
“What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition.” That is why “war and high office are so popular”, Pascal argued.
Pascal argues individuals seek to be “diverted from thinking of what they are”. I would argue a better choice of words is what they have made of themselves.
I’ll let the reader decide how many modern politicians Pascal’s ideas apply to. With Pascal’s insight, we understand why conflict is a feature of politics and not a bug.
Pascal spares no one’s feelings. Some “seek external diversion and occupation, and this is the result of their constant sense of wretchedness”. For them, “rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces. [They] must get away from it and crave excitement.”
Let that sink in. A person able to exercise coercive power can use their morally undeveloped “wretched” mind to create endless misery for others merely because exercising power distracts them from their failures as human beings.
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