People are always picking and choosing when to act like art, entertainment & media has no political power & I’m so tired of it. A Tweet by Bree Newsome who identifies as artist – grassroots organizer – free black woman – proud wife & mama – removed sc’s confederate flag in the name of Jesus on june 27, 2015

Hitler was one of the first great rock stars. He was no politician, he was a great media artist. How he worked his audience! He made women hot and sweaty and guys all wished they were the ones who were up there. The world will never see anything like that again. He made an entire country a stage show. Said David Bowie after he and Mick Jagger had seen Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the 1934 Nuremberg rally, fifteen times.

I’ve been reading Hitler and The Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts and it is fascinating. I recommend it if you are at all interested in World War II or how Hitler came to power although it isn’t really about either one. It is about Hitler as an artist and the power of that art, especially performance art. As far back as I can remember being told anything about Hitler, it was that he was a buffoon. I don’t think I have ever been shown a movie clip of Hitler speaking except to demonstrate that he was a foolish little man.

That is ad hominin thinking at its purest. Hitler was evil, he was a narcissist and a sociopath, and, after he was in power, increasingly out of control and out of touch with reality. At twenty, he was a powerless evil man, and how he became a demi-god is fascinating. As I type this, I can hear myself getting defensive to an imagined “Why would anyone want to read about that little evil man?” so I’ll resort to quoting Timothy Snyder: It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.

This book was written – or, at least, published – during the Trump Administration and there are times when what Hitler did seems to resonate with what Trump did during his 2016 campaign, especially in terms of his rallies. In both cases, they have been criticized and ridiculed for their use of language but in Hitler’s case – and probably Trump’s also – his use of language was thought out and practiced. Hitler admired Llyod George, the Liberal Party Prime Minister of England, for the primitiveness of his language which Hitler thought connected him to his followers. Hitler’s speeches were all emotion, he didn’t lay out programs, he charmed his listeners and they adored him. According to William Shirer, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich who saw Hitler in Nuremberg in a 1934 rally, They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few moments, I think many of the women would have swooned from excitement.

I started this blog post just before Putin launched his attack on Ukraine which has sucked up most of my bandwidth and stalled me out. But I did find this book fascinating and wanted to comment on it so I can get it off my desk. I also want to comment on the isolation and paranoia of autocrats. Hitler and Putin are very different men but there are commonalities worth looking at. One of them is the arc towards isolation that all autocrats seem to follow.

Humans are social animals and, to a certain extent, that socialness is what keeps us sane. Bumping into other people – not physically but emotionally and developmentally, at least – is what sets boundaries and keeps us coherent, it enables us to be in a relationship with our fellow travelers. People who amass great power sort of step out of normal societal rules, they do not follow the conventional wisdom, they are, almost always, sociopaths. It becomes increasingly easy for them to think they are the only one who is right and everybody else is wrong, that has been the case up to that time after all. Their advisors become sycophants and the only reality they see is the sociopathic leader’s reality which they reflect back to them. As their reality drifts away from our common reality, the sycophants follow them, and the sociopath is free of checks, leading him into a fantasy land of his own making.

As late as Spring of 1945, as Germany was imploding, Hitler was in his bunker, moving imaginary armies around on the situation board and refining models of his plans for rebuilding German cities as grand displays of the power and longevity of the Third Reich. I don’t think that Putin has reached that level of delusion yet, but he clearly thought taking Ukraine back into the Russian fold would be easier than it has turned out to be and his army is clearly not as well trained and equipped as he imagined. I’m beginning to think that, with enough support, Ukraine has a chance in this war.

https://twitter.com/BeaHowse/status/1498458797316222977?s=20&t=A6hmUZHBOIWWGATgJiIcJg

The first casualty when war comes is truth. Attributed to California isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson (and others, starting with Aeschylus in about 450BC.

Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100), Statement by Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption

Putin’s reaction to shame has become my greatest obsession & fuel for deep instinctive fears. I know, deep in my bones, that humiliating a powerful man is the worst possible result. The energy 4 revenge will be potent & vast. I’m scared. & I hate that I know this. But it’s real. A Tweet by Julia Sweeney @JIsbackintown fading into oblivion with acceptance Los Angeles, CA

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic Attributed to Stalin.

Yeah, it is true. We are now in another devastating European war. It makes one want to ask, What is it with these White Europeans? Are they just the most violent people on the planet? It’s pretty hard not to come to that conclusion, about two/thirds of mass shootings in the US are by White men of European heritage, after all. On the other hand, maybe it is just because White men have access to the best weapons, we’ve been fighting wars ever since we all lived in Africa, since we were hunter-gathers and this is just another chapter. And I want to quickly point out that it is not everybody, that it is always only one man, but I think that one man is a distillation of the crowd. This time it’s Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin who is the angel of destruction.

There is no good news really but, if there were, it would be that Ukraine is rewriting the book on how to wage a 21st-century propaganda war. They are brilliant. On the propaganda front, at least, Ukraine seems to be doing everything right. They are constantly showing stories of Ukrainians fighting back and winning despite the odds, starting with the nine guys who gave their life protecting Snake Island and the pilot who shot down six Russian jets.

The propaganda on President Volodymyr Zelensky is especially good with pictures and videos of him defending the country from the trenches versus pictures of Putin sitting at the end of the longest table on earth with three minions, nervously huddled at the other end. In a video, in response to the US offer to evacuate him, Zelenskyy says “I Need Ammunition, Not A Ride”. Whenever damage is shown, it is damage to Ukrainian civilian facilities or Russian military assets (to use the current jargon). Still, as good as their propaganda is, it probably will not be enough to save the country. We all hope Ukraine wins this war and even though it is unlikely without NATO air support, it might be possible if Ukraine gets enough high-tech weapons. Especially if the war drags on and turns into a guerilla war which, undoubtedly and unfortunately, will result in even more people dying.

Russia is bogged down in the north and that has been encouraging if you’re rooting for Ukraine like I am. But Russia can still throw a lot more into their attack and they can’t all be as unprepared as the first wave, seemingly, was. They have oodles and oodles of room to escalate and nastiate the war. The Russians can bring in more men and material and direct more firepower to attack civilian targets. Right now, the Ukrainians feel like they are winning but Putin has shown himself to be a dreadful enemy who is capable of pursuing a burnt earth strategy similar to the campaign Russia waged in Chechnya. But that will take time, time that Joe Biden is counting on to make his sanctions effective.

When I listened to President Biden’s State of the Union speech, I was very impressed. I completely agreed with heavy sanctions and supplying weapons to the Ukrainians as a way to fight Putin. Establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine seemed too provocative but I’ve changed my mind after reading a Tweet Thread from Garry Kasparov, former Russian – and now a citizen of Croatia (go Croatia) – and, as he says, 13th World Chess Champion. Kasparov thinks that Putin won’t stop attacking people and taking territory until he is stopped. In that regard, he is like Hitler or, to use an example with less political valence, Alexander the Great.

I think Kasparov is right in that assessment and I expect that President Biden does also and, I should add, that is a position that seems to be catching on. What doesn’t seem to be catching on is the logical conclusion, at some point, Putin has to be stopped and it will continue to get harder.

Putin’s war on Ukraine has entered its next phase, one of destruction and slaughter of civilians. It is also a part of Putin’s World War, a war on the civilized world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power, which he declared long ago. The free world’s denial of this war and decades of appeasement allowed Putin to threaten and conquer abroad while turning Russia into a police state. The price to stop him has gone up every time he has advanced unchallenged. Ukrainians are paying that price in blood.

If Putin is not stopped now, not prevented from destroying Ukraine and committing genocide against its people, there will be a next time and it will be in NATO, with an unprecedented nuclear threat. Do not let Putin escalate again in a time and place of his choosing.

Lindsey Graham Tweeted Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this end is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service, and every liberal Blogger and Tweeter I read went ballistic, shouting out that he was not only wrong but criminally wrong. But they are wrong, not criminally wrong, but wrong. The best way out of this would be to kill Putin or exile him at, say, to the Medvezhyi Islands, and somehow move Russia back into the democracy camp. But that would be very hard to do, I imagine Putin is the most protected human in the world. Still, I guess, we can hope.

Here are a couple of two contrasting propaganda pieces that should help us hope.

“we are not fascists! the ukrainians are the nazis! and here’s the video to prove i—ooooooh, okay. right right right right right.” pic.twitter.com/xBdH8d0NoY

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) March 5, 2022

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1500272897075654661?s=20&t=Ta_1nHuihtJK6lcopigj2Q

Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did in #2WW years. As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history. 🇷🇺 has embarked on a path of evil, but 🇺🇦 is defending itself & won’t give up its freedom no matter what Moscow thinks. A Tweet by Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUaПрезидент України Ukraine president.gov.ua

when you read about Ukraine in the news now, you might think of it as a strange place. War, tanks, dead etc. But Ukraine is a normal country with people willing a normal life. To be happy, enjoy life, raise kids. Not to attack anybody. Normality is an important word here A Tweet by Volodymyr Yermolenko @yermolenko_vUkrainian philosopher, analyst & journalist, chief editor at @ukraine_world – explaining Ukrainian politics & society in English.

Driving on the road towards Kyiv and the radio announcer is giving out instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails. A Tweet by Shaun Walker @shaunwalker7 Covering central/eastern Europe for The Guardian. Author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

More TV, more articles to come, but I’m sad and angry. Ukraine is suffering another long night alone. The sanctions so far are weak, ignoring Putin’s worst oligarchs. They would have been fine in 2008, or even 6 months ago. Now, with Kyiv under siege? Too little, too late. A Tweet by Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 Join RDI! @Renew_Democracy. Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Author, speaker, 13th World Chess Champion.

I’m always surprised when I see pictures of people from Ukraine. I always expect them to be more exotic, more like people from further east on the Silk Road, more like people from Kazakhstan, not like blond Europeans. I shouldn’t be though. They are European even if they write their language in Cyrillic and they are even what we would call a first-world country – if that is still OK to use as an identifier – in that they have subways and traffic jams. But it is important ti know that they are not first-world in that their main exports are seed oil, corn, and wheat and they are big importers of coal briquettes and used clothing. The country has a population of over 44,000,000 souls, most of whom want to be more European and less Russian and the capitol, Kyiv, is the seventh-largest city in Europe with a population of almost 3,000,000, bigger than Chicago, Rome, or Paris, so Putin may end up like the dog that caught the bus. Imagining tanks rolling into one of those cities gave me the chills.

I’m reading a book on Hitler and it may be coloring my thinking but, it seems to me that Putin is a typical autocrat in that he will keep trying to enlarge his empire until he is stopped. He attacked Georgia during the Bush Administration calling it a peace-keeping special operation. Then he took the Crimea and an enclave in eastern Ukraine during the Obama Administration and now he is going after the rest of Ukraine. If he takes Ukraine, there is no reason to think he will stop trying to rebuild the USSR by bluff, threat, and, if necessary, tanks. If Putin takes Ukraine, the next target would probably be Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, who are members of NATO, which would mean a major war for sure. The whole thing is frightening.

Proprioception, otherwise known as kinesthesia, is your body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. It’s present in every muscle movement you have. … Proprioception allows you to walk without consciously thinking about where to place your foot next. It lets you touch your elbow with your eyes closed. WebMD

You’re walking
And you don’t always realize it
But you’re always falling
With each step, you fall forward slightly
And then catch yourself from falling
Over and over, you’re falling
And then catching yourself from falling…Walking & Falling, Song by Laurie Anderson

Proprioception is a word I hadn’t known even existed three weeks ago. That’s too bad because for most of my life I’ve had pretty good proprioception and it would have been nice to know the word when I could have used it in a positive – read subtle bragging – way, but now, my spacial awareness is one of the casualties of getting older. Now, I’ll be walking down a sidewalk and catch one of my feet – one of my shoes? – on, uhh…seemingly nothing. Now, I’ll grab a glass and, while lifting it, knock over a neighboring glass unless I’m specifically paying attention which I almost never am.

Specifically paying attention to the mechanics of walking, however, is almost impossible. Walking is something that most of us have been doing since we were somewhere around one year old, and now walking is entirely unconscious. I’ll trip on a rug on the hardwood floor and tell myself, “Be more conscience.” but it is not about being conscience, it is about my deteriorating proprioception. Knowing that it’s normal to lose my sense of balance as I get older is not as much of a comfort as it might, at first, seem.

In my case, maybe it is karmic punishment for not being very sympathetic when old people complained about their arthritis or I was told of some old person – maybe a mother or, usually, a grandmother – falling over and breaking her hip. I thought they would have solved the problem by just paying attention, I thought they should be more conscious and, of course, that isn’t really the problem. the problem is deteriorating proprioception.

Speaking of proprioception, Michele and I have been watching the Olympics for the last two weeks and, along with their extraordinary athleticism, the Olympians are a group of people who always know where their body is in space. Especially the athletes who are competing in sports like figure skating and are performing aerial tricks. In these sports, in which the competitor is spinning or somersaulting or, as improbable as it seems, both at the same time, superb proprioception is mandatory. And in these sports, East Asians dominate the medals. By East Asian, I mean people whose heritage is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, even if they are now from Europe or the USA.

There are lots of reasons why East Asians dominate these sports but, it seems to me, that the paramount reason is that East Asians just have a better sense of where they are as they are spinning and tumbling. In other words, Nathan Chin, Chloe Kim, Ayumu Hirano, and their ilk just have better proprioception.

After nearly two brutal years fighting for its survival, the soul of Los Angeles dining remains resilient. First Line of an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled These are the 101 best restaurants in L.A.

I think that one can get a good meal, a really good meal, in any city in the US with a population of over, say, 10,000. I’ve – well, Michele, really – had a super goat vindaloo taco in Fredricksburg Texas (population 11, 245), the best beats – fresh, fresh, beets with smoked cashew butter – I’ve ever had were in Bentonville Arkansas (pop 49,467), I’ve even had a perfect French Onion Soup in Boulder, Utah (270), but, what they don’t have is depth. San Francisco has depth, in San Francisco, one can get a superb meal at a restaurant whose main feature is that it is close to the movie no matter where the movie theater is. That’s not the case in most cities, but it is also true for LA and we were going to Malibu (which is close enough to LA to call it LA if you’re from the Bay Area).

So, as Michele was making plans to go to the Getty Villa for her birthday, she chose Malibu Farms Restaurant for the lunch before because it is close to the Getty. Just a regular good restaurant, not one of the 101 best restaurants in LA according to the LA Times, just an average LA – which, means super good almost anywhere else – restaurant serving fresh, organic, food. Michele and I split a raw, purple, Brussel sprout salad and the daily steak flatbread special and sat at an outside table, looking over the calm Pacific, finally soaking up some sun and warmth.

As an aside, Malibu Farms Restaurant was started by Chef Helene Henderson who, improbably, is a Black woman from Sweden. She started with cooking classes in her backyard which turned into a popup on the Malibu pier where she met Meir Teper who, along with Robert De Niro and Nobu Matsuhisa, founded Nobu Hotels and Restaurants. Henderson credits Teper with mentoring her success which is considerable as she now has restaurants in Newport Beach, Montecito, New York, Miami, Cabo, and Tokyo with one opening soon in Tiburon. End aside.

The center of our trip to the Getty Villa is – duh! – the Villa. Neither one of us had been to the Getty Villa and we didn’t know what to expect but what we got was still surprising. It was billed as a recreation of the Villa of the Papyri which was buried in ash from the eruption of Vesuvius and, I think, the awkward entry is designed to mimic walking around a recently uncovered ruin. For me, it doesn’t work and I didn’t take any pictures. And I don’t think I was the only one as there are signs explaining why the entry staging was a good idea which does seem a little defensive.

In 2017, while staying with Michele’s cousin Marion, Michele and I visited the ruins of a real Roman villa in Southern France. It was fascinating and frustrating; fascinating because it was a peek into the lives of people – very rich people, granted – who lived more than sixteen hundred years ago and frustrating because it was only a peak. The Getty Villa touts itself as a re-created Roman country home but, once inside, it becomes obvious that this is a modern building with a Roman villa facade. While there is no place to see what a Roman bath – or toilet, or kitchen, for that matter – is like, the place is full of Greek and Roman art.

I am no judge of ancient Greek or Roman and the “I know what I like” test doesn’t work because almost all of the Greek and Roman art, especially Roman marble sculpture, looks pretty much the same to my untrained eye. I don’t mean to say that Greek and Roman art looks the same, they don’t. Greek art seems to be about the idealized. The idealized human body or a God who is sort of idealized by definition. In The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes postulates that consciousness is the result of language and only developed after civilization. He thinks that, until the very end, the action in the Iliad takes place by men who think the voices they hear in their heads are actually voices from The Gods. I don’t buy the theory but it is obvious that most, if not all, Greek art does not represent individuals in the same way that Roman art does.

But it is hard for me to tell one Greek sculpture from another in terms of quality. With that disclaimer, Getty started collecting in the late 1930s and it seems to me that the Louve and the Met in New York – the two places I’ve seen the most ancient art – had been collecting for a long time. Obviously, Winged Victory and The Three Graces were already gone.

At the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas, the viewer is directed around the museum on a – more or less – chronological path, at the Getty Villa the different periods are in different rooms, and the rooms, themselves, seem to be in a random order. The first floor is generally Greek and the second floor all Roman. With the floorplan map, we were able to plot a chronological path through the Greek galleries which meant we saw the earliest Greek gallery first. It was completely different from anything I’ve seen before – or remember seeing before – and a very pleasant surprise.

Unlike Greek art, most of the Roman art seemed to be of individuals. Each piece was different but, after a couple of hours wandering around, they began to lose their individuality.

After spending the day at the Villa, we had dinner in our room and got up the next morning to drive home. At the beginning of our drive, we had what is, unfortunately, becoming too common a California experience, a fire in the hills. Fortunately, we also had what ha become another California experience, great tacos in Santa Barbara.