Category Archives: Americana

True Detective and The Good Wife

Americana, Television

Sugar Cane Refinery

Sugar Cane Refinery by Richard Misrach

 Last Sunday was the finale of True Detective and the first Good Wife in several weeks. Good Wife showing times being so erratic, made watching True Detective on HBO much easier. Not that it wasn’t easy to start with, True Detective was on HBO – the adult channel – and that screams Serious television. It turned out, though, that the easy decision was the wrong decision. The last episode of True Detective has left me dissatisfied. The total was less than the sum of True Detective’s parts. I should probably say Spoiler Alert here although I don’t particularly want to talk about any plot points.

True Detective has lots to like: the photography was great, giving me a genuine sense of place; the music was superb and haunting; and the acting, by two actors I like alot, was outstanding. However, it was all to almost no avail. Michele said that True Detective was a story about telling stories, but the stories were like somebody who keeps telling us that this story is going to be great and then it turns out to be about a crushed ping pong ball à la Auntie Mame. I loved the way the scenes took place at three different, distinct times, mid nineties, early oughts, and now, but – in the end – the different times did not really add anything. In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s mixing up of the times was a big factor. If the time were linear, one of the last scenes, would be when Vincent Vega got killed by Butch Coolidge. But True Detective seems to be, in the end, a buddy movie, and if the scenes were presented in a chronological order, I don’t think much would have changed.

I am not a big fan of conspiracy movies – you know, the kind where the little paperboy is killed because he saw the President kill his mistress – but I found myself hoping for it in True Detective. Nevertheless, in the end, True Detective was just about some crazy loon. Not that that couldn’t have made a good story, but everything about True Detective hinted at something bigger.

On the other hand, The Good Wife, is almost always about something bigger idea. As an aside, the producer of The Good Wife, is Ridley Scott who is one of Hollywood’d most ardent feminists – think Thelma and Louise, Ripley in Alien, or Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus – and the main character, Alicia Florrick, is the wife of the guy who is cheating (unlike True Detective in which the cheated-upon wife, played by the underused Michelle Monaghan, is just a plot device).  End aside. In Perry Mason style, every week is centered around a different court case and the cases are usually fascinating in their own right.

Often the case will turn on some cutting-edge legal or technological question. Last week, it was illegal wiretaps which turned out to be collateral damage from NSA wiretaps. There have been cases on  online currency  and the Treasury Department, a software manufacturer accused of helping the Syrian government spy on protesters, a test case to overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, and an athletic doping case. All this against the backdrop of Alicia’s relationship with her husband and with her two kids and their relationship with their father. It is all fascinating stuff.

The next day, The Good Wife is still fascinating and True Detective has disappeared, like a phantasma.

150 years ago

Americana, General U.S. Grant, What's a man?

bGrant Shilo-2

General Ulysses S. Grant first came to Washington 150 years ago, on March 8, 1864. It had been a long journey, starting, I suppose you could say, when Grant had resigned from the Army about ten years before under the cloud of being a drunkard. He was stationed at Fort Humboldt which, at that time, was near the end of the world. Grant had been drinking heavily and with his resignation, his Army career was pretty much in shambles.

Back home, he tried to make a living, but not very successfully. With his wife, Julia, he settled on property that had belonged to her family near St. Louis. Grant tried farming, calling the farm Hardscrabble. He was a failure. Among other things, he hired “free men of color” and was criticized by his white neighbors for overpaying them.  He tried selling firewood door to door. He barely eked out a living. When the Civil war started, in 1861, Grant was working, as a clerk, for his younger brother.

As an aside, at some point, Julia had been given a slave, William Jones, by her father (the whole idea of giving another human being away as a gift seems so bizarre to my naive, 2014, mind, Happy Birthday, dear daughter, here is a human being for you to own). I guess Mr. Jones became Ulysses Grant’s by community property, but , however it happened, when Grant could no longer afford to provide for Jones, when he desperately needed the money, he freed William Jones rather than selling him. Grant signed the manumission papers in March of 1859. He was a Mensch. End aside.

In his book, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, Major General J. F. C. Fuller tells what happened next. In the winter of 1861, a young merchant of Galena roused by the conditions of the day to a sense of patriotism began drilling his company of militiamen and, one morning, as it happened, he found himself in front of the leather store of Grant Brothers. A wrong word of command caused a confuse opening in the ranks when, hidden away behind the soldiers, was seen a little man seated on a packing box. Then it occurred to the young merchant that this was Captain Grant , late of the Regular Army. He asked him to take charge of his company, and handed him his sword. Grant buckled it on and stepped out in front of the men. “As he drew his blade from the scabbard and it flashed in the sunlight, his whole nature seemed transformed and to his fellow townsmen was revealed the fact that here was a man who understood the business of war”.

During the Mexican War, Grant had distinguished himself. He was one of those rare individuals who did better – much better – under stress. He knew war was coming and he volunteered to go back into the Regular Army if he were given a field command. He was not only turned down, but, when he traveled to Major General George B. McClellan’s Headquarters in Cincinnati, McClellan wouldn’t even see him. When Napoleon was asked what characteristic was most desirable in a General, he answered Luck, and Grant was very lucky. He didn’t know it at the time, but not being able to meet McClellan, was Grant’s first lucky break.

Grant stayed in Galena, out of sight in the backwaters of the war, training volunteer Union recruits before they were formed into units. He became very good at it, and with the help of his Congressman, Grant was  put in charge of an unruly regiment, the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry, as a Colonel.  In August, backdated to May, he was promoted to Brigadier General, part of a series of promotions as troops were being called up.  It was the best break he could get and Colonel Grant knew it, telling his wife, Julia, the safety of the country, to some extent, and my reputation and that of our children greatly depends upon my acts.

At the end of the year, Brigadier General Grant was involved in what he thought would be a small skirmish. It was the first time he had led troops into battle and the responsibility terrified him. In his memoirs, he says

At the time of which I now write we had no transportation and the country about Salt River was sparsely settled, so that it took some days to collect teams and drivers enough to move the camp and garrison equipage of a regiment nearly a thousand strong, together with a week’s supply of provision and some ammunition. While preparations for the move were going on I felt quite comfortable; but when we got on the road and found every house deserted I was anything but easy. In the twenty-five miles we had to march we did not see a person, old or young, male or female, except two horsemen who were on a road that crossed ours. As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast as their horses could carry them.

I kept my men in the ranks and forbade their entering any of the deserted houses or taking anything from them. We halted at night on the road and proceeded the next morning at an early hour. Harris had been encamped in a creek bottom for the sake of being near water. The hills on either side of the creek extend to a considerable height, possibly more than a hundred feet. As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris’ camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted.

The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable.

For Grant, everything was a lesson. The first time he lead troops into battle, the enemy had fled. In November 1861, leading 3,114 troops, he captured Fort Belmont. Fuller says that it was a amateur job and he lists the mistakes Grant made. The extraordinary thing, though, as Fuller points out, Grant recognized those mistakes and corrected them in the next battle.

Early in 1862, on February 11th through the 15th, Grant lead an Army of 24,531 in an attack of Fort Donelson, pinning the Confederate Army in the fort. During a lull in the fighting, Grant left the battle to meet with Naval Flag Officer Andrew Foote to coordinate a bombardment. Grant neglected to name a temporary commander and the Confederate forces almost escaped. He came back just in time to prevent a disaster. It was a mistake that Grant never made again.

On April 6 of the same year, at Pittsburgh Landing, a nondescript dock on the Tennessee River, Grant was attacked by Confederate General Sidney Johnson. The attack  was a complete surprise and Grant failed to have his troops – most of whom were raw recruits – dug in, nor had he sent out patrols to find the enemy. It was Sunday, a warm spring morning with the orchards in bloom and the forest floor carpeted with violets – many people remembered that birds were singing in the trees – and it was a bloodbath. The Confederate Army almost drove Grant’s Army back into the Tennessee River and probably would have if Johnson hadn’t been killed and his replacement failed to press his advantage.

When Grant was attacked, he had an Army of 48,894 men. Somewhere around 10,000 deserted, and that night, it turned colder with a heavy rain. Several of Grant’s generals suggested a retreat. When Grant wouldn’t even consider a retreat, they got Sherman to talk to him. As the Confederate soldiers slept in the abandoned Union camps and the exhausted Union soldiers huddled with their back to the Tennessee River, Sherman found Grant, hoping to convince him to retreat. He was sitting under an oak tree in the heavy rain, his hat pulled down, in the darkness, alone, smoking a cigar. Later, Sherman would say, some wise and sudden instinct not to mention retreat came over him.  Instead, he said, Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we? Grant took a puff on his cigar and serenely replied, Yes. Lick ’em tomorrow, though.

During the night, Grant consolidated his forces and was reinforced with troops that had not arrived in time for the battle of the 6th. He attacked at dawn with about 45,000 troops, before the Confederates could get ready and, after hard fighting all day, drove the Confederates from the field. Up until then, it was the bloodiest battle on the North American continent with about 24,000 men killed and wounded. The nation was shocked, on both sides, and Grant was almost fired (and probably would have been if Lincoln hadn’t interceded, saying I need this man, he fights). With no sense of irony, the battle was named after a local church, Shiloh.

A year later, Grant directed the brilliant blitzkrieg that captured the Citadel of Vicksburg so that, as Lincoln said, The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. And then there was Chattanooga in late October and November. Union troops had been badly mauled at the Battle of Chickamauga in September and driven back into Chattanooga where they were pinned down, being starved to death. Grant was in New Orleans where he had a horse fall on his leg after it slipped on some trolly tracks. He could barely walk when he got a message to meet an official of the war Department in Louisville.

To back up a bit, General Ulysses S. Grant was an unprepossessing guy, he was short at 5’8″ and slight – he played Desdemona in a production of Othello put on by his barracks in St Louis – he often favored wearing a private’s uniform with his rank pinned on the shoulder, and always seemed sort of rumpled. He was crazy in love with his wife, Julia, and saw her when ever he could; they would sit next to each other and hold hands.

On the way to Louisville, Grant was traveling with Julia and his youngest son, Jesse. He was accompanied by his Chief of Staff, John Rawlins, and his personal Field Surgeon, General Kittoe, probably because of his injured leg. What ever the reason, in Louisville, to everybody’s surprise, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton got on the train. Stanton had never met Grant, but he immediately rushed over to General Kittoe, saying, Secretary Stanton, General Grant. You may not recognize me, but I would know the hero of Donaldson and Vicksburg anywhere. The embarrassed Kittoe kept nodding towards Grant as Stanton pumped his arm, but Stanton did not get the hint, until Grant stepped forward to introduce Kittoe as a member of his staff.  Stanton, embarrassed, apologized saying I’m sorry General Grant, having no photographs to recognize you by, I made a mistake. Grant disarmed the situation with It seems Mr. Secretary that many people are mistaken when they first meet me. They expect some mythological warrior and instead find a crumbled old soldier.

Stanton had come west to promote Grant. He was to command all the Armies in the West. Much later, after he had met Grant, Lincoln told William Stoddard  Well…I hardly know what to think of him, altogether. He’s the quietest little fellow you ever saw. Why, he makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew. I believe two or three times he has been in this room a minute or so before I knew he was here. It’s about so all around. The only evidence you have that he’s in any place in that he makes things git! Where he is, things move! In a way that is what happened at Chattanooga; a new supply route was opened, the troops fed and provisioned, more troops brought in to cover the flanks, and the same infantry that had been so badly defeated at Chickamauga, charged up Missionary Ridge with a vengeance, to destroy General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee.

But that was all 150 years ago last year and the year before that. Now, 150 years ago, Grant was being brought to Washington to become the commander of all military forces. George Washington’s rank of Lieutenant General had being revived and it was going to be given to him. Again he took the train, again it was a regular train, and he had to travel for four days to get to to Washington. Except for Fred, his oldest son, Grant was alone.

When he checked into Willard’s Hotel, he must have been especially travel-weary and unprepossessing. He looked just like a crumbled old soldier, probably out of a job – there were lots of Generals without jobs in Washington – and Willard’s was the best hotel in town. The clerk told Grant that they only had a room in the back on the top floor (this was before elevators). Grant said fine – or something Grantian, I have no idea what – and signed in U.S. Grant & Son, Galena, Illinois. When the clerk turned the register around and saw the name, he suddenly remembered that there was a much better room available.

A little more than a month from now, 150 years ago, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant went south to take over direct command of The Armies of the United States. Lincoln wrote him,  If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now with a brave army, and a just cause, may God sustain you. Grant answered, The confidence you express for the future and satisfaction for the past in my military administration is acknowledged with pride. It shall be my earnest endeavor that you and the country shall not be disappointed….I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked. Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you. 

In a little more than a year from now, 150 years ago, the American Civil War would be over.

Coming to California

Americana, Around home

The Rambows-0024A couple of weeks ago, The Economist, in an article on Argentina, said,  A century ago….for the young and ambitious the choice between Argentina and California was a hard one.

I am surely glad that my grandparents, Johanna von Borstal and Otto Rambowski – later know as Bambow and Paul Rambow, to us kids – made the right choice.

The Monuments Men and Ted Nugent

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings, Religion

Street Art-4

Michele and I saw The Monuments Men, a story about trying to save art looted by the Nazis, a couple of days ago. I kept thinking, How did these thugs take over Germany? As I type that question, it seems more rhetorical than an actual question because I do know the rough outline of how Hitler went from the failed Beer Hall Putsch to Chancellor. I somewhat know the facts, but I have a hard time understanding the undercurrent. They were thugs, afterall, and used the language of thugs; acted like thugs.

I really only know Germany through her artifacts; Audis, BMWs, and Mercedei, Leicas and IWC watches. The Germany of refined passion, of Bach and Run, Lola, Run. Her artifacts are so thoughtful, for lack of a better word. How did that Germany let itself be taken over by thugs?

One of my main tenets is that cultures are different but that people – worldwide – are more or less the same. I have a much better sense of The United States than I do of Germany and it doesn’t seem possible that thugs could take over here. It seems impossible that the Ted Nugents or the Duck Breath guys could gain real power. But, when I really think about it, I think that the first step – to take them seriously – is already here.

Why does the press – what we call The media, now – even acknowledge the ravings of a Ted Nugent? He is like a lunatic screaming in the street – the kind of guy we scurry by, heads turned away – except that he is not in the street, he is on the radio or TV. The media acts as if he actually had something to say. Part of it, I think, is that the media loves conflict, even manufactured conflict. It sells newspaper and airtime.

However, there is something deeper going on here. Huge numbers of Americans – and people worldwide – feel that their lives are getting worse and there seems to be no governmental plan as to how they will improve. Our government seems to be incapable of  solving the problems. Problems that I consider real problems; income inequality, gun violence, and climate change. But also problems that I consider phony problems or, even, actual improvements – but lots of people consider them real – like the diminishing influence of the Bible and Gay Marriage.

I listened to Nancy Pelosi on Jon Stewart and he kept asking her what were the systemic reasons that resulted in income inequality, the failure to control gun violence, and climate change, she kept blaming the Republicans and Stewart kept coming back to the question of the systemic reasons. I don’t think she even understood what he was asking, she just seemed completely befuddled. The crowd even booed her, this is the Daily Show crowd who are liberal, who should be her constituency. I like Nancy Pelosi – in March of 2010, I wrote With all the credit that should go to President Obama – and he has done an extraordinary job of getting the Health Care Bill pushed through – without Nancy Pelosi it wouldn’t have happened. Period! – and I was embarrassed, even pissed, and turned off the TV thinking She is not the solution.

When government loses people like me, when I lose confidence that government is going to solve income disparity or set a rational gun policy or forge a coalition to end destroying the world, it is easy to imagine, that people that didn’t like government in the first place, will look someplace else. Someplace where the people with answers are not part of The Establishment. Somebody who has answers that are easier to understand.

All over the world, people are finding those people. We see it in the anti-gay votes in Arizona and the Stand Your Ground laws in Florida. We see it in the resurging Nationalism movement in Hungary and Vladimir Putin being illegally reelected,  in the new wave of persecution and harassment of the Roma in Europe . We see it in the rise of Old Testament-hate-Christianity and old-time Mormonism, in Fundamentalist Islam and ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Against all that I would have predicted, growing up in the 50s and 60s, a growing minority is becoming more religious and superstitious, less scientific. They are more willing to accept the simple, clear answer over the complex muddled answer.

We are herd animals, it is in our DNA, and we want leaders, most of us want to follow somebody. When our leaders leave a void, the screamers in the street, the Ted Nugents, the Pat Robertsons, the Rush Limbaughs, have room to move in. They get taken seriously.

What I kept forgetting, as I watched The Monuments Men, is that thugs can be smart. Being nasty is not the opposite of being smart, they can go hand in hand. Also going hand in hand with thuggery is the crude – as in simple – answer.

 

A prisoner release in Afghanistan and American hubris

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

Korea-0010

Last week, CNN reported  Citing a lack of evidence, Afghan authorities released from prison 65 men Thursday over strong objections from U.S. officials, who said they pose a threat to security forces and civilians.

According to the New York Times, American officials had lobbied intensely with the Afghan government, first in private and then in increasingly acrimonious terms in public, to prevent the release.   

I was stationed in Korea fifty years ago, and I still remember how superior we Americans acted. We wouldn’t allow the Koreans anywhere near the radars or missiles, relegating them to lowly jobs like dog handlers, generator operators, and of course houseboys. Let’s face it, there is no American who knows what is really going on in Afghanistan, no American who knows who is really guilty or innocent – with really being the operative word here – no American in the military, no American in the diplomatic core, no American CIA Afghan expert, no old hand who has been there for three tours, and yet, we think we can tell them what to do.

At the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, that while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.

Think about it for a few seconds, think about the fact that there are damn few Americans who even know the nuances of what is going on in America. Do you think that John Boehner knows what is really going on? If he did, how did he so misjudge the government shutdown? Do you think Obama does, then why can’t he get an Immigration Bill through Congress? And, if he didn’t because getting an Immigration Bill through is impossible, why did he try? Yet, we come into a foreign country and take over, telling the natives to move out of the way, we know what to do better than they do.

As an aside, the country we knew best when we conquered it, was the South after the Civil War. We spoke the same language, had similar histories, and many of our leaders and the Southern leaders had gone to school together (including the military leaders at West Point). After the North won, we moved military and civilian administrators into the South to run the place. Most school children, especially those in the South, know how badly we bollixed that. End aside.

Sending in carpetbaggers and telling people how to run their country just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in the South, it didn’t work in Vietnam or Iraq, and it won’t work in Afghanistan. We have brought in hundreds of carpetbaggers to run Afghanistan, spent billions of dollars, and about the only thing we have changed is raising the property values in parts of Kabul. There are now so many people in Kabul telling the Afghans how to run their country, that the European-style houses – built during the time the Soviets were there – are now selling for California prices, between $350,000 to $1 million dollars (this in a country with the per capita income among the lowest in the world at about $180 to $190 US dollars). According to the owner of Wazir Akbar Khan Property Agency, Rents in Wazir Akbar Khan and adjacent Shar-i-Naw are now in the range of 3,000 to 25,000 US dollars while the same houses rented for 150 to 300 dollars before November 2001, even under the Soviets.

But if there is one area, in particular, that we shouldn’t tell people how to run their country, it is in the area of who to lock up in prison. We are crazy about putting people in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world – with the possible exception of North Korea – even worse, our rate is so much higher that we even have the highest actual number of people in prison. China is second with 1.5 million people in jail, but with a population of less than one-fourth of China, we have an astounding 2.2 million people behind bars and China is not even a democracy. We put people in prison for almost everything, especially if they are people of color (and, let’s face it, those 65 people in jail are people of color). As an aside, it seems that the only thing we don’t put people in prison for is shooting young black men…that is if you are white and live in Florida. End aside.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the release of prisoners is of no concern” to the U.S, and that the prison in which they were held is a Taliban-producing factory. I suspect that he is right, but I know that I really don’t know very much about it. Lindsey Graham thinks he does, however, and he is outraged, threatening to get Congress to cut off aid. I agree with the cutting off aid part, but more importantly, I don’t think we should be telling anybody how to run their country and we certainly shouldn’t be telling them who they should put in jail.