Liberal Fascism 4: Interlude

I began this series of essays a few months ago, inspired by Fred Clark's ongoing series of essays about Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind novels. If you aren't aware, the Left Behind series tells LaHaye and Jenkins' version of the Rapture and its aftermath. What Clark, an evangelical Christian who fails to live up to whatever stereotype that might entail, brought to these essays was a knowledge of LaHaye and Jenkins' particular brand of Premillenial Dispensationalism, and enough knowledge of writing to be aware of the plodding awkwardness of the narrative. He provides a close reading of the book that exposes the essentially unchristian nature of their take, as well as the essential impossibility of the circumstances that the novel claims are ripped from the front pages.

What I want to do in these essays about Goldberg's book is similar. I've read and agreed with many criticisms of the book, but I had hoped to be able to discuss and dispute this book without getting too heated by his admittedly provocative rhetoric. It seems like it's been progressively more difficult to do in light of recent events.

The right has taken Goldberg's theses to heart, and have invoked fascism, Naziism, and their tactics and ideologies in the debates over healthcare (see Sarah Palin's egregious lie about "death panels"). Meanwhile, there have been many incidents of people at these town hall protests carrying firearms. Such acts, of course, are acts of intimidation, and are certainly analagous to the actions of Mussolini's fascisti, though to be fair, there have, as of this writing, been no major acts of violence.

What is more alarming is the response the right, and Goldberg specifically has for the release (of parts, at least) of the CIA Inspector General's report on acts of torture committed by the agency and others. The report reveals information about acts of violence beyond the parameters set by the Bush administrations DOJ decrees, including threats of rape and death.

Goldberg replies to this with the most ridiculous argument imaginable:

I've long been fascinated with the disconnect between what pundits, politicians and various activist groups complain about and the status of interrogation techniques in the popular culture (here's a column I did on the subject in 2005). In countless films and TV shows the good guys — not the bad guys — do things to get important information that makes all some [see update] of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage. In NYPD Blue, The Wire, The Unit, 24 and on and on, suspects are beaten, threatened, terrified. In some instances they are simply straight-up tortured. In movies, too, this stuff is commonplace. In Patriot Games, Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In Rules of Engagement, Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk. In Guarding Tess, Nick Cage blows off a wimpy little man's toes until he talks. In The Untouchables Sean Connery conducts a mock execution.

Now, I know I will get a lot of "it's just a movie" or "TV shows aren't real" email from people. At least I have every other time I've made this point. So let me concede a point I've never disputed while making one these folks don't seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn't beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford's motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it's just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans.

It comes as a bit of a surprise that a member of the editorial staff of the National Review would let Hollywood define the ideal of moral behavior, but there you have it. The idea that we are willing to watch people (or as Goldberg calls them, 'the good guys') torture people in movies and TV shows because we believe it morally right is absurd. Such practices in the contexts depicted are sometimes revenge fantasies, sometimes queasy making, sometimes exciting, sometimes shocking, and yes, these feelings are attempts to tap into common sentiments (just as Hollywood taps into lust, greed, envy, and the remaining deadly sins). But what conservative is willing to believe that movies tap into common morality? Should we really emulate Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and shoot someone in the kneecap to get information? Unlike the movies, we have no real guarantee that our victim will then tell the truth. And unlike in the movies, there are legal consequences for such drastic action. This is what's happening now. Evidence is coming out that interrogators used techniques that were illegal, even if you buy that all of the Bush DOE's writings about 'enhanced interrogation' are correct and binding. Goldberg's argument against this is essentially, "Jack Ryan (or Jack Bauer) did it, too, and most people think Jack Ryan (or Bauer) kicks ass."

Really, what's the point of arguing rationally against something like this?

SF: One Way to Separate the Wheat from the Chaff

Isaac Asimov on the Golden Age of SF

Since the Golden Age of SF, science fiction has been a genre deeply rooted in its own history. John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, essentially created the genre, at least as a marketing concept, when he published the work of writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and others. As Asimov says in the above video, Campbell cultivated writers who were scientifically literate, which is true but is only part of the story.

When the general public thinks of science fiction, they tend to think of the tropes created by these authors, such as sentient robots, interplanetary travel and alien civilizations, lasers and other large scale weapons, among many other things. And writers are often lauded for their prescience and inspirations regarding new technologies. But the fundamental optimism regarding Golden Age SF, that core idea that humanity would conquer and colonize space, was slowly shown to be more fantastic than real, built on the fallacious idea that matter can travel faster than the speed of light. This was often elided by pseudoscience (tachyons, warp drives, radical acts of quantum tunnelling, etc.), or merely ignored, but it was never more than hope-against-hope fantasy.

Another set of tropes were created by the cyberpunks, whose narratives largely remained earthbound, opting instead for fantasies focused on the emerging world of information technology, and the vanishing ideal of virtual reality. We contemporaries live in a world saturated by information technology, so the concept is more than cogent to our own lives, though VR is stuck at the level of videogames, MMORPG like World of Warcraft and 3D movies.

A common trope in a good deal of contemporary SF is the Singularity. The singularity is an idea posited by Mathematician and SF author Vernor Vinge. Singularity is a loaded term in mathematics, but it can be loosely described as the point where predictions break down. What Vinge means when he evokes the singularity is that individual computer capacity will soon surpass that of us humans, and then, ?

This is generally manifest in stories by large, artificial intelligences that will be more powerful than humans, and at that point, all bets are off. The problem with the singularity is addressed well by Neal Stephenson:

I have a personal mental block as far as the Singularity prediction is concerned. My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware’s nothing more than a really complicated space heater.

Throughout its history, SF has been plagued with this idea that its authors' imaginings of near and far futures were somehow prescient. Just as historical novelists are supposed to create accurate versions of the past, science fiction novelists have been tasked with accurately recreating out future. Of course some surprise and are able to follow through on that difficult task.

But I'd argue that this is a small part of what makes science fiction interesting. As SF novelist/critic Samuel R. Delany claims:

There are few 'ideas' in science fiction.

The resonance between an idea and a landscape is what it's all about.

Like any fiction, storytelling is more imperative than scientific concept. I'd argue that setting is less of an issue than the confrontation with something that is fundamentally unknown (much SF takes place in a world as mimetic as the ones written by so-called realists, but invaded by something other, be it aliens, human created tech that somehow is able to surprise its creators, etc.)

Setting is a significant part of SF inasmuch as it involves suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief is a fundamental part of how narrative works, but a tricky beast to pin down. Some readers (or consumers of story via books, TV, movies, etc.) become so engrossed in a story that they literally believe it to be true. Though it might be blasphemous to say this, most children do not believe that Harry Potter actually exists outside of novels, movies, and assorted tie-ins. But for the reader who is truly engaged by Ms. Rowling's creations, the novels have satisfied a criteria described by Delany (quoting his teacher Charles Olson) as "keep[ing] their fictions up to the real."

Small wonder then, that the most intruiging work in SF has come from writers from or inspired by the "New Wave" school. The New Wave (not to be confused with the synthesizer-infused hair-sculpted school of pop music that was popular when I was a teenager) was a group of writers who grew up reading Golden Age SF, but who were as focused on literature, character, and language.

There are a lot of remarkable writers who came from this school of novelists, who, despite the fact that they are less well known than Golden Age novelists like Asimov and Clarke, have had as large an influence on literature and culture as those two iconic figures. But, in order to keep this post from becoming unreadably long, that will have to wait for another missive.

Something Else!

I recently spent way too much money on myself, and purchased the Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, an 8-CD (no really!) box set of recordings the composer recorded in the latter half of the 70s. It's amazing to think that this stuff came out on a major label at any time, but particularly in the late 70s, when the audience for jazz had all but dried up. One is used to the Ken Burns version of the story, where jazz went off the rails in the late 60s, and wasn't seen again until Wynton started recording on Columbia. But the reality is that much great jazz was recorded in the 70s, and this is a prime example.

After a short retirement from music, when he made a living playing chess, Braxton came back to music with the quartet Circle, which featured Miles Davis alums Dave Holland and Chick Corea, along with drummer Barry Altschul. Circle split up, in part because of Corea's involvement in Scientology, which Braxton describes in typically wry fashion:

I found Scientology very interesting, especially some of the techniques the developed for having people brainwash themselves, but this was not what I wanted to be a part of.

Corea broke the group up in Los Angeles, and Braxton was stranded there, looking for a gig or a way out. He got both when Michael Cuscuna approached him about working with Arista.

Braxton came to these sessions knowing that this was his opportunity both to speak to a larger audience and to fund his most ambitious experiments. The result was the greatest output of his career, a collection of idiosyncratic music that touched on the entire of jazz history, and was a harbinger of things to come, music that's simultaneously heady and swinging.

Of course some would say that what Braxton is doing in these recordings is not jazz, and that's a discussion that I believe will go exactly nowhere (except to say that there are covers of Scott Joplin, John Coltrane, Lionel Hampton, Eric Dolphy and Benny Golson on these recordings), so I'll move on. As for the music, this is some of the most astonishing work being done by any composer of the period. The recordings range from works for solo saxophone to a three-LP (or two-CD) composition for 4 orchestras of 39 musicians each.

A lot of credit can be given to his collaborators. Many of his colleagues in the AACM are represented, including pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, violinist Leroy Jenkins, trombone player George Lewis, fellow woodwind junkie Henry Threadgill, and many others. The music ranges from manic avant-bop workouts to 12-tone ballads to music that could as easily be found on recordings by Stockhausen or Xenakis.

It's a lot to chew on, and there is no doubt that the music he makes is complex and unusual. Even the titles of his works are difficult to explain. For example, the full title of Opus 82 looks like this:



There are explanations for both the numbering and the graphic representations of his composition titles (the curious can turn to his discography here, the obsessed can turn to his philosophical and musical writings, the massive Tri-Axium Writings and Composition Notes).

For someone who is often accused of being cold and abstract, these recordings stand out for their passion and emotionality. Sadly, the most accessible work of Anthony Braxton's career can only be found on an expensive limited-edition box set. It's a shame that neophytes will have a hard time hearing the pinnacle of this recording session, a large ensemble session recorded under the title Creative Orchestra Music. These recordings are a perfect blend of esoteric avant-garde music and straight ahead jazz.

Finally, here's a rendering of Composition no 58, done by a student and longtime collaborator of Braxton's, Taylor Ho Bynum.




Composition No. 58 - Taylor Ho Bynum Chicago Big Band

And here's Braxton playing clarinet with his great quartet featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway.




Anthony Braxton Quartet 1983