On the 21st-Century Relevance of King Croesus

 

Curmie had an essay started, linking the bellicosity of Dear Leader and the Secretary of Drunkenness Dominionism War to Mark Twain’s brilliant short story, “The War Prayer.”  But he got bogged down in questions of whether to include a note of personal history, and didn’t get it written before a Facebook friend posted this piece by Renée Loth that appeared in the Boston Globe last week. 

Loth says pretty much what Curmie would have said.  There is one omission, however, namely the last line of Twain’s story: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”  That’s what really makes the point: not that “war is hell,” but that those who point out the inevitable effects of warfare are, well, “deranged” seems to be the favored adjective of the right, but “lunatic” will do.  

The foregoing is not to suggest that there is no such thing as a “just war,” but merely to argue that what is happening in Iran doesn’t come close to that standard.  Yet, although even as MAGAs are turning away from supporting the (probably) illegal campaign against Iran, especially since the ludicrous attacks on the Pope, there remain some once-sentient conservatives who seem quite satisfied with a few more tens of billions of dollars spent on creating more dead civilians.  This point is worth a paragraph but not a full post, however, so…

On to a different blast from the past.  It’s about that charming rascal you see portrayed above.  The image is from an amphora painting dating from the early 5th century BCE.  The subject is the Lydian king Croesus, who ruled, according to Herodotus, for 14 years in the middle of the previous century.  Today, Croesus is known primarily for two things: his fabulous wealth and his misinterpretation of a message from the Oracle at Delphi.  There’s more, of course—there’s a good summary here—but these are the two things that have found their way into what’s been called “cultural literacy.”  And it doesn’t matter, in those terms, whether the events described by Herodotus (known as both the “father of history” and the “father of lies”) actually happened: knowing nothing about Zeus or Sherlock Holmes is as problematic as ignorance of Confucius or Eliot Ness.

Curmie hasn’t heard the phrase “as rich as Croesus” in years, but it apparently is still in use.  Croesus’s wealth was indeed legendary throughout the ancient world.  Lydia conquered Phrygia, whose rivers had substantial deposits of gold.  (Is it a coincidence that Midas was a Phrygian king?)  And, in a variation on what happens today, the ultra-rich are in a position to easily increase their prosperity.  Two and a half millennia ago, that meant the ability to enlist the most skilled and well-equipped army.  Today, it’s more the ability to hire the best lawyers and accountants, and perhaps to bribe the occasional cop or judge.  Controlling the largest media outlets is also useful, of course.

But, like his modern-day equivalents, Croesus had two significant failings with respect to his wealth.  First, he was inordinately proud of it, to the point of angering the gods.  Stated otherwise, he was hubristic.  Secondly, he utterly failed to understand that happiness is not solely, or even primarily, a function of one’s financial resources and the lifestyle they afford.  He demonstrates this in conversation with the great Athenian law-giver, Solon, who declares, essentially, that a life well lived gives greater happiness than material possessions ever could, and that such things can only be measured at the end of a life.  Croesus was furious and said Solon was stupid.

(Note to Curmie’s former theatre history students: yes, this is the same Solon who famously told Thespis that “if we allow ourselves to praise and honor make-believe like this, the next thing will be to find it creeping into our serious business.”  Curmie always gave him a Good Ol’ Boy accent, including pronouncing “business” as “bidniz.”)

So… we have leader of a country who used his position to acquire even more personal wealth.  He’s obsessed with gold, and seems to equate prosperity with both happiness and virtue.  He got angry when people didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.  Does that sound like anyone who might have been in the news more recently, Gentle Reader?

But wait!  That’s not all!

Most people don’t know how Croesus became rich, only that he was rich.  His colossal misreading of the Delphic Oracle is better known.  Croesus was contemplating attacking Persia, but sent to Delphi to assess in advance his chances for success.  The response: if Croesus should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire.  Croesus took this as prophesying victory and moved forward with the military expedition.  The Persians under the legendary King Cyrus, were ready.  The kicked the Lydians’ asses, in part by employing a weapon Croesus and his troops didn’t anticipate: camels.  Yes, camels.  They scared the Lydian horses; if your army relies on its cavalry and your horses don’t cooperate, things aren’t likely to go your way. 

The Oracle got it right, of course.  A great empire was indeed destroyed: Croesus’s.  Supposedly, he sent the ancient equivalent of a sternly worded letter to the Oracle.  Her response, loosely translated, was “Dude.  Did a great empire fall?  Yes.  Do I have a reputation for being cryptic?  Yes.  Don’t blame me if you can’t keep up.”

Curmie was reminded of Croesus when today’s version of a rich, arrogant head of state (certainly a king-wannabe if not an actual monarch) decided to attack Persia (it’s called Iran, now).  He even provided his own prophecy, that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”  Yes, that was no doubt posturing, and perhaps was intended as some sort of bargaining chip.  But that’s not what the world heard.  Dear Leader had already destroyed much of what made the US great (if you’ll pardon the expression, Dear Reader): he ignored promises, subverted due process, threatened allies, openly manipulated the stock market, turned the military against innocent citizens… well, the full list would take too long to enumerate.

But prior to that unhinged Truth Social post on April 7, there was the possibility of turning back.  America had already lost its status as the world leader, as a trustworthy ally, as a dominant positive force in world affairs.  But we remained a player, even if no longer the player.  That post, though, in its malevolent braggadocio, became something of a tipping point.  It would be a stretch to say that American civilization was destroyed on that day, but it became more imperiled than at any point since World War II (at least).  Can we find our way back?  Yes, but it will take time—probably decades—to undo the disastrous results of allowing a demented, mean-spirited, narcissist to speak for us all.

There are differences between Dear Leader and Croesus, of course.  The latter, though arrogant and infatuated by riches, was sane and even intelligent.  Not anticipating Persian camels in warfare pales in comparison to not preparing for the literal inevitability of Iranian drone attacks.  And in what seemed to be the last moments of his life, as he was about to be burned alive, Croesus realized the errors of his ways.  He was not only forgiven by Cyrus; he became a trusted advisor.  The chances that Dear Leader will ever admit to his own fallibility are about the same as Venezuela’s dominating the next Winter Olympics. 

Hey, it could happen…

Mark Twain Is Right. Again.

Mark Twain has already been lauded by Curmie for his observation that “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”  Of course, he’s not the only luminary who, despite having been dead for decades (or even millennia), has been cited for offering more incisive commentary on America in the 2020s than the vast majority of contemporary pundits have been able to generate.  Other folks in that category include Euripides, Luigi Pirandello, George Orwell, Martin Niemöller, and Gertrude Stein.  There are others, no doubt, who will be added to the list in the weeks and months ahead.

But ol’ Mark (or “Sam,” if you prefer, Gentle Reader) gets a second nod today for his observation that “there are three kinds of lies: regular lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  Curmie could have written about that line years ago in reference to, say, border security.  If administration X turns away more unauthorized migrants than administration Y does, does that mean there were more illegal crossings during the X administration or that the Y administration didn’t do as good a job of identifying wrong-doers?  Probably a little of both, one supposes.

Some statistics relating to crimes actually matter.  If there’s a dead body with bullet holes in it, there’s a really good chance a murder has been committed, whether someone is ultimately arrested, tried, and convicted or not.  But if the crime in question is, say, sneaking across the border, we generally don’t know of the existence of the offense until someone is caught. 

And this brings us to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.  Cutesy title notwithstanding, the bill is an abomination, but we’ll get nowhere arguing statistics.  There’s a meme out there that says the Cleveland Browns have started more quarterbacks since 1999 than non-citizens have voted in that time period.  Curmie actually fell for that one, but it’s a lie… not just an untruth, a lie.  More to the point, that claim wasn’t justified even by the statistics supposedly cited: its evidence was that there were fewer convictions than Browns quarterbacks.  That’s different than the number of illegal votes cast by a factor of…what? 2? 10? 100? 1000?  Who knows?

One side claims that prosecutions and convictions are extremely rare; the other side points to tens of thousands of names of non-citizens on voter lists.  They’re both right.  And they’re both exaggerating.  The following statements are all true, as far as Curmie can determine: 1). The majority of cases of illegal voting involve convicted felons, false impersonations, or registering in multiple constituencies, not non-citizens.  2). Some locales allow non-citizens to vote in local elections (school board, mayor, etc.).  3). Motor/voter programs may give non-citizens the impression that they can legally vote, especially if, say, they have a green card, have petitioned for asylum, etc.  4). A significant number of people who were about to have their registrations revoked were in fact citizens, and a disproportionate percentage of them were either black or Hispanic. 

Curmie made similar points 14 years ago when Texas was about to purge thousands of voters from the rolls.  It’s actually a pretty good essay.  You should read it in its entirety, Gentle Reader, but here are a couple of selections:

This all boils down to a simple illustration: if someone named Carlos Martinez, a registered Democrat, shows up to vote, too many Republicans want to say “no,” and too many Democrats want to say “yes.” The correct answer, of course, is “yes, if…”: if you’re a citizen, if you’re registered in this district and nowhere else, if you have some sort of reasonable proof that you are who you say you are….

We need to establish some system of presumption. You can’t register to vote unless you can prove citizenship; once registered, however, the government must prove you should be removed. None of this reliance on motor vehicle registrations or jury exemption lists: they’re notoriously unreliable. And the presumption rests always with the status quo. Once you’re registered, the burden of proof shifts to the government to demonstrate to a high standard of proof that you shouldn’t be….

As regards increased demand for appropriate identification, perhaps requiring a photo ID: yes, by all means, if and only if there is a full-scale, well-funded campaign to make sure that prospective voters know not only that the laws have changed, but how they’ve changed, and how to secure, without undue hassle, a legally sufficient, free, identification card.

The same argument about presumption re-appeared a few years later when Curmie was discussing a different xenophobic exercise in a different Trump administration: literally incarcerating and rescinding passports from honest-to-God born-in-the-USA citizens who happen to be… you know… of Hispanic heritage.  Curmie concluded that piece with this: “Yes, there are leftie commentators who are comparing this issue to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or even the worst excesses of Nazi Germany. Is that really where we are? Of course not. But have we taken far too many steps down a road towards a very nasty, xenophobic, and unjust nation? Oh, yes.”

So there’s no guarantee, on the one hand, that even having a US passport will in fact mean anything to the Mad King of Trumpistan.  But even if that particular strategy doesn’t re-appear, there’s plenty to hate about the SAVE Act.  No, we shouldn’t yammer on about how few violations there actually are (we can’t prove those assertions beyond the general observation that there aren’t many), but we sure as hell need to keep pounding the fact that this bill is all about voter suppression. 

Curmie remembers citing a quotation generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin in a blog post from four years ago: “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.”  Unfortunately, however, Curmie also noted that a 2016 study by the Cato Institute found that a “terrifying 52% of Donald Trump’s ‘early core supporters’ responded to the question of which is worse, ‘having 20,000 people in prison who are actually innocent; or, having 20,000 people not in prison who are actually guilty’ by selecting the latter.”  There’s something fundamentally psychotic about that mindset, but… Trump supporters.  (Curmie antiphrastically refrains from suggesting to them that anyone whose name appears in the Epstein files should therefore be imprisoned immediately.)

The idea that it is somehow worth disenfranchising legitimate voters if by doing so we catch a few bad guys is, of course, the best case argument for supporting the SAVE Act.  The other rationales are even worse: that people who have changed their names for whatever reason—because they are trans or women who took their husband’s surname when they got married, for instance—ought to have to jump through more hoops than the rest of us just to be able to vote.  Oh, sure, a passport would work (assuming it hadn’t been arbitrarily revoked for spurious reasons) but those things cost a fair amount of money and take weeks or even months to get (especially since the Trump administration has initiated staff cuts in the agency charged with processing applications).  

Place the presumption with the status quo (if you’re currently registered to vote, you stay that way until and unless the government can prove that you should be disenfranchised) and make the process for new applicants fast, simple, and free, and we can talk.  Otherwise, it’s a poll tax intended to suppress the votes of women and poor people: those who would be more likely to vote against Republicans, in other words.

Of course, liberals are more likely to have passports than conservatives are, and liberal women are less likely to change their names when they get married, so it’s possible that this little stratagem would blow up in the smug faces of the Trumpistanian minions.  They’d certainly deserve it.  A better alternative, however, would be to have a couple of Republican Congresscritters care more about their country than about Dear Leader’s latest power grab.  As of this writing, there may just be a large enough handful of them to prevent this absurdity from becoming law.  We can but hope.  (Oh, and write, and call, and…)

On the Prescience of Samuel Clemens

He’s still got it.

One of the sagest commentators on the 21st century American education system died almost 120 years ago. It was, after all, Mark Twain who famously noted that “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” Curmie continues to shake his head in wonderment at the perspicacity of that observation. 

Three cases in point from recent news stories. First up: what appears to be a nationwide effort to eliminate honors and AP courses in the name of some perverse definition of inclusion. The most recent case the Curmie read about was in Culver City, California, but these efforts appear to be bordering on the ubiquitous. 

Apparently, black and brown students were “under-represented” in those classes. All they had to do was opt in, of course; there was no criterion other than student (and one presumes parental) interest. The solution: provide more of those students with the ability to prosper in those advanced courses and an appropriate understanding of the value of taking challenging classes? Of course not! 

No, the morons in charge decided that challenging good students, providing them with both the skills and the credentials to get into good colleges, and generally rewarding aptitude and work ethic had to be abandoned because equal outcomes, not opportunities are what matter. (One suspects that such entirely race-based considerations are not similarly manifested in such decisions as who gets playing time on the basketball team. Meow.) 

One argument is that students who weren’t guided into accelerated classes at a younger age now feel they’re incapable of competing in honors courses at the high school level. Two responses, the first of which is a bisyllabic term for bovine feces. The second: hey, in the unlikely event that this argument has validity, why don’t we try steering promising students of whatever race into those more challenging courses earlier in their school careers? 

It might also be worth noting that the presence of really good students in a class is likely to cause more self-image problems for the average high schooler than being placed in a “regular” section of math or English or whatever would. Curmie isn’t advocating for Brave New World segregation here, but being surrounded by peers rather than superiors does have clear psychological advantages. 

Joanna Schaenman, a parent who wants her child to have access to honors courses, argues that “We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study.” This kind of mature and intelligent thinking, of course, is unlikely to sway a school board whose sole objective seems to be to prove Twain an optimist. 

Last year, Jon Kean, a school board member in Santa Monica proclaimed that “This is not a social experiment. This is a sound pedagogical approach to education.” At last report, Mr. Kean has learned how to feed himself, and is making progress towards dressing himself without assistance. Potty training is taking a little longer than expected. 

Curmie, of course, is a veteran of advanced courses as both a student and an educator. Slowing down a class because the weaker students can’t or won’t keep up is a great way to make sure that everyone in the class is bored and (therefore) under-achieving. It also leads pretty directly to students’ finding other attractions: sex and drugs being at the top of the list. (Not everyone likes rock and roll, after all.) Years of experience in an actual classroom setting suggest that the way to get results is to set the bar high and provide students with the tools they need to clear it. 

There is nothing wrong with a student who doesn’t excel at one or more subjects. Some of the best students in an upper-level theatre history class struggle with a course that looks remarkably similar to an algebra class Curmie took in 7th grade. Similarly, Curmie once had a student who was apparently a brilliant physicist (as suggested by a full ride to an Ivy League university)… the young man could barely construct a sentence, let alone a paragraph. 

And, by the way, being merely adequate across the board is okay, too. So you learn a trade or go to Compasspoint State instead of Stanford… you’ll be fine… well, unless you run for school board, at least. But putting lower-achieving students, whether they fare poorer because of aptitude or attitude, in the same room with that slam-dunk Stanford admit helps neither of them. Good students, irrespective of race, are good students; bad students, irrespective of race, are not. 

Ah, but this is all stupidity from the left; and the idiots on the right are demanding at least equal time. Curmie, the very soul of benevolence, is happy to oblige. 

So let’s go to North Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, located in what one Curmiphile has described as “part of the great political wasteland between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.” There, the school board vetoed the local high school’s decision to present The Addams Family Musical next spring. Oh boy, here we go again. 

The loudest voice in opposition to the play, apparently, was Troy Williams, who’s also the pastor of the Calvary Church in Lebanon. Sigh. “If we promote it, we permit it,” quoth he in one of the most inarticulate utterances ever spouted even by a school board member. 

The notion of exaggeration for comic effect appears to be too heady intellectual fare for the Lebanon school board. Board VP Michael Marlowe objects to scenes of children smoking, references to liking torture and self-harm. Sigh (again). Curmie hasn’t seem the musical, but strongly suspects that these “dark” themes and characters are presented as humorous juxtapositions, not as role models. 

To be fair, Curmie, ever the theatre historian, is reminded of one of the medieval Christian Church’s objections to theatre: that the Vice character was inevitably far more interesting than the pious characters intended to be the heroes and heroines of the plays. The modern variation on this is that if you’re watching a TV mystery show, the villain is quite likely to be the best-known guest star, because the villain is not only the most fun to watch, but also to play. 

Still, it’s worth noting two things. First, The Addams Family Musicalis extremely popular high school fare: it ranked #3 in the country last year, even higher than The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which another gaggle of censorious asshats derailed at another high school about five hours to the west. This suggests that a whole lot of school boards, superintendents, and principals across the country found the script pretty innocuous. 

Which takes us to point #2: one of the show’s supporters on the board was Reverend Robb Faller. Yes, Reverend Faller is the pastor of the local Methodist Church. It’s more than a little problematic that two of the nine members of the school board are ministers, but at least one of them has functioning grey cells. Alas, only one other board member agreed. 

The good news, such as it is, is that at least the decision came now, rather than after faculty and students had committed thousands of person-hours of work and thousands of dollars for non-refundable expenses, as has too often been the case of late. Curmie has lamented the late cancellations of a number of plays and musicals over the years. Small favors, eh? 

Finally (for this go-round), there is the pièce de resistance. At Tallahassee Classical School, a public charter in (you guessed, Gentle Reader) Florida, Principal Hope Carrasquilla was forced out because… wait for it… 6th graders were allowed to view photos of Michelangelo’s David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 

This from a school that purports to provide “a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue.” As one of Curmie’s more colorful uncles might have said, “classical education, my rosy-red ass.” Yes, the works in question are technically Renaissance rather than strictly-speaking “classical,” but Curmie is pretty damned certain that examining a pair of the greatest (and most famous) artworks in human history is precisely what that school is selling. 

Board chairman Barney Bishop III would have us believe three things. In an often borderline incoherent interview with Slate’s Dan Kois (this is the “edited for clarity” version?), he first argues that Carrasquilla wasn’t, in fact, fired, but rather threatened with being fired if she didn’t resign. In Curmie’s world, this is a definition by example of a distinction without a difference. 

Secondly, Bishop asserts that the dismissal was the culmination of a series of problems with Carrasquilla, not the sole cause. Over at Ethics Alarms, Jack Marshall aptly describes this claim as being “the penis that broke the camel’s back,” and suggests that it “sounds like a cover story.”  Curmie has read literally thousands of Ethics Alarms posts over the years; Jack’s cynicism is seldom misplaced.

Finally, Bishop argues that the problem wasn’t showing the images per se (“Gosh, we’re a classical school. Why wouldn’t we show Renaissance art to children?”), but rather the fact that parents weren’t alerted to the “controversial” content in advance. Apparently the teacher wrote a letter, but due to a “series of miscommunications” the letter wasn’t sent out. Curmie, wild-eyed leftie that he is, sees nothing whatsoever controversial about those images, but the teacher, in a recognition of parental hysteria for its own sake an abundance of caution initiated the warning process. 

And then came the no doubt inevitable outrage from a grand total of three parents, to which Bishop and his cohorts/underlings meekly capitulated. The fact that even Bishop admits that “98 percent of the parents didn’t have a problem” is apparently irrelevant. Curmie, were he of a cynical disposition (I know… go with me here, Gentle Reader), might suggest that to describe the depiction of a flaccid penis on a marble representation of an idealized male body as “pornographic” is to demonstrate that the problem is with the viewer, not the sculpture, which, over the last several hundred years has been seen in person by literally millions of pre-teens with no apparent ill effects. Oh, and by the way, a teacher saying “nonpornographic” isn’t an issue to any sentient adult, which of course excludes Bishop. 

Curmie might even argue that given the fact that Carrasquilla was the third principal in the school’s less-than-three-year history, that if Bishop is really looking for the problem, he might stop placing the blame on principals and start pondering the role of that fella gazing back at him from the mirror. Statements like “even poor people have standards” don’t help. 

The major issue here is far more significant, however. The idea that parents should be able to have a say in how the education system works is, or at least ought to be, self-evident. But Bishop’s statement that “Parental rights trump everything else” is not merely problematic, but chilling. No, they don’t, or at least they damned well shouldn’t. Education is not, cannot be, about serving up whatever pabulum the most insular and doctrinaire parents want. It’s about students, and what is best for them must be the primary objective. 

Bishop’s comments demonstrate pretty clearly that Tallahassee Classical’s claims to an emphasis on classical learning is, in a phrase often employed by Curmie’s mom, so much balloon juice.  Rather, the real objective is more about force-feeding a political ideology fully as narrowminded as the “woke” agenda Bishop alleges to be rampant in the public schools. His leadership style seems to be to accede to every heckler’s veto in sight, while abrogating his responsibilities to the people who really matter: the students.  

This way lies the abyss.