Bullseye

I'd like to take a quick peek at an article which a friend brought to my attention this afternoon. I would preface with the fact that I'm not condoning or denying Mr. Taranto's arguments, only presenting them as I understand them and explicating them in the light of what seem to be the implications of the Media Matters "piece," which is in fact little more than an assumption hidden in a byline meant to cast a wicked spell over a series of quotations. Hard-hitting journalism at its finest.

–

First, in the most recent article in question, Mr. Taranto doesn't allege or deny that the judgments in question are illegal or immoral, but rather that they "show signs of becoming" an effort to criminalize male sexuality. 

Second, what he does affirm in his most recent article is that the judicial and legislative reactions demonstrate not that any crime is acceptable, but rather that, "The presumption that reckless men are criminals while reckless women are victims makes a mockery of any notion that the sexes are equal." In other words, Taranto's point is that either A) men and women are in fact not equal and thus the law and judgments in question  in the 6/17 article are potentially and partially proper in principle, or B) men and women are equal and thus the laws and judgments should reflect that premise in their executions. Taranto predicated this argument on the fact that with equally ambiguous evidence (in the case mentioned in his 6/17 piece), the man's testimony was deemed less reliable for no apparent reason.

Third and as such, the byline is disingenuous since:

1. Taranto does not "dismiss" the allegations but asserts their handling demonstrates something
2. Where did the word "epidemic" come from and how is it substantiated here?
3. The statement "the epidemic of sexual assault in the military as a 'war on men'" is not even intelligible. It technically means that the actual assaults (presumably by men) constitute the war on men, which is of course incorrect and absurd. What it means to say was that "charging men with assault is evidence of of a war on men," which is what the subsequent quotations from Taranto's pieces are meant to suggest and which Taranto never alleges. 

The byline concludes the cutting commentary by asserting all of the following quotations demonstrate sexism, to which the commentariat replies with winning charges about Goebbels, the conservative oligarchy, 18th century mores, and one which proceeds to make Mr. Taranto's point:

Actually, [men] have the right to choose not to have unprotected sex with a woman. They know or should have known that unprotected sex can lead to pregnancy. If it does lead to pregnancy, they have the legal responsibility and the moral obligation to provide for that child that they knowingly created when they chose to have unprotected sex.

Perhaps, but the point is that in such a case men and women would not be equal, since while both parties were free to have sex, and the woman is free to abort the fetus to undo some of the consequences, the man is not free to forego any consequences by refusing paternal obligations. Again, the question Mr. Taranto concerned himself with was about apparent inconsistencies in allegedly egalitarian administration of law, which he attributed to a:

war on men—a political campaign against sexual assault in the military that shows signs of becoming an effort to criminalize male sexuality.

Taranto's argument seems to be that the apparent lack of egalitarian judgments, which he alleges occurred in the cases he cited in the 6/17 article, demonstrate that:

• The principle of egalitarianism is unworkable and thus ignored in proceedings AND/OR
• The principle of egalitarianism is ignored for the purpose of somehow harassing men, AND/OR
• Such anti-egalitarian judgment by Lt. Gen. Susan Helms was still somehow unsatisfactorily punitive for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Whichever is the case, Mr. Taranto does not claim that any prosecution of sexual assault constitutes a "war on men," but that at the judicial level with Lt. Gen. Helms and/or the legislative level with Sen. McCaskill, a particular, alleged "political" pursuit "shows signs of becoming an effort to criminalize male sexuality" beyond, or instead of, trying cases based on an egalitarian justice.

Face/Off

The Art of Stillness

People are loud. Not just some people, although some are noisier than others, but all people are noisy. It's not so hard to understand really, people moving around and making noise, and it might seem a grouchy contention that people ought to be quiet, but as we discussed before, silence destroys because some things can exist only in silence. When we last made that point we did so in an aesthetic dimension focused on perception of phenomena. To a different end I would proceed from Romano Guardini's definition of stillness:

Stillness is the tranquility of the inner life, the quiet at the depths of its hidden stream. It is a collected, total presence, a being all there, receptive, alert, ready. [Guardini, 11]

Many implications flow from these two lines, and bless the souls to whom Guardini preached that blissfully breviloquent–three page–homily, so let us look at those implications in turn.

The need for corporal stillness is perhaps the most obvious necessity for a general stillness. Corporal stillness falls into the categories of the deliberate and the incidental. The prescription for both is simple: stop what you're doing. No typing, talking, texting, or communication. No work and certainly none of the manic multitasking to which the well-intentioned, foolishly overburdened incline. Stopping is the easy part, though, and it's the ensuing void that terrifies modern man back into activity. Not only the common man but also the philosopher both seek activity, the former for entertainment and the latter in endless thinking. What of inner stillness, then?

As Josef Pieper distinguished, [Pieper, 9] since Kant all happenings in the mind have been re-classified as activity. No longer can man simply see or listen or know, but he always actively reasons about an object of inquiry. The medievals, however,

distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, of searching and re-searching, abstracting, refining, and concluding. . . whereas intellectus refers to the ability of "simple looking" (simplex intuitus), to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye. [Pieper, 11]

So instead of pacing on an endless treadmill of ratiocination, man may both actively reason and passively receive. The two, however opposed, mutually reinforce. A man would not consider that he knows a piece of music which heard but does not understand, nor one which he understood from study but which he has not heard. Likewise most of us would not say that we know a person about whom we have read but with whom we do not live. The rational and experiential need one another.

So we have ceased our jabbering, curbed our tapping toes, and banished all thoughts from our minds. Now what? One needs a silent space, free from bustling people, blinking and booping electronics, and anything which tugs at the senses. Alas, this includes music, even our beloved relaxation playlists, for recorded music allows us to drown out noise, but it does not create silence from which something else may arise. Such is in contrast to playing, which requires focus and attention. Even physical activity must cease, for the focus is not on the body or its exercise.

So what is the focus? Not the usual subjects of beauty, truth, knowledge, and not even virtue. The goal is where we started: stillness.

Stillness is the tranquility of the inner life, the quiet at the depths of its hidden stream. It is a collected, total presence, a being all there, receptive, alert, ready. [Guardini, 11]

The goal is simply being in fullness. Yes, you can use stillness toward the end of knowledge, about oneself and the world, as the philosophers say. You can use stillness as preparation for an experience. In neither case though is use the proper word, for both intellectus and ἡσῠχικός (stillness) imply some superhuman faculty which simply perceives and waits.

Really it was already the end itself, the ultimate paradox of the end that's present at the beginning. [Kingsley, 186]

The knowledge we already have is useless unless we can really live it, in and through ourselves. Otherwise it becomes a burden that can weigh us down or even destroy us, like the oracle of the Phocaeans. We already have everything we need. We just need to be shown what we have. [Kingsley, 191]

Such is not, however, what Guardini cautions against, a withdrawal into the ego, for it is not a conceit, i.e. formed by the mind, rather it is in-formed. It is not rushing activity seeking completion, but the silence of the source, its distillation awaiting perfection.

–

Guardini, Romano. Meditations Before Mass. Matthias Grünewald Verlag. 1939.
Kingsley, Peter. In the Dark Places of Wisdom. The Golden Sufi Center Publishing. 1999.
Pieper, Josef. (Malsbary, Gerald. trans.) Leisure: The  Basis of Culture. Kösel-Verlag. 1948.

The Barcids of Broadway

Book Review: A Dash of Style

by Noah Lukeman. 2006.

A Dash of Style is an exciting book on grammatical punctuation. Yes, that's right: exciting. It's not a history of punctuation and it's not a compendium of every which way you may use a comma. Instead, it's an introduction to a troupe of players who are going to help you put on your show. You meet the magician (the colon), the advisor (parentheses), and the bridge (the semicolon), and liberally spiced with examples of their greatest performances from Poe to Forster, Lukeman shows how the dozen or so points of punctuation can really make your work sing.

Lukeman's greatest strength here is his ability to define these strange little symbols in clear and memorable terms. He doesn't tell us how we're allowed to use it or even how we ought to, but rather he tells us what these marks do and how they'll affect our sentences: the dash interrupts, the colon "pulls back the curtain." With a crystal clear definition in place, Lukeman then gives examples of various combinations and uses, some contrived to make a point and some quotations from the greats. The quotations are generous and choice, creating a miniature anthology not of do's-and-don'ts, but of, well, style.

That's not to say Lukeman has thrown all the rules to the wind; he's clear about what constitutes strict and loose use of a punctuation mark. Yet Lukeman approaches from the point of style, that is, the expression of thought, not from rules. The result is a book which empowers you to refine your process, unlike textbooks which can paralyze you with conditionals. The happy result is that A Dash of Style is less admonition and more invitation, a book you can return to both for example and inspiration. In fact, the author concludes each chapter with a dozen or so questions for examining one's own writing. For example, take something you've written and take out all the semicolons, or try to find a moment to use a colon. What did it do? Do you want more or less of that effect?

It's a rather culinary approach, a pinch of this and a dash of that, and as such it respects the authority of the author. On the other hand you may feel more pressure to do well in the shadow of the masters than you do following the prescriptions of a rule book. Not quite pressure to punctuate well, though, so much as pressure to give proper expression to one's ideas. In this respect A Dash of Style is a challenge to know thyself by mastering that process of putting thought to page.

Three Kirks and Plato

Anyone want to help produce this?

Accio Style!

Following up our analyses of Cicero and Melville, it's time to look at a less successful, though not wholly failed, selection of literature. From J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

As the pain from Harry's scar forced his eyes shut, his wand acted of its own accord. He felt it drag his hand around like some great magnet, saw a spurt of golden fire through his half-closed eyelids, heard a crack and a scream of fury. The remaining Death Eater yelled; Voldemort screamed, "No!": Somehow, Harry found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button. He punched it with his wand-free hand and the bike shot more flames into the air, hurtling straight toward the ground.

I would first like to note that there's a lot to like in the Harry Potter series, but the style and clarity of this passage are lacking. Second, I'm not suggesting the whole series or even book are as uneven as this passage.

–

Right out of the gate, describing the scar so literally is a missed opportunity: because the scar is synonymous with Voldemort it should seem to act as Voldemort. The pain shouldn't be doing the action of the verb, with scar shunted away to a prepositional phrase.

Why as here? It's not the simultaneity of Harry closing his eyes and the wand acting that is important, but the contrast of his impotence and the wand's power. For that reason, it was a good opportunity to personify the wand instead of literally saying that it acted of its own accord, which tells us very little.

He felt it drag is unnecessary: we'll imagine what Harry felt because we empathize with him and his intense situation. Simply it dragged will do. Also, the scene seems to be unfolding quickly, so is dragged the proper word? Let's take a peek.

1. to draw with force, effort, or difficulty; pull heavily or slowly along; haul; trail
2. to search with a drag, grapnel, or the like: 
3. to level and smooth (land) with a drag or harrow.
4. to introduce; inject; insert
5. to protract (something) or pass (time) tediously or painfully (often followed by out or on )
6. to pull (a graphical image) from one place to another on a computer display screen, especially by using a mouse.

Does any of that seem like it fits? Maybe the wand had difficulty dragging his hand? If so, why? And what of the sloppy simile, like some great magnet. Is his hand metallic? Couldn't we find something more original? And his eyes are half-closed now? Why? Also, who cares about his eyes? It's a jejune thought that because Harry is doesn't know what's going on his eyes must be closed, or that because the author needs Harry incapacitated, the easiest way to do that is to close his eyes.

The structure of the sentence continues the same problem of telling instead of drawing.

He felt it drag his hand around like some great magnet, saw a spurt of golden fire through his half-closed eyelids, heard a crack and a scream of fury.

It's structured around the verbs, but there's this layer of narration between us and the action. Just tell us what's happening without telling us how Harry's experiencing it. Again: we'll empathize. This was a good opportunity for short, declarative sentences, which we get next, but. . . let's see what happens.

The remaining Death Eater yelled; Voldemort screamed, "No!": Somehow, Harry found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button.

What is this? What's going on? Which Death Eater are we talking about? Yelled? What did he yell? Why? Is he yelling because he was hit or what he saw? Yell is also much too vague.

The punctuation here is also problematic. The first two clauses are not unreasonably edited together with a semicolon, appropriate on account of their similarity and because a comma might have been to little a pause while a period too much. It's a debatable, but not outrageous, punctuation. The problem is the climax and use of that colon. The colon should herald the big reveal of the sentence and instead it confuses: are the bad guys screaming because of what Harry did, or what he was about to do?

Somehow, Harry found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button.

Somehow implies improbability. What was improbable, though: Harry finding himself in that spot or him actually being in that spot? Also, why are either of those circumstances improbable? The event is also a bit of a cheat, because on the one hand the author has painted Harry as incapacitated, and on the other hand he's the only one on the bike so he has to do something. The wand can't do everything.

The next statement isn't awful but it doesn't work because it's too long and sounds preposterous until fully unraveled.

He found his nose (what?)
He found his nose an inch (what?)
He found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button (ohhhh!)

And what's all of these iambs? u- | u- | u- | u-

he felt it drag his hand around [like some great magnet]
found his nose an inch from the [dragon-fire button]
he punched it with his wand-free hand [and the bike shot]

We're in narration here: why this rhythm? It's a curious move even as a pacing device, because the following phrase neither continues nor contrasts the pattern, and thus there is no climax to the thought. The use of dragon seems to work, but dragon is dependent on the next two words thus its effect is diminished.

He punched it with his wand-free hand and the bike shot more flames into the air, hurtling straight toward the ground.

His wand-free hand? How about free hand? I haven't forgotten that Harry has two hands and is holding a wand in one of them, especially because she made such a big deal about the wand "acting of its own accord" three sentences ago. Why more flames? More than when? And into the air? OK, but where else were the flames going to go? If the author had said into the night or darkness or black, then we'd at least get an image out of the observation. Who cares about the air? Did we forget that he's flying?

None of this is horrific, but it's vague and sloppy, turning a thrilling moment into an mushy, unsatisfying read. With all humility: an alternative.

A hiss in the darkness: Harry's scar seared his eyes in flash of pain. Something of that sinister spite awoke the phoenix core of Harry's wand which, eyeing its twin across the sky, streamed gold and fire through the night. A deathly crack. Silence. Now the other Death Eaters howled, but one beastly bellow swallowed all their cries. The wand released Harry's hand and he lunged across the seat, jabbing around for the fire button. At last he punched it and the bike hurtled straight down toward the ground. 

What do you think? I can't claim to know Rowling's story better than she, so I'm not sure this is better or more appropriate, but I tried to make it vivid, clear, and specific. What I had in mind:

1. Open with a clear image with a clear rhythmic profile: hiss in the darkness (zippity-do-da)
2. Evoke Voldemort's presence with sibilance: hiss and -ness
3. The colon is the deep breath before the plunge of the sentence paragraph, and also emphasizes the powerful, causal, dangerous nature of the brief opening statement which preceded it. I chose the colon over the dash because we know what follows the colon will be caused by what preceded it, not just interrupting it.
4. Connect the idea of the hiss and the pain by personifying the scar. Use more sibilance to continue the idea. 
5. End with a clear, contrasting image: flash of pain (contrasts and fulfills hiss in darkness)
6. Sibilance continues Voldemort's presence: something...sinister spite
7. Indefinite pronoun something implies that Voldemort's hatred is wider than the way in which we are discussing it and links the previous idea of pain to the subject of this sentence, spite.
8. Making the spite the subject of awoke continues Voldemort's agency.
9. Phoenix core 1) finally conjures a new, positive, colorful image, 2) plays into the idea of its verb, awake, since the Phoenix rises, 3) allows me not to use the word wand yet and save it for the end of the clause, where it emphasizes the relative pronoun.
10. eyeing its twin harkens to the relationship of the wands, and their owners, without having to describe it, and explains what's happening without being boring and literal. 
11. Making the wand the subject emphasizes Harry's passivity by not mentioning him. 
12. sibilance with sky and streamed links the words over the comma.
13. hendiadys with "gold and fire" instead of "golden fire" emphasizes both color and shape, instead of just color
14. the iambic (u-) concluding clause to the sentence 1) puts emphasis on the important words (gold, fire, through, night) by placing them on the long beats, and 2) disappears into the darkness like the stream from the wand.
15. That long sentence A) contrasts the ones which come before and after it and B) emphasizes Harry's daze by mimicking the slow-motion, hyper-acuity which people experience when shocked and afraid
16. Two more short images: deathly crack and silence, contrasting the opening images, hiss and darkness. Tit for tat.
17. Contrast of deathly and Death Eaters emphasizes that one of the self-styled death-dealers has himself been killed
18. howled emphasizes the animalistic nature of the Death Dealers, and is a cliche of nighttime spookiness
19. light assonance of l with howled, beastly, bellow, and swallowed, subtly unifies the bad guys.
20. alliteration with beastly and bellowed unites the ideas and suggests Voldemort is, as their leader, the most beastly. 
21. rhyming of bellow and swallow 
22. contrast of bellow and swallow: bellowing goes out and swallowing goes in, also reinforces Voldemort's dominance and power-at-a-distance.
23. cries contrasts bellows both in pitch and insofar as cries, like howls, conveys lamentation whereas bellows conveys anger. Even the Death Eaters feel for their companion whereas Voldemort is enraged only by the effrontery of the act.
24. trochaic (-u) conclusion to the sentence contrasts the previous long sentence which, describing the deed of Harry's wand, was its opposite, and concludes with a pattern-breaking long to emphasize the conclusion.
25. Finally the wand returns control to Harry, who finally reappears in the story.
26. With Harry awake, the action speeds up again: lunging, jabbing, punching, hurtling
27. Never mention Voldemort by name, adding to his allure and fear of his agency at a distance.
28. Five distinct parts of the story: A) the cause of the action, B) the reaction of the wand, C) the bad guys' reaction, D) Harry's reaction, and E) Where the action's going next.
29. Those five parts come in five sentences, split up between B and C into two parts, by the lacuna of the heavily elided "A deathly crack. Silence."
30. Simple conclusion tells you where you are and where you're going.

A Warm Welcome

Dear Everyone Who. . .

• wants a powerful government
• wants to "reform" government
• wants to fix government by putting "good people" in charge
• wants just to "trim a little fat" from government
• can't imagine how life could go on without the government
• is thrilled  by the idea of "energetic" government
• doesn't hold "their guy" accountable in office
• thinks it "would be even worse" if the government didn't do x,y, or z
• holds statist beliefs of varying kinds

Thanks for following the whole NSA Spying Scandal.

Please consider applying the lessons of this scandal to your other ideas about government.

Sincerely,

Libertarians and Other Non-Statists

Word Power III: Die, Word, Die!

Words are powerful, and because of this sometimes they die iniquitous deaths. Verbicide, the twisting of an ancient, honest word to a new, nebulous purpose, is an ugly crime. C. S. Lewis catalogued [1] the types of verbicide: inflationary, of verbiage, politicizing, and approbatory. Inflation occurs when a word takes on many other meanings, verbiage when you set up an idea but never complete it, politicizing when you use just part of a word or redefine a word, and approbative verbicide occurs when you use a word only for the purpose of praising something, disregarding the word's descriptive power. Today I would like to take a look at some words that died on the political battlefield.

The first is that infamous word itself, politics. The Greek πολιτεία carries the senses of citizenship, a body of citizens (a polity), and a constitution. Helpfully, πολιτεία, along with πολιτεύω, the word for being a citizen, and citizen, πολιτηΐη, are similar, forming a happy little family of ideas which describe man's fate as a political animal. So what on earth do we mean when we say that someone is playing politics? Chiefly, we seem to mean that he's getting what he wants and we're not, and that his intentions are somehow nefarious. The business of living together and administering government is messy because men have conflicting interests and power seems to degenerate the character of men, but that's no reason to debase the very idea of living together in society and administering services. Too, we need not restrict political to describing activity centered around the state. Instead we ought with politics to reflect the free living and associations of free people.

Speaking of the state, our usage of the word borders on the ridiculous. From the Latin sisto it can mean appointed, fixed, or regular, and from sto it can mean positioned, arranged, or ranked. In both cases, one's status, i.e. situation, is relative to something. That something may very well be the government, but to use the word state to refer to the government is unbecoming because the government is not the nexus of being around which all life turns.

In fact, government isn't such a fine word either. The Latin verb guberno, even when used to mean govern a polity, retains its sense of to steer, as the gubernator steers the ship. Today's connotation of government, regardless of whether you want it big or small, is that of a large, monolithic or at best tripartite, entity. That doesn't seem to be the best fit for the metaphor, steering the ship of state. Ship implies swift, light, and maneuverable–if you want a big government, I humbly suggest a related name: leviathan.

The last word I'd like to reconsider is right. As an adjective it's just fine, meaning just, correct, or fair, or more literally, straight or set straight. The modern sense of right meaning a guarantee of something, stems from English legal notion of having a just claim or title. These words succeed, though, where rights fails because they are specific. Claim retains its root of clamare, Latin for to shout, and the notion that you are yourself claiming something for yourself. Likewise title, or entitled, retains the idea of a written document, a title, declaring your ownership of real property. Both claim and title are preferable to the nebulous definition of rights as "something I get because it's right," a notion at best a misdirection of natural law.

In conclusion, our goal should be to protect all ideas, not just the ones we like, so that they remain distinct and comprehensible. One step toward such a goal is to express them with as much clarity and precision as possible, and that requires from us both study and honesty.

–

[1] Lewis, C. S. Studies in Words. Cambridge University Press. 1960.

Please Stand Up

The Atlantic is running another boilerplate encomium to our beloved 16th president, but above the heaping praise dangles a tantalizing question: how do you get to know a president? That's not how the author asks it, of course, but that's the bottom line. In private life we're pretty cautious about declaring that we know someone. This is simply common sense, owing to the fact that it takes us a long time to feel comfortable around someone. In public life, though, we hop aboard the political bandwagon at the slightest coincidence of feeling. We love them, we hate them, we vote for them, seldom do even the most scrupulous actually research them. And when we do our homework, what do we learn? What can we? By the time they've taken office, most politicians have held every conceivable position and grabbed dollars from every possible pot. Look at our current chief executive: we're finally at the point where every conceivable opinion of him is held by someone.

Among his supporters, he is or has been, a messianic figure who'll heal the nation and the planet. Among his detractors, he's an antichrist who is actively trying to ruin the United States. He's a radical leftist, a moderate, and too far to the right. He's too Christian, he's an atheist, and he's a Muslim. He's too agressive and too conciliatory. He's the philosopher president with Moby Dick in one hand and Thomas Aquinas in the other, and he's just having a beer with the guys. He's the peacemaker who hasn't bombed Iran or North Korea, and the warmonger waging a drone campaign. He's a pragmatist and an ideologue, a bona fide American and a foreigner, he's too formal and too casual, too cold and too folksy. He's everything to everyone.

Now I'm not saying President Obama's character is an indecipherable enigma, but I'm saying it's awfully hard to tell precisely what he believes and what he'll do in a given situation. When he acts is the deed for or against his principles? Is it the ideologue or pragmatist, and in what degree?

As we try to judge him now, we also contend with our own prejudices as well as those of the news sources, the opinion the president himself wants to convey, and the general static of life. Nate Silver has recently argued that although the information revolution has spread facts, it has amplified the noise too. Will it be any easier then, as the author of that Atlantic piece suggests, to judge President Obama in hindsight? I don't think Lincoln is the best example of a man vindicated by history, but his criterion is revealing: success. Is that the only standard? What about consistency, or the Hippocratic principle of doing no harm? How easily do we shift into relativistic judgment, and how unconsciously do we do the dirty math of calculating means and ends.

Again, though, does hindsight help us distinguish anything? Other than by success, what differentiates Marius, Sulla, Catiline, Pompey, and Caesar? Is it any clearer to us now than it was for their contemporaries? In some ways it was surely clearer and others muddier.

Of course there's no easy solution to this epistemological conundrum, save the bromides about diligence, skepticism, and reason, which are true enough. The more useful question is perhaps about the American people. What do we really want from a leader and government? Does our schizophrenic policy simply reflect a schizoid people? I can't say, but I've noticed one thing during the administrations of Bush and Obama, and that during both tenures there were seemingly substantial groups of people who just couldn't acknowledge the man as the Commander in Chief. He was always an interloper, a fraud, Bush because of the irregularities of the 2000 election, and Obama because of doubts about where he was born.

There was of course much emotion and little reason behind any of the sentiments, but in both cases, each side quieted down to a deafening silence once "his guy" was in office. I think now, perhaps, that people are genuinely afraid of the government, and only the thought, however misguided and misconstrued, of a friend at the helm, lets people sleep. I'm reminded of the famous passage from Xenophon:

The Paralos arrived at Athens during the night, bringing news of the disaster at Aigospotamoi, and a cry arose in the Peiraieus and ran up through the Long Walls and into the city itself as one man imparted the calamitous news to the next. As a result, no one slept that night as they mourned not only for the men destroyed but even more for themselves, thinking they would suffer the same catastrophes they had inflicted on others. –Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.3

We want power, we want technology and energetic government, then we abuse it, and then like any guilty man we make excuses, and then we grow afraid, and we turn to a protector.

Or is it the politicians or pundits who whip up fervor? Most people seem pretty busy with work and life, and if left alone wouldn't have much cause to stir up trouble. Likewise the news, if it informs at all, still primes people for delusions of superiority.

Maybe, as a new account argues was the case before the civil war, that we just plain don't like one another. If that's true, a powerful and energetic government is unlikely to ameliorate relations.

There doesn't seem to be golden bullet, either, no perfect policy or system which is both energetic and incorruptible. It might be a start, though, to stop admitting leaders to the pantheon of presidential immortals, and praising citizens who do things apolitically, that is, themselves. Unlike the presidents, we really do know people like that; they're called friends, neighbors, and generally, good people. Maybe they should get a monument instead, or better, our esteem and affection.