Ciceronian Review

Honduras and Constancy

Over the weekend, the Honduran President was displaced by a coup d'etat effected by the military.  Unlike most coups, this one seems to have had the support of the Supreme Court and the Legislature.  Very unusual.  All the same, a coup.  By its nature, a coup displaces the will of the electorate because it terminates the office of the President elected by the citizens of Honduras.  As expected, the OAS and its member states (all, as far I know) have condemned the coup.  Interestingly absent was a call by the Republican spokesmen for more forceful action in Honduras.  One would think the Republicans would want forceful intervention, which, in Honduras, would likely be pretty effective.  Or at least an economic boycott, to support the democratic process.  But that has not been forthcoming.  Maybe it has to do with the President overthrown -- a Chavez ally, so perhaps not worthy of support. 

I don't think it is helpful for that party to be so brazen in the posturing with principle.  It would not cost the Republicans much of anything to just stand against military coups.  It is not like Lenin would be raised from the dead as a result, or even Bill Ayres. 

Throw Him on the Barbie

This has been an interesting week for the Republican Party and for the defense of marriage crowd.  Sen. Ensign has an affair with a staffer.  Gov. Sanford has an affair, wanders off to Buenos Aires with his darling and has his staff lying about hiking the Appalachian Trail.  The defense of marriage from gays and lesbians seems to be losing its luster --the defenders aren't all that taken with their own marriages it seems.  Another way to see it is to think of it all as competition between the parties -- the Demoncrats had John Edwards finding sex in the middle of a presidential campaign (shades of Gary Hart).  The Republican candidates couldn't match it so the next rank of up and comers had to match Edwards.  So Ensign goes public when -- well, not so very clear why.  Extortion is not usually attempted by the party lawyer sending a letter.  Not to be outdone, Mr. Sanford decided that unexplained disappearance would be okay -- Gary Hart again!  That was a self-destructive move.  Which all suggests that the old slogan is still good -- Republicans make good barbie - throw one on today.

Hunger

Based on some recommendation -- I have forgotten where I saw it -- I read Knut Hamsun's Hunger.  It might have been in a letter from James Wright to Robert Bly, whose afterword to the novel I skipped.  The introduction by Auster also skipped.  It is a relatively short novel, and certainly modernist in the pre-war sense.  The basics of the novel are that it appears as the first person narrative of a journalist who is both without any steady or even remotely sufficient work and likely somewhat insane.  I think it is both.  Not that I have ever been hungry enough to live the relevant circumstances.  But it seems so very different from the description of hunger's effect on the mind by, e.g., Achebe.  That is pretty limited evidence, and however thin it is was I relied on.  Mostly, though, it seemed to me a novel about a man whose mind is not entirely all interconnected, as shown by his odd thoughts and behavior.  And modernist in the self-awareness of the pieces moving apart from one another.  It reminded me, as it does many, of Dostoevsky or, in places, Gogol.  Like them, Hamsun's character is very chatty with himself, and quite funny.  Most of the book I think is quite funny, not just the inner monologues.  The things the speaker does and his circumstances are absurd -- a journalist writing pieces about the meaning of the world while too hungry to think, and the many times his peculiar sense of duty requires him to give away everything.  In that sense, a bit kantian.  And fit quite well into travel to and from a deposition -- another peculiar use of one's time, use to limited ends.

On a different subject, I recommend the comments on the Iranian situation at Fistful of Euros.

Leaders

Iran reminds me of a small piece in the series "I, Claudius."  Pretty poor production values by today's standards, and very talky.  The series is about the Julian-Claudian emperors, cast as the reminiscences of Claudius.  There is a scene late in the series, most of the details of which I do not recall anymore - which emperor, etc.  In any event, the person is before the emperor and about to be sentenced to death for plotting or such.  The man says, to the effect of, "One thinks that if one shouts 'Liberty!' the walls of the city will all fall down.  They don't of course."  And off to his death.  But it is a piece of thought that recurs for me.  And Iran is an example, in this sense -- what is the US to do, and what is it that the government and the President to say?  We are for liberty and for democracy and so on.  But to what end?  It does not seem likely that anything said by anyone here will have a useful effect there.  At least, it is hard to see what good would come of governmental announcements.  The US is no friend of Iran and it would be less than serious to suppose that those in opposition to Khamenei and Ahmenijad will be bolstered by announcements.  Maybe.  But also, and much more certainly, ammunition for the government.  This is a hard problem for political theory -- when and what sort of intervention.  Makes Walzer's story-telling (in place of theory) more palatable.  But not more instructive.