Kaeru

A kaeru, or frog statue. This one sat at the primary Shinto shrine in the United States, which was northeast of Seattle until last June. The new shrine, as I understand it, is to be in Florida.

The shrine was a nice, peaceful place, tucked away in the sort of place that if one didn't know to look for it, one would drive right past it. I took this picture when I went up there to spend one last stretch of time before it closed.

I don't know if the statuary and whatnot is still present. Maybe I should go up and look.

Target Selection

I started listening to The Rest is Politics out of the United Kingdom a few months ago, at the suggestion of a British coworker, and have been really enjoying it. Mainly because politics here in the United States can be a drag, and it's nice to hear about what's going on elsewhere for a change. TRiP, however, had other ideas, and has spun up a third weekly episode, hosted by Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci, to talk about American politics in the run-up to the presidential election in November.

During their first episode, one of the points that Ms. Kay made concerned political cynicism. She noted that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had gone to the Columbia University campus to excoriate the administration there on their handling to anti-Israel protests over the current war in Gaza, but, back in 2017 (when the Speaker was still a freshman Representative) he'd had nothing to say on the matter. (Google appears to back her up on this.)

I don't know if I'd term it political cynicism so much as political expediency. Parties don't garner very many votes by criticizing their voters. President Trump made his infamous statement: "They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," not because he was attempting to praise neo-Nazis and White nationalists, but because he understood that Republican voters are considered part of the American Right, and a blanket condemnation of the politically Right activists at the rally would have hurt him. Likewise, Speaker Johnson has a lot to say about real and imagined antisemitism on college campuses specifically because Republican voters have come to see universities as bastions of the Left, so "Standing With Israel," has no political cost. Neither does turning on the very college president who passed muster when they were summoned to Capitol Hill to be grilled on how they would handle protests.

As the American political landscape drifts further and further into two camps made up of people who believe that the other hates them, the real and imagined mutual hostility between them becomes fertile ground for politicians (who are partisan more or less by definition) to play up those feelings as a means of displaying their own loyalties and (genuine or expedient) hostilities. Right now, college campuses where there are demonstrations, and the administrators are unready, unwilling or unable to put an end to them are target-rich environments for Republican lawmakers looking to prove that they have little tolerance for anyone further to the political Left than themselves. It's the nature of the game.

Placement

So I've finished The Republic, and not a moment too soon; it's something of a slog. Mainly because of its construction as a dialog where all of the other characters seem to serve no real purpose other than to agree with Plato's Socrates. I started to suspect that they were meant to be avatars for the audience; either as a way of getting the audience to agree with the positions that Plato was taking, or as something of a pander, showing them to be as wise as Socrates was.

In any event, the interesting part of the book was seeing out some of its concepts have lasted through the years, like the idea that there is a better, and "more real," reality out there, and that's where the wise seek to focus their attentions. Or the idea that some people are simply better than others, and therefore they should be given leadership for the good of everyone. Although it could be said that the fact that The Republic's disdain for fiction and artistry never seemed to have caught on is also interesting.

I'm not going to say that the basic insight of The Republic, which seems to be that an autocracy of benevolent Philosopher Kings would make the best form of government (and likewise, the philosophical mindset, presided over by pure Reason makes the most just person), has been debunked, but it quickly becomes evident that it would be a difficult system to maintain in practice, even outside of the communal nature of the place. Plato's understanding is that the everyday world that people inhabit is so corrupting that only constant vigilance for any negative influences will prevent it from degrading. Plato's just state would take a phenomenal amount of effort to enact and relies on the best minds being given the best education at the correct times in their lives. There simply isn't enough room for error for the whole thing to be a human enterprise.

Inexhausted

"What," the graphic asked, "is Black Fatigue?"

It gave five answers:

• The fatigue that comes from the pain and anguish of living with racism every single day of your life.
• The constant fatigue of not knowing whether you or a loved one will come home alive.
• Enduring the ravages of intergenerational racism.
• Being fatigued by those who are surprised and express outrage (with no action) that such inequities still exist.
• The fear, frustration, anger and rage that is part of many Black people's daily lives.

I get where this sort of thing is coming from, even as I wonder about its overall effectiveness.

I'm of the opinion that it's not helpful to give other people a veto over one's peace of mind, because they're likely to exercise that veto. Not out of spite or animus, but simply as a side effect of looking out for themselves and attending to the priorities that are important to them. And I suspect that for at least a sizable minority of the American public, if racism were to end tomorrow, they wouldn't notice its absence. And that means that it isn't a priority for them; they have problems of their own to worry about. Accordingly, it being a constant weight on one's shoulders is a recipe for unhappiness, because it's not likely to go anywhere on anything approaching a reasonable timeframe. Depending on who one might ask, or how one defines the phenomenon, racism in the sense that we understand it today dates back from anywhere from the Middle Ages to Classical Greece. It's likely not going anywhere anytime soon.

The fact that many Americans (of all racial backgrounds) lead lives of enduring desperation (quiet or not), fear and/or uncertainty is certainly a failure of the United State's vaunted ideals. And in the face of this, a commitment to "personal responsibility" (which often, ironically, is seen as a commitment that entire demographic groups should make) comes across as victim-blaming. Even so, there is something to be said for changing what one can change, and simply letting the rest of it go. Beating the drum over racism doesn't make it any more salient of a concern to those for whom it isn't a real problem. But the idea that it constantly erodes mind, body and spirit, or that it's a continuing problem for the mental health of the Black community serves as a constant reminder of the inability of Black Americans to either solve the problem, or insulate themselves from it. And what does that do to help anything?

I understand that, for many Black people, my outlook on life is nothing more than proof that I've turned my back on my people, and bought into a culture of White supremacy. Perhaps that is true; I don't claim to have a particularly clear perspective on myself, given the lack of distance between me, myself and I. But if my understanding of people in general is even somewhat accurate, ceding the ability to be happy in life, or at least satisfied, to others is simply a bad idea. I decided that I wasn't going to let racism get me down, because I could exercise at least that much control over my life. Were the fact there are people for whom the unequal nature of life in the United States surprising, but not motivating, a reliable source of fatigue, I wouldn't even have that. Homo Sapiens doesn't live up to the hype. It never has. I've never found accepting that fact to be particularly uplifting; only better than the alternative.

Private Show

A busker puts on a show for three in Seattle's Lake City neighborhood. The small park here was, for a time, a fairly populous homeless encampment.