"The More Things Change, the More They do Change"

 Dear Readers,

 

The below (and the attached) is my final offering for 2023. The year has been busy, though less so than past ones: thirty-seven “TOTDs,” seventeen “More Essays from Essex,” and thirteen “Burrowing into Books” – roughly 62,000 words, about as many words as are found in an average 250-page book. As my wife Caroline reminds me, being busy keeps me out of trouble.

 

This essay was fun to write. It is meant to put a smile on your face. Some of you would have chosen different products, but I believe we would all agree that the years have seen remarkable changes in the way we live. While we often complain, our lives have been enriched through new products, born of dreamers.

 

However, given the division in the Country and the current political situation, the old (and allegedly Chinese) curse, “may you live in interesting times,” seems assured of being an accurate prediction. But, on a happier note, the winter solstice, here in Connecticut, arrived at 10:27pm last evening; so today is the first full day of winter, and the days will begin to get longer.

 

Thank you for your perseverance as readers; I appreciate your feedback, even when unable to respond. Enjoy the holiday season, and may the New Year be a healthy and happy one,

 

Sydney

 

December 22, 2023

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The More Things Change, the More They do Change”

December 22, 2024

 

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Harriet Tubman (1822-1913)

 

Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has seen rapid change, driven by new inventions, most for the better. My grandparents grew up before cars, washing machines, airplanes, or telephones. My parents grew up before radios, jet planes, atom bombs, or Social Security. I grew up without television, computers, microwave ovens, seat belts, and even before zip codes and valium. My children grew up without cell phones, the internet, Sony PlayStations, DVDs, e-mail, or social media.

 

Are we better off for these inventions? Yes, most have enhanced our lives, and the world is thankful that it was America, not the Nazis, that first produced the atom bomb. Technological advances have freed up time, made jobs safer, improved living standards, and made lives more comfortable. But are we happy? Again, yes; according to Gallup, Americans are generally satisfied with their lives.

 

Nevertheless, as time rushes by I think of what my grandchildren will never experience: gliding through the park on strapped-on roller skates, rolling up a car window, or emptying an ice tray. They will never use a fountain pen, type a letter on a Smith-Corona, or open a can of peas. They will never play tennis with a wooden racquet, lace a pair of ski boots, or float off on an inner tube. They will never call a friend on a dial phone, pay a bill with Travelers Checks, or read a roadmap. They will never have to get up to change the TV channel, or handle carbon paper. They may never read a print newspaper, use a handkerchief, or mess with a window air-conditioning unit. And their children may never have to pump gas!

 

Will they miss what they don’t know? Probably not. Do you miss skis with long thongs, tire chains when roads are snow covered, shoveling coal, or using the choke to give your car the proper fuel-air mixture? 

 

Yet, I feel privileged to have grown up in an old-fashioned way – in a small town in New Hampshire, with artist-parents who preferred a simple life, so different from the homes in which they had been raised. We lived on a rocky farm four miles from the village. We had indoor plumbing but no central heat and the house was not insulated until I was about ten. In the kitchen, there was a wood stove and a real ice chest; and in the bathroom the tub sat on claw feet. Our first phone was a wooden box with an ear-piece on the left and a small crank on the right. In front was a mouthpiece into which one spoke. By turning the crank, the operator was aroused who then placed the asked-for call. It was a party line, so first one had to make sure the line was free. Modernity came late to our home.

 

Dreamers and inventors have improved lives, which speaks to the importance of education. Electric vacuum cleaners, frozen foods, and dish washers have eased the drudgery of housework. Factories and farms have become more efficient. PDAs have made family and friends more accessible. The internet has replaced the need for encyclopedias – though now artificial intelligence is fast approaching, bringing unknown changes. But some things should not change, like curling up before a wood-burning fire on a December night, with a hot chocolate and a book printed on real paper – something I hope my grandchildren will know and enjoy.

"Thoughts on Israel and the Palestinians"

                                                                    Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Thoughts on Israel and the Palestinians”

December 16, 2023

 

“War must be, while we defend ourselves against a destroyer who would devour all;

but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its

swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

                                                                                                                                J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

                                                                                                                                “The Two Towers,” Part 2

                                                                                                                                The Lord of the Rings, 1954

 

War has been around as long as has man. President Obama said as much in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2009: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man.” Efforts to outlaw war, or even to impose rules as to its conduct, have failed. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, an effort to outlaw war, signed on August 27, 1928 did not prevent Japan (a signatory) from invading Manchuria three years later. Nor did it stop Germany (also a signatory) from invading Poland eleven years later. The best means to prevent war is to prepare for it. When I was at the University of New Hampshire, I often drove past Pease Airforce Base with its seemingly oxymoronic, but in fact accurate, sign, “Peace is Our Profession.” The projection of strength is necessary to curtail war. Unfortunately, that air base, and the entire Strategic Air Command was “disestablished” in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

The conduct of modern war is supposed to follow rules of international humanitarian law established under the Geneva Convention of 1949, as they pertain to non-combatants, the wounded and treatment of prisoners of war. But such good intentions are never followed, as we have seen throughout all subsequent wars, and as Senator John McCain, along with thousands of other servicemen, learned during their years as prisoners of war in North Vietnam. As Carl von Clausewitz noted in On War, “The object of fighting is the destruction or defeat of the enemy.” The Swedish war historian Peter Englund, in his new book November 1942, wrote of a British tail gunner flying over Germany: “The aircrews are not guided by moralistic motives or complex explanations; they are given orders to carry out their missions…”

 

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are not asking for a two-state solution. Their call for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea,” is a call to eradicate Israel. When terrorists hide among civilians it is they who are causing civilian deaths. “Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary,” wrote Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolutions in France, but “just” is in the eyes of the beholder. “Unjust war is to be abhorred,” spoke President Theodore Roosevelt at the University of Berlin on May 12, 1910 (only four years before Europe embarked on a four-year war of devastation), “but,” he added, “woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it.” And woe to the state of Israel now if they do not confront and destroy Hamas.

 

War is never pretty. “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it” wrote Major General William Tecumseh Sherman to Mayor James Calhoun and the Atlanta City Council on September 12, 1864; “and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” Hamas brought war into Israel on October 7^th. For Israel, there is no such thing as a disproportionate response. 

 

The land Palestinians claim as their own was part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, until the end of World War I. Does that give Turkey a “right” to that land today? Of course not. Before that, followers of Muhammed, and earlier Byzantines, Jews, Romans, and Christians occupied that land. What we know now as the Middle East was a “cradle of civilization,” whose existence goes back almost 5,000 years. It extends from Egypt in the east to Iran in the west, and from Yemen and Oman in the south to Syria and Iraq in the north. The Middle East gave birth to three of the world’s monotheistic religions. From Judaism emerged Christianity 2,000 years ago, and Islam arrived 600 years later. Members of all three religions are descendants of Abraham, Jews and Christians through his son Isaac, with Muslims descending through his son Ishmael. Despite this common heritage, Middle East Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been at war almost continuously.

 

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, supported a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then a region of the Ottoman Empire. In 1948, following the end of World War II during which close to 50% of the world’s Jewish people were exterminated, a Jewish state was created on land that had been their historic home. To consider them oppressors and colonialists because they built a prosperous and democratic society in the desert is absurd. Even after the end of the War, Jews continued to be persecuted in the Middle East. According to the Washington Institute, 150,000 Jews lived in Iraq at the start of the 20^th Century. When the United States invaded the country in 2003 only 35 Jews remained in Baghdad. The problem for diplomats and world leaders is that Palestinians can also trace their ancestry back as far as Jews. But no Arab country, with the exception of Jordan (home to two million Palestinians) has been willing to accommodate them. Qatar, Iran, and Turkey, however, house Hamas terrorist leaders.

 

Bent on annihilating the state of Israel, Palestinians leaders have ignored the welfare of their people. Citizens of Israel, living in a democracy with rule of law and property rights, have greater freedom and higher living standards than those living under the control of the PA or Hamas. Consider the differences in annual GDP per capita between those living under Palestinian rule ($3,500 in the West Bank and Gaza in 2021) versus $53,200 for Israelis. Keep in mind, the PA has controlled about half of the West Bank for almost thirty years, while Hamas, also elected by the people, has controlled the Gaza Strip for fifteen years. 

 

While there is complexity in the religious and cultural heritage of those living in the Middle East, there is nothing complex about the different moral and ethical values between Hamas and the Israelis. This is not a war between oppressor and oppressed. It is a fight about universal values, between good and evil, between right and wrong, between the classically liberal West and those who follow an illiberal, authoritarian path. While the West, of which Israel is an integral part, has never been perfect, in comparison to those states aligned against it – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and their allies – the West is a paragon of righteousness. Its citizens have more freedom and higher standards of living. Israel, like Ukraine and Taiwan, is fighting to defend self-government, rule of law, property rights, and individual freedom, while Hamas, which takes its orders from an authoritarian Iran, represents a people devoid of human rights. Fully supporting Israel, as well as Ukraine and Taiwan, should not be a difficult decision for any Western power.

 

The United States and other Western nations have an obligation to their citizens to preserve the liberal order, whether in Ukraine, Taiwan, or in Israel. That requires, as Tolkien wrote in the rubric above, standing firm on principles of democracy and personal freedoms, while upping defense spending. It is the weak, not the strong, who are attacked and vanquished. To ignore that lesson is to let authoritarianism thrive.

"Autumn Days (and Nights) with Tolstoy"

 I recognize my production of essays has abated of late, due to the holidays that consume so much of our attention – and I am happy they do. For the Hannukah and Christmas seasons are reminders of the good in life: the blessing that is ours to live where and when we do; the joy that comes in hearing from and being with family and friends; and the pleasure we get from greeting those who merrily serve us in stores and restaurants. 

 

Reading War and Peace was a gift, which will stay with me. It is not escapist, for it causes one to think in broader and deeper terms about our lives, and the story puts the silliness and sordidness of today’s politics in perspective. But, if 1500 pages seems a hill too high, try Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, in my opinion the finest novel ever written.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Autumn Days (and Nights) with Tolstoy”

December 10, 2023

 

“An historian and an artist describing our historic epoch have two quite different tasks before them. As an 

historian would be wrong if he tried to present an historical person in his entirety, in all his relations with all sides of life, so the artist would fail to perform his task were he to represent the person always in his historical significance.”

                                                                                                                                Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

                                                                                                                                War and Peace, Appendix, 1868

 

In the Introduction to my copy of War and Peace, the late Tolstoy scholar Reginald Frank Christian of St. Andrews University wrote: “Many years later he [Tolstoy] told Gorky [Maxim Gorky] that ‘without false modesty, War and Peace is like the Iliad…” Professor Christian added that he had “deliberately refrained from calling War and Peace a novel,” and noted that Tolstoy claimed Anna Karenina, published ten years later, to be his first novel. Tolstoy wrote about what he knew. Born into the aristocracy fifteen years after Napoleon had been pushed out of Russia, he had first-hand war experience in Crimea, where he arrived in the fall of 1854 in time for the siege of Sevastopol. What Tolstoy created in War and Peace is epic – a combination of fiction, history and philosophy – and deserves its classical status.

 

In early September, I read Peggy Noonan’s column in The Wall Street Journal, “My Summer with Leo Tolstoy.” The first thing I did, after deciding to read the book, was ditch the one-volume paperback I had purchased a few years earlier and bought a more-easily-handled three-volume set translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. At story’s end, I empathized with Ms. Noonan’s quote of George Will, who on completing Moby Dick wrote: “To think I might have died without reading it!”

.

Tolstoy wrote of war: “On the 12^th of June 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began…” “One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead, lies uncertainty…You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed…” He wrote of people, of four families, but especially of two individuals: Countess Natásha Rostóva, a “…strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!” and Count Pierre Bezúkhov, a large, young, unhappily married man who searches for life’s purpose: “To that question What for? a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: ‘Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man’s head.’” As well, Tolstoy pondered social, ethical, and religious concerns of the time, and he philosophized about the difficulty to understand the why of events like Napoleon’s invasion of Russia: “The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.”

 

At over 1,500 pages, War and Peace is daunting, but it is captivating in all aspects. Like Dostoevsky and Chekhov, Tolstoy’s characters have names difficult for American ears. But they are descriptive and credible. Readers will not soon forget Andrew’s death, Sónya’s unrequited love, nor Mary’s loyalty. To those interested in the Napoleonic Wars, Tolstoy provided a window on that era from Russia’s perspective. And for us, living in traumatic times, his questions, thoughts, and timeless wisdom on life deserve our reflection. I spent many hours with Tolstoy, and I am glad I did.

"To Whom, or to What, Do We Owe the Phenomenon that is Donald Trump?"

 Writing is a difficult form of communication. In his weekly Wall Street Journal column this past Wednesday, Holman Jenkins, Jr. wrote: “No matter how carefully I choose my words, I can’t make you know all or exactly what I mean.” I understand what he is saying. First, it is not easy to take a half-formed idea and translate it into comprehensible English. And second, words can be defined differently by different people. What, for example, is meant by ‘truth’ or ‘justice,’ not to mention ‘diversity,’ equity,’ ‘inclusion,’ or ‘proportional,’ as the latter applies to the Israeli-Hamas war?

 

This essay had a particularly tough gestation. Fortunately, my wife is a close reader, saving me from even more embarrassment. I appreciate your forbearance. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

December 1, 2023

“To Whom, or to What, Do We Owe the Phenomenon that is Donald Trump?”

 

“Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy.”

                                                                                                Andrew Levkoff

                                                                                                A Mixture of Madness, 2012

                                                                                                

Donald Trump is like a battery-operated Hyper Pet Critter Dog that runs helter-skelter around the floor. As long as its battery is charged it will annoy most everyone except its owner. Trump’s battery life appears inexhaustible, but is it, and who or what is responsible? 

 

Since January 6, 2021, it has become common for Democrats to claim democracy is under attack, with Donald Trump as prima facie evidence. In a speech on November 2, 2022, shortly before the midterms, President Biden said: “In our bones, we know democracy is at risk.” Just over two months ago, and citing the January 6 attack, he repeated the warning: “We know how damaged our institutions of democracy – our judiciary, the legislature, the executive – have become in the eyes of the American people, even the world, from attacks within, the past few years.” It is a message that resonated with voters in 2022. Will it succeed again in 2024? In that same 2023 speech, he warned that democracies “can die when people are silent – when they fail to stand up or condemn threats to democracy.” While he did not refer to him by name, he was speaking of Donald Trump.

 

The impetus for his remarks was January 6, and the “attack” on the Capital by Trump supporters. But in both remarks Biden failed to mention that democracy did survive – that the only fatality was that of Ashli Babbitt who was shot dead by a Capital policemen and that Vice President Michael Pence certified the election results, which made Joe Biden President. Nor did he acknowledge that the people were not silent – that the “attack” was condemned by Democrats and Independents – and by many Republicans – and all of mainstream media. More than 1,100 rioters have been charged with close to 300 having been given prison sentences, ranging from six months to eighteen years. The people have not been silent about January 6.

 

In the months since, Trump has been charged with ninety-one criminal counts, enough to keep his name in the news continuously, and for his supporters to gather strength from continued insults to their hero and to their intelligence. One asks: Is the phenomenon of Trump an unintended consequence of progressive intemperance? 

 

While I am not a fan of Mr. Trump, I voted for him twice because I believed, right or wrong, that he was better for the country than alternatives. I am a fiscal conservative, socially liberal in the classical sense, and one who is concerned about a degradation in the values that have made this country unique among nations – reverence for family, respect for the law and for others, personal responsibility and pride in our nation. 

 

In 2016 disaffected voters felt that government had become too elitist – too distant from the common man. The Tea Party, which called for smaller government, was deemed extremist, as was the House Freedom Caucus. And progressives’ calls for DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) were seen by those on the right as hypocritical, as universities, big corporations, mainstream and social media, and tech companies had no interest in diversity of opinion or inclusion of those who did not conform to the accepted progressive narrative. As Amir Taheri wrote recently for the Gatestone Institute: “…Trump has given voice to millions of voiceless Americans who feel uncomfortable with the status quo and harbor fears, genuine or imagined, about the future.” It is understandable what made him attractive in 2016. What is less comprehensible is why the left now gives him so much free press.

 

In their determination to minimalize Trump, Democrats instead elevated him. Presumably this was done because they thought that since Biden had beaten him in 2020 he could do so again in 2024. Trump was (and is) the nominee Democrats prefer. But Trump recognizes the wisdom attributed to Phineas T. Barnum, that all publicity is good publicity. Progressives in Washington and their lackeys in mainstream media, both blinded with hatred for Trump, have served, unwittingly, as his re-charging stations. Mr. Trump benefits every time a rioter from January 6 is jailed, or when another criminal charge is filed against him. Mr. Trump is on social media, on networks’ and cables’ evening news, and in the headlines. “Exposure to a candidate’s name…can lead to an increase in the candidate’s likeability,” is the wisdom from Wikipedia. 

 

It is true that democratically elected leaders can become dictators. In 1921, Fascist Benito Mussolini was elected to Italy’s Parliament and a year later was handed ultimate power by King Victor Emanuel. In July 1932, Adolph Hitler was elected to the Reichstag. Six months later, as leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, he was appointed Chancellor by President Von Hindenburg. For an American President to assume dictatorial control, he or she would need the backing of the military and the intelligence agencies, and support from the press. That was never going to happen to Mr. Trump, as we know from the way he was treated when President, especially by the intelligences services and the media. Keep in mind, extremists inhabit both ends of the political spectrum. And it is the left that is unguarded by watchdogs of democracy.

 

……………………………………………………………

 

Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, but particularly Trump, agitate emotions rather than reason. We need citizens educated in the basic principles of democracy. Eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, in 1765 John Adams wrote that “…liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” Today, if knowledge of civics were required to vote, many of the electorate would be disenfranchised. 

 

Nevertheless, the country has faced challenges in the past – many more severe than what we now face. Men like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan appeared when needed, and the nation had a course correction. The American actress Ilka Chase reputedly once said: “Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.” She was right.

 

Was Trump the best answer to the concerns so many had seven years ago? Perhaps not, but there was a sense that government had become too elitist, too distant from people and their traditional beliefs in faith and family, a concern that has intensified over the past three years. Yet, the man who has been pilloried has been kept alive by the very people who detest him the most. Mr. Trump craves attention. And the media gives it to him: publicity-seeking prosecutors seeking criminal charges and a never-ending rehash of the January 6 saga. If he were ignored, he might fade away. But the media realizes he drives viewers and eyeballs, more than the failing Mr. Biden. And woke progressives cannot help themselves, so the public is constantly exposed to him. It falls to conservatives – not Mr. Trump – to save our republic. Enter stage right (I hope), Nikki Haley.