China Summit

 

I have always disliked Communism, its principles and its practices. As a child I recognized that while we may have all been born equal, we did not develop equally either in the classroom or the playground. As I grew up, my studies and experience revealed that Communist regimes were among the most murderous in history, and that their atrocities were directed not just at capitalists but at their own people. 

 

Although not on a par with such brutal oppression, one of the worst things about Communists was the way in which they betrayed the hopes and dreams of their most ardent supporters. After all, there is something noble about Communism, despite its sordid history, that attracted and still attracts millions of idealistic supporters all over the world. Slogans from a bygone day like, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” really resonated. 

 

There are countless examples of young idealists going to fight for Communism. I think of George Orwell, an English writer, whose political convictions led him to fight with the Communist backed Republicans against the Fascists during the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. His own experience in Spain led him to realize that in practice Communists were just as bad, if not worse than the Fascists.

 

Older readers will remember Orwell’s political fable “Animal Farm” about a rebellion of oppressed farm animals against the farmer who profited from their labor. The farmer and his men were driven off the farm that then was to be worked by and for the animals. A banner was raised proclaiming, “All Animals are Equal.” All would share equally in the work and rewards of the farm. 

 

Unfortunately, things soon took a wrong turn. The wily pigs took over with the aid of fierce attack dogs and soon lorded it over the other animals. One day the animals noted that the revolutionary banner had been altered to read: “All Animals are Equal, but Some are More Equal than Others.” 

 

The book ends with a very touching scene. One night the ordinary animals stand out in the cold peering through the window of the restored farmhouse. They behold the prosperous pigs enjoying a fine dinner. Their guest is the farmer. The revolution had been betrayed.

 

The above thoughts came to mind while I watched some of the ceremonies of President Trump’s recent visit to China. As Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist party, descended the stairs in front of an enormous palace I could only think that he was the latest in the long line of Chinese Emperors. True, he preferred Western business attire to Imperial robes, but it is obvious that the People’s Republic of China is long gone.

 

The Communist Party in China is the largest in the world, but its one million members make up a small minority of China’s 1.5 billion population. Interestingly, workers in China are not allowed to unite. Labor and trade unions are prohibited. Communists and Communist sympathizers in the United States have to willfully blind themselves to the realities of Communist rule wherever it has triumphed. Whether Soviet Russia, China, or Cuba some animals were more equal than others.

 

Nevertheless, I hope the summit does achieve some good results. If President Trump somehow managed to convince the Chinese leader that it would not be in his best interest to invade Taiwan, that would be a huge success. If the trade deals work out, that would also be a major accomplishment. Actually, I think that President Trump understands that trade, rather than military force, is our best weapon in dealing with the Chinese empire.

 

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Marriage Vows

I know it is common for couples today to compose their own wedding vows. When my wife and I married 63 years ago, we never thought of writing our own vows. In our innocence we accepted the traditional words. In turn we said:

I take you for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

I take you for my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

That was all we said. I then placed a ring on my bride’s finger “as a sign of our marriage vows.” Although it was followed by a Mass, the actual wedding was a brief ceremony taking no more than five minutes. I still have the little wedding pamphlet from that day, and I notice that the priest did not even say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” It was our brief vows that made us man and wife.

The pamphlet included an introduction that provided the basis for the simple vows. Reading it today I can honestly say that I was not aware at the time of the awesome significance of the words.  I realize now that the words represented an ideal that would not be easy to attain. 

This union then is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes, and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that, recognizing their full import, you are nevertheless so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may be required to make to preserve this common life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy; and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love.

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today, never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on.

I doubt that I read those words back then, or even that I would have understood their full significance if I had read them. It would take a lifetime. 

Maybe the best depiction of the exchange of vows can be found in the final scene of the award winning 1946 film, The Best Years of Our Lives. It ends with the simple wedding ceremony of a sailor who after losing both his hands in the war, returned home to find that his childhood sweetheart was still in love with him. Click on this link for the brief video. 

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Who Was Shakespeare?

The recent visit of King Charles III  of Great Britain brought to mind one of my favorite subjects:  the authorship of the plays and poems of William Shakespeare, the greatest author in the English language.  I confess that I am a Shakespeare denier. I believe that the great plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare, the man of that name from Stratford on Avon, were not written by him, but by an aristocratic contemporary, Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, one of the most prominent, best educated, and notorious noblemen in Elizabethan England. Below is an essay on the subject that originally appeared on The Weekly Bystander on April 6, 2016.

 

Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, 1575

 I am an advocate of the theory that the true identity of the greatest writer in the English language has been hidden for more than 400 years. I am not alone. Great writers like Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Henry James, as well as great Shakespearean actors like Orson Welles and Derek Jacobi believed that the plays and poems were written by someone other than the simple commoner from Stratford. Even Sigmund Freud agreed. 

While many names have been put forward as the true author, I believe that the aristocratic background, unique education, and life experience of the Earl of Oxford makes him the prime candidate for the true author of the Shakesperean canon. When it comes to Shakespeare, I agree with those who are called by scholars, with a certain degree of contempt, “Oxfordians”. These would include the unfortunately named J. Thomas Looney, an English high school teacher whose groundbreaking 1919 book, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, has never received the attention it deserves.

Oddly enough, it was on my first trip to Italy back in 1997 that I saw the light. My wife and I attended a little symposium on the Renaissance held that year in Gardone Riviera, a resort town on the coast of beautiful Lake Garda. We stayed in an old pensione up the hill from Gardone that had a spectacular view of the lake. 

Before the trip I had happened to read a book by Joseph Sobran* that also questioned the authorship of the man from Stratford, and promoted the cause of the Earl of Oxford, but I found it hard to believe given the overwhelming scholarly tradition. Italy changed my mind. Many of the plays are set in Italy, and the playwright seems to have a first hand knowledge of the customs, language, and geography of the country.

The man from Stratford never traveled outside of England. Scholars are reduced to saying that he got his extensive knowledge of things Italian by listening to Italian seamen in London pubs. On the other hand, shortly after he turned 21 and took his seat in the House of Lords, the young Earl of Oxford left England to spend a year and a half traveling on a kind of grand tour, most of which was spent in Italy. Is it a coincidence that practically every town he visited in Italy is featured or at least mentioned in the plays? Venice, Verona, and Padua come immediately to mind. Places he did not visit, like Turin and Bologna, receive no mention in the plays. 

Moreover, my own brief first visit to Italy convinced me that it would be impossible to describe the beautiful countryside, and the fabled cities without having actually seen them. Even today, after many subsequent visits, I find it almost impossible to describe the breathtaking scene of the Tuscan countryside, or a ride in a water taxi down Venice’s Grand Canal.

The young Edward de Vere spent a fortune on his Italian journey and had to borrow heavily to pay his enormous bills. He arrived back in England deeply in debt and even stark naked, having been stripped of his clothes by pirates in the English Channel, in the same manner as Prince Hamlet in the famous play. This incident is just one of many where the life of the Earl of Oxford is mirrored in the plays and poems of Shakespeare.**

Edward de Vere was born in 1550, fourteen years before the man from Avon.  The de Vere’s were one of England’s great aristocratic families, and could trace their lineage back over 400 years. After the death of his father, when Edward was only twelve, he was taken from his mother and made a ward of the Crown. His property and wealth were managed by Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, Sir Robert Dudley, and his education and upbringing were put into the hands of Sir Robert Cecil the Queen’s chief minister, who even non-Oxfordians believe to be the prototype of Polonius in Hamlet. Edward de Vere grew up in the highest circles of English society, and studied under some of the greatest scholars of his time.

On the other hand, it would appear that the man from Stratford on Avon received no more than the barest elementary education. His father was a butcher and his family was illiterate. Scholars are hard pressed to find any evidence that he received even an elementary education. He left no books or manuscripts behind but only a handful of copies of his signature on legal documents that indicate that he could hardly write his own name.

Throughout his life Edward de Vere was associated with the theater. He sponsored and promoted plays and companies of players. However, at the time it was considered disgraceful for someone of his status to associate with plays and players. For this reason Oxfordians believe that he used the name of the man from Avon to cover his tracks. There is evidence that the young man from Avon was amply compensated. After all, what’s in a name?

The greatest objection to the authorship of de Vere is the fact that he died in 1604. Although it is difficult to date the plays, the traditional belief has been that some, like the Tempest, were written between 1604 and 1616, the date of the death of the man from Stratford. However, in recent years scholars have reduced the number of post-1604 plays to one or two and even their dates are questionable. One recent author has even argued that the whole “Shakespeare project” seems to shut down after 1604. 

The other objection involves a kind of reverse snobbery. We live in the age of the underdog and people like to believe that the greatest author in the English language was a common man possessed with great natural genius. We do not like aristocrats and shows like Downton Abbey make us aware of their follies and weaknesses. Nevertheless, greatness in any field still requires education and life experience. Every author writes himself. The plays of Shakespeare are all about Kings, Queens, and other aristocrats. In those plays Edward de Vere wrote about a world of which he was intimately acquainted and in which he played a major role. 

Written around 1604, Hamlet was one of the last plays. The dying words of Hamlet could well apply to Edward de Vere.

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity a while,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.

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* Joseph Sobran, Alias Shakespeare, 1997.

**Mark Anderson, Shakespeare by Another Name, 2005, provides an exhaustive account of the similarities between the life of Edward de Vere and the characters in both the plays and poems of Shakespeare.  

Assassins

 

The recent attempt by a self-proclaimed assassin to enter the White House Correspondents dinner and possibly kill President Trump and other members of his administration marked the third attempt on Donald Trump’s life in the last twelve months. 

It makes you wonder why Donald Trump is such a target. The question was put to the President in the brief press conference held right after the incident. He replied that he had studied assassinations and claimed that the Presidency has always been a high-risk job, especially if the President has achieved much.  According to him there is little reason to target an inconsequential President like his predecessor.

I suspect that there is some truth in his remarks, but I think there is something more involved in the attacks aimed at him. I do not agree with those who think the problem will be solved by toning down the “rhetoric.” The rhetoric itself stems from something deeper. I do not believe that the people who claim that Trump is a dictator, a fascist, or another Hitler are lying or hypocritical. They really believe it. In a way, they can’t help themselves. It is as if they have been programmed. Let me give an example.

An incident occurred in our home during President Trump’s first administration that was strange. For years a window cleaner had been coming to our home to clean our windows. He was a nice guy who always did a good job, and my wife really liked him. While chatting with him on one occasion, she mentioned that she liked Trump. Immediately, he picked up his equipment and walked out of the house leaving the job half done. It was as if his psychological immune system had sprung into action and he could not help reacting. 

I thought of this trivial incident while trying to understand why three attempts have been made on the life of President Trump so far. What are the assassins like, and what do they believe?

The case of Luigi Mangione provides some clues. This young man deliberately shot a man in the back in broad daylight, a killing that in former times would have been considered craven cowardice. Yet, Mangione apparently thought he was doing a good deed in shooting the CEO of a large health care insurance company. Moreover, instead of being vilified, he is regarded by many as a kind of hero, even a saint. The CEO he killed was a successful Businessman who somehow deserved to die.  

In the eyes of his haters Donald Trump is the epitome of the Big Bad Businessman. He is rich and flaunts it. He is arrogant and self-assured. He brooks no criticism or insult. He is the personification of the villains of innumerable movies and TV series that I have witnessed over my long lifetime. For years, Law and Order, to name one, has been among TV’s most popular shows. Inevitably, the original murder suspect is usually a poor young Black or Puerto Rican, but then the murderer turns out to be a wealthy businessman.

The pandemic alerted us to the workings of our immune system: how it is programmed to immediately spring into action against harmful invaders. We also learned that sometimes the immune system can overreact and cause even more damage.

I have come to believe that we also have a psychological immune system that has largely been conditioned by what we have been watching over our lifetimes. Any rational person must admit that from the age of the robber barons to our current tech tycoons, the cultural bias has been largely left wing and anti- business.

The opinion page of my local newspaper has no conservative commentators. It cannot afford to offend the sensibilities of its readers or remaining advertisers. The mainstream news media is notoriously biased. The staff at NPR is overwhelmingly Democratic. It’s not much different online. It turns out that over 70% of Wikipedia sources are left wing, and only 1% come from the right. For every conservative on the Yale faculty, there are 36 liberals.  

I admit that I have my own psychological immune system, but I have never hated anyone or thought of killing anybody even if it would benefit humanity.  I can’t bear to watch or read left leaning news but do not hate the Democrats who for years have dominated politics here in Connecticut. I disagreed with many of the things that former Democratic Presidents Biden and Obama did, but I never hated them. 

In thinking about it, I believe that there were some institutions that kept my psychological immune system from over-reacting even when I was a young man. First, there was my marriage. My wife certainly would not have allowed me to be an assassin. Our shared beliefs, background, and values also helped. There were our children. We had to raise them, and I had to work to support them. There were our extended families who supported us and who we had to support in turn. There was our Church whose teaching, culture, and long history were in our blood.

I certainly don’t think that I am unique. On the contrary, I believe that most people still are supported by institutions like these that keep them from doing harm. Unfortunately, over my long lifetime I have seen most of these institutions ridiculed, bitterly attacked, or just regarded as irrelevant. Marriage, children, family, and religion are no longer the ideal. Young men especially are on their own.

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