Opinionator | Menagerie: Downhill on a Forest Road

Menagerie: Just between us species.

The series is featuring occasional works of fiction. This is one.

For the first time ever he had some difficulty getting the key into the ignition and eventually forced it if only because there was no way but force, then he turned the engine which sprang to life and reversed on to the hill road forgetting all about the key problem though he did wonder while still maneuvering whether everything was all right for after all there shouldn't have been a problem getting the key into the ignition of a car as new as this, but the thought vanished as soon as he started downhill, not a shred of it remaining, and he concentrated on driving in second gear before switching to third then climbing again to reach the highway above the village, the highway that would still be deserted because half past eight was too early for tourists and too late for locals, not that he knew the exact time because when he looked at the car's clock it showed eight minutes to nine and he thought, oh, better get a move on, and he stepped lightly on the gas while either side of him the branches formed a tent over the winding lane, the whole scene so beautiful with sunbeams penetrating the boughs, the light sprinkling the road, everything trembling, and the highway behind; quite marvelous, he thought, and he could almost smell the scent of the greenery still wet with dew, he now being at the straight part of the road, some three hundred meters leading straight down where the car naturally picked up speed, and he thought it would be nice to have some music, and was just reaching for the car radio when suddenly he saw, some hundred or hundred fifty meters ahead of him, that is to say about half way or two-thirds of the way down the straight, a patch on the road that made him frown and peer trying to guess what it might be — a discarded piece of clothing, a machine part or what? — and it flashed through his mind that it looked exactly like an animal though it had to be a rag of some sort, something thrown from, or dropped from a truck, a rag that had remained curiously tangled, but when he saw that there was something at the side of the road as well as in the middle, he leaned forward on the steering wheel and tried to get a better look at it but couldn't quite see where one form stopped and the other started so he slowed down just in case because, if there were two of them he didn't want to drive over either, and it was only once he was very close that he could make them out and was so surprised he could hardly believe his eyes and put his foot down on the brake, since the thing didn't just look like an animal, it was one, a young dog, a puppy, sitting perfectly still on the white line in the middle of the road, a rather thin creature with a patchy coat and an innocent look there in the middle of the road watching him in the car, quite calmly sitting on its butt, keeping a straight back and what was even more frightening than the fact of its presence was the look in its eyes, the way it didn't move, the quite incomprehensible way it just sat there despite the big car, whatever the hell it was doing there with the car practically on top of it so you could see it wasn't going to move even if he or his big car did, because this dog was not interested in the car or its proximity though he was almost touching it; and it was only then he noticed that to the left of the dog sitting on the white line there was another dog at the side of the road, its flattened corpse apparently hit by a car that had sliced it open, and though his own car had reached them the companion of the dead dog — what was the relationship between them? were they companions? — hadn't moved an inch so he was forced to drive around it very slowly on its right side, his right wheel off the road so he could get by, only just avoiding it by a few centimeters if that, the dog still sitting there straight backed, and now he could look directly into its face though it would have been better if he hadn't because, having carefully passed it, the dog was slowly following him with its eyes, with its sad eyes that showed no trace of panic or wild fury or of being traumatized by shock, the eyes simply uncomprehending and sad, sadly gazing at the driver of the car moving round and away from him, still not moving from the white line in the middle of the forest road and it didn't matter whether it was fifteen miles from Los Angeles, eighteen miles from Kyoto or twenty miles to the north of Budapest, it simply sat there, looking sad, watching over its companion, waiting for someone to come along to whom it might explain what had happened or just sitting and waiting for the other to get up at last and make some movement so that the pair of them might vanish from this incomprehensible place.

He was just a few meters past them and immediately wanted to stop, thinking I can't leave them here, it was just that his legs refused to move for some reason, to do what he would have them do, and as the car rolled on he watched them through the mirror, the dead one lying half on its side, its internal organs spilled into the street, its four legs stretched stiffly out all parallel, but he could only see the back of the puppy, fragile but ramrod straight, still sitting in the middle of the road as if it could afford to wait for hours, and he worried it too might be struck by a car, and I should stop, he said to himself, but kept rolling on since it was two minutes past nine as he found when he glanced at his watch, what to do, I'll be late, he fretted, his foot already pressing on the gas, in two minutes I shall be in town, then one bend followed another and he was already past the winding part of the road and it was one minute past nine when he checked his watch, pressing his foot harder down on the gas when for a moment, he remembered the dog again, the way it was watching over its companion, but the image quickly passed and for the next minute he concentrated entirely on driving, picking up speed to just under sixty since there was no one else on the road except a slower vehicle ahead of him, a Skoda he decided as he approached it, fretting because he had to slow right down instead of overtaking it, the possibility of overtaking diminishing as he approached, but I won't wait, he thought crossly, not behind this ancient Skoda, not for the bend, and because he knew the road well having driven down it a thousand times and realizing there wouldn't be a chance of overtaking it until they reached the sign for the town, he put his foot right down so as to pass it before the bend when suddenly the Skoda began to swing slowly towards the left right in front of him and everything happened almost at once, he glancing in his mirror to signal that he was about to pass, pulling left on the steering wheel, entering the other lane and starting to overtake, when the other man, having failed to look in his mirror, also swung out left because he wanted to turn off or to turn right round, who knows what, and maybe his left indicator had just started blinking, but only at that moment, as he swung left, by which time it was too late of course and it was no use him slamming on the brakes because the Skoda, being so slow was now practically straddling the road, as if the image of it had frozen and he could neither avoid it nor brake, and in other words, there being no means of stopping it, he crashed into him.

The onset of catastrophe is not signaled by the sense of everything falling through the dark and ending in accidental death: everything, including a catastrophe, has a moment-by-moment structure, a structure that is beyond measurement or comprehension, that is maddeningly complex or must be conceived in quite another manner, one in which the degree of complexity can be articulated only in terms of images that seem impossible to conjure since time has slowed down to the point that the world has becomes indifferent to circumstances and various terrible preconditions have arrived at a perfect universal conclusion, that being because they are composed of intentions, because the moment is the result of unconscious choices, because a key doesn't immediately fit into the ignition, because we do not start in third gear then move down to second but because we start in second and move into third as we move down the hill then turn onto a highway above the village, because the distance before us is like looking down a tunnel, because the greenery on the boughs still smells of morning dew, because of the death of a dog and someone's badly executed maneuver when turning left, that is to say because of one missed choice or another, of more missed choices and still more missed choices ad infinitum, all those maddening had-we-but-known choices impossible to conceptualize because the situation we find ourselves in is complicated, determined by something that is in the nature of neither God nor the devil, whose ways are impenetrable to us and are doomed to remain so because choice is not simply a matter of choosing, but the result of that which might have happened anyway.

This story was translated by George Szirtes from the Hungarian.

László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian novelist. He is the author of five novels, including "War & War," "The Melancholy of Resistance" and "Satantango," and of "Animalinside," a collaboration with the artist Max Neumann.

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Opinionator | Disunion: Blacks, Baseball and the Civil War

Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

The Civil War era revolutionized the still-nascent game of baseball in America – and not just for whites. During the war black baseball clubs increased; in the postwar period they sought recognition and equal treatment by white clubs and state and national baseball associations. But as in so many parts of national life, those achievements were ultimately limited and soon foreshortened: While black players gained respect from some members of the ball-playing fraternity, racist stereotypes, discrimination and segregation barred them from achieving equality on America's diamonds.

Black ballplayers shared in the baseball mania that began in the 1840s in Manhattan and Brooklyn and then spread, during the late 1850s and early 1860s, to dozens of cities and towns. During these years most Northern blacks were impoverished, but a few of the more privileged could afford the time and expense of baseball. African-Americans founded their own clubs from New York to New Orleans. Most of these clubs recruited members from the upper ranks of black society, especially artisans, shopkeepers, clerks and teachers.

The start of the Civil War disrupted ball playing by both whites and blacks, but the following year brought a baseball revival. But if baseball playing by blacks increased, so did discrimination against them. Newspaper reporters used racist stereotypes to describe blacks playing baseball: On Oct. 17, 1862, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a brief account of a match between the Unknowns and the Monitors. Its headline introduced the contest as a novelty: "A New Sensation in Baseball Circles – Sambo as a Ball-Player and Dinah as an Emulator." The reporter observed that everyone in the large crowd was "as black as the ace of spades."

Photo A black baseball team in Danbury, Conn. in 1870.Credit Library of Congress

But the report also gives some clues about the history and scope of black baseball. The reporter's comment that the spectators included "a number of old and well known players, who seemed to enjoy the game more heartily than if they had been the players themselves," suggests that baseball had long been a familiar pastime in African-American communities. He added, "The assemblage included women and children: Dinah, all eyes, was there to applaud. … All appeared to have a very jolly time, and the little piccaninnies laughed with the rest."

Before, during and after the Civil War black baseball was inextricably linked to the campaign for African-American civil and political rights. On July 4, 1859, Joshua Giddings, a white antislavery Republican congressman from Ohio, showed his support for desegregation and equality in baseball by playing in a game with African-Americans. During and after the war members of Philadelphia's Pythian Base Ball Club (an elite African-American association) were activists in local and state campaigns for black equal opportunity. In 1863 the club's secretary, Jacob C. White Jr., and the shortstop and captain of its first nine, Octavius V. Catto, served on a committee that recruited soldiers for the Union Army and joined a local African-American militia. During the late 1860s Catto campaigned for the desegregation of Philadelphia's streetcars and for blacks' right to vote. After voting on Election Day of 1871, he encountered Frank Kelly, a Democratic Party supporter; the two got into a fight, and Kelly shot and killed Catto.

In 1859, in Rochester, Frederick Douglass Jr., son of the renowned abolitionist, played baseball with the integrated Charter Oak Juniors; after the war he was one of the founders of the Alerts Base Ball Club of Washington. Another son, Charles Douglass, third baseman for the Alerts, spent three years with the Freedman's Bureau before earning a position as a clerk in the Treasury Department. In 1869 he joined Washington's Mutual club and became its corresponding secretary. In August of that year, the Mutuals (with Charles Douglass on its first nine), headed north for a tour of upstate New York towns that had provided safe houses on the Underground Railroad.

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, ratified after the war, redefined state and federal citizenship and extended civil and political rights, but they included no provisions for equality in private, voluntary activities. Nevertheless, officers of the leading black clubs of Brooklyn, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington sought equal treatment by the white ball-playing fraternity. Some of them were on good terms with white club officials and frequently obtained permission to use their grounds for feature contests. White umpires sometimes officiated at their games. The Pythians enjoyed harmonious relations with the officers of the city's powerful Athletics Base Ball Club, who gave them permission to use their field for major matches.

All of the premier white clubs that competed for unofficial state and national championships drew the line at interracial competition; according to The Spirit of the Times of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., the Athletics "would have nothing to do with the dark votaries of the bat and ball." (A few lesser-known white teams did, however, play black teams.) Exceptions included an 1869 match arranged by Col. Thomas Fitzgerald, editor of another local paper, The City Item. The historic encounter attracted a large crowd, who watched the Philadelphia Olympics rout the Pythians, 44-23. The Spirit praised the experiment, declaring that "old-time prejudices are melting away in this country." It noted that interracial sporting contests were common in England and other countries, adding, "It is not considered outside our own territory a lessening of dignity nor in the least disparaging to white men that they contend with blacks." That journal hoped that "now that the prejudice has been broken through here, it will be entirely swept away."

A few weeks later the Pythians defeated The City Item's first nine, 27-17, at the Athletics' ball field. In September the Washington Olympics manhandled the black Alerts of that city on the grounds of the Washington Nationals, 56-4, in front of a large assembly of men and women of both races, including federal government officials. The Brooklyn Eagle observed that the game provided:

A striking illustration of the social change of the last eight years. … Until now when a question of color has arisen, it has been solely on a claim of equal civil and political rights for the negro. … It is not a political or civil right or a privilege of citizenship that a colored base ball club shall be permitted to challenge a white base ball club, and that the challenge shall be accepted. It is purely a voluntary matter, having nothing to do with any law of Congress or amendment to the Constitution. The peaceful way in which this new war of races is carried on is significant. How long is it since such a game as that proposed to be played to-day would have provoked a riot?

In September 1870 in Boston, a white club and a black club, both called the Resolutes, competed for the right to use that name. The "colored" Resolutes triumphed, 25-15. The New York Clipper described the outcome as a victory for the "sons of Ham, who fought nobly for their cherished title, out-playing their fair-faced friends at every point in the game, especially in the field."

Related

Civil War Timeline

An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors.

Despite these occasional interracial matches, white baseball clubs excluded black clubs from participation in tournaments and membership in state and national baseball associations. The sponsors of an 1870 Chicago amateur competition barred that city's Blue Stockings Base Ball Club, an African-American organization composed mainly of hotel and restaurant waiters. The Blue Stockings thought that the white clubs feared the humiliation of losing to a black nine. The Chicago Tribune denied that allegation, but conceded that the white teams included some young men of high social standing who "were not disposed to burlesque the tournament by the admission of a colored club of inferior capacity, even though the gate receipts should suffer thereby."

State meetings followed the same segregationist policy. In the fall of 1867 the Pythians sent White to Harrisburg to present the club's credentials to the Pennsylvania State Association of Base Ball Players. He reported to the members that "whilst all expressed sympathy for our club, a few only … expressed a willingness to vote for our admission … numbers of the others openly said that they would in justice to the opinion of the clubs they represented be compelled, tho against their personal feelings, to vote against our admission." Supporters advocated a discreet withdrawal to avoid a humiliating rejection by ballot, and White reluctantly concurred. Similarly, in 1870 the New York State Base Ball Association approved a motion that if any of the clubs admitted were found to be composed of people of color, their association membership would be voided. The Clipper objected and advised black clubs to organize "a National organization of their own."

The Pythians faced the same resistance at the national level. In December 1867 they applied for admission to the National Association of Base Ball Players. Its nominating committee "unanimously reported against the admission of any club which may be composed of one or two colored persons." It added, "If colored clubs were admitted there would be in all probability some division of feeling whereas, by excluding them no injury could result to anybody, and the possibility of any rupture being created on political grounds would be avoided."

By 1870 baseball was widely recognized as America's national pastime – and was, like much of the national culture, tightly segregated. While a few African-American ballplayers joined professional clubs during the 1880s, another six decades passed before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and revived the campaign to achieve equal opportunity on America's diamonds.

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George B. Kirsch is a professor emeritus of history at Manhattan College and the author of "Baseball and Cricket: The Creation of American Team Sports, 1838-72" and "Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War." His latest book is "Six Guys From Hackensack: Coming of Age in the Real New Jersey."

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Opinionator | The Conversation: Toasting With a Half-Full Glass

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Brooks: Do you mind if I go the narcissistic route and ask you about my own column?

Gail Collins: Column? David, I had no idea you wrote a column. I thought you were just here for the conversation.

David: I wanted to ask you specifically about my contention that New York is in better shape than ever before. I'm in the city about two days a week these days and I've just been amazed by how great the parks are this year, from the Cloisters down to Battery Park.

Gail: I agree the parks are great, although I suspect you're just rediscovering them. They've been terrific for ages. Except for the part where speed demon bicyclists run over pedestrians.

David: I am also amazed by how many great and original stores there are. Have you been to Story, a store on 10^th Avenue that changes themes and merchandise around a new narrative every few months? I know we're supposed to bemoan the fact that mom and pop stores have been replaced by CVS and the chains, but let's not romanticize the old days of the mom and pops.

Gail: Sorry, as a person who now lives next door to a Rite Aid, and a stone's throw from two Duane Reades, I am totally in mourning for the mom and pops. How does the economy support so many mega-pharmacies anyway? You'd think the entire population did nothing but fill prescriptions and buy hair spray.

David: My question: Do you think New York is better than ever? I'd say 1910s New York had better radicals. The 1920s had better writers and nightclubs. 1940s New York had better painters, but contemporary New York has better everything else.

Gail: You forgot rents. Every other era in the history of the city had more affordable rents.

Also, I remember many periods with better politics. People seem grumpily disengaged. Maybe it's because this year's big race involves choosing between Andrew Cuomo and A Person Named Rob.

David: The cities are wonderful. I was just in Philadelphia, and it was the same. The dead parts of town now have vibrant restaurants. In D.C., middle-class neighborhoods like Brookland are sprouting bars, coffee shops and other gathering spots. Even Detroit has restaurants like Slows Bar-B-Q, which are destination restaurants in the middle of urban wastelands.

Gail: This has been a long time coming. I remember when I was in college and everybody was worried about the death of the cities. I heard a speaker – it might actually have been Saul Alinsky – predict that the cities would be saved not by government action, but by people deciding it was more convenient and fun to live there. And it really is, especially if you're young or old.

David: I don't think this is just a gentrification phenomenon. It's like there's been a leap in the quality of American aesthetics. People have better taste and demand more. Meanwhile, McDonald's is losing customers at the moment, especially among people in their 20s.

Gail: I love the idea that McDonald's is slipping due to aesthetics. But I would feel more inclined to embrace your theory if I could see one fewer Duane Reade from my corner.

David: I'm trying to focus on the positive these days. Somebody gave me good advice recently. The world is divided between glass-half-full people and glass-half-empty people. It's also divided between givers and takers. When you are choosing a spouse or a friend, you want a glass-half-full giver. You definitely do not want a half-empty-glass taker.

Gail: Can I send a shout-out to my spouse? He is definitely a giver. Also, the other night I heard him tell someone: "Marriage becomes truly happy when you stop trying to change your mate." So I'd say go for a glass-half-full, giver, nonchanger.

David: Personally, I'd befriend any dichotomizer. You have probably heard me say that the world is divided between two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. I'm definitely the former. Every virtue has its vice. Every situation has its paradox.

Gail: I am tempted to divide everything into threes, but I have a feeling you're taking us somewhere else.

David: Yes, that brings me to the pivot. A few years ago, the Obama administration decided to favor the positive over the negative. U.S. policy would pivot from places where bad news dominates (the Middle East) to places where good news dominates (Asia). To tell you the truth, I never understood the pivot. We have some diplomats who focus on the Middle East and some people who focus on Asia. Why can't we pay attention to both regions at once? A country is not like a person; it doesn't have to pivot, pirouette or fox trot. It can do a lot simultaneously.

Gail: I always thought it was just a way to say, "We're going to try to avoid the Middle East but still provide enough work to keep the State Department off the streets."

David: Regardless, the administration has completely failed to pull off the pivot. Obama keeps getting pulled into the Middle East. This is the paradox of power. The most powerful person on earth doesn't get to choose what he'll think about each day.

Gail: I know I've told you this before, but I'm convinced it's the story of the modern presidency. Whoever sits in the Oval Office spends every morning going over reports about people who are planning to kill American civilians. And no matter what they say when they come into office, the terror of another 9-11 is going to wind up obsessing them and turn them into interventionists abroad.

I don't necessarily believe it's the right assessment, but I suspect the transformation is inevitable.

David: I guess I'd say when planning a career you should focus on your strengths, but when running a government, your job is to focus on places where things are going wrong. Political leaders have limited power to make the world noble. They have some power to prevent the world from becoming miserable. Their job is not to make things great. It is to prevent things from being terrible — so that people in the private world will have the context they need to make things great.

It's like being a cop. You just have to congregate in bad situations. In politics the highs are not as high as the lows are low. The downside risk is always bigger than the upside risk.

Gail: Yeah, that's true. You have to focus on the problem spots. But that still leaves the question of what you do. Stay out of it, strengthen homeland security, and try to encourage international sanctions against the bad guys? Or actually intervene militarily?

David: How do you think Obama is doing at preventing the Middle East from being completely miserable? I was surprised by how gigantic the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS seems to be. Do you think it will work?

Gail: Work? As in reduce violence in the region and end the threat of terrorist attacks at home? No, sadly, I don't think it'll work.

David: I guess my view is that Obama will have to ramp up the operation quite a lot over the next couple of years. Not a big invasion, obviously, but something much more aggressively designed to dislodge ISIS from the cities. I suspect he'll do this, and the beneficiary will be his successor, not him.

I think this a lot about Obama. I think the economy is finally going to take off as corporations unleash their cash over the next few years. I think the Middle East will evolve away from its jihadist phase to something more orderly if not exactly democratic. The next president will have it easy compared to B.H.O. Oh well, them's the breaks.

Gail: I agree that we won't remember this president for foreign policy. They gave the Nobel Peace Prize to the wrong guy. It'll be the next administration, or the one after, who puts an end to the era George W. Bush started in Iraq. But the history books will celebrate Barack Obama as the president who grabbed the economy by the collar and saved the country from another Great Depression.

He will also be remembered as the president who finally, after 100 years of struggle, created a national health care system. Which is huge, just huge. And which gives me a chance to end on an optimistic note — to raise my half-full glass.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Talk: Who Needs a Cuddle Buddy? Everyone, It Turns Out

Photo Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

When I was in college, there was a Facebook group called "Will someone just please lie on top of me?" This was in an era when Facebook groups existed mainly as quirky avatars of real-life groups of friends, not as message boards for organizations or marketing for companies. It was a large group comprising people who didn't necessarily know one another.

The group has since been disbanded, but its purpose was to express the simple pleasure of having someone, well, just lie on top of you. "Do not kiss me. Do not gyrate on top of me. That is not what this is about," the group's description read. "I just want to feel the weight of another person's body compressing mine."

The idea of touching strangers makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But for others, there may be a middle ground between a sexual encounter, affection between family and accidentally bumping into someone on the subway. According to Charlie Williams, it's time we loosened up. Last week, Mr. Williams launched Cuddlr, an app forged in the mold of Tinder or Grindr, but with the sole intention of helping individuals find someone to cuddle.

Mr. Williams believes, as he says in an interview with Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon, that "we don't get enough touch in our daily lives." "I think as a culture we're ready to consider cuddling as more than just something that happens before or after sex, but as something worth pursuing in its own right."

To find a cuddle buddy, a user creates a profile that consists of one photograph and his or her name. The app adds a tally of positive or negative ratings following cuddling sessions and omits information about gender and age. The user can then scroll through potential cuddle partners in the vicinity and send a request to cuddle. The recipient must reply within 15 minutes; if he or she consents, then the two users will see walking directions for how to meet up.

Mr. Williams says that it's then up to the pair how they want to proceed. Cuddling can take place in public or in private, lying down or not. "Cuddling takes communication, respect for boundaries, and self-control," Mr. Williams says, and figuring out how to express what you want is part of the exercise.

Mr. Williams is very clear in his conversation with Ms. Clark-Flory that Cuddlr isn't meant for dates or hookups. He is likewise alert to the possibility that cuddling might transition into a sexual encounter, and he offers guidelines for how to avoid an uncomfortable or dangerous situation. "What we state in the app's 'Rules of the Road' is that you wait until the end of the cuddle, ask nicely, and be prepared to take either 'yes' or 'no' as an answer. Keep your cuddle a cuddle, don't try to 'change gears' midway through."

Cuddlr is intended not only to facilitate cuddling but also to get people thinking about physical touch, how it makes us feel and who we share it with. "From some folks, there also seems to be a visceral reaction against the idea of casual platonic cuddling," Mr. Williams writes, making his case on Medium. Ms. Clark-Flory confirms that: She begins her article with a firm statement: "I don't like being touched by strangers. I enjoy a hug with a friendly new acquaintance, but the physical intimacy stops there," she writes. The same goes for Lucia Peters at Bustle: "I'll admit that my initial reaction to the idea was, 'NO I DO NOT WANT TO BE HUGGED BY STRANGERS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.'"

According to Mr. Williams, it needn't be that way. In other cultures, he points out, straight men hold hands. We are willing to transgress physical space boundaries by offering a hug when someone is sad or grieving.

Furthermore, physical contact is healthy for us. Physical affection, especially as a child, is essential to emotional well being, as we know from Harry Harlow's 1950s studies with monkeys and maternal love. GOOD magazine recommends "a good cuddle" as a remedy for a hangover: "Physical contact releases oxytocin and other happy-making hormones.'' Research shows that oxytocin reduces stress; improves communication, trust and attachment; and can help sleep.

The idea of platonic physical contact may also help us relate to one another more openly as a society. Mr. Williams writes, "Bringing platonic cuddling into the public discussion of commitment and monogamy-and-its-variants will help couples negotiate what they are and aren't comfortable with (and even start to explore why)." It might reverse the trend to avoid touching people of the same sex out of homophobia, something that Mr. Williams argues that we learn during adolescence.

An op-ed by Elizabeth W. Dunn and Michael Norton in The New York Times states that interacting with strangers, rather than avoiding them, likewise makes people happier. The article didn't address touch, but it was illustrated with photos by Richard Renaldi, an artist who approaches passers-by and asks them to touch one another. He then captures these encounters in group portraits (as seen in his monograph, "Touching Strangers.") By creating tableaux of people who are unlikely to touch one another, Mr. Renaldi's photographs encourage the viewer to consider more expansive ideas of what a relationship can be.

Mr. Williams's enthusiasm for cuddling among strangers shows up in other venues. Gideon Lewis-Kraus reported last summer for Harper's on a co-sleeping cafe in Japan, where you pay to sleep next to someone (in his case a young woman) for an hour but can add, at an additional charge, a pat on the head, spooning, staring into each other's eyes, or sleeping with your head in your co-sleeper's lap.

Jon Fortenbury wrote in July for The Atlantic about attending a cuddle party, an event attended by "mostly middle-aged" and "predominantly white" men and women. Similar to Mr. Williams's protocol for Cuddlr, the evening began with an hourlong discussion of appropriate behavior and an opportunity for each participant to state their intentions. (Mr. Lewis-Kraus was similarly briefed that no sexual advances would be tolerated.)

Then, "people held each other, gave massages, nuzzled, spooned, puppy piled, and laughed over snacks. It was not a front for an orgy or a bunch of touchy-feely hippies preaching peace and love, but a group of individuals who craved the kind of non-sexual human connection that many people don't get if they're single." Mr. Fortenbury, initially skeptical that the whole thing would be "pathetic and weird," found that "I left that night feeling more appreciated, connected, and relaxed."

Even for those whom touching a stranger seems like an uncomfortable idea, the urgency of the need for touch has caused people to get creative. Temple Grandin, the autism activist, designed the "hug machine" to provide the physical pressure of an embrace in cases where someone can't tolerate physical contact. The machine and, more generally, the sensation of deep touch pressure has been shown to have calming effects for people with autism, animals and college students.

Whoever started that Facebook group may have had the right idea. In the meantime, we'll see if the initially skeptical can warm up to the idea of Cuddlr.

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Opinionator | The Stone: Who’s On Trial, Eichmann or Arendt?

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

Photo Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trial.Credit Associated Press

The new English translation of Bettina Stangneth's "Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer," is the latest in a long line of scholarship that aims to illuminate the inner life of Adolf Eichmann, one of Nazi Germany's most notorious, and most analyzed, figures. Based on troves of memoir, notes and interviews given by Eichmann in Argentina, where he lived under the pseudonym Ricardo Clement between 1950 and 1960, it is an impressive historical study — one that underscores the fanatical nature of Eichmann's anti-Semitism.

In 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' and after, it was Kant, not Heidegger, who was foremost on Hannah Arendt's mind.

Much of the reaction to the book hinges on how these new findings reflect on Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem," her 1963 work based on her witnessing of Eichmann's trial, which famously depicted him as the embodiment of "the banality of evil." This is not surprising, given the echo in Stangneth's English title, and the enduring controversy generated by Arendt's interpretation, which arouses outrage for allegedly diminishing Eichmann's moral culpability for his role in the Holocaust. While discussion of the original 2011 German edition of Stangneth's book centered on the circle of neo-Nazi sympathizers in Argentina and their hopes to influence postwar German politics, and on Stangneth's claim that German governments had resisted bringing Eichmann to trial there, American commentators on the English edition have mainly ignored those issues, choosing instead to turn the trial of Adolf Eichmann into the trial of Hannah Arendt.

The Emory University historian Deborah E. Lipstadt told The Times this month that Stangneth "shatters" Arendt's portrait of Eichmann. In The Jewish Review of Books, the intellectual historian Richard Wolin writes: "Arendt had her own intellectual agenda, and perhaps out of her misplaced loyalty to her former mentor and lover, Martin Heidegger, insisted on applying the Freiburg philosopher's concept of 'thoughtlessness' (Gedankenlosigkeit) to Eichmann. In doing so, she drastically underestimated the fanatical conviction that infused his actions."

This sort of dismissal of Arendt's work — essentially a rejection of the "banality of evil" argument — is by no means new, but it does not hold up when one truly understands the meaning of her phrase. Couldn't Eichmann have been a fanatical Nazi and banal? What precisely did Arendt mean then when she wrote that Eichmann "was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness — something by no means identical with stupidity — that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period."? Arendt certainly did not think that ordinary human beings were all potential Eichmanns; nor did she diminish the crime Eichmann committed against the Jewish people. In fact, she accused him of "crimes against humanity," and approved his death sentence, with which many, including the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, disagreed.

~~~~~

Photo Hannah Arendt in 1972.Credit Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

Stangneth's book, although far more respectful of Arendt's work than her detractors are, does not address these questions or throw much light on their philosophical context. She does present new evidence about Eichmann's persona and thinking, based mainly on the so-called "Argentina Papers," which took nearly 20 years to emerge completely. In 1957 Willem S. Sassen, a Dutch journalist and Nazi collaborator who had become a German citizen, conducted interviews with Eichmann, who believed that they would be a basis for a book of his own to be called "Others Have Spoken, Now I Will Speak."The Argentina Papers included over 1,000 typed pages of conversation (whose original tape recordings emerged only in 1998), and 500 pages of handwritten commentary, some by Eichmann and some by Sassen. Some of this material would subsequently appear in Life magazine in a notorious expose of Eichmann by Sassen.

Arendt knew that "Eichmann had made copious notes for the interview, which was tape-recorded and then rewritten by Sassen with considerable embellishments." She also knew that although some of the notes were admitted to the trial as evidence, "the statement as a whole was not." Israel's state prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, had a bad photographic copy of 713 typed and 83 handwritten pages, but Eichmann and his lawyer convinced the court that most of it was inadmissible, supposedly because the recorded statements were uttered under the influence of alcohol and with Sassen's encouragement to Eichmann to make sensationalist pronouncements which the latter intended to use for publicity purposes.

Would full access to this material have led Arendt to change her assessment that Eichmann was banal and "thoughtless"? Not if one understands and uses German as she did, and not if one understands the philosophical contexts within which she meant precisely what she said.

The Argentine Papers do give us new insights into the intensity of Eichmann's anti-Semitic worldview, insights that Arendt could not have had access to. Stangneth cites a statement by Eichmann's former friend and colleague, Dieter Wisliceny in the Nuremberg trials: "[Eichmann] said: He would jump laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would please him extraordinarily."

Commenting on Eichmann's claim that he was "neither a murderer nor a mass murderer," Stangneth writes that his "'inner morality is not an idea of justice,  a universal moral category, or even a kind of introspection…. Eichmann was not demanding a common human law, which could also apply to him, because he, too, was human. He was actually demanding recognition for a National Socialist dogma, according to which each people (Volk) has a right to defend itself by any means necessary, the German people most of all." Stangneth explains that for Eichmann "Conscience was simply the 'morality of the Fatherland that dwells within' a person, which Eichmann also termed 'the voice of the blood.' "

This recalls the famous exchange during Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem between Judge Yitzhak Raveh and the defendant about Kant's moral philosophy, which Arendt cites in "Eichmann in Jerusalem." She quotes Eichmann saying, "I meant by my remark about Kant that the principle of my will must always be such that it can become the principle of general laws." But Arendt notes that Eichmann's meaning perverts Kant's Categorical Imperative: Whereas "In Kant's philosophy the source, that source was practical reason, in Eichmann's household use of him, it was the will of the Führer."

So when Arendt uses the phrase "the inability to think" to characterize Eichmann's reduction of conscience to a "voice of blood" and of the categorical imperative to the command of the Führer, she is taking as given the Kantian terminology, in which "to think" means to think for oneself and to think consistently, but also from the standpoint of everyone else. The Categorical Imperative in one of its formulations says, "Act in such a way that the principle of your actions can be a universal law for all." Eichmann neither thought for himself nor from a universal standpoint in any Kantian sense, and Arendt returned to the relationship between thinking and moral action in several of her essays after "Eichmann in Jerusalem." It was Kant — not Heidegger, as Wolin alleges — who was foremost on her mind.

Related

More From The Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

In a farewell message to sympathizers in Argentina, Eichmann dropped "all his misgivings" and admitted himself to be a "cautious bureaucrat," but one who was "attended by a fanatical warrior, fighting for the freedom of my blood, which is my birthright." Eichmann concludes: "And the cautious bureaucrat, which of course I was, this is what I had been, also guided and inspired me: what benefits my people is a sacred order and sacred law for me."

It is this strange mixture of bravado and cruelty, of patriotic idealism and the shallowness of racialist thinking that Arendt sensed because she was so well attuned to Eichmann's misuse of the German language and to his idiosyncratic deployment of concepts like the Categorical Imperative. As Stangneth puts it, "Hannah Arendt, whose linguistic and conceptual sensibilities had been honed on classical German literature, wrote that Eichmann's language was a roller coaster of thoughtless horror, cynicism, whining self-pity, unintentional comedy and incredible human wretchedness."

Eichmann's self-immunizing mixture of anti-Semitic clichés, his antiquated idiom of German patriotism and the craving for the warrior's honor and dignity, led Arendt to conclude that Eichmann could not "think" — not because he was incapable of rational intelligence but because he could not think for himself beyond clichés. He was banal precisely because he was a fanatical anti-Semite, not despite it.

Although Arendt was wrong about the depth of Eichmann's anti-Semitism, she was not wrong about these crucial aspects of his persona and mentality. She saw in him an all-too familiar syndrome of rigid self-righteousness; extreme defensiveness fueled by exaggerated metaphysical and world-historical theories; fervent patriotism based on the "purity" of one's people; paranoid projections about the power of Jews and envy of them for their achievements in science, literature and philosophy; and contempt for Jews' supposed deviousness, cowardice and pretensions to be the "chosen people." This syndrome was banal in that it was widespread among National Socialists.

But by coining the phrase "the banality of evil" and by declining to ascribe Eichmann's deeds to the demonic or monstrous nature of the doer, Arendt knew that she was going against a tradition of Western thought that sees evil in terms of ultimate sinfulness, depravity and corruption. Emphasizing the fanaticism of Eichmann's anti-Semitism cannot discredit her challenge to a tradition of philosophical thinking; it only avoids coming honestly to terms with it.

Seyla Benhabib is a professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University. She is the author of several books, including "The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt" and, most recently, "Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times," and the editor of "Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt."

Correction: September 21, 2014
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the author of a Life magazine article about Adolf Eichmann. It was Williem S. Sassen, not Bettina Stangneth. The article also referred incorrectly to the Dutch-German journalist Willem Sassen. He was a Nazi collaborator, not a neo-Nazi.

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Opinionator | The Stone: Who’s On Trial, Eichmann or Arendt?

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

Photo Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trial.Credit Associated Press

The new English translation of Bettina Stangneth's "Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer," is the latest in a long line of scholarship that aims to illuminate the inner life of Adolf Eichmann, one of Nazi Germany's most notorious, and most analyzed, figures. Based on troves of memoir, notes and interviews given by Eichmann in Argentina, where he lived under the pseudonym Ricardo Clement between 1950 and 1960, it is an impressive historical study — one that underscores the fanatical nature of Eichmann's anti-Semitism.

In 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' and after, it was Kant, not Heidegger, who was foremost on Hannah Arendt's mind.

Much of the reaction to the book hinges on how these new findings reflect on Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem," her 1963 work based on her witnessing of Eichmann's trial, which famously depicted him as the embodiment of "the banality of evil." This is not surprising, given the echo in Stangneth's English title, and the enduring controversy generated by Arendt's interpretation, which arouses outrage for allegedly diminishing Eichmann's moral culpability for his role in the Holocaust. While discussion of the original 2011 German edition of Stangneth's book centered on the circle of neo-Nazi sympathizers in Argentina and their hopes to influence postwar German politics, and on Stangneth's claim that German governments had resisted bringing Eichmann to trial there, American commentators on the English edition have mainly ignored those issues, choosing instead to turn the trial of Adolf Eichmann into the trial of Hannah Arendt.

The Emory University historian Deborah E. Lipstadt told The Times this month that Stangneth "shatters" Arendt's portrait of Eichmann. In The Jewish Review of Books, the intellectual historian Richard Wolin writes: "Arendt had her own intellectual agenda, and perhaps out of her misplaced loyalty to her former mentor and lover, Martin Heidegger, insisted on applying the Freiburg philosopher's concept of 'thoughtlessness' (Gedankenlosigkeit) to Eichmann. In doing so, she drastically underestimated the fanatical conviction that infused his actions."

This sort of dismissal of Arendt's work — essentially a rejection of the "banality of evil" argument — is by no means new, but it does not hold up when one truly understands the meaning of her phrase. Couldn't Eichmann have been a fanatical Nazi and banal? What precisely did Arendt mean then when she wrote that Eichmann "was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness — something by no means identical with stupidity — that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period."? Arendt certainly did not think that ordinary human beings were all potential Eichmanns; nor did she diminish the crime Eichmann committed against the Jewish people. In fact, she accused him of "crimes against humanity," and approved his death sentence, with which many, including the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, disagreed.

~~~~~

Photo Hannah Arendt in 1972.Credit Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

Stangneth's book, although far more respectful of Arendt's work than her detractors are, does not address these questions or throw much light on their philosophical context. She does present new evidence about Eichmann's persona and thinking, based mainly on the so-called "Argentina Papers," which took nearly 20 years to emerge completely. In 1957 Willem S. Sassen, a Dutch neo-Nazi journalist who had become a German citizen, conducted interviews with Eichmann, who believed that they would be a basis for a book of his own to be called "Others Have Spoken, Now I Will Speak."The Argentina Papers included over 1,000 typed pages of conversation (whose original tape recordings emerged only in 1998), and 500 pages of handwritten commentary, some by Eichmann and some by Sassen. Some of this material would subsequently appear in Life magazine in a notorious expose of Eichmann by Sassen.

Arendt knew that "Eichmann had made copious notes for the interview, which was tape-recorded and then rewritten by Sassen with considerable embellishments." She also knew that although some of the notes were admitted to the trial as evidence, "the statement as a whole was not." Israel's state prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, had a bad photographic copy of 713 typed and 83 handwritten pages, but Eichmann and his lawyer convinced the court that most of it was inadmissible, supposedly because the recorded statements were uttered under the influence of alcohol and with Sassen's encouragement to Eichmann to make sensationalist pronouncements which the latter intended to use for publicity purposes.

Would full access to this material have led Arendt to change her assessment that Eichmann was banal and "thoughtless"? Not if one understands and uses German as she did, and not if one understands the philosophical contexts within which she meant precisely what she said.

The Argentine Papers do give us new insights into the intensity of Eichmann's anti-Semitic worldview, insights that Arendt could not have had access to. Stangneth cites a statement by Eichmann's former friend and colleague, Dieter Wisliceny in the Nuremberg trials: "[Eichmann] said: He would jump laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would please him extraordinarily."

Commenting on Eichmann's claim that he was "neither a murderer nor a mass murderer," Stangneth writes that his "'inner morality is not an idea of justice,  a universal moral category, or even a kind of introspection…. Eichmann was not demanding a common human law, which could also apply to him, because he, too, was human. He was actually demanding recognition for a National Socialist dogma, according to which each people (Volk) has a right to defend itself by any means necessary, the German people most of all." Stangneth explains that for Eichmann "Conscience was simply the 'morality of the Fatherland that dwells within' a person, which Eichmann also termed 'the voice of the blood.' "

This recalls the famous exchange during Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem between Judge Yitzhak Raveh and the defendant about Kant's moral philosophy, which Arendt cites in "Eichmann in Jerusalem." She quotes Eichmann saying, "I meant by my remark about Kant that the principle of my will must always be such that it can become the principle of general laws." But Arendt notes that Eichmann's meaning perverts Kant's Categorical Imperative: Whereas "In Kant's philosophy the source, that source was practical reason, in Eichmann's household use of him, it was the will of the Führer."

So when Arendt uses the phrase "the inability to think" to characterize Eichmann's reduction of conscience to a "voice of blood" and of the categorical imperative to the command of the Führer, she is taking as given the Kantian terminology, in which "to think" means to think for oneself and to think consistently, but also from the standpoint of everyone else. The Categorical Imperative in one of its formulations says, "Act in such a way that the principle of your actions can be a universal law for all." Eichmann neither thought for himself nor from a universal standpoint in any Kantian sense, and Arendt returned to the relationship between thinking and moral action in several of her essays after "Eichmann in Jerusalem." It was Kant — not Heidegger, as Wolin alleges — who was foremost on her mind.

Related

More From The Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

In a farewell message to sympathizers in Argentina, Eichmann dropped "all his misgivings" and admitted himself to be a "cautious bureaucrat," but one who was "attended by a fanatical warrior, fighting for the freedom of my blood, which is my birthright." Eichmann concludes: "And the cautious bureaucrat, which of course I was, this is what I had been, also guided and inspired me: what benefits my people is a sacred order and sacred law for me."

It is this strange mixture of bravado and cruelty, of patriotic idealism and the shallowness of racialist thinking that Arendt sensed because she was so well attuned to Eichmann's misuse of the German language and to his idiosyncratic deployment of concepts like the Categorical Imperative. As Stangneth puts it, "Hannah Arendt, whose linguistic and conceptual sensibilities had been honed on classical German literature, wrote that Eichmann's language was a roller coaster of thoughtless horror, cynicism, whining self-pity, unintentional comedy and incredible human wretchedness."

Eichmann's self-immunizing mixture of anti-Semitic clichés, his antiquated idiom of German patriotism and the craving for the warrior's honor and dignity, led Arendt to conclude that Eichmann could not "think" — not because he was incapable of rational intelligence but because he could not think for himself beyond clichés. He was banal precisely because he was a fanatical anti-Semite, not despite it.

Although Arendt was wrong about the depth of Eichmann's anti-Semitism, she was not wrong about these crucial aspects of his persona and mentality. She saw in him an all-too familiar syndrome of rigid self-righteousness; extreme defensiveness fueled by exaggerated metaphysical and world-historical theories; fervent patriotism based on the "purity" of one's people; paranoid projections about the power of Jews and envy of them for their achievements in science, literature and philosophy; and contempt for Jews' supposed deviousness, cowardice and pretensions to be the "chosen people." This syndrome was banal in that it was widespread among National Socialists.

But by coining the phrase "the banality of evil" and by declining to ascribe Eichmann's deeds to the demonic or monstrous nature of the doer, Arendt knew that she was going against a tradition of Western thought that sees evil in terms of ultimate sinfulness, depravity and corruption. Emphasizing the fanaticism of Eichmann's anti-Semitism cannot discredit her challenge to a tradition of philosophical thinking; it only avoids coming honestly to terms with it.

Seyla Benhabib is a professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University. She is the author of several books, including "The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt" and, most recently, "Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times," and the editor of "Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt."

Correction: September 21, 2014
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the author of a Life magazine article about Adolf Eichmann. It was Williem S. Sassen, not Bettina Stangneth.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Opinionator | Disunion: The Civil War’s Most Famous Clown

Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

A clown ran for public office – and no, that's not the beginning of a joke. On Sept. 15, 1864, America's most famous circus clown, Dan Rice, accepted the Democratic nomination for the Pennsylvania State Senate. And it was just his first foray into politics: Even while continuing his career as a clown, a state convention later considered him as a candidate for Congress, and, in 1867, he made a brief but legitimate run for president.

Photo Dan Rice, ca. 1870.Credit David Carlyon

While the idea of a clown running for office sounds like a gimmick, in the 1860s it was taken seriously — because circus itself was taken seriously, as adult fare. Long before it was relegated to children's entertainment, early circus in this country combined what appealed to grown-up tastes: sex, violence, political commentary and, in a horse-based culture, top-notch horsemanship. George Washington attended the first circus in 1793 in Philadelphia not for family-friendly amusement — a notion that didn't emerge until the 1880s — but as a horseman keen to see animals and humans working together at a peak level.

Sex and violence enhanced the appeal. Like later burlesque comedians, talking clowns told dirty jokes in a titillating whirl of the scantily clad: Circus acrobats and riders showed more skin — or flesh-colored fabric that seemed to be skin — than could be seen anywhere else in public life.

Walt Whitman approved. Reviewing a circus in 1856 in Brooklyn, he wrote: "It can do no harm to boys to see a set of limbs display all their agility." (In a favorite mind-plus-body theme, Whitman added: "A circus performer is the other half of a college professor. The perfect Man has more than the professor's brain, and a good deal of the performer's legs.") Meanwhile, fights were a daily occurrence, drawing attention the way fights at soccer matches do now. Violence was so common that Rice's journal from 1856 noted the rare days when no fight occurred.

And while nostalgia portrays early circus as small and quaint, antebellum tents were some of the largest structures on the continent, seating thousands, while over the winter, circuses played major city theaters.

Dan Rice stood in the center of this lively public arena. Born in New York City in 1823, he burst onto the circus scene in the 1840s with a lightning-quick wit and sharp topical instincts that made him a national favorite. Proclaiming himself "the Great American Humorist," he combined ad-libs, jokes ancient and new, sexual allusions, comic and sentimental songs, clever parodies of Shakespeare and quips on current events. (He did little physical comedy, which was the specialty of knockabout clowns and acrobats.)

Scholars believe that Mark Twain, who later adopted that Great American Humorist label, used Rice as his model for the clown described in "Huckleberry Finn," "carrying on so it most killed the people," as "quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said." Though obscure when he died in 1900, Rice had probably been seen by more Americans than any other public figure. Nor was renown restricted to the United States: Imitators in England and Germany appropriated his famous name in their own acts.

As the country tumbled toward war, Rice expanded his "hits on the times." Instead of Bozo, think Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh. Or Robin Williams, who shared the same quick wit, verbal virtuosity, and sharp political humor. (In fact, Williams toyed with the idea of playing Rice in a movie.) Rice's expanded approach extended to his costumes, as he alternated between traditional clown garb decorated in stripes and stars, and a new look of tailcoat, vest, and pants, the Great American Humorist as respectable gentleman, a man with serious opinions on the events of the day.

Once the Civil War erupted, Rice pushed directly into politics, a Peace Democrat condemning Abraham Lincoln and "Black Republicans" from the circus ring. By 1864, it was a natural step for the Democrats of Erie, Pa.., near his winter quarters in Girard, to choose the nationally prominent "Col. Dan Rice" as their candidate for the state senate. (The title was self-granted, matching the times' martial mood.)

Writing from his tour on Sept. 15 to accept the nomination, Rice denied that he worshipped "at the shrine of any political dogma," but did declare that his "proclivities were formerly with the Whigs." He condemned Lincoln for violating the Constitution and creating an imperial presidency. Rice wrote: "When I see the great principles of personal liberty and the rights of property being cloven down by the men now running the machine of Government, 'the ancient landmarks' of the Constitution 'which our fathers set' removed, I feel like crying, in the language of the Holy Writ, 'cursed be he that removeth them.'"

Historians, adopting the later family-friendly image of circus, assumed that a clown's campaign for office had to be a publicity stunt. But Rice's nomination was no joke. Chicago newspapers took it seriously: On Sept. 23, the Republican Tribune opened a two-day attack in its headline, "Dan Rice and Disloyalty." It complained that Rice filled "his ring talk with disloyal utterances and flings at Lincoln and the war. A trimmer so cautious as this personage who once, it is said, actually gave a performance under the confederate flag, should understand that this style of thing will not pay in loyal communities." (The "Confederate flag" jab was political spin, because Rice presented his circus in New Orleans when Louisiana seceded.)

Next the Tribune claimed that no one laughed at Rice's "quips and pasquinades persistently leveled at the President, the war, the government, and the anti-slavery sentiment of the north." That Rice could make these jokes and still attract customers is another indication that late into 1864, discontent about the war remained strong. The Tribune, in an allusion to Southern sympathizers known as Copperheads, concluded by urging the press on his route to guard that his jokes did not "resemble a certain kind of soda — 'drawn from copper.'" (Rice, visiting his friend Morrison Foster, Stephen Foster's brother, apparently met the notorious Copperhead Clement Vallandigham there.)

Related

Civil War Timeline

An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors.

Even as criticism of abolitionists continued, the crucible of war was burning away belief that the nation's "peculiar institution" of slavery was acceptable. And as the country changed, so did Rice. In a July 4 speech in Elmira, N.Y., he had declared that blacks "are God's creatures, and shouldn't belong to Jeff. Davis, or any other man," for they "were not made for southern planters to vote on, nor northern fanatics to dote on." He added a folksy variation on Lincoln's theme of equality: "Let every tub stand on its own bottom."

Rice ran an abbreviated campaign. He was still a businessman with a show to troupe. He also knew he faced an uphill battle, running against a Republican incumbent, Morrow Lowry, in a heavily Republican district. Whatever advantage his national renown gave him was offset by the leading families of Girard, who harbored the distaste of small-town gentry for "the show business." That distaste increased when Rice married into one of those families against their objections, to a woman the same age as his daughters.

Photo A trading card advertising Dan Rice's circus in 1873.Credit David Carlyon

Despite such handicaps, in November Rice ran ahead of the Democratic ticket. He attracted 40 percent of the district's vote, while the presidential candidate Gen. George McClellan got only 36 percent.

Later, like others who had criticized the war, Rice sought to shore up his reputation for patriotism. In 1865 in Girard he erected what was said to be the first Civil War monument, with a ceremony featured on the front page of the Nov. 25 Harper's Weekly.

He also began peddling a claim that he'd been Abraham Lincoln's pal, dropping by the White House to cheer up war-weary Abe and advise him on the mood of the country. Blatantly false, the tale thrived thanks to Rice's national stature and the postwar urge to paper over the bitter divide of the war. The Lincoln fiction survived intact into the 20th century, as a bit of trivia about the president, because it fit a new sentimentality about clowns as sweetly innocuous. It was easier to believe in a clown consoling Lincoln than one attacking him as a tyrant.

Another claim, though one that Rice didn't make himself, said he'd been the model for Uncle Sam. At first glance it's unlikely. Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who completed the evolution of that image to the icon we know today, was a fervent Republican who wouldn't have knowingly based anything on a fervent Democrat like Rice. But it wouldn't have been unusual to be unconsciously influenced by one of the most famous Americans of the era. In any case Nast drew a cartoon that echoed Rice perfectly, combining the famous clown's democratic irreverence, his trademark goatee, the top hat he often wore, and a mash-up of his two primary costumes, a clown's stars and stripes and the fancy wardrobe of a middle-class gentleman. If anyone could be said to have been the model for Uncle Sam, it was Dan Rice, circus clown and political candidate.

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

---

Sources: David Carlyon, "Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of " and Carlyon, "Twain's 'Stretcher': The Circus Shapes Huckleberry Finn," South Atlantic Review, 72.4 (Fall 2007); Dan Rice, "Fourth of July Oration," "Dan Rice's Songs, Sentiments, Jests, and Stories"; Walter A. McDougall, "Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era: 1829-1877."

---

David Carlyon is the author of "Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of."

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Opinionator | Fixes: A Chance to Go From Hard Lives to Healing

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

Like too many young men in his East Oakland neighborhood, 21-year-old Shaka Perdue spent the earlier part of his youth "living like I was becoming a statistic," as he put it. At 16, he landed in juvenile hall after robbing a pedestrian in broad daylight. Two years later a friend was shot right in front of him in a drive-by. "In Oakland, you run into all the people you have problems with," he explained.

Perdue still hangs out in the neighborhood — but he now wears a stethoscope around his neck. He is one of 90 or so graduates of EMS Corps, a pioneering five-month program spearheaded by the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency that trains young men of color to be qualified emergency medical technicians. "You are the first person to approach the patients," Perdue said of his future as an E.M.T. "The nurses and doctors get them after they're stabilized in the field."

Started in 2012, the corps is a novel effort to recruit, train and mentor a new generation of emergency medical professionals: young men growing up in communities in which concentrated poverty, violence and unemployment are well-documented barriers to health and longevity. Graduates like Perdue have a singular perspective on health disparities — they've lived them.

"The young men who are vilified as noncontributing members of society are not the problem," said Alex Briscoe, the agency's energetic director, who got his start as a dropout prevention counselor at a tough Oakland high school. "They're the solution."

A founding premise of the corps, which has received just over $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is to create a strong pool of professionals who reflect the neighborhoods they serve. Though participants are trained to save peoples' lives, the corps strives to transform the young men themselves, and influence others who see them, by training them to do meaningful and decently paid work.

"Many of these young men have experienced a significant amount of violence," said Marc Philpart, an associate director of PolicyLink, a national nonprofit research and advocacy group. "Yet they are now exposed to a profession where they become healers."

Jimmy Jordan, another recent graduate, never knew his father and met his mother only once, six months before she died. He had a rocky adolescence, lost his first job, grew alienated from the older woman who was his guardian, and spent a number of years bouncing from sofa to sofa, shelter to shelter, occasionally sleeping in his car. "I used to be outgoing," he said. "But once I hit the homeless part of my life I sort of shut down."

Through a friend, he heard about the EMS Corps, which not only teaches lifesaving care but also provides a kind of life support for its trainees: five weeks of mentoring and "manhood" development — designed to strengthen leadership skills and cultivate a healthy African-American identity — followed by life coaching, individual and group counseling, and tutoring. Graduates continue to have access to counseling and are matched with paramedic mentors on the job. Each of the 50 or so young men accepted each year receives an $800 monthly stipend during training.

For Jordan, 24, the combination of mastering a skill and understanding the social context of his struggles helped him rewrite his life's script. Today, he is a health coach at Highland Hospital in Oakland, a county medical center known for its trauma center. He has an easy bedside manner. "I'm a compassionate person, and I always felt I wanted to share emotions with people," Jordan explained. "But I didn't know how to work through my anger and depression and have it not affect my future.

"The corps has made me proud of myself," he continued. "Being with patients is a maturing, humbling kind of experience. I'm not going to be another homeless teenager not knowing what to do with myself."

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Most young men learn about the program by word of mouth, as Jordan did. Applicants — about 250 a year — must have a high school diploma or G.E.D., a driver's license with no more than two points on it and have no arrests for the past three years. The course meets six days a week and includes a volunteer component in which young trainees serve as educators at health fairs, schools and churches.

"I felt it leave," Mohamed Diouf, 21, said of the sadness, tightness and anger that came from being physically abused as a child. "The EMS Corps teaches you about values. You go from the boy mind to the man mind."

The program is part of a larger national movement to improve opportunities and health outcomes for boys and men of color, including President Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" initiative. In Oakland, homicide is the leading cause of death for young black men ages 15 to 34. It is a population disproportionately affected by inadequate schools, substandard housing, involvement in the criminal justice system and a lack of access to preventive care.

Rather than considering them "throwaway kids," the corps regards its young participants as community assets, said Junious Williams, the chief executive officer of the Oakland-based Urban Strategies Council, a research and advocacy organization. "Even if they decide an E.M.T. career is not for them, they leave the program with an understanding of health careers and confidence for the next stage of life," he said.

The $600,000 yearly tab for the program, which guarantees a job to all graduates who pass the National EMS Certification Exam, comes from a county sales tax for emergency health care.

Photo Antonio Grant, a participant in the EMS Corps program, performs a blood pressure screening during a health fair at Acts Full Gospel Baptist Church in East Oakland, Calif.Credit Lynsey Addario

Rachel Unruh, associate director of the National Skills Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based work force development group, said the corps incorporates many of the current best practices in what is known as "sectoral-focused employment training" — programs that tailor job training to the needs of local employers. Many programs focus on high schools: last year, for instance, the New York Alliance for Careers in Healthcare launched a program with a grant from the Heckscher Foundation for Children that is training 30 high school seniors and unemployed young adults to be certified as pharmacy technicians, "an occupation anticipated to have strong growth in New York City," said Shawna J. Trager, the executive director.

The EMS Corps began as a modest urban health initiative at Camp Wilmont Sweeney, a minimum-security residential program for adolescent males in San Leandro, Calif., run by the Alameda County probation department. The program didn't jell until the life coaching, mentoring and manhood development elements were added, said Michael Gibson, the EMS Corps director, who, himself, grew up in East Oakland, and whose parents both struggled with addiction. Gibson spent his youth in and out of juvenile hall for drug offenses. At 16, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in the California Youth Authority (now the California Division of Juvenile Justice).

He managed to break the cycle of self-destruction with the help of mentors from an African-American male transition program. "They pointed out what I was doing — the fake sense of manhood," he said. "They saw something in me that I didn't see."

He wound up with a full scholarship to Morehouse College. Now the EMS Corps members Gibson mentors mirror his younger self. "They have issues with low self-esteem, a negative attitude, and a lack of confidence due to trauma and family environments," he said. "They are young men ready for a second chance."

Much of the hands-on training for the Corps is provided by Bay Area EMT, a coed emergency medical worker program for 18- to 24-year-olds co-founded by two Oakland firefighters.

To date, about 75 percent of the graduates are working as E.M.T.s or in related positions. Some drop out for personal reasons and some are unprepared for the academic work. Dale Feldhauser, the chief operating officer of Paramedics Plus/California, which handles about 88 percent of the county's 911 calls with 62 ambulances, has hired five graduates and is expecting to hire three more. They are doing well on the job, he said, adding that he's only had to let go of one part-timer with an "attendance issue."

A challenge for the program is that there are now more graduates than jobs, so the health services department is scrambling to identify other opportunities, such as working with hospital health coaching programs or assisting at a local detox center.
More serious is a cautionary tale from Washington, D.C. A cadet program designed to train young firefighters fresh out of high school is currently under scrutiny after a 77-year-old man died of a heart attack across the street from a firehouse, where a rookie cadet at the station's watch desk was unclear how to respond, according to a Washington Post investigation. This program has a history of problems: in an earlier incarnation, a 19-year-old cadet was arrested and booked on a first-degree murder charge, one of a number of criminal incidents.

The corps goes to great lengths to avoid similar problems, screening its candidates carefully, said Dr. Jocelyn Freeman Garrick, deputy medical director for the Alameda County EMS Agency. The mentoring and coaching are essential, she added. "We can train all day, but if the young man's attitude, hope and vision is not re-directed, the same learned negative behaviors will continue," she said.

Teetering between his old life and his future one, Shaka Perdue asked himself a hard question: "Are you going to be the person who inspires the next generation to be good?"

Were it not for the corps — and "the support of 20 other guys who came from where you came from," he says that he would probably be earning minimum wage somewhere. Today, walking through his neighborhood, he often runs into the "O.G.s," or "older gangsters," who now treat him with respect. They don't resent his stable income or aspirations for a better life, he said. Instead they say: "I want you to talk to my son."

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Patricia Leigh Brown, a former staff reporter for The New York Times, writes regularly for The Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting from San Francisco. She was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has taught at UC Berkeley and Yale.

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Room for Debate: When Geeks Rule

A book of arcane questions by the creator of a bizarre comic strip beloved by scientists and tech workers recently debuted atop The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. The most heavily hyped new product has been Apple's version of a science-fiction totem, the gadget wristwatch. And "The Big Bang Theory" often leads the Nielsen ratings.

When fringe pleasures become popular, there can be consequences. So what does it mean when geek culture becomes mainstream?

Read the Discussion »

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Room for Debate: Does the U.S. Have the Allies It Needs to Fight ISIS?

A Military Campaign Alone Is Not the Solution

Ed Husain, Council on Foreign Relations

Political unity, free-market capitalism and religious pluralism can solve the deep problems of the Middle East, of which ISIS is just a symptom.

U.S. Must Lead, and Not Rely on Allies

Kimberly Kagan, Institute for the Study of War and Frederick W. Kagan, American Enterprise Institute

Allies can provide basing and support. But the U.S, a unique power, must be ready to commit even some ground forces if needed to face this threat.

Turkey Should Be the Strongest Ally, But It Won't Be

Gonul Tol, Middle East Institute

There are too many constrains -- concerns about hostages in Mosul, about Kurds, about Iraqi Shiites and the Assad government in Syria.

Beware of Blowback From Forces Being Fought

Khalid Al-Shatti, Former Kuwaiti legislator

Kuwait faced an invasion of extremism after the U.S. liberated it from Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. Can't Count on Regional Support

Dalia Dassa Kaye, Center for Middle East Public Policy

The Arab states could pay a severe price if expanded military action further exacerbates instability and displacement in the region.

ISIS Won't Be Defeated, Until the Syrian War Ends

Anja Manuel, Stanford University

Obama and Kerry are trying to do the right thing, but much difficult and diplomatic effort lies ahead.

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Opinionator | Menagerie: Useless Creatures

Menagerie: Just between us species.

This article contains no useful information. Zero. Nada. Nothing. If usefulness is your criterion for reading, thank you very much for your time and goodbye, we have nothing more to say. The truth is that I am bored to tears by usefulness. I am bored, more precisely, of pretending usefulness is the thing that really matters.

I mostly write about wildlife. So here is how it typically happens for me: A study comes out indicating that species x, y and z are in imminent danger of extinction, or that some major bioregion of the planet is being sucked down into the abyss. And it's my job to convince people that they should care, even as they are racing to catch the 7:10 train, or wondering if they'll be able to pay this month's (or last month's) rent.

My usual strategy is to trot out a list of ways even the most obscure species can prove unexpectedly, yes, useful. The first effective treatment that turned H.I.V. from a death sentence into a manageable condition? Inspired by the biochemistry of a nondescript Caribbean sponge. The ACE inhibitors that are currently among our most effective treatments for cardiovascular disease (and which have lately been proposed as a treatment for Ebola)? Developed by studying the venom of the fer-de-lance, a deadly snake found from Mexico to northern South America. The new medical bandage that's gentle enough for the delicate skin of newborns and the elderly? Modeled on the silk of spider webs.

Every time I begin this line of argument, though, I get the queasy feeling that I am perpetuating a fallacy. It's not that I'm telling lies; these examples are entirely real. But given, for instance, that three-quarters of our farm crops depend on insect pollinators, or that more than 2.6 billion people rely directly on seafood for protein, it seems a little obvious to be reminding people that wildlife can be useful, or, more to the point, that human survival depends on wildlife. Without saying so out loud, the argument also implies that animals matter only because they benefit humans, or because just possibly, at some unknowable point in the future, they might benefit humans.

You don't have to look too far to see how silly this can get. In truth, I don't have to look at all, because university press offices fill my inbox with examples every day: The Harvard scientists who hope their study of cuttlefish skin will "inspire improved protective camouflage for soldiers on the battlefield." The Berkeley team that thinks studying the genetics of blubber-eating polar bears could help us learn to live with our bacon-wrapped, wide-load lifestyle. And the wonderful folks at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, who believe "Squid sucker ring teeth material could aid reconstructive surgery, serve as eco-packaging." (And you thought they were good only for calamari.)

I don't entirely blame the scientists. Their research often depends on taxpayer funding, and their dreams are haunted by the ghost of United States Senator William Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award. That award garnered headlines by ridiculing outlandish-seeming items in the federal budget, and animal behavior studies were a juicy target. So now people doing that kind of research all feel obliged to imply that they are two steps away from a cure for the common cold. No basic research here, Senator, sir, no idle curiosity. Useful "R" Us. (They also delight in pointing out that one of Mr. Proxmire's targets — a $250,000 investigation into the sex life of the screwworm fly — has yielded $20 billion in benefits to American cattle farmers by enabling control of a major insect pest.)

Photo Credit Chloé Poizat

Improbably, wildlife conservationists now also often hear the call of the useful. Along with a large contingent of eco-finance bureaucrats, they try to save threatened habitats by reminding nearby communities of all the benefits they derive from keeping these habitats intact. Forests, meadows and marshes prevent floods, supply clean water, provide habitat for species that pollinate crops, put oxygen into the atmosphere and take carbon out, and otherwise make themselves useful. In some cases, conservation groups or other interested parties actually put down cash for these ecosystem services — paying countries, for instance, to maintain forests as a form of carbon sequestration. The argument, in essence, is that we can persuade people to save nature by making it possible for them to sell it. They can take nature to the bank, or at least to the local grocery. They can monetize it. (The new revised version of Genesis now says, "God made the wild animals according to their kinds, and he said, 'Let them be fungible.' ")

I understand the logic, or at least the desperation, that drives conservationists to this horrible idea. It may seem like the only way to keep what's left of the natural world from being plowed under by unstoppable human expansion and by our insatiable appetite for what appears to be useful. But usefulness is precisely the argument other people put forward to justify destroying or displacing wildlife, and they generally bring a larger and more persuasive kind of green to the argument. Nothing you can say about 100 acres in the New Jersey Meadowlands will ever add up for a politician who thinks a new shopping mall will mean more jobs for local voters (and contributions to his campaign war chest). Nothing you can say about the value of rhinos for ecotourism in South Africa will ever matter to a wildlife trafficker who can sell their horns for $30,000 a pound in Vietnam.

Finally, there is the unavoidable problem that most wildlife species — honey badgers, blobfish, blue-footed boobies, red-tailed hawks, monarch butterflies, hellbenders — are always going to be "useless," or occasionally annoying, from a human perspective. And even when they do turn out, by some quirk, to be useful, that's typically incidental to what makes them interesting. Cuttlefish do not fascinate because their skin may suggest new forms of military camouflage, but because of the fantastic light shows that sometimes play across their flanks. Spider web silk doesn't intrigue because somebody can turn it into bandages, but because of the astonishing things spiders can do with it — stringing a line across a stream and running trotlines down the surface to catch water striders, for instance, or (in the case of the species named mastophora dizzydeani) flinging a ball of silk on a thread like a spitball to snag moths out of the air.

Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what's weird, different, other, but to a world where we humans do not matter nearly as much as we like to think.

And that should be enough.

Richard Conniff is a contributing opinion writer and the author of "The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth."

A version of this article appears in print on 09/14/2014, on page SR8 of the National edition with the headline: Useless Creatures.

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Opinionator | The Conversation: Our Reluctant National Security President

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Brooks: Gail, I'd like to start by asking you about embarrassing omissions. Are there books you haven't read or places you haven't been that you really should have in your cultural repertoire?

Gail Collins: Good grief, David. I'm not going to compare cultural repertoire defects with you. You've read half the books in the world.

David: Actually, my gaps are glaring. Pretty much everything by Dickens is a void for me — I just can't get into the guy. And every epic poem ever written except "The Divine Comedy." If I'm going to read a story, I need paragraphs.

Gail: O.K, that makes me feel better. There's nobody I love better than Charles Dickens. "Bleak House" was my inspiration as a pundit. Also, since you don't read epic poetry I am going to pretend that I do. Yes! "Orlando Furioso" is my favorite.

David: As for places, I have never been to Norway, which you just visited, but I don't feel any moral obligation to see Scandinavia again. I should have visited Greece, Turkey and Japan, though.

Gail: David, are you suggesting that I attempted to raise questions about your geographic well-roundedness by telling you I've been to Norway? Honestly, you don't have to go. It's all right.

David: I raise this question for grand strategic reasons, naturally. Over the past few years the United States has been guilty of an embarrassing glaring omission. A succession of presidents has neglected to shore up the global state system.

Gail: Stop a second. When people bring up terms like "global state system," I tend to blank out. Perhaps it's like you with Dickens. But please, rephrase. Do you mean the United Nations and NATO or just a general working-together by countries of good will?

David: I'd put it this way. In the past, maintaining the global state system was almost instinctual for presidents. From Franklin Roosevelt through George H.W. Bush, we've had a series of leaders whose foreign policy visions were formed by the conflicts against fascism and communism. These leaders had a reflexive commitment to global institutions that contributed to global regularity and order. Leaders of this generation know how much effort it took to tend to these institutions.

But baby boomers — yes, this is another thing people can blame our generation for — did not grow up with that consciousness.

Gail: I should have known. Nothing bad exists that was not the fruit of the boomers. Do you remember all those years when we ruled? First the older generation worried about why we were so ticked off and asked themselves how they failed us. Then every company in the world asked what it would take to make us buy their stuff. I should have known there'd be payback.

Now we're just the dumping ground for every problem from rising health costs to declining productivity.

And we've also screwed up the global state system? I warn you David, it's just a matter of minutes before somebody starts talking about building ice floes to put us on. Despite global warming, which is undoubtedly our fault too.

David: Well yes, you make a good point, but let me continue on this theme. The decline in the management of this global system came from the right: George W. Bush's weak coalition building skills —and from the left: President Obama's tendency to withdraw to attend to nation-building at home.

Gail: That's a nice way of putting it. By "attend to nation-building at home," I presume you mean "wrestling with the crazed domestic right wing."

I'm not sure I'm going to agree with your theory, but finish it before I say something unsupportive.

David: America's leadership problems have been compounded by the fact that Europe has not been able to coordinate an effective military or foreign policy apparatus. And a new superpower, China, has failed to accept any responsibility for maintaining the system by which it rose.

The result is like when the normal teacher is off sick and the substitute teacher takes over. Do you remember those days? Every student started off a little more rambunctious. The class clowns and bullies picked and probed to see what they could get away with.

Gail: You're looking at a decline of presidential leadership since World War II. I see a western world that has learned painfully, over and over again, how impossible it is to fight a ground war in other people's countries. Particularly on a planet where your friends aren't the only ones with weapons of mass destruction.

So maybe it's not the presidents who have changed, but the world they confront.

David: In the Middle East the decline of the state system has created a vacuum that religious armies have filled. Conflict in the region is no longer defined by the Arab-Israeli dispute. That's now a sideshow to the Arab vs. Arab war that is taking place on about four levels at once. It's amazing. Since 1648 religion has been largely neutralized as a force in foreign affairs, but now ISIS wants to replace state system rules with religious war rules. Arab identities will be defined by the Sunni/Shiite rivalry and by fealty to jihadism.

Gail: You're right, it is amazing, although I don't think it's unique to the Arabs. Having spent a little part of my younger days in Northern Ireland, I do kind of understand people's capacity to use religion as an all-purpose cover for fights that are really about historic grievances.

David: All of this brings us home to President Obama.

Gail: I knew you were going to bring us back to President Obama.

David: It's funny, but I don't think his problem is conceptual. Occasionally he will say something unfortunate, like the time he told donors that the world is always messy. That is a completely inadequate diagnosis of the degradation of the global state system.

Gail: I agree it was unfortunate, but I heard it a different way. That it's harder for the developed world to just go in there and bang heads because people who are all connected through the Internet can no longer close their eyes and shrug about the collateral damage. It made him sound as if he regretted those good old days, although I'm sure he didn't mean it that way.

I do wonder if we would have bombed Japan if we knew everybody in Hiroshima had a smart phone.

David: In general, President Obama's descriptions of the threats to the global order are robust and accurate. Yet there is a yawning chasm between his comments and his policies. He says ISIS is a cancer that can't be tolerated anywhere. Yet his policies, at least so far, don't lead to the destruction of ISIS, especially inside Syria. He understands that Vladimir Putin threatens the norm that big nations don't gobble up little ones, and yet he is against giving Ukrainians the weapons they need to deter attack.

Gail: Without getting into Ukraine I do want to question the idea that the answer to all the problems of the world is to give the other side a whole bunch of weapons. How did ISIS get to be such a huge threat? In part because it was able to capture weaponry that we gave to Iraq.

David: What do you think the president should say tonight and do afterward?

Gail: Well, I am pretty sure that you'll get your wish about the global state system. He'll talk about his plans in the context of an international alliance of some sort.

David: I suspect tonight's address will be the defining talk of his last two years. He's learned that, especially in foreign affairs, presidents don't get to choose their policies. A guy who came amid promises of withdrawal, amid talk of a pivot to Asia, vowing to do nation building at home, and arguing that military force is usually not the answer, is now going to be pivoting to the Middle East and using military force.

We are playthings of fate.

Gail: Here's the thing we're going to see with every post-9/11 president: They come in with principled theories about what they're going to do, and then they read the intelligence and listen to their advisers spin the most horrific projections possible about what could happen. What terrorists are trying to do. And they imagine the awful things that could happen under their watch.

Barack Obama isn't going to be the only expert in constitutional law who comes into office and tolerates unconstitutional wiretaps. I think history will judge he was wrong on that point. But there's an excellent chance that history will also find that rather being slow on the war with ISIS, he was generally very smart in erring on the side of caution.

David: I suspect President Obama will be forced by circumstances to go against his inclinations and goals. He simply cannot leave office with ISIS in good shape. He wasn't elected to democratize Iraq. He was elected amid promises that he would destroy Al Qaeda and its offshoots.

Gail: He was elected as the guy who promised not to get us involved in any more stupid wars. And that's still an excellent goal.

David: One hard part, I'd say, is that Obama is governing at a time of low legitimacy, when people don't really believe America can be an effective player in the world. I suspect Obama shares this belief to some extent. And he's got to persuade current voters, in a way the WWII generation never needed to be persuaded, that the democratic community can be effective at defeating tyranny.

To do this he somehow has to set more realistic goals. Obviously George W. Bush's goals of spreading freedom and defeating evil were too lofty, but that doesn't mean we need to flip over and fatalistically assume we can do nothing. President Obama's assaults on ISIS have so far borne enormous fruit. Sometimes force works. Sometimes war is the answer.

Gail: So I think you're saying that Obama's doing pretty darned well.

Let's go back to where we started. Which was you mourning the loss of the global state system. Well, first you dissed Charles Dickens and Norway. But then it was the global state system.

And I still hate that phrase. Can't we just say something like "working effectively with our allies?" And if so, do you really think a President Romney or McCain could have done it better?

David: The hard part is explaining to the American people what the system is. You can barely see it or feel it. But it is the unconscious background for everybody's behavior, the good guys as well as the bad guys.

Gail: True, but I think it's in better shape now than it would have been with a different president.

And I hope it's a really good speech. I want Obama to take on all the jerks who are yelling about how we need to go in there and squash the enemy like a bug, or fight like men, or just blow the bad guys to smithereens.

We've long discovered he's not the magic wordsmith we thought he was during his first run for office. But I hope he explains his plans tonight in a way that makes people feel like we can be strong and sensible at the same time.

David: None of the individual problems we face is going to threaten American interests. It wouldn't be worth expending significant resources, even on the horrific Syrian civil war, if that was all that was at stake. But those kinds of conflicts are undermining the whole system of shared assumptions that kept everybody in line.

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