Lists

     Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński's The Soccer War (1986), translated by William Brand, inspires me to start a few lists. One is of the best lines from author bios. Kapuściński's entry: "He witnessed twenty-seven coups and revolutions and was sentenced to death four times." 

I've heard almost exclusively good things about his work through the years. Not long ago I read the first book of his I bought, a choice based on title, since every selection from his oeuvre seems as acclaimed as the others. His approach is tough to describe. It isn't quite formal reportage. But "informal reportage" isn't right because he is technically a paid professional. It isn't quite memoir. Sometimes it's diary. Several chapters are "notes" on a book he intends to write. Others are fragments from the frontlines: Algeria, Ghana, Cyprus, Honduras....

In Nigeria he's beaten. A lot. So much that he comes up with advice for how to take a beating: Don't fight back. Your assailant is never alone and fighting back will only get you beaten worse or murdered. But don't turn into a blubbering, craven mess, as showing weakness will also get you beaten severely or murdered. The book is filled with stories such as this: Kapuściński drives up to a checkpoint. The men who control the area pull him from his car and slap him around, demanding money. He gives them a little and someone hits him hard. He gives them more and is allowed to drive on. At the next checkpoint, he's pulled from his car and sprayed down with a flammable chemical. (They've been burning people, including women and children, alive.) He pays them and he's allowed to drive on. Now he's out of money. Coming up to the next checkpoint emptyhanded means death. So he floors it and breaks through the checkpoint, making it to the next village. But how is he going to return? He speaks to the police. Officers pile into his car to escort him.

Kapuściński doesn't swagger into danger. He's a modest man who happens to have an irrepressible urge to be at the center of great upheavals and experience danger for himself. Besides, he can't stand being at home, working in a safe, quiet environment, participating in mundane activities and conversations. Another list I'll start is of my favorite tirades. Kapuściński's entry: A multipage paragraph about his grudging tolerance of all furniture except desks. His hatred of desks.

Power struggles, mismanagement, corruption, food insecurity, bloodshed. Societies trying to stabilize, societies falling apart. The term "civil war" is currently being thrown around in the US and Kapuściński's book provides an insight into what that actually means. It's hell and yet, without softening his account, he preserves his lightness of touch, his humanity, his sense of humor. Every book on war I've read reveals its absurd side and he may take it furthest. As one breaks out, Kapuściński stumbles in the dark and wrestles a trash can.

The final list is entitled "Ryszard Kapuściński." It starts with The Soccer War and will continue through the rest of his work.

Ross Douthat Remembers Christopher Hitchens

     Ross Douthat, writing for The New Statesman, claims Christopher Hitchens aspired to be a second George Orwell. Without a doubt he admired Orwell, publishing a booklength study of him, Why Orwell Matters (2002), in which the prevailing sentiment is gratitude. It also marks the distinctions between the two. Hitchens, no matter what his aspirations were or were not, is certainly no George Orwell epigone. He ends his study of the great writer's life and work saying it's not what you think but how you think, a thought that doesn't receive my full endorsement. I wouldn't be impressed by "thinking" that undergirds a hateful ideology. But with Hitchens, Douthat makes the mistake of trashing him for what he thinks (as well as failing in his duty to improve civilization itself) without exploring the reason we remember him in the first place - how he thinks. In fact, he doesn't even allude to Hitchens's true appeal. It's not "brio," which no writer uniquely possesses. Sure, there are those willing to attack both the left and the right, though not necessarily memorably. Now show me the writer with a comparable sense of humor. Fair warning: You'll be searching long and hard. Those with an awful sense of humor and those with no sense of humor - the serious thinkers - take up most of the space and aren't budging any time soon. I wouldn't insult Hitchens by reducing him to the status of "wit." Some seem to make a living, perhaps a fine living, off a sort of fast food version of humor. And the internet is rife with humor of less substance than a burger that looks like someone punched. Which suggests that the world always seems to have a shamefully scarce supply of writers and thinkers who are synonymous with laughter, who can be counted on to truly laugh and appreciate laughter and enrage with laughter. When Hitchens died, the scarcity grew. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if few noticed.

Democracy, 2

     Closing thoughts on David Runciman's How Democracy Ends. A two-parter? Curse that DR!

On Catastrophe

There was a time when warning the public of environmental catastrophe was expected to galvanize it into collectively pressuring elected officials to remedy the situation. Not today. After decades, the threat of climate collapse, supported by a towering body of evidence, hasn't. Anyone attempting to have the same effect, Runciman observes, is at a disadvantage: The worst consequences must be imagined. Of the consequences visible now, they're both unevenly felt throughout the world and gradual. Even striking the right tone can be difficult, since most thoughts, including those about democracy, have a tendency to dissolve in the face of true catastrophe. 

People need to believe that what they do still matters. Otherwise they are liable to feel powerless. The challenge for anyone wanting to scare people into action is not to scare them into inaction instead. If democracy is just a sideshow, then democratic citizens are bound to feel sidelined. They might drift off again.

(Runciman also reasonably speculates that apocalyptic warnings were once novel but, in the 21st century, people have heard about the fast-approaching End one too many times.) 

Neither democracies nor non-democracies have taken the steps necessary to halt or mitigate climate collapse. In the former case, politicians voice support or denial, thereby putting it up for debate, creating another source of conspiracy theory. With no general agreement on the facts and no unified demand for proper action, democracy appears unable to decide what to do. Runciman displays what passes for optimism in 2022: Once the consequences are evenly felt throughout the world, he trusts it'll respond accordingly, as it has in the past, though by then it may be too late. 

One scenario that's missing from his list of catastrophes is a pandemic. What we've learned from our recent experience with one is that hospitals can fill up, medical workers can complain of burnout and express a sense of betrayal and leave the field, people can die in the hundreds of thousands in the US alone, the economy can be ravaged, and still there'll be no general agreement on the facts and a unified demand for proper action. What we get is more conspiracy theory. Each side uses the pandemic to attack the other. One state's policy differs from the next state's policy. A vaccine arrives but it's unclear how many are willing to take it. The Supreme Court, preventing the Biden administration from enforcing a testing-or-vaccination mandate on large companies, isn't too worried about the coronavirus as an occupational hazard. Looking to yesterday's track record on this matter doesn't seem to serve as a reliable guide for collective future behavior either. Updated with the latest findings, the record is now spottier. For a considerable number of people, serious illness and death can simply be waved off if it means being inconvenienced or going by the word of a liberal.

Nuclear disarmament was once a pressing issue. Now barely anyone talks about it. The few who do are unelected officials. To disarm or not isn't a question asked of voters in democracies. And we can't be sure how we even managed to get this far, whether through skillful political maneuvering or sheer luck or some mysterious combination of the two. Until a nuke detonates or we get rid of them entirely, we live with uncertainty.

Nuclear catastrophe lacks grip because it is an all-or-nothing phenomenon. There is nothing that can make it real without threatening to make everything else effectively meaningless. It is too huge to grasp. So we cross our fingers and hope that our luck holds.

Runciman similarly examines the potential for the system to be infiltrated by evil, the threat of new technology, and the threat that one flaw in an interconnected system can take everything down, and finds that democracy and existential risk make a bad pair. Democracy can't manage any of the catastrophes he writes about, while the experts and theorists focused on existential risk tend to think of democracy as a distraction or of secondary concern without being able to elude or suppress it. Yet they remain a pair. And we live with uncertainty on all fronts.

On Technological Takeover

The date for the emergence of AI has been pushed back repeatedly, and can't do it.

Alternatives to Democracy

As tempting as it is to write about the entire book, I can't give so much of it away. To promote the joys of discovery, and to not be lame, I jump ahead to my

Conclusion

One can make a record of reality as it unfolds and leave it there. Or one can go further, warning of distressing trends today. And yet further: Provide a solution or prophesize where we will be tomorrow. Issuing a warning on the state of democracy is natural and sensible. Who'll listen? Those shouting for a better democracy may be shouting for a worse democracy or no democracy (while accusing the other side of the same). The situation devolves. As Runciman puts it: "conspiracy theory v. conspiracy theory in the name of democracy." Constructive solutions are hard to come by and Runciman doesn't have one either, though he doesn't pretend to have one. Prophecies are easier to come by. It'd be an exaggeration to say Runciman has his own. Instead he argues comprehensively and persuasively that democracy will be here when we wake up, limping into the foreseeable future and, a few years on, that's precisely what's happened. But the coming years or decades could prove him wrong and if he is, he'll be pummeled on that basis alone. (Treatment that certain prophets may not receive if their prophecies turn out to be wrong.) Set the crystal ball aside. My last compliment for David Runciman is that his book enlarges and refines my view of the present.