Dope.
Okay. Forward to our next tableau.

�The earthquake began at 9:30 on November 1st, 1755, and was centered in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 km WSW of Cape St. Vincent.� Geologists call it a slip � there was a slip between two tectonic plates. It might have been the greatest earthquake in recorded history. Immanuel Kant, writing about it latter, believed that atmospheric phenomena prophesied that something was up:

I look upon the prelude of the subterranean inflammation, that after-
wards grew so amazing, to be the atmospheric phenomenon which was
perceived at Locarno in Switzerland on the 14th October last year at 8
o'clock in the morning. A warm vapour, as if coming out of an oven, dif-
fused itself and in two hours turned into a red fog, which towards evening
occasioned a rain red as blood, that, when it was caught, deposited 1/9 of a
reddish gluey sediment. The snow six feet deep was likewise tinged red.
This purple rain was perceived [at] 40 hours, [to extend] about
20 German miles in quadratum, yes, even to Schwaben. On this atmo-
spheric phenomenon followed unnatural downpours, that in three
days gave 23 inches of water,39 which is more than falls throughout the
whole year in a country of a moderately damp nature. This rain continued
over 14 days, though not always with the same violence. The rivers in
Lombardy that have their source in the mountains of Switzerland, as also
the Rhone, swelled with water and overflowed their banks. From this time
prevailed in the air frightful hurricanes, which raged everywhere furiously.
In the middle of November such a purple rain still fell in Ulm, and the
disorder in the atmosphere, the whirlwinds in Italy, [and] the extremely wet
weather continued.

Readers are begged to notice the reference to purple rain. Bet you didn�t know Prince was an ardent fan of Immanuel Kant�s, did you?

Three earthwaves radiated out, the first one hitting Lisbon about 10, and pretty much destroying the lower part of the city. Since it was a feast day, a good part of the population was in church. Marion Kaplan, in her book on Portugal, quotes the contemporary (and, I must say, unlikely sounding) report of a nun: � Itt began like the rattleing of Coaches� I look about me and see the Walls a-shaking and a falling down, then I up and took to my heells, with Jesus in my mouth.�

The third wave hit the upper part of Lisbon, the wealthier neighborhoods, around 12. By this time the devastation in the lower part of the city had been added to by the conflagration that was probably the result of the candles burning in Lisbon�s several churches that day � that was the speculation of contemporaries. To complete the charmed circle of cursed elements, the survivors from the first two shocks had, instinctively, rushed to the harbor, only to find themselves scrambling with human speed to escape the tsunami that came in, it is estimated, at about 6 meters.

�Immediately after the earthquake, many inhabitants of Lisbon looked for safety on the sea by boarding ships moored on the river. But about 30 minutes after the quake, a large wave swamped the area near Bugie Tower on the mouth of the Tagus. The area between Junqueria and Alcantara in the western part of the city was the most heavily damaged by the wave, but further destruction occurred upstream. The Cais de Pedra at Rerreiro do Paco and part of the nearby custom house were flattened.
�A total of three waves struck the shore, each dragging people and debris out to sea and leaving exposed large stretches of the river bottom. In front of the Terreiro do Paco, the maximum height of the waves was estimated at 6 meters. Boats overcrowded with refugees capsized and sank. In the town Cascais, some 30 km west of Lisbon, the waves wrecked several boats and when the water withdrew, large stretches of sea bottom were left uncovered. In coastal areas such as Peniche, situated about 80 km north of Lisbon, many people were killed by the tsunami. In Setubal, 30 km south of Lisbon, the water reached the first floor of buildings. �

One of the remarkable things about the Lisbon quake is that there are still disputes about how much damage it actually did. Here�s an account, appended to a book about the San Francisco earthquake, that gives one estimate of the quake�s magnitude:

�The most distinguishing peculiarities of this earthquake were the
swallowing up of the mole, and the vast extent of the earth's
surface over which the shocks were felt. Several of the highest
mountains in Portugal were violently shaken, and rent at their
summits; huge masses falling from them into the neighboring
valleys. These great fractures gave rise to immense volumes of
dust, which at a distance were mistaken for smoke by those who
beheld them. Flames were also said to have been observed: but if
there were any such, they were probably electrical flashes produced
by the sudden rupture of the rocks.

The portion of the earth's surface convulsed by this earthquake is
estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the
whole extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the
Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as
violent. At a place about twenty-four miles from the city of
Morocco, there is said to have occurred a catastrophe much
resembling what took place at the Lisbon mole. A great fissure
opened in the earth, and an entire village, with all its
inhabitants, upwards of 8,000 in number, were precipitated into the
gulf, which immediately closed over its prey.�

Reverand Charles Davy wrote a fine firsthand account of the quake. It is at the much to lauded Fordham history site:

Upon this I threw down my pen---and started upon my feet, remaining a moment in suspense, whether I should stay in the apartment or run into the street, as the danger in both places seemed equal; and still flattering myself that this tremor might produce no other effects than such inconsiderable ones as had been felt at Madeira; but in a moment I was roused from my dream, being instantly stunned with a most horrid crash, as if every edifice in the city had tumbled down at once. The house I was in shook with such violence, that the upper stories immediately fell; and though my apartment (which was the first floor) did not then share the same fate, yet everything was thrown out of its place in such a manner that it was with no small difficulty I kept my feet, and expected nothing less than to be soon crushed to death, as the walls continued rocking to and fro in the frightfulest manner, opening in several places; large stones falling down on every side from the cracks, and the ends of most of the rafters starting out from the roof. To add to this terrifying scene, the sky in a moment became so gloomy that I could now distinguish no particular object; it was an Egyptian darkness indeed, such as might be felt; owing, no doubt, to the prodigious clouds of dust and lime raised from so violent a concussion, and, as some reported, to sulphureous exhalations, but this I cannot affirm; however, it is certain I found myself almost choked for near ten minutes.
I hastened out of the house and through the narrow streets, where the buildings either were down or were continually falling, and climbed over the ruins of St. Paul's Church to get to the river's side, where I thought I might find safety. Here I found a prodigious concourse of people of both sexes, and of all ranks and conditions, among whom I observed some of the principal canons of the patriarchal church, in their purple robes and rochets, as these all go in the habit of bishops; several priests who had run from the altars in their sacerdotal vestments in the midst of their celebrating Mass; ladies half dressed, and some without shoes; all these, whom their mutual dangers had here assembled as to a place of safety, were on their knees at prayers, with the terrors of death in their countenances, every one striking his breast and crying out incessantly, Miserecordia meu Dios! . . . In the midst of our devotions, the second great shock came on, little less violent than the first, and completed the ruin of those buildings which had been already much shattered."



In the aftermath of the quake, there was a brief period of anarchy. With the flames consuming half the town�s goods, the other half became fair game for the prisoners who had escaped from their cells, due to the collapse of the penitentiary. The king�s prime minister, the Marques de Pombal, a figure of xemplary Englightenment views, solved the problem of pillage by erecting gallows in a circle around the shattered hulk of Lisbon and hanging as many thieves as his soldiers could catch. He solved the problem of moral, which was deepened by the fervent call to repentence of several priests, by kicking the Jesuits out of Portugal. Both instances of public policy were applauded by the philosophes.

Finally, here�s a letter, sent by Voltaire to the M. Tronchin on Novemeber 24th, 1755:

Les D�lices, November 24, 1755
This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds-- where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath d�bris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants -- Swiss, like yourself -- swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is! What will the preachers say -- especially if the Palace of the Inquisition is left standing! I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. I believe it is our mountains which save us from earthquakes.

Enough for one day.

Dope

For those of you worried that I am neglecting my promised, straggly essay on the Earthquake in Lisbon and its effects on the Enlightenment - a hot button issue, right? Hollywood fodder -- well, I'm not. My plan, on this site, is to experiment with free form essays - ex cathedra riffs that are visibly assembled out of the lumber in my head. So if that lumber doesn't feel like getting up and making itself into an essay, I'm not going to make it. But I do remember my promises, and will try to get around to my original intentions.

-- The Randalls Grocery store I go to has a large red white and blue ribbon stuck to the stuccoed pillar in front of the entrance; the Goodwill store on 5th and Lamar has tacked up a goodly sized flag, maybe two and a half feet by five, on the side of their building; the GSD and M advertising agency on 6th has a huge flag on a pole and a banner stretched out on their front lawn area which contains some pithy patriotic apothegm; ny neighbor has a small flag on a shishkabab sized stick waving outside her door. I am living, right now, in a flurry of patriotic colors. It stirs memories of 1980, the hostage crisis, the frustratingly ineffectual Jimmy Carter, the songs of hillbilly defiance on the radio. I lived in Shreveport then, and Shreveport's white population responded to the occupation of the "nest of spies" in Teheran by demanding, and receiving, round the clock playing of Kenny Rodger's "Coward of the County." I was a redneck, but I wasn't stupid -- I turned to black fm and listened to Grand Master Flash invent hip-hop.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

Readers, I've been reading Robert Lacey's gossipy account of the Saud royal family, published in the backwash of the hostage crisis (1981), and I've been surprised by the assumptions in that book -- surprised, that is, by the way perception was so totally shaped by the Cold War. Surprised, for instance, that the US sponsored King Faisal's pan-Islamic ideas to counter Nasser's russophile socialism. Surprised by the immediacy of the oil price shock in those days. Surprised, mostly, by how much of this I have forgotten. Yes, the importance of forgetting in history is always underrated: historians have a natural fondness for memory, for archeology and continuing structures and civilization. But it is forgetting that melts the structures of hegemony, and that operates so openly, ingenuously, and ruthlessly in the minds of men. All that is solid melts into air, somebody once said. And what melts it?

Remora

'Smokin em out' - the definition.

We don't know what the Bush's international coon hunt is going to look like - neither does he. But for a combat ready wet dream, look to this interview with Rear Admiral Stephen Baker, who is creaking in his joints with excitement.

Q & A with Rear Adm. (Ret.) Stephen H. Baker, USN, Senior Fellow, CDI - Terrorism Project - Center for Defense Information

Most frightening exchange is this one:

"Q. Will this "war on terrorism" be just focused only on Afghanistan?
A. No, but the initial focus is to bring to justice the individual terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and all current leads point to those regions. The Taliban regime and all the leaders and cells of al Qaeda are definitely on the hit list. It will not end there, however. The campaign being planned is global, and it will be a long, many-tiered, world-wide effort. The terrorist training camps that we know of in Lebanon, for example, most likely are being looked at right now. More than 60 countries have known terrorist problems, and it seems clear that there will be multiple ongoing operations at every level of U.S. counter-terrorism capabilities for quite some time."

Not Lebanon again! Not content to repeat the mistakes of his father, Bush 2 is reaching all the way back to repeat the mistakes of the monumental Reagan. If the US is going after Hezbollah again, we really have lost our minds. As for Baker's last sentence, god knows what that means translated out of Pentagon-speak -- I suspect it merely indicates a military wishlist, as the military likes nothing better than to throw money against a newly discovered threat. You can hear them salivating in offices from General Dynamics to The Raytheon Company. It isn't pleasant to hear that much salivating, reader -- it makes me a bit ill.

Remora
Talking about folly and evil -- here's a story from the NYT:
Bush Urges Afghans to Rid Their Country of Taliban

in which Bush 2 has apparently decided to make the same mistakes as Bush 1. You'll remember -- or you won't -- that Bush 1 urged the people of Iraq to "take matters into their own hands -- to force Saddam Hussein the dictator aside..." back in the heady Gulf War days. The Iraqui people, unluckily for them, actually took Bush 1 at his word, and were promptly abandoned by the American military, who calmly watched them being slaughtered by the 'dictator Saddam Hussein's" Republican guard.
Bush 2's people have learned nothing. Once again the president makes an appeal that is promptly denied by his spokesman, Ari Fleischer. Once again a mass of refugees who would like nothing better than to be rid of the Taliban are being given televised assurances by the President of the US that we will support a rebellion, and once again this is, to put it bluntly, a lie. If we do support a rebellion, we've done a piss poor job of aiding it so far. This is the kind of thing that makes one into a pacifist -- vide my earlier post today.
First graf of story:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 � President Bush came close to telling the Afghan people today to overthrow the Taliban government, encouraging them to rid Afghanistan of what he called "an incredibly repressive" administration.

Remora

Mike Kelly's column in the WP is, as usual, as stuffed with nonsense as my mama's pecan pie used to be stuffed with nuts (hey, I'm practicing making homegrown comparisons, in an effort to show my Americanism):

. . . Pacifist Claptrap (washingtonpost.com)

The column considers pacifism and, in the concluding graf, concludes it is evil. What Kelly means by evil, I think, is that it is bad. Kelly goes to Orwell's controversy with pacifists in World War II. At that time, Orwell contended, the pacifists were objectively pro-fascist. Kelly wants to transfer this logic to today's pacifists, and say they are objectively pro-terrorist. Here, for what it is worth, is his argument graf. He begins with reasons for engaging with pacifists at all. I'll skip his first reason and go to the second:

"Second, it is worth it because the reactionary left-liberal crowd in America and in Europe has already staked out its ground here: What happened to America is America's fault, the fruits of foolish arrogance and greedy imperialism, racism, colonialism, etc., etc. From this rises an argument that the resulting war is also an exercise in arrogance and imperialism, etc., and not deserving of support. This argument will be made with greater fearlessness as the first memories of the 7,000 murdered recede. Third, it is worth it because the American foreign policy establishment has all the heart for war of a titmouse, and not one of your braver titmice. The first faint, let-us-be-reasonable bleats can even now be heard: Yes, we must do something, but is an escalation of aggression really the right thing? Mightn't it just make matters ever so much worse?"

Here we have a masterful case of muddying your colors, and the invocation of Orwell isn't going to help him out. Pacifism is not the same thing as deciding not to use violence for one or another reason. The idea that America's foreign policy establishment is pacifist is ludicrous in the extreme. If they have hearts like titmice, that has more to do with not wanting to provoke controversy in what is now officially "the homeland." And why not provoke controversy? Because foreign policy is conducted, now, by a very small group, with little attention paid to it by the mass of Americans. Foreign policy people like it like that. If the mass of Americans must stick their noses into foreign policy, the foreign policy establishment would prefer that it happen in the shape of ticker tape parades for returning soldiers and 90% support for whatever inane ass sits in the Oval Office.

As for Kelly's thoughts re the liberal-lefties -- well, again, we aren't dealing with pacifism here. Among some, certainly, that might be the case. Kneejerk anti-war sentiment isn't a bad vice; but it is true, I think, that it is a vice. Meaning that the argument that there is no virtue in using violence for political ends ignores the structure of political injustice. Nor is Kelly very perceptive about American foreign policy in the Middle East, which has been, to say the least, unwise, driven by hasty impulses, political panics, and the overriding need for a stable supply of oil uncoupled from any concentrated national policy to promote, with all our wealth, alternatives to oil energy. I know, sounds way rationalistic, right?

I've already had my say about this in earlier posts, but to reiterate: the era since the Cold and the Gulf War ended has not been a glorious one for American foreign policy. The dual containment of Iran and Iraq ignored the reality of change in Iran, and enforced a horrendously immoral -- let's even use Kelly's word, evil -- policy in Iraq, to wit, the refusal to aid or countenance a democratically oriented overthrow of Saddam Hussein for fear that such an overthrow would destroy the country and expand the sphere of Iranian influence, and the consequent turn to the compromise of sanctions, which was premised on the insane proposition that an unarmed populace could be prodded into overthrowing a heavily armed, violent dictator by being systematically starved. With, of course, the codicil that even if the population, by some miracle, was able to successfully bring some tyrannicide to fruition, that it would allow the political fruit of its courage to be wrenched away from it, leaving the structure of the regime alone. Exchanging, in other words, one tyranny for another, in a nightmarish succession of Ba'athist strongmen.
Yeah, let's see, what were the terms Kelly used? "Foolish arrogance and greedy imperialism, racism, colonialism"? I think I could throw a few more insults on that pile, but that will do for starters.

Dope.

In 1725, Voltaire was thirty one years old. He'd established himself at the great houses by this time, where the Names could enjoy the dangerous turn of his epigrams. His wildly successful plays were thought to be the successor of Racine's (although now they are considered the last clunk of classic theater, heading for the garbage chute). He had, it was true, spent time in the Bastille in 1717 for writing verses that satirized the Regent. It was also true that he was the prematurely wizened child of a conseiller de roi, a bourgeois, and that his father did not count his poet son among his worldly successes - in the Arouet family the ornament was the older son, Armand, a lawyer like papa.

Voltaire, however, considered himself the peer of his titled friends -- ennobled, so to speak, by his brain.

It is a sign of the times that Voltaire could so easily allow himself this presumption. In the seventeenth century, a Moliere could see a king, but couldn't sup with a prince. Voltaire, however, felt himself fully entitled to break bread with princes -- or, more usually, princesses. The habits of Louis XIV's regime, in which a conscious effort was made to codify, and so stabilize, the hierarchy in order to control the nobility, so inclined in the first half of the seventeenth century to frightening Frondes, had been swept away during the Regency. In particular, the Mississippi bubble, John Law's attempt to take a seventeenth century society into the age of floating currencies and stock options, had turned life upside down, bankrupting old houses and enriching outsiders, until it all came down with a crash. Law's paper currency was a real, if unintended, assault on the feudalist order, and succeeded in weakening that order even if it did not succeed in floating France's debt.

In December, 1725, Voltaire had an altercation with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot (the link has another version of this story) in the dressing room of an actress. Rohan-Chabot made a cutting remark, Voltaire replied in kind, the Chevalier raised his can, Voltaire raised his sword, friends intervened, and the broil was brought to a close.

A few days later Voltaire was at the table in the Duc de Sully's hotel, with the family, when a servant came in and told him he was wanted outside. In the street stood two closed carriages, to one of which Voltaire advanced. He was grabbed, thrust inside, and assaulted with sticks and fists. From the second carriage, the Chevalier de Rohan's voice was heard: "don't hurt his head, something good may come out of it." After being beaten, Voltaire was thrown back out into the street.

He made his way upstairs to the Duc de Sully's table, disheveled and presumably bleeding Let me quote from Jean Orieux's biography: "He called on them [the dinner guests] to help him -- first of all the Duc de Sully, whose guest he was, and on whose doorstep he had been assaulted. He begged Sully to go with him to lodge a complaint; his assailants had tried to murder him. But the duc calmly refused. The faces of all present were impassive; everyone was silent. Voltaire realized then that no one was going to aid him..."

I love this story. I, too, have seen those faces -- the face the established order shows the outsider. I saw it when I was a young man in Shreveport, Louisiana. In a way, it was a rare privilege. This story could have happened yesterday in any number of places: Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia... and Louisiana. It could happen anywhere, in other words, where the roots of civil society are weak; where clans are strong; where the monopoly of violence is not entirely conceded to the state, and where the state recognizes, in its daily working, the de facto right of groups to enforce extra-legal punishments. What Votaire saw, sealed in the impassivity of the circle of faces that confronted him, was the naked substructure of the very society he moved in. Rohan's henchmen woke him up. Voltaire made a leap in place that moment. He became the Voltaire we know, realizing, beyond his vanity, what the point was: the great target, really, of the whole Enlightenment project in the first half of the 18th century. The traditional order, the rule of authority rather than reason, was based on just this moment when the face closes. He realized that he could expect no quarter from these people. He'd have to forge his arms himself.

So he did. He operated under the aegis of satire, the downstairs weapon. Scapin's revenge. (actually, the denouement of this story does have a Scapin-esque feel - Voltaire made it known that he was consorting with underworld thugs, learning fencing, and Rohan, a notorious coward, prevailed on the king to issue a lettre de cachet, putting Voltaire in the Bastille again. A sign of the regime's essential weakness is that Voltaire was soon released -- there was a certain shame about what Rohan had done. Follow the shame - it is always a clue). To implant a sense of the judicial equality of persons in a society that doesn't, in its social tissues, feel that equality, requires more toxic methods than the arguments of rationality. It required all the tactics of ridicule, imprudence and pointed analogy that the philosophes inherited from the ancients, and from the kindred spirits of the century before: Montaigne and the libertine circle around St. - Evremond. Even in this early stage of modernity, shock was the weapon of choice, because the other weapons -- the closed carriages and the cudgels -- were all held by the other side. As we will see in my third tableaux -- you see, I am thinking of my posts about this subject as pictures in a triptych -- this ingrained habit of satire stood between Voltaire and Rousseau, making it impossible for either party to understand the other one. Satire, in other word, has its great historic moment in the 18th century. It is the dark star twinned with optimism in the Enlightenment program. That relationship contains in itself the seed of its own dialectical destruction.

Remora
Blogger wasn't working for me this morning. So I posted the same entry twice. Look to the entry below this one, please