Bob Schwartz

The West is sacrificing Ukraine to avoid escalation and broadening conflict. Which is not an unworthy goal.

But if the goal is clear—Western leaders stressing the imminence of World War III—the price, the sacrifice, is not always so boldly and loudly articulated. What I call the Morning After.

We don’t know when the Morning After in Ukraine arrives or exactly what it looks like. The world is uplifted, and Putin appears to be surprised, by the resistance. It is floated that even when the Russians succeed in their occupation, resistance will continue, making it painful for Putin to keep hold of Ukraine, just as the sanctions have made it painful.

Painful as it may be to Russia, it will take and keep hold of Ukraine. It will continue to pursue deadly, frightening and inhumane means to succeed. Maybe Putin will use Ukraine as a bargaining chip, which bargains the West will categorically refuse. Or maybe Putin will just revel in having won a big victory, expanding the Russian footprint by adding (in his view taking back) Europe’s biggest territory. Millions of Ukrainians will be refugees, millions more will be terrified, thousands will be dead and injured, and cities will be devastated and demolished. With Putin as leader and his puppets in place.

Maybe that won’t be the Morning After. Maybe the internal resistance and external sanctions and isolation will convince Putin to withdraw. But don’t bet on it. And if that is roughly the Morning After, what will the conversations be like? Will the Western leaders ruefully agree that it tragically had to be this way so that the worse—the worst—could be avoided? Will Ukrainians feel honored to have been the sacrifice that possibly prevented World War III? How does the lamb feel?

Bloomberg:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is shifting vodka sales in the U.S., despite the fact that little Russian-made vodka is actually sold outside of Russia.

Some stores or consumers have been dumping brands with Russian-sounding names. But only around 14% of global vodka volume is produced in Russia, and almost all of that is sold in Russia, according to market-research firm IWSR. Worldwide vodka sales totaled $75.7 billion in 2020, according to GlobalData, another research firm.

“Many vodka brands that trace their origin to Russia are actually no longer produced in Russia, so boycotts of those brands do very little to impact Russian businesses,” said Brandy Rand, chief operating officer of the Americas at IWSR Drinks Market Analysis. “In 2020, less than 1% of vodka volume in the U.S. was from brands produced in Russia.”

Every little bit of sanction pain counts. Millions here, millions there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money…and discomfort.

Regarding Ukraine, though, we remain caught in a web of rhetoric, symbolism and virtue that makes us feel better, demonstrates spiritual solidarity, but may accomplish little. Not that avoiding and banning Russian vodka is not something, but given how little Russian vodka we actually buy and consume, it is mostly a big “so what.”

In Ukraine, whether it is the symbol of banning vodka or the real effect of not establishing a no-fly zone, we have to be brutally honest about the impact and consequences of our choices. Because Russia will be brutally dishonest about everything.

Viewing the endless reports of trains leaving Ukraine, filled with pieces of divided families maybe never to be made whole, music of Different Trains by Steve Reich came to mind.

Reich was inspired to compose this groundbreaking piece as he remembered the train trips he took as a young child, moving every six months between the homes of his divorced parents in New York and Los Angeles. Other trains then came to his imagination, especially the trains that carried Eastern Europeans Jews by the millions to their death. Different trains.

Art like Reich’s cannot change history, personal or global. Art can change us, or let us realize who we are and might be. And maybe change history after all.

For a long time, America has been involved in wars of shades of gray. Not that right and wrong weren’t involved, but that the equities weren’t always so clear. Vietnam was a glaring example: an unachievable outcome, corruption and inhumanity on both sides, lies and lies, and so much death for what? A glaring example, but just one.

Ukraine is not that. A powerful and sinister leader, driven by demons, whatever they are, is determined to roll over an innocent nation and its people. “Justified” by lies so obvious that they match the Master of Lies who once led America. Not the first and only example of brutality in recent years (China has forced citizens into ethnic concentration camps, right now), but one that shakes us differently.

What weighs on us, at least on me, is the absolute impotence of genuinely concerned nations. Sanctions and isolation do indeed inflict pain on Russia, pain which won’t be soon (or ever) relieved, but pain that will not stop the onslaught and slaughter. The tools exist to stop Russia in its tracks, but the realities of military back-and-forth, and the formalities of international law, prevent using them. Plainly, just one direct confrontation between Russia and the West will lead to escalation, and no one—not the smartest statesmen or generals—can know where that leads. In a crude calculation of better the devil you know, better to allow Russia to have Ukraine and work it out later than to take actions that have the potential for another European-wide war, knowing that the last two European-wide wars are grotesquely infamous, and those without nuclear.

And that is the weight we feel.

Q: Will sanctions work?

A: Sanctions won’t work to deter Putin from continuing his taking Ukraine, which will take another day or two. Sanctions won’t work to force Putin to withdraw, which would be a massive embarrassment for him.

Q: Will sanctions backfire?

A. Very possibly. Removing Russia from the global banking system, for example, means that European nations who buy gas from Russia can’t pay their bills. Russia would then be in a legitimate position to cut off that gas.

Q: What is Putin’s plan?

A: Putin will occupy Ukraine, put a puppet government in place, and then claim it is once again a part of Russia. He will then continue his request that bordering European NATO nations stand down their military readiness, which is a security threat to Russian Ukraine. NATO will again refuse, setting the scene for possible—though not anytime soon—Russian action to demilitarize those nations.

Q: What did Putin mean by his threat against any nation that intervenes?

A: Not a nuclear threat. Instead, he can initiate massive crippling cyberattacks.

Q: Does it matter that this war may not be popular in Russia?

A: Not at all. Russia is a dictatorship. Putin’s hold on power is virtually absolute. Even those in his leadership who have long been close to him are frightened by him and, in some cases, want to be his successor in 2024 (not wholly unlike the American case of Trump).

Q: What about American cyber warfare against Russia?

A: Russia will regard this as an attack, no different than a military attack. For Putin, this will justify whatever he subsequently chooses to do.

Q: Putin is now regularly called an irrational actor or, sometimes, a madman. Is he?

A: This matters and it doesn’t. Yes, if his calculations are recognizably rational, it might be a better situation. But if he is following some personal agenda, this is just name-calling. The best surmise, from his talks, is that he is driven by fierce retro-nationalism, willing to do anything to reconstitute the “glory days” of the Soviet Union. Given that a number of Americans, at the highest levels, are driven by fierce retro-nationalism, we have to determine if this is madness.

Q: What about Trump (former Republican President) and Pompeo (his former Secretary of State) now praising Putin as a strategic genius?

A: Giving aid and comfort to the enemy is the definition of treason.

By 1955, publisher William M. (Bill) Gaines was already revolutionizing the comic book industry. His line of EC (Entertaining Comics) books took on all sorts of mature themes and genres. So much so that he had been called before the U.S. Senate, which was on a high-profile crusade to control a medium that it believed was corrupting American youth, in fact, Americans of any age.

(Speaking of corruption, Gaines went on to publish Mad Magazine for forty years, which influenced a generation to believe that American culture was basically absurd, stupid and funny. What me worry?)

Among the talents that Gaines featured was an artist named Bernard Krigstein. In 1955, as the cover story for the first issue of EC’s new publication Impact, Krigstein illustrated the eight-page story Master Race. It is a stark tale of a former concentration camp prisoner who sees a former Nazi camp commandant on a New York subway—and who pushes that tormentor to his death.

There is deserved attention recently to Art Spiegelman’s celebrated Holocaust graphic novel Maus. After the benighted school board of McMinn County Tennessee banned the book, it once again became a bestseller. Though it was not noted in any of the news, more than twenty years before Maus, Master Race had taken on the Holocaust in comic form.

Spiegelman is no stranger to Krigstein or Master Race. In a 2002 New Yorker article, he writes about Krigstein’s being one of his teachers and about the artist’s complex life and career:

Anyone interested in crossing the ever-narrowing divide between High and Low culture ought to contemplate the work and troubled career of Bernard Krigstein (1919-90), a postwar comic-book illustrator who had the privilege and the misfortune of being an Artist with a capital “A” working in an Art Form that considered itself only a Business. Krigstein was never associated with a specific character (the most sure ticket to comics success), and he never wrote his own stories (a handicap in a narrative medium). He wasn’t beloved by publishers, editors, or readers. What reputation he has rests on a handful of short stories he illustrated in 1954 and 1955 for EC comics (the folks who brought you Tales from the Crypt and Mad), but one of those stories, “Master Race,” was an accomplishment of the highest order—a masterpiece.
Art Spiegelman

Read Master Race online or find one of the many books featuring this and other EC comics.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami was given to me. I had never heard of or read Murakami. I don’t read as much fiction as once I did, and so don’t keep up with the most popular writers.

I have now learned that Murakami is not just a popular and critically appreciated writer but a global phenomenon. Millions of copies sold. Frequently mentioned in Nobel Prize conversations. And 1Q84 is not just any Murakami book. When it was published after years of anticipation, it was seen as a remarkable moment in his already prolific career. At over 900 pages, with 79 chapters, divided into 3 volumes, it could only be remarkable.

It took me weeks, a few chapters a day, to finish. Since I don’t have the frame of reference, as critics and fans do, of his work before this, I took it at face value, reading without prejudice.

It is stuffed with cultural allusions, which I now understand is a Murakami trademark. None more telling than a character in forced isolation working her way through Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Not that this was necessarily Murakami’s attempt at a Proustian magnum opus. But any reader, veteran of Murakami or new to him, compelled to keep reading, may hit a point when you ask: what am I doing here and what is Murakami (or Proust) doing here?

Which, strangely or appropriately, is central to 1Q84. Along with related questions such as: where am I (are you) and when am I (are you) and who am I (are you)?

On the day I finished reading it, I unrelatedly came across a 1963 essay by Susan Sontag about the philosopher Simone Weil. Far removed at first glance from 1Q84 and yet:

Perhaps there are certain ages which do not need truth as much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality, a widening of the imagination. I, for one, do not doubt that the sane view of the world is the true one. But is that what is always wanted, truth? The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Susan Sontag, New York Review of Books, February 1, 1963

This might be the justification for all who create what we call fiction, whether in writing or painting or any medium. So instead of an attempt at insightful critique or analysis of 1Q84, of which one more isn’t needed, I leave you with that quote. If you have read 1Q84, you will understand the connection. If you haven’t read it, you will be the better for doing so. “The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.”

In 1970, Alvin Toffler published the book Future Shock. It was an immediate and long-time bestseller, with substantial influence on public conversations. Less so on action.

The premise, in my oversimplified summary: The rate of technological change is accelerating at an uncontrolled pace. But there are limits to our adaptability to change. The outcome is what he called “future shock.” There may be something we can do about it. Maybe if we study, learn and try:

This is a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed by change. It is about the ways in which we adapt—or fail to adapt—to the future. Much has been written about the future. Yet, for the most part, books about the world to come sound a harsh metallic note. These pages, by contrast, concern themselves with the “soft” or human side of tomorrow. Moreover, they concern themselves with the steps by which we are likely to reach tomorrow. They deal with common, everyday matters—the products we buy and discard, the places we leave behind, the corporations we inhabit, the people who pass at an ever faster clip through our lives. The future of friendship and family life is probed. Strange new subcultures and life styles are investigated, along with an array of other subjects from politics and playgrounds to skydiving and sex.

What joins all these—in the book as in life—is the roaring current of change, a current so powerful today that it overturns institutions, shifts our values and shrivels our roots. Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it.

The acceleration of change in our time is, itself, an elemental force. This accelerative thrust has personal and psychological, as well as sociological, consequences. In the pages ahead, these effects of acceleration are, for the first time, systematically explored. The book argues forcefully, I hope, that, unless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

Is this relevant, more than fifty years later? Have you heard the news? Have you lived life in 2022? Read or reread Future Shock.

I don’t pay attention to Whoopi Goldberg or The View or ABC Television. Then came this week’s development.

Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended by ABC for saying that the Holocaust was not about race but about man’s inhumanity to man.

What the ADL and other worthy and well-meaning enemies of hate essentially expressed: The Holocaust was about race. She is spreading antisemitic disinformation. That disinformation must be refuted and she must be corrected and punished appropriately.

What ABC did: They corrected and punished Whoopi Goldberg by suspending her.

What ABC might have said and done instead:

Whoopi Goldberg was historically wrong, as she has admitted. But rather than suspension, since we are in the business of information and education (?) we will be producing a program exploring not only the racial motivation of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust but also featuring the important studies about the distinctly different types of antisemitism, including racial and religious antisemitism, all of them pernicious.  Many people, Jews and non-Jews, aren’t fully aware of that distinction. This should be of great interest to all our audiences, especially the audience of The View (?). We believe this is a more thoughtful, comprehensive, constructive and valuable response.

For those interested in exploring the topic, in 2019 the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College held an extraordinary two-day event about Racism and Antisemitism.

What do we know? What can we know? What should we know? Is it worse to know too much than to know too little? Is the way of knowledge madness?

Ben Zoma

Ben Zoma was one of the tannaim, teachers recorded in the Misnah, a part of the Talmud.

The story is told that Ben Zoma was seen staring into space, lost in thought. When asked about it, he said he was contemplating creation, when the waters above were separated from the waters below. What, Ben Zoma wondered, was in between? It was then said about Ben Zoma that he was “still outside”, that is, out of his mind.

The Tower of Babel

In the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 11), a tower reaching to heaven is planned by ambitious and presumptuous people. God thwarts the plan, believing that if they continued, there was nothing they could not know or do. Their infinite power would rival God’s. They had all been together, speaking one language. God separates them and their languages, baffles them so they will no longer understand each other.

The Library of Babel

In his story The Library of Babel,  Jorge Luis Borges conceives a library containing all books. It does not turn out well:

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad…