Many meditation practices begin with breathing. Sometimes you count your breaths—inhales, exhales or both. Sometimes you advance to following your breaths without counting, harder to describe than counting, better understood when practiced.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is known in the Hebrew Bible as Kohelet. The most famous line from Ecclesiastes reads in ancient Hebrew: Hevel hevelim, hevel hevelim, kol hevel. In the King James version, this is forever known as “vanity, vanity, all is vanity”. Modern translators, however, struggle with the translation, and some translate kol hevel as “all is breath”.
All is breath. Wisdom, experience and science say that slowing the breath is a key to calming. Trouble breathing is a sign and cause of physical distress. Not breathing is the end of life. All is breath.
Along with mindfulness, I suggest the parallel concept of breathfulness. It is surprising, or maybe not, how little attention we pay to breaths unless there is a particular observation, direction or difficulty. Even those who make breathing a part of practice, when we get up from meditation, may forget about breathing. Which we shouldn’t. Because all is breath.
Recommending this book is not meant to compare Trump to Hitler. It is to view the upcoming trials of a contemporary demagogue in light of what may been the most consequential trial in modern history.
In 1924 Hitler was tried on charges of high treason for leading the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup d’état by the Nazi Party on November 8-9 1923. Before the trial, Hitler was a minor character with sympathizers, supporters and believers, but he was not yet the leader he would become. During his brief prison stay after conviction, he built his role and wrote Mein Kampf. Everything changed for him and Germany. The rest is history.
On November 8, 1923, a slight young man in an oversized trench coat had crashed a beer hall rally and declared the overthrow of the government. The night, he vowed, would end in victory or death. Seventeen hours later, however, it had ended in neither. Hitler had fled the scene of an ignominious defeat. Many astute observers, from the New York Times to Frankfurter Zeitung, believed that this fiasco meant the end of his career, and it might well have been too, had it not been for his trial in Munich….
A large crowd gathered on the usually quiet Blutenburgstrasse west of Munich’s city center. Mounted guards, plainclothes detectives, and two battalions of state police troops patrolled outside the redbrick building. Nobody was allowed to enter without the proper stamped pass and accompanying photo identification. Once inside, in a small room down the long corridor, security personnel checked for hand grenades in purses or daggers in stockings.
It was February 26, 1924, the first day of the anticipated high-treason trial that would mesmerize the country. According to tips picked up by the Munich police, thugs and hooligans planned to swarm into town, disrupt the proceedings, free the accused, and perhaps even stage another insurrection….
On the eve of the trial, Adolf Hitler was a minor, if ambitious, local party leader idolized by a relatively small number of supporters. His name was still sometimes misspelled in the international press, and his background bungled—if he was mentioned at all, that is, besides in jest at leading his followers in what the New York Times dubbed a “Bavarian Opera Bouffe.” Once the trial began, those days would be numbered.
As the judges prepared to make their entrance, the two sets of doors on the side of the room were shut as a safety precaution. The foreign correspondent of the Associated Press watched Hitler and Ludendorff shake hands and chat amicably beforehand. Ludendorff looked cool. Hitler, on the other hand, appeared agitated and showed signs of emotional strain. There was good reason for his concern….
On November 8, 1923, a slight young man in an oversized trench coat had crashed a beer hall rally and declared the overthrow of the government. The night, he vowed, would end in victory or death. Seventeen hours later, however, it had ended in neither. Hitler had fled the scene of an ignominious defeat. Many astute observers, from the New York Times to Frankfurter Zeitung, believed that this fiasco meant the end of his career, and it might well have been too, had it not been for his trial in Munich….
Hitler was not prosecuted as the law demanded. The court slapped him with the absolute minimum penalty and then, instead of deporting him, ruled in favor of parole. Hitler was out of prison by the end of the year. He returned, just as the prosecutors Stenglein and Ehard had warned, to work where he had left off, though by that time he was much more dangerous to the republic. He had a clearer vision for the future, a more detailed plan on how to get there, and a much more confident perception of himself as a leader with the rarest of talents.
Hitler would later credit his experience in prison with giving him “that fearless faith, that optimism, that confidence in our destiny, which nothing could shake thereafter.” Landsberg was clearly an important period in his life, but had Hitler paused a moment from his triumphalist and self-serving legend-building, he might have considered another factor that contributed to his renewed sense of mission….
The trial of Adolf Hitler is not the story of his rise to power, but rather an episode that helped make that rise possible. It was this trial that catapulted this relatively minor local leader onto the national stage. Hitler’s speeches and testimony in Neithardt’s courtroom form his earliest major autobiography, defining himself before a public beyond the beer halls of Munich that previously neither knew nor cared that much about him. Hitler quickly turned the dock into a platform for himself and his party while putting the young republic on trial.
For twenty-four days, Hitler had hammered the government and its leaders with verve, his shrill, guttural voice rising and falling, choking on emotion, clipping his syllables, sometimes spitting on his toothbrush mustache as he barked a relentless stream of attacks against his accusers. All his rhetorical and stagecraft talents were on full display. Hitler’s performance in the former dining hall of the infantry academy included some of his most impressive and arguably most influential speeches of his career.
Reporters from Germany, the rest of Europe, and as far away as Argentina and Australia described his antics in detail. This was publicity that a local agitator could not have purchased, nor at this stage of his career even dreamed of achieving.
In the process, Hitler had transformed the beer hall fiasco into a personal and political triumph. He was no longer the buffoon who botched the putsch; he had become, in the eyes of his growing number of supporters, a patriot who had stood up for the German people against the treasonous oppression of Berlin, the cowardice of Bavaria, and the humiliations at the hands of the Allied powers. He was, in their view, a martyr taking the fall for his people, while his more distinguished allies sought cover, or, like Ludendorff, blamed everyone else for his own mistakes.
As previously noted, Trump will not be the Republican presidential nominee, no matter what. Trump decided not to attend tonight’s Republican Party debate. This means that the next Republican presidential candidate will be on stage.
Debate host Fox News, concerned that Trump’s absence will hurt its viewership, will be showing the debate participants videos of Trump talking and ask these debaters to respond—as if he was actually there. This wacky scheme reflects the mess that Fox News and the Republican Party are.
There are a million better things to do than watch this debate. All of these are more enlightening, informative, entertaining, fun, etc. So do one of those other things. Yes, it is possible that one of the participants will say something so outrageous and ridiculous that it will be laughable. You can see that video moment later. Just remember that it is unlikely but possible that the particular amusing clown might actually turn out to be the party candidate or…president?
Rock and roll was bad enough for millions of American racists. Music that evolved from black sources (“race music” as it was called) infected young people, becoming the dominant sound of pop culture by the 1960s. (For a picture of this, see John Waters’ Hairspray). The haters eventually mostly gave in, at least expressly, as rock melded into other genres. Rock was everybody’s and anybody’s music, color deaf and blind.
But early on, black artists tried to reclaim the music, as messages started to creep in. In 1971, Marvin Gaye defied the Motown get-along ethos with the album What’s Going On. It was filled with protest tracks, epitomized by the cry “Make me wanna holler/throw up both my hands”. Just a few years later came the musical explosion.
This month marks the 50th year of the birth of hip-hop in 1973. By 1982 the message became The Message by Grandmaster Flash: “Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge/I’m trying not to lose my head”. Today hip-hop is the dominant musical genre and style in the world. It not only took over culture. It made millionaires and billionaires out of black artists and entrepreneurs.
In 1990 Public Enemy released Fear of a Black Planet, including Fight the Power:
Elvis was a hero to most, but he Never meant shit to me, you see, straight outRacist—that sucker was simple and plain Motherfuck him and John Wayne! ‘Cause I’m Black and I’m proud, I’m ready, I’m hyped, plus I’m amped Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps Sample a look back; you look and find nothing But rednecks for 400 years, if you check “Don’t Worry Be Happy” was a number-one jam Damn, if I say it, you can slap me right here Get it—let’s get this party Started right, right on, c’mon! What we got to say? Power to the people, no delay Make everybody see, in order to Fight the powers that be
Fear of a black planet. Fear. Hip-hop disturbed millions of Americans in 1990. It disturbs millions of Americans even more in 2023. While there are areas that have little to do with black culture, listening to contemporary music—just as with rock and roll—this is a black planet.
Makes racists wanna holler, throw up both their hands.
By the time of the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Trump will have been multiply indicted, tried at least once, and very possibly convicted at least once. By the time of the election in November, more trials will have happened, along with more possible convictions.
Two scenarios for the Republican nomination, assuming that Trump has managed to win the requisite delegates by the time of the convention:
Trump gets the nomination and is the party’s presidential candidate. In the election, some number of Republicans will not vote for him, though they will not vote for a Democrat, and instead will simply not vote for president. Some number of Republican-leaning independents will do the same, while others of them may actually reluctantly vote for the Democratic candidate. This is close to assuring that Trump will lose.
Trump is somehow denied the nomination, as the party doesn’t want to be known for running an indicted or convicted felon for president. Lawyers and party operatives are secretly working on this scenario, since attempting to deny a nomination puts the party (not for the first time in the Trump era) in unprecedented territory. Chaos would ensue. A not-Trump candidate would have to be nominated, some number of delegates will walk out, Trump will run as an independent and get plenty of votes, etc. This is close to assuring that Republicans will again lose the presidency.
Experts will say that scenario #1 is easier and lower risk and it is the choice the party will make. Who knows? Trump may yet pull it off, as he has before (except in 2020 and 2022).
I predict scenario #2. It does involve a level of party mechanics that, as noted, the lawyers and operatives are secretly conjuring. How exactly do you tell someone who has the requisite delegates that, party rules be damned, you can’t be our nominee? But enough hard-headed Republicans, so far willing to wear the Trump brand, don’t want the party known for generations as the one that put forward an authoritarian coup leader—essentially a traitor—as their standard bearer. Anyway, if Trump couldn’t win as an incumbent in 2020, before his criminal character was glaringly spotlighted, how could he win in 2024? If the party is going to lose the presidency anyway, wouldn’t they like to go down with dignity and decency intact—or at least on the way to being recovered?
Literary people associate the title “The Bonfire of the Vanities” with a 1987 bestselling novel by Tom Wolfe, as movie mavens associate it with the 1990 box office bomb based on the book.
Michael Dirda wrote in the Washington Post about Savanarola and the original bonfire in 1497:
For approximately four years, from 1494 to 1498, a Dominican monk and preacher was first the conscience, then the virtual king of Florence. His admirers, indeed followers, included the Neoplatonic philosopher Pico della Mirandola, the young Machiavelli and the painter Botticelli. His two greatest enemies were just as eminent: Piero de’ Medici, that feckless son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and heir to his father’s dictatorship of the city, and that charming arch-sensualist Pope Alexander VI, among the most notorious of the notorious Borgias. The simple monk himself would pass into legend as the scourge of the rich and corrupt, a fanatical moralist, an accused heretic and, finally, a martyr.
Nowadays, though, people tend to recognize the name Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) chiefly because he instituted the original “bonfire of the vanities.” In 1497, this crusading prior of San Marco (blessed with paintings by Fra Angelico) berated the Florentines over the fripperies they wore, the salacious books they read, the provocative paintings they hung on their walls, the gold and silver jewelry that flashed even in the half-light of the sacred cathedral, all the gaudiness, luxury and lasciviousness of their sinful lives. Away with these snares of the devil! And so, rather than celebrate the last day before Lent with a lewd carnival, Savonarola called for the faithful to cast their “vanities” onto a great pyramid of holy fire. And they did.
I am looking at my bookshelves, thinking of the books and other media I have collected, read, watched, listened to, studied, and I am considering (safely) torching them. I don’t earnestly mean that. But maybe I do.
The Book of Ecclesiastes (aka Kohelet) is a favorite of mine in the Hebrew Bible, up there with Genesis and Job. In Hebrew it begins:
Hevel, hevel, amar kohelet, hacol havelim.
The famous King James translation:
Vanity, vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity.
But the Hebrew hevel is a mystery and challenge to translators, who have tried a number of English words, including:
So what exactly would a bonfire of the vain, absurd, futile, senseless, meaningless look like for me?
If Savanarola reminds you of some of the current high-profile figures trying to claw us back to a less enlightened time, you’ve got that right. With some appropriate conditions, people as a whole should be able to share in whatever is on offer. (Did Boticelli really not want us to see The Birth of Venus more than five hundred years later?)
But as individuals, even the best of it may not be the best for us at any given time. I don’t have to actually set fire to these books as long as I watch my use of and attachment to them. Discern.
When the mat cushion and me Were less worn I might think the man who sat Breathing sweet sandalwood Would arise different better. Now the man sitting legs folded Is the man who stands legs straight The man who sleeps Is the man who wakes No more or less.
Bob Schwartz 