I had vaguely known about Brest Litovsk and the disastrous peace agreement before listening to this episode. I think it's one of those things that's commonly covered in survey history classes, so I remember hearing about it in college.
But, this episode was really interesting for getting into the details of the negotiation. And once again, Mike Duncan did a wonderful job of using his storytelling abilities to make a narrative out of what was going on in the negotiations.
A few random thoughts:
* There are a lot of really interesting little stories in this episode. Like the fact that the Bolsheviks brought an SR assassin with them to the negotiations. Or when the Bolsheviks pick up a peasant delegate off of the street on their way to the negotiations, and the old man doesn't want to be part of the peace negotiations, but gets bribed into it anyway.
Or Trotsky getting the keys to the safe, and publishing all the correspondence between the Tsar and France and England which showed that the private reasons for World War I were completely different from the public reasons for World War I. (It sounds like it was that era's version of the Pentagon Papers.)
* I'm liking Trotsky a lot. He really comes off as a fascinating figure in this episode. But I know that once he gets around to brutally putting down opposition to the Bolsheviks (which is no doubt coming up in later episodes), I'll lose that affection.
* Trotsky especially, and the Bolsheviks in particular, are still coming off like idealists in the early days. Not necessarily democratic idealists, but idealists. They seem to genuinely believe that they are ushering in a new era with no more great power imperialist wars.
Of course, with hindsight we now know that there was no new era--just a brief disruption to the status quo, and then the normal trends of human nature re-asserted themselves, and the USSR went back to behaving as an imperialistic power. Which is the story of all of these idealistic revolutions. It seems that it's always folly to try to believe that human nature can be changed. And yet, for all that, my sympathy is always for the idealists, even though I know they are bound to fail.
* On a completely different note: If memory serves, in her autobiography, Emma Goldman includes the disgraceful peace at Brest Litovsk as one of the crimes of Trotsky when she's listing off all the reasons that she doesn't like him. But based on Mike Duncan's telling, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks didn't really have much of a choice here.
* But that being said... ever since my college days, I've been a little bit confused by exactly who had leverage at Brest Litovsk. I mean, I get that the Germans had beaten the Russians, but the Germans were also on the verge of getting creamed by the other allied powers in World War I. (This was 1917-1918 already.) Why did they still have so much leverage over the Bolsheviks? Mike Duncan explains this a bit, but I'm still slightly confused why the Germans didn't just accept the peace with the Bolsheviks, and then immediately bring all their troops over to the Western Front.
* Some reference in this episode to unrest back in Germany. I hope that will be explored more later.
I saw this on Youtube, and I thought this described my online teaching situation perfectly:
The reluctance of my students to turn on their cameras has always puzzled me. (I mean, I always turn my camera on whenever I'm in a zoom meeting. It's just common courtesy, right?) For the longest time I thought it was just a Vietnamese thing, but I've been discovering rather recently it's a worldwide phenomenon with teaching high school and university students online. (I'm doing an online course right now with teachers from all over the world, and we all have the same problem with students refusing to turn on cameras.)
Interesting to see the comments on this video from both the students' and the teachers' perspectives. Speaking as a teacher, it's difficult to teach a class when you can't see anyone, and so you can't rely on any of the normal visual cues that you would use in a face to face class. --Are they comprehending what I'm saying? Are they still engaged, or do I need to switch up the activity? Are they even paying attention? Are they even still there, or have they gone to the bathroom?
I identified with some of the comments in the comment section:
For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.
Friday, November 26, 2021
More thoughts on the Kyle Rittenhouse case.
Hopefully this will be the last thing I write on this.
As I wrote last week, I was disturbed (and continue to be disturbed) by the thirst for vengeance on the left. These kind of negative emotions are not healthy.
I think Kyle Rittenhouse did a very bad thing. I'm hopeful that he can find redemption and move on with his life. I do not wish him ill.
I am even more disturbed, however, by the effort on the right to turn Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero. And unfortunately I'm not just talking about crazy pundits here, but multiple sitting congressmen and congresswomen. This is another reminder of how badly American politics is broken. It's certainly not the first case (we've known American political discourse has been broken for 5 years now), but it is yet another reminder.
What to do about it? I don't know. Things have gotten so hateful, it's difficult to see a way out of it at this point. Except that we can stop participating in the hate. Try not to hate Kyle Rittenhouse. Try to find forgiveness in your heart.
And we should pity those who traffic in hate, rather than to hate them back.
Also I think these videos are worth watching about the case:
Do I say that every week? Forgive me, I guess I'm becoming a bit predictable. But it's interesting to see the nuts and bolts of how the Bolsheviks are going about consolidating power.
As the description of this episode indicates, the central dilemma is that they want to create a popular government, but they also want to keep their hold on power. And as is also indicated by the description (in this case, by the ironic question at the end), Lenin is going to choose to maintain his hold on power rather than grant everyone political liberty.
At the end of the episode, they're not quite autocrats yet--there's still some democracy operating in the Soviet and the Constituent Assembly--but they are quickly consolidating power. It'll be interested to see how the consolidation is continued in future episodes.
Other notes:
* Compared to the other revolutions Mike Duncan has covered, it strikes me that this one is unique in how quickly the Bolsheviks are consolidating power for themselves. In the previous revolutions, the initial goal was to create a democratic government, and it was only after those popular governments started to fall apart that later dictators emerged from the chaos. But here, right from the first days of the revolution, the Bolsheviks are more interested in consolidating power than creating democratic governments. We have now entered the era of communist revolution--there's a tension between the desire to create democratic governments, and a desire to create a communist state, and the desire to create a communist state is given priority.
* Although, that being said, it's interesting how much Lenin seems to be the driving force for all of this autocracy. As Mike Duncan makes clear in his narrative, there are a lot of other socialist groups vying for power at the moment, and it sounds like the rest of them are all more concerned about political liberty than Lenin is. Had history gone another way, and the Mensheviks or the SRs had gotten power, maybe the history of the USSR wouldn't have been so autocratic. (Or, maybe groups that are out of power are always more concerned about protecting minority rights than groups in power. I don't know.)
* Speaking of the SRs, I'm surprised that the peasantry voted overwhelmingly for SRs. I thought the peasants were conservative and supported the Tsar. Did I miss a part where this was explained in a past episode. (I may have missed it. My attention is, after all, sometimes distracted when I listen to podcasts.)
* And speaking of things I may have missed--for several episodes now, Mike Duncan has been talking about Right SRs and Left SRs, but when and how did this split happen. Did I miss that?
* To return to the first point I made, on further consideration, I suppose it depends on when you date the start of this revolution. If you count the October revolution as a continuation of the revolution that started in February, then maybe the emergence of dictators isn't premature. Maybe this is right on schedule.
I found out about this article via a friend on Facebook, who commented beneath the article, "Embracing communism to own the libs"
And I agree with that snide comment. This blatant market intervention does seem to be a betrayal of conservative principles. But besides that, it is yet another indication that not everyone realizes that we are in a climate emergency right now.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Started: Revolutions Season 2: The American Revolution by Mike Duncan
Part of working through the Revolutions Podcast, as mentioned HERE. I plan to listen to this 3 times through (I'll keep track of my progress at the bottom of this post), and then at the end give it a video review only. (I'll save the written review for when I finish the whole thing.)
Listening Progress
November 23, 2021--2.4- The Boston Tea Party
November 25--2.9- Valley Forge
November 26--2.10- Turning South
November 27--2.11- Tarleton's Quarter
November 28--2.14- The Critical Period
December 1--2.15- The Rising Sun
Finished First Listening. Started Second Listening
December 2--2.1- The Thirteen Colonies
December 3--2.3- The Townshend Acts
December 6--2.6- Independence
December 9--2.6a- Supplemental The Declaration of Independence
December 10--2.11- Tarleton's Quarter
December 11--2.12- Yorktown
Finished Second Listening. Started Third Listening
(This is part of my journey through Revolutions Podcast, which I talked about HERE. As I said in that post, I'm only going to do video reviews for the individual seasons, and then will put together a written review once I've worked my way through the whole podcast.)
Started: The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum (I'm reading this book out of The Complete Stories of Oz collection. As I've mentioned before (HERE and HERE) This is my second attempt to finish this collection. I read The Road to Oz once before 5 years ago, when I first attempted to get through this book, so this is a re-read.)
When visiting relatives in California, Dorothy falls into the center of the earth when she gets swallowed up by an earthquake. (Dorothy just has the worst luck--picked up by a cyclone in the first book, swept into the ocean in the third book, and now swallowed by an earthquake in the fourth book.)
The Wizard from the original "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" book is also back as well, having also been swallowed up by the same earthquake. And good news, the Wizard is now a good guy again. (Apparently readers reacted badly to the Wizard becoming a bad guy in the second book, so that whole angle is gone now, and we're back to the kind-hearted Wizard that we know and love from the first book.)
Dorothy and the Wizard--along with their other friends Zeb the boy, Jim the horse, Eureka the kitten, and 9 miniature piglets, make their way through the various lands in the center of the earth. They fight off the vegetable people in the land of the Mangaboos, and then go to the valley of Voe, where they have to fight off invisible bears. Then they climb up a wooden pyramid, where they fight wooden gargoyles, and then encounter dragonettes (young dragons), before getting rescued by Ozma and the magic belt and being brought back to Oz.
Evaluation
By now the formula for these Oz books is established. Our heroes journey through a strange land and encounter strange creatures.
In the first two books, this strange land was Oz, but from the 3rd book on, Oz is now the safe place, and the dangerous lands are outside Oz. In this book, the strange land is the center of the earth.
I remember reading this book 5 years ago, and when I got to the part about the vegetable people who live in glass house and can float on the air in the middle of the earth, I remember thinking, "this seems like something that would be written in the drug induced haze of the psychedelic era in the 1960s or 70s. How strange that L. Frank Baum was writing these kind of trippy stories way back in 1908."
I thought about it some more, and then wondered if my initial thoughts were a bit narrow-minded. Plenty of authors have wrote surreal fantasy before the age of psychedelics. I mean, even just within this Land of Oz series, we've had quite a few bizarre moments, but I still think the adventures of this book are the most bizarre thus far. Fighting invisible bears, running on water to escape the bears, climbing up a pyramid and fighting wooden gargoyles--it's all really wonderfully bizarre.
And also violent. The Wizard has a sword which he uses to kill one of the vegetable people and also one of the invisible bears.
And the Wizard even pulls out guns to fight the wooden gargoyles. (Picture the Wizard of Oz from your childhood memories. Do you imagine him shooting revolvers at wooden gargoyles?)
Illustration from the original edition
Ozma rescuing everyone with her magic belt at the end feels like a bit of a cheat, but at least they had a lot of crazy adventures before the deus-ex-magic-belt saved the day.
Once back in Oz, the action slows down a bit, as all the characters mill around meeting each other. (Another staple of these Oz books is that each book introduces new characters, while having them meet the previous characters.) There's some attempts to establish drama by having Jim the horse race the sawhorse, or putting Eureka the Kitten on trial for eating one of the tiny piglets. But it doesn't match the made energy of the first part of the book.
Characters do a lot of things in this book that don't make logical sense. Logic and consistency are not the strong points of this series, but wonderfully imaginative lands and strange creatures are the reasons to keep reading.
Links
The Wikipedia entry for this book is HERE. Lots of interesting little tidbits on Wikipedia, including the fact that this book was written shortly after the 1906 California earthquake, which probably influenced Baum. Also speculation on Wikipedia that the quality of this book and the dark tone were affected by the fact that Baum was rushing it out shortly after the previous book.
Also via Wikipedia's entry on the Wizard of Oz, I learned that the reason he went back to being a good-guy in this book is that readers didn't like his portrayal as a bad-guy in the second book.
Mari Ness makes a number of observations, including:
* Pointing out that the part about the Gargoyles is really dark. In the book, it's left implied that there's a good chance there whole world will burn down, and Mari Ness points out that this is genocide in the land of Oz series!
* The fact that Jim the horse and Zeb the boy feel uncomfortable in Oz is a series first (and apparently only). They apparently do not show up in any future Oz books.
* Mari Ness points out that the trial of Eureka the kitten is more proof that Ozma is really a poor ruler.
...and other observations. Go read her review, she's really interesting.
Also, I'm doing this as a buddy read with Dane Reads, so check out his review:
The houses of the city were all made of glass, so clear and transparent that one could look through the walls as easily as though a window. Dorothy saw, underneath the roof on which she stood, several rooms used for rest chambers, and even thought she could make out a number of queer forms huddled into the corners of these rooms.
The roof beside them had a great hole smashed through it, and pieces of glass were lying scattered in every direction. A near by steeple had been broken off short and the fragments lay heaped beside it. Other buildings were cracked in places or had corners chipped off from them; but they must have been very beautiful before these accidents had happened to mar their perfection. The rainbow tints from the colored suns fell upon the glass city softly and gave to the buildings many delicate, shifting hues which were very pretty to see.
But not a sound had broken the stillness since the strangers had arrived, except that of their own voices. They began to wonder if there were no people to inhabit this magnificent city of the inner world.
Suddenly a man appeared through a hole in the roof next to the one they were on and stepped into plain view. He was not a very large man, but was well formed and had a beautiful face—calm and serene as the face of a fine portrait. His clothing fitted his form snugly and was gorgeously colored in brilliant shades of green, which varied as the sunbeams touched them but was not wholly influenced by the solar rays.
The man had taken a step or two across the glass roof before he noticed the presence of the strangers; but then he stopped abruptly. There was no expression of either fear or surprise upon his tranquil face, yet he must have been both astonished and afraid; for after his eyes had rested upon the ungainly form of the horse for a moment he walked rapidly to the furthest edge of the roof, his head turned back over his shoulder to gaze at the strange animal.
"Look out!" cried Dorothy, who noticed that the beautiful man did not look where he was going; "be careful, or you'll fall off!"
But he paid no attention to her warning. He reached the edge of the tall roof, stepped one foot out into the air, and walked into space as calmly as if he were on firm ground.
The girl, greatly astonished, ran to lean over the edge of the roof, and saw the man walking rapidly through the air toward the ground. Soon he reached the street and disappeared through a glass doorway into one of the glass buildings.
"How strange!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath.
****END QUOTE****--from chapter 2: The Glass City.
I thought this whole section about the floating people in the glass city was really trippy.
6 out of 10 Stars. The first part of this book was so bizarre and so crazy I thought it was going to be a 7, but then the ending parts in Oz were pretty boring, so I'm going to keep it as a 6.
Jim put together a compilation of jokes from the j-tag video. Including my own contribution.
Finished: Revolutions Season 1: The English Revolution by Mike Duncan --As I mentioned HERE, I'm going to listen to each season through 3 times, and only do video reviews of the individual seasons. I finished the first listening on November 12, the second listening on November 15, and finished the third listening just now.
Ordinarily, I'll try to do the video review as soon as possible after finishing the 3rd season. But in this case, I'm actually really busy with a marking deadline (as I mentioned in the Weekly Reading Vlog video I posted earlier today), so I'm going to take at least 24 hours to post the video review.
Another Steve Donoghue Q&A, so I put in my question HERE:
Since you're a long time Superman fan, I'm curious about how you felt while the whole Death of Superman saga was going on. Were you absolutely horrified? Or did you know all along that it was just a gimmick, and Superman wouldn't stay dead?
What about the story itself? Did you feel the narrative was engaging? Would you have written it differently?
I myself actually started reading Superman comics for the first time during this period. (The whole affair was getting so much attention from the mainstream media, and I got curious.) As a new reader in the early 90s, the first thing that struck me was all weird and wonderful the supporting characters. I didn't realize until years later that these characters came from Jack Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen in the 1970s. What did you think of Jack Kirby's work on Jimmy Olsen? What did you think of Dan Jurgens bringing these characters back in the 1990s?
I probably should have deleted that second paragraph, as its only tangentially related, and the question runs afoul of Steve's request for brevity.
(And also breaks my own self-imposed rules. I like to make a little game of out these Q&As, which is to try to predict which questions can get longer answers out of Steve, but I view it as cheating to force a long answer by asking a multi-part question.)
But, in the end I gave in to my own curiosity. I wanted to hear what Steve thought about it, and I figured I wouldn't be back on the subject of early 1990s Superman in these Q&As again.
For my own thoughts on the supporting cast of early 1990s Superman comics, see HERE and HERE.
That video was obviously meant to be symbolic. It wasn't a real threat of violence to AOC or Biden, and we shouldn't get hyperbolic about it.
That being said, it is in incredibly poor taste, and certainly doesn't reflect the way we would want our Congressmen to comport themselves. Nobody should actually be defending Paul Gosar either.
If I were in charge, I'd say he should have gotten a mild scolding from the House, but not stripped of any committee assignments. (Is mild scolding an option?)
So, we all know where this story is ultimately headed. The Bolsheviks are eventually going to go from idealistic revolutionaries to despotic authoritarians. And now that they've seized power, that journey is officially starting. But, seeing exactly how it happens, and what the first steps are, is very fascinating.
In this first post October Revolution episode, the Bolsheviks are still mostly likable, and are still showing a lot of idealism. I mean, I'm definitely on board with the very democratic and progressive declarations that they are issuing in this episode. But there are definitely hints of the authoritarianism emerging here.
But what I really like about Mike Duncan is that he gives you everyone's perspective. You can see how Lenin thinks everything he's doing is totally legitimate given the ideological stance that he's operating from. But you can also see how his opponents think that what they're doing is also legitimate.
I'm looking forward to seeing Mike Duncan break down exactly what is going to happen in the next few episodes.
Notes:
* It's funny that the SRs got so mad that the Bolsheviks enacted their land reform program. I mean, if they truly cared about the land reform, they should just have been glad that the reforms were being done, right?
* Interesting to hear that once the soldiers in the Bolshevik army had control of the city, they immediately raided the alcohol and promptly became drunk and useless. The exact same thing happened to a lot of the soldier in the Paris Commune. It sounds like alcohol is the enemy of the proletariat revolution.
penmanship: the ability to write neatly, or the activity of learning to do this
script: a particular style of writing letters
cursive: Cursive writing is written with rounded letters that are joined together.
Cursive writing looks like this.
print: to write words without joining the letters together. (This is the opposite of cursive)
word processor: a computer or computer program that you use for writing letters, reports, etc
credibility: a quality that means someone can be believed and trusted:
legibility: the fact of being easy to read, or the degree to which something is easy to read
peak: to reach the highest level or value of something
1. How many emails and text messages are sent every day?
2. Nowadays, for adults, what is the tactile personal art of handwriting used for?
3. Tamara Plakins Thornton has written a history about what?
4. In the time of the pilgrims, not everybody could write. And there was something even more strange. What was even more strange?
5. Nowadays, what is Spencerian script known for?
6. Who was the penmanship emperor of the 20th century?
7. What is “graphology”?
8. Before the 1920s, what is the only type of handwriting that students were taught?
9. What is something that Abraham Lincoln never did?
10. According to Steve Graham, Which kids have better quality writing over time: those who write by hand, or those who write on word processors?
11. Some people believe writing by hand is more effective for stimulating what?
12. According to Steve Graham, people form judgements about the credibility of your ideas based upon what?
13. When does our legibility tend to peak? Why?
14. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown caused a national scandal because of his bad penmanship in one of his letters. Who had he written the letter to?
15. What percentage of people call their penmanship excellent?
penmanship: the ability to write neatly, or the activity of learning to do this
script: a particular style of writing letters
cursive: Cursive writing is written with rounded letters that are joined together.
Cursive writing looks like this.
print: to write words without joining the letters together. (This is the opposite of cursive)
word processor: a computer or computer program that you use for writing letters, reports, etc
credibility: a quality that means someone can be believed and trusted:
legibility: the fact of being easy to read, or the degree to which something is easy to read
peak: to reach the highest level or value of something
1. How many emails and text messages are sent every day?
294 billion emails and nearly 5 billion text messages (1:02)
2. Nowadays, for adults, what is the tactile personal art of handwriting used for?
Shopping lists and credit card signatures (1:07)
3. Tamara Plakins Thornton has written a history about what?
Handwriting in America (1:35)
4. In the time of the pilgrims, not everybody could write. And there was something even more strange. What was even more strange?
Some people could read, but not write. (1:47)
5. Nowadays, what is Spencerian script known for?
Coca Cola logo (2:37)
6. Who was the penmanship emperor of the 20th century?
A.M. Palmer (2:57)
7. What is “graphology”?
Handwriting analysis (3:49)
8. Before the 1920s, what is the only type of handwriting that students were taught?
Cursive (4:19)
9. What is something that Abraham Lincoln never did?
Printed (4:27)
10. According to Steve Graham, Which kids have better quality writing over time: those who write by hand, or those who write on word processors?
Word processors (5:34)
11. Some people believe writing by hand is more effective for stimulating what?
Memory and language skills (5:59)
12. According to Steve Graham, people form judgements about the credibility of your ideas based upon what?
Your handwriting (6:14)
13. When does our legibility tend to peak? Why?
Around 4th grade. Because that’s when instruction stops (6:28)
14. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown caused a national scandal because of his bad penmanship in one of his letters. Who had he written the letter to?
The mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan (6:45)
15. What percentage of people call their penmanship excellent?
