Carl Wells Books

Last week in my blog post entitled “Afghanistan exit” I tried to show how the American war in Afghanistan was foolish and unproductive, costing many lives (foreign and domestic) and costing much treasure for no gain, and really, no possible gain.

This week I want to step back several paces and try to examine why we as a nation do the things that we do in our foreign policy.

We choose to do the things that we do in our foreign policy, because we lack understanding of how the world is put together. Along with our lack of understanding, we have an enormous hubris–a pride that we are the best, bravest, most highly principled people in the world. We stand taller and see further, as Madeleine Albright assured us.

Except that we don’t. We are just people, and our behavior is often horrific. A nation which shrugs at the murder of 61,000,000 unborn children in slightly over a generation does not stand taller and see further.

Briefly consider our interventions in WW I, WW II, and Vietnam. We were always certain that our interventions were on the side of the angels. But they really weren’t. If we had stayed out of World War I, there might not have been a World War II.

Consider, just for an example, our humongous fear of communism. Why fear communism? It defeats itself. Instead of understanding that, we got our panties in a wad and tried to fight communism with interventions, and with foreign aid (communistic in principle!). We weakened ourselves. We were fighting fire with fire. We did not understand how the world is put together.

The world is put together in such a manner that minding one’s own business and leaving other people alone is very good for peace and prosperity. I think God put the world together in such a manner. But assume that the God of the Bible does not exist. Still, the universe is put together in such a manner, whether God exists or not.

The Bible tells us that as far as it depends on us, we are to be at peace with all men. (Romans 12:18)

Evil exists, and so do evil men, and the communists are always evil. Look at how they treat people, for proof. So how do we overcome them? “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21)

Who is most to blame, the Democrats or the Republicans? This is an easy question to answer. Our foreign policy has been consistently ecumenical. Of course there were minor differences of opinion now and then, but everyone has been in basic agreement. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, mainstream conservatives, neoconservatives, all have been in agreement that we need to try to manipulate how other countries behave. Our secular elite has been in broad agreement on foreign policy issues.

However, there is one other group contributing mightily to our ecumenical consensus. That is the American Christian church. None of our foolish interventions could have happened if the church had not approved. But approve we did. We went along, not reluctantly, but cheerfully and waving flags.

Did a few people speak up in protest, among the secular elite, and among the Christian millions? Of course. But they were few in number, and never gained much traction. They still don’t have traction.

Here is one example of how disastrous our interventions have been.

As disastrous as Afghanistan has been in terms of American lives lost and crippled, Vietnam was far worse. American lives lost in Afghanistan have been about 6,200. We lost almost eight times that many in Vietnam: 47,424. (That leaves aside the crippled, the U.S. treasure spent for no gain, the foreign lives lost.) We lost the war.

Then what do we find in 2021? We have been subsidizing Vietnam to the tune of $1.8 billion over the last 20 years. That is on average about $90,000,000.00 per year. That is only 1,800 American people earning $50,000.00 a year, giving their entire wages to Vietnam, year after year for 20 years. To a communist country. We supposedly fought to keep Vietnam from becoming communist. Yet we take the earnings of our people to subsidize the country we didn’t want to become communist. This, I submit, makes no sense. But it is quite consistent with U.S. foreign policy taken as a whole. We simply do not understand how the world is put together, nor do we understand what is good and what is evil.

If we try to think that U.S. interventions in foreign countries are only big name marquee events, a book like Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA soon sets us straight. John Prados gives us almost 700 pages (counting footnotes) describing the constant foreign interventions carried out by the CIA. With your money and mine, in our name. Doing what very often was despicable things. (Safe for Democracy was only $6.69, shipping included, at AbeBooks this morning.)

We did not understand how the world was put together. We thought it was put together with force and violence and trickery. But God wanted us to act with honesty, and to leave other people alone.

As despicable as our elite has been–and they are getting worse by the minute–they could not have done the evil they have done without the ready, cheerful acquiescence of the American church.

Can the way we conduct foreign policy change for the better? No, probably not. Our elite is committed to manipulation and violence. Our Christianity is pietist, antinomian, dispensational, amillennial, and flag-waving idolatry of the United States. We Christians can’t change, because we think we are doing quite well living and thinking the way we do. Therefore we can’t and won’t encourage our civil government to change.

So we Christians will keep on telling foolish young soldiers, “Thank you for your service,” and we will keep on supporting whatever the U.S. does abroad, because we assume it must be good for the simple reason that we are doing it.

But could we Christians–theoretically–change to a more biblical brand of thinking? I think we could, and I think eventually we will. I think God does not want us to continue the way we have been going, and that He will wake us up. He may have to do it the hard way, bringing much pain upon us in the process of waking us up. (Don’t blame God; we were the ones who refused to think His thoughts after Him.)

We will not change until we have to, but “have to” can be a powerful persuader. A bankrupt and broken up United States may be what it takes for us to begin to try to think biblical thoughts.

I think someday we Christians will wake up to our folly. This likely will not happen until we have undergone disaster, and after preachers become willing to tell us painful truths. It will probably take a combination of the two things. Right now we are unready and unwilling. But history has a long sweep. Good can and does happen because the God of the Bible is in control.

“There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,/On the throne of David and over his kingdom,/To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness/From then on and forevermore./The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” (Isaiah 9:7)

On our own, we don’t care enough about peace, justice, and righteousness to accomplish much. God’s zeal is only what assures that change for the better can happen. He will not let us get away forever with our foolish idolatry. He may have to use a two by four to get our attention. But isn’t it better that we have the two by four, than for us to go on smiling while thousands of people are murdered and crippled simply because we refuse to think and act in a biblical manner?

The U.S. is not completely out of Afghanistan, of course. We are never completely out of anywhere. (Unless we count out of our minds.) But we have begun to exit Afghanistan in a somewhat serious fashion, and supposedly we are going to be gone by the end of August. (August 2021, or August 3021?) The link below is to an article by Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press, entitled “US troops exit quietly from Afghanistan base,” dated July 6, 2021.

https://apnews.com/article/bagram-afghanistan-airfield-us-troops-f3614828364f567593251aaaa167e623

I read the article a day later, although the version I saw did not contain everything available in the link. The article details how the U.S. troops slipped away in the night, and waited about two hours before they notified the new Afghan commander. Which led to the base being invaded by looters.

“Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.”

Ms. Gannon later tells us,

“The big ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles and hundreds of armored vehicles.”

Believe it or not, I’m not here to bash the Biden administration for their judgment (or lack thereof) in the way they exited the base. The method of exit seems demented, but would a Trump administration have done any better? Who knows?

The thing is, Donald Trump had four years to get out of Afghanistan. He didn’t do it. That was #2,678 of the thirty trillion missed opportunities he had to do something which would begin to throw a spanner in the works of the Deep State.

The article by Ms. Gannon appeared over two weeks ago. I have kept a weather eye out to see if there were repudiations of the claim that we left the base in the manner Ms. Gannon describes. There doesn’t seem to be any push-back. I expect her report is pretty accurate.

And no one cares. I don’t think Americans care much about Afghanistan one way or the other. I care, because I think the method of leaving was wrongheaded, but I am a grumpy, judgmental old man, and the idea of leaving a military base to be invaded by looters is just exactly the kind of thing that I think is both silly and wicked. “Boomer,” I can hear people say, rolling their eyes. Exactly.

Part of what it means to be an American these days is that we can’t be bothered with trifles. A looted army base because we neglected to notify our allies in a timely manner? So what? It’s not worth even talking about.

What I mostly want to do here is recount some of the costs of the Afghanistan venture. These statistics are taken from an article by Isabel Debre, entitled “Counting the costs of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan,” with a publishing date of May 1, 2021. For the sake of argument, let’s assume her statistics are in the ball park of being correct.

We lost about 2,400 U.S. troops killed, with another 20,600 wounded. Another 3,800 U.S. private security contractors lost their lives. Afghan civilian dead are over 47,100. Afghan troops (our allies) killed were about 66,000 or more.

I think our minds have a hard time processing big numbers. If we try to break down the numbers a bit, it might help us have a sense of the cost in lives.

Adding our dead troops and our dead contractors, that is 6,200 people. Let’s say you attend a church of 100 people. Picture the devastation if all 100 people lost their lives in your church. Now divide 6,200 by 100. That is 62 American churches of 100 people–all of them completely wiped out.

Do the math on 20,600 wounded, 100 at a time. That is 206 churches with 100 people, every person of which was wounded. Some of them very grievously wounded, no doubt.

This completely leaves aside the 113,000 Afghan dead, civilians and soldiers. They’re only foreigners; who gives a rat’s posterior? Certainly not Americans.

Now let’s consider the money spent. Ms. Debre posits a cost to the U.S. of $2.26 trillion. Or, written another way, $2,260,000,000,000.00.

Again, big numbers cause our eyes to glaze over. We can’t really picture the cost. Let’s break the numbers down a bit.

Most of us would consider $50,000.00 to be a decent year’s wages for one person. If you took the entire year’s wages of one person, $50,000.00, and applied it to the money we have spent in Afghanistan, how many people would have to give up their salary to pay for the war? Not, remember, pay their income tax on $50,000.00, but rather pay their entire salary toward the war effort. How many people would have to give up their entire salary to pay for the war? 8,000? 30,000?

Well, the number is a little higher than either figure. It would take 45,200,000 people paying their entire salary of $50,000.00 a year, to pay for the war. That is 45 million, 200 thousand people, paying their entire salary for one year. Even spread out over 20 years, that is a lot of people spending a lot of money–well over 2,000,000 people a year paying their entire salary for one year of $50,000.00. If my math is wrong, let me know and I will correct it. But I think it is correct.

Just think of how many transgender bathrooms we could have built with that much money!

The 6,200 dead U.S. citizens could have been living and working at jobs that provided something other people wanted. Instead, they are, well, dead.

The $2.26 trillion could have been spent on transgender bathrooms. Or, alternatively, left in the pockets of people who work for a living.

Now let’s ask ourselves if all this blood and treasure was worth the cost. What have we gained in Afghanistan? What good have we done the Afghan people? What good have we done ourselves? How long will we be gone before the Taliban takes over completely?

Even if we had succeeded completely in conquering Afghanistan, and had destroyed the Taliban and had forced them to leave or surrender, what would we have gained? Are we really that sure that “our democracy” is so wonderful that the Afghans should want to be exactly like us?

Actually, countless people really do seem to be sure that the Afghans should want to be like us. I confess I am not one of them. I think we should just leave the Afghans alone. To paraphrase William Faulkner’s Uncle Willy, the Afghans can go to hell and leave us to come on at our own gait.

Does that mean I support the Taliban and their Islamic morality? Of course not. The Afghans need Jesus Christ. Americans as churches and as individuals can be supporting people who are trying to take the gospel to Afghanistan. In short, rather than telling the Afghans to go to hell, we can be telling them about the way to heaven, and paying money voluntarily out of our pockets to get that message to them. To me that seems to be a lot better than pretending “our democracy” is something above reproach, and better than spending blood and treasure–ours and that of the Afghans–to force that fantasy on them.

We are–supposedly–leaving Afghanistan. Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. The Soviet Union chewed Afghanistan and had to spit it out. Then a few years later the Soviet Union ceased to exist, in 1991. The U.S. chewed for 20 years and finally had to admit the gristle wouldn’t go down. If our defeat there is a large factor in the U.S. empire finally collapsing, then at least one good thing will have come of our defeat: the end of the hog on ice American empire.

In 1967 Norman Mailer published Why Are We in Vietnam? A Novel. I have not read the book, and don’t plan to do so. What I remember about the book is that according to reliable sources the only time the word Vietnam was mentioned was very near the end, and very briefly.

This was not unfair on Mailer’s part. What he was trying to do was to show, through the events taking place in the novel, that the attitudes held by Americans led to us being in a war on the other side of the world from the U.S. I think that was a clever title.

I am not here to defend a novel I have never read. I am not a big fan of Mailer as a thinker, so if I read the book I might even dislike it thoroughly.

The reason I bring all this up is because my post today reminds me a little bit of what Mailer did. Inspired by Mailer, I thought about titling this post, “Why are we in Afghanistan?”. Because my post has nothing to do with Afghanistan directly, but it has a good deal to do with the attitudes we have which make us the people that we are.

I bailed out on the tricky title, and settled on the more straightforward “An incident for our times.” Consider “Why are we in Afghanistan?” as the unofficial subtitle.

With that long introduction, I will briefly discuss the incident in question.

It happened in a big city, which shall remain nameless. The main characters will remain nameless as well. They are real people, but I don’t think anything is added by naming the people. The important thing is the incident itself, which is to my mind indicative as to why we are the people we are.

What happened was an unmarried teacher at a Roman Catholic school became pregnant. After some to-ing and fro-ing with the leadership, she was eventually fired.

Instead of accepting this as a consequence of her behavior, and moving on with her life, she sued the local archdiocese.

I don’t want to get into the weeds of the lawsuit. The details no doubt are important. But to me the most fascinating aspect of all this is the woman’s attitude–the anti-Christian fantasy world in which she lives.

Her lawsuit stated that she was ‘”in a committed relationship”‘ with her boyfriend and had been living with him since 2019. I would contend that a committed relationship is marriage. Not very committed, in these days of easy divorce, but still more committed than simply living with someone without benefit of clergy.

The newspaper article features a picture of the woman holding her illegitimate child and smiling broadly. Here are her comments. I have exorcised her name.

‘”It’s been such a beautiful transition having him in our lives,” [Ms. X] said. “He’s a really good baby. He’s super chill and obviously super cute. Just a total blessing.”‘

Here are a few takeaways I got from all of this.

1/Many of our people are no longer capable of shame. I don’t think Ms. X is in any way unusual. I think she speaks for a very high percentage of our population. It does not even occur to her that she has anything of which to be ashamed. From my experience of modern people, including of supposedly Christian people, she speaks for a very large number of us. This woman voluntarily put her name and behavior out there for all the world to see, by her lawsuit and by her appearance in a feature article in a huge metropolitan newspaper. I think for many of us, shame is no longer an option.

2/Once we become smarter than God, our behavior begins to reflect that pretty quickly. Ms. X became smarter than God, on the topic of sexual morality.

3/Mushy cliches are always acceptable; they reflect how we think. She was in a ‘”committed relationship.”‘ In her interactions with the school, telling them about her pregnancy, ‘”I just tried to do the right thing.”‘ That the right thing might have been not to engage in premarital sex with her boyfriend, and not to live with him in an unmarried state, clearly is a bridge too far for her thinking.

4/Countless men are jerks. Ladies, get involved with principled Christian men only. The God of the Bible wants you both to remain chaste until you are married. He has your best interests at heart, believe it or not. The bozo who impregnated this woman is representative of a very high percentage of our American manhood. The bozo’s name, by the way, does not appear in the article. He is laying low, hoping he can go on with his immoral lifestyle without negative consequences. Oh wait, I forgot: no doubt he too is in a ‘”a committed relationship.”‘ Not committed enough to remove his son’s illegitimate status by marrying the child’s mother, of course.

5/Don’t trust Christian schools any further than you can throw them with one hand tied behind your back. I used to have a lot more optimism that Christian schools would make a vast difference for good in our country. Circumstances have begun to indicate that I was far too optimistic. Call it naivete on my part. Don’t even trust homeschooling. What? That leads to the next point.

6/There is no escaping the personal responsibility each parent has to be a strong, obedient, highly principled Christian. We can’t farm out our responsibilities to public schools. We can’t farm out our responsibilities to private schools, even when those schools are Christian. And we can’t automatically assume that our children will flourish even when we homeschool them. If we are not godly, our children too will learn not to be godly even if we are homeschooling them. If we claim to be Christian, but think and act like pagans, then our children too will learn to think and act like pagans. This is very hard for us to accept. We want goodness to happen automatically, especially with our own children. Like Ms. X, we see ourselves as doing the right thing. But that is not how God has put together the universe. We really need to live in obedience to God and His Christ, from the heart. If we refuse to do that, there are going to be bad consequences for us, and for our children. Too hard? Tough. Reality exists. And, on the positive side, God really does reward those who seek Him with diligence and humility. That is my theory, anyway, and I think the Bible backs me up on that point.

7/Now we know why we are in Afghanistan. We as an American people just wanted to do what we wanted to do. We are like the rudderless Israelites as described in the final sentence of the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25; see also Judges 17:6) The foolish woman with her illegitimate child is an example of how we Americans think and live. She is in no way unusual, except perhaps that she is slightly–slightly only–more public in her foolishness.

Here are a few more written passages that have made a memorable impression on me.

9/The following is from William Faulkner’s short story entitled “Uncle Willy.” In the story, Uncle Willy has been a drug addict for many years. But people around him decide that they will do an intervention, and cure him of his addiction. What is a little strange about my memory of this passage is that I don’t really remember the story all that well, and I have read it only once. But when I read it, long ages ago, this passage really struck me. I know it was long ages ago, because I originally marked the passage in pencil. For many years, I have used pens only, not pencils, so clearly I read this story when the dinosaurs were young. Here is Uncle Willy speaking to the people who are trying to get him cured of his addiction:

‘”Wait,” he said. “Wait! I will ask it one more time. Won’t you please quit? Won’t you please go away? Won’t you please go to hell and just let me come on at my own gait?”

The last line is the one that got me. He wants his tormentors to go to hell, but he is very polite about it. He asks them ‘”please.”‘ Moreover, he does not pretend to take high moral ground in opposition to them. He expects to go to hell too. He will proceed forward to hell also, with the difference being that he prefers to come on at his own gait. That still makes me laugh out loud. Somehow Uncle Willy manages to bring humor into a situation which is very frustrating to him. This attitude might be one which we need to cultivate. Frustration, humility, and humor all fit together well in the words of Uncle Willy. Perhaps we too can keep a sense of humor, and can cultivate humility, even when we are frustrated.

10/The Gulag Archipelago (1973) by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn is a non-fiction book detailing what went on in Soviet prisons. There are actually three longish volumes. This passage is from volume one, early on. It appears in footnote 5 on page 13. Solzhenitsyn is lamenting how the Russian people might have put a spanner in the works of the security forces arresting people, if this and if that. But they had not acted. In the following passage the first two ellipses are Solzenitsyn’s. The third one, in brackets, is mine.

“If . . . if . . . We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more–we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! [. . .] We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

This, I suspect, is exactly where we American people are, at this point in our history. Do we have awareness of the real situation? I don’t think we do. Do we love freedom enough? Will historians several hundred years down the road say of us that we “purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward”? I suspect that they will. Solzhenitsyn tried to warn everyone in the universe, but few of us have been listening. If we have been listening, have we been doing something to throw a spanner in the works of the democommunazis, or have we been content to relax and let someone else do the thinking and acting?

For decades I have thought that The Gulag Archipelago (especially volume one!) is a book that everyone should read. It shows us how horribly human beings can treat one another. It warns us. It should humble us and make us want to love freedom more, and want to do something to defend or regain freedom. I fear that we will be saying to ourselves, “If . . . if . . .” when we look back on our behavior in this dangerous time.

11/The next passage is from a book which is close to being completely forgotten. Well, that would be true if it had ever been noticed and appreciated to start with. Which it never was, so I guess, looking on the bright side, the book is not really forgotten. It just never was known. The book is As I Was Young and Easy by Clancy Carlile (1958). It is a novel detailing the adventures of young Ray Macky and his dog Dingy. This is a very good book and deserves to be much better known. It contains much humor, and moreover is chock full of moving passages. In the one that follows, Lem Higgins is speaking. He is telling us what happened when three of his dogs went up against a mountain lion who was terrorizing the neighborhood.

‘”Then we found my three dogs in that there gully, sliced open like you’d slice a watermelon, dead. They was the best dogs. They had courage and hope, the only real dogs I had. They, the three of them, tried to hold the cat at bay till we got there. But I don’t know–they wasn’t lion dogs to begin with. And maybe they had too much spunk, just too much.”‘ (pp. 132-133)

A leading theme of the book is the necessity for courage and hope. Here we see the reward for having courage and hope: three dogs dead in a gully sliced open like a watermelon. But that is how life is organized by God. Sometimes the reward for acting with courage and hope is to be killed.

12/The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain has many memorable scenes, and many passages of excellent writing. In the passage that follows, Muff Potter is speaking to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Muff Potter is in jail, awaiting his trial for murder. Muff Potter, like everyone else, thinks that he, while drunk, murdered Dr. Robinson. The boys, who know Potter is innocent, have been visiting him in jail, and bringing him small gifts. They are afraid to tell what really happened, for reasons you will understand if you read the book.

‘”You’ve been mighty good to me, boys–better’n anybody else in this town. And I don’t forget it, I don’t. Often I says to myself, says I, ‘I used to mend all the boys’ kites and things, and show ’em where the good fishin’-places was, and befriend ’em what I could, and now they’ve all forgot old Muff when he’s in trouble; but Tom don’t, and Huck don’t–they don’t forget him,’ says I, ‘ and I don’t forget them.’ Well, boys, I done an awful thing–drunk and crazy at the time–that’s the only way I account for it–and now I got to swing for it, and it’s right. Right, and best, too, I reckon–hope so, anyway.”‘ (Chapter XXIII)

Muff Potter is not a very reputable person. He doesn’t work much, he sometimes drinks to excess, he is not noted for personal cleanliness. He is generous–has shared a fish with Huck when there wasn’t really enough for two–but on the whole he is a person most of us would probably steer well clear of if we met him in real life. But in the passage quoted, he reminds me of . . . the apostle Paul. Paul was accused by the chief priests and the leading men of the Jews of having committed terrible crimes, including crimes worthy of the death penalty. Paul said, ‘”If then I am a wrongdoer, and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die;”‘ (Acts 25:11)

Muff Potter has demonstrated the some spirit of objectivity which Paul has. Paul said, if I am deserving of death, I don’t refuse to die. Muff Potter said, because I am guilty of murder it is right and best that I be executed. Both men were innocent of capital crimes, but both men straightforwardly say that if they are guilty, execute away. No complaints.

Muff Potter is a ne’er-do-well of St. Petersburg society. But I think Christianity had saturated that culture so much that even Muff, with all his flaws, has been profoundly influenced by the Christianity around him. He holds that there is objective truth, that there is right and wrong, and that murdering someone deserves the death penalty. Like Paul, he refuses not to die.

My most recent reading of Tom Sawyer was the first one I have done in recent years, after a lifetime of reading it often. I was struck by the degree to which Christianity is the unacknowledged background of the action. This is not because Mark Twain was a Christian, because he made no claim to be one. It was just that Christianity was the air the culture breathed. They took it for granted, the way fish take water for granted. Until, I suppose, the fish are no longer able to be in the water, when they begin to notice its absence. Maybe we in the Christian West are similar to the fish. Now that the Christian air we have taken for granted is beginning to be taken from us, suddenly maybe we will begin to understand that we needed that air after all. The fish needs to get back in the water. We need to get back in the Christian air.

Muff Potter is a very interesting character. Maybe someday we will hear more about his life.

13/This is the first paragraph of True Grit (1968) by Charles Portis.

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

With that we are off on an adventure containing both humor and drama unceasing. What is the greatest American novel? Many people would say Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. A great choice. Or, possibly, True Grit. For my money, True Grit is right up there with HF.

The passage above was written by the narrator, Mattie Ross. Her voice is unique, as Huck’s voice is unique. If you want to see if she was able to avenge her father’s murder, you will have to read the book.

This concludes our three part series on entertaining writing passages. Dozens more could be listed, but we’ll stop here for now.

Last week I began a series in which I quote passages in world literature which I have found especially entertaining. This will includes passages both from fiction and non-fiction. We are ready for a fifth passage, after the four of part I.

5/Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher is a classic children’s book, first published in 1916-17. It seems even more timely in 2021, than it was a century ago. How could that be? Well, Betsy was in danger of becoming a lifelong snowflake–before there was such a category as snowflakes. (Today we are drowning in snowflakes.) But Providence was kind to her, and put her under the guardianship of a family who helped her to grow up and become responsible. Late in the book, when Betsy has already shown excellent growth, she was thrown a curve ball. Through no fault of her own, on her tenth birthday she and her young friend Molly are stranded at the fair, their ride home having disappeared. Betsy desperately needs to earn twenty cents so that she can buy train tickets home for Molly and herself. Betsy, after temporary setbacks, is finally able to hire herself out at a booth at the fair. Her employer leaves, with Betsy now in control of the booth.

“Betsy mounted on a soap box and began joyfully to wash the dishes. She had never thought that ever in her life would she simply love to wash dishes beyond anything else! But it was so. Her relief was so great that she could have kissed the coarse, thick plates and glasses as she washed them.” (penultimate chapter in the book)

This is psychologically true to life. Betsy was so glad to be gainfully employed to earn the money she needs to get home, that she washes the dishes “joyfully.” Later we read that “Never were dishes washed better!” Bullseye again. Betsy didn’t wash the dishes grudgingly; she washed them with gratitude in her heart for having a job to earn the money she needed. Hmm. Maybe we need to be thinking and acting along with Betsy here, as we try to earn a living. Just a thought.

6/Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain offers up countless memorable lines. One line has always stuck with me through the years. Huck and Jim had been exploring a steamboat wrecked on the Mississippi River. A crew of criminals (likely murderers) are on the boat. Huck and Jim, suddenly having temporarily lost their raft, need to steal the small boat of the criminals if they are to escape. They successfully do so. Huck subsequently alerts someone that people are stranded on the wreck–making up his own details as he goes along–so there is a chance the crooks can still be rescued. However, it was not to be. Pretty soon the wreck comes down the river, with little chance of anybody being alive on it. All is silent.

“I felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it I could.” (Chapter XIII)

The phrase “if they could stand it I could” is cynical but true to life. The gang will have to stand it, of course. They lost their lives because they foolishly got on board a steamboat wreck in the Mississippi River, and the wreck broke up with them still on board. They have no option but to “stand it.” Huck, quite dry and safe, in turn can stand it as well. No problem on his side. I have used this phrase or a variation often in subsequent years. Huck’s cynicism fits in quite well with my own cynicism. I am grateful to him and Mark Twain for so colorful a phrase.

7/There are many passages of George Orwell’s 1984 which have passed into our public consciousness. The one I have chosen here is from near the end of the book. I am trying not to give the plot away. So I will just say that one of the bad guys is speaking. He is explaining the motivation of those who seize power. Much more than these few brief lines are interesting, but I will keep the quote short.

‘”We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”‘ (Part Three, section III)

‘”The object of power is power.”‘ Somehow we need to learn that this is how the human spirit works. That is true for Nikolai Lenin, but it is also true for us. Not true just for the democommunazis ruling us, but also true for those of us with some faint love of freedom and responsibility as well. Self-deception is the most commonplace form of deception. We need to watch ourselves like a hawk. We can only exercise power properly if we do so under the restraining law of God. Power is not inherently bad. As proof of this, we have the God of the Bible. But we humans, in our pride and self-deception, far too readily become willing to push other people around, to persecute, to torture, to kill.

Meanwhile, we need to be quite aware that the self-righteous, self-deceiving woke bullies feel no self-restraint. Power in their hands is going to continue to mean disaster for us, because they feel that they are so wise and good, in contradistinction to our stupidity and evil, that they have the right to tell us what to do. They have not yet come to the understanding of the speaker in the Orwell quote, that the object of power is power. They are still self-deceived enough to believe that their use of power is only a means, not an end. But reality exists. Whether they know it or not, for these people the object of power is power. Forewarned, we can be forearmed.

8/Rafael Sabatini is the author of Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution, first published in 1921. The author and the book were both quite famous at one time. The book was so well written that I would not be surprised to see the author make a comeback one day, especially if some of his other books are close to being as good as this one. (I need to read more of his work.) One line that Sabatini wrote, however, is still somewhat famous. The comedian Allan Sherman used part of the line as the title for his autobiography. The famous line is the opening line of the book.

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

Allan Sherman titled his 1965 autobiography A Gift of Laughter. Oddly, he came up with the title thinking he had created the phrase himself. A friend pointed out that Sabatini came up with the phrase first, but of course Sherman may indeed have created the phrase independently. Great minds, etc.

My own love of the sentence written by Sabatini, however, derives more from the latter half of the sentence: “a sense that the world was mad.” It has been my theory for approximately two decades that we all are insane. When I say all, I mean all. I think the Bible backs me up in this, and I also think lived experience backs me up. I have written about this at some length in Chapter 11 of my book The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays, entitled “Insanity.”

Here we have a one-time world famous adventure novelist backing me up with the first line of his most famous book. In fact Sabatini goes on to make the same point at least twice more in the book. Scaramouche, the hero, develops “an unassailable conviction” “of the general insanity of his own species.” (p. 2) And, a bit later, we learn that “This man he loved above all other living men was caught in the snare’s of the world’s insanity.” (p. 28)

I won’t try to develop my argument further, here. Read my book. Better yet, buy, then read my book. Here I will just say that Sabatini got it exactly right. The world is mad. We, as individuals, are mad. Of course there are degrees of insanity. Moreover, semi-sanity can be striven for. We may never reach full sanity on this side of the grave, but we can (maybe) reach semi-sanity. At the absolute worst, we can strive for semi-sanity even if we can’t quite reach it. But Rafael Sabatini was right: the world is mad. So are we.

Well, there we have four more passages which have entertained me. I hope to come up with a few more next week.