Legacies and Comebacks

The Pixies are coming to my home town, which precipitated the predictable conversations about 'the integrity of the legacy of an artist who once truly mattered', versus the desire of many people to a) experience a legendary artist for the first time, or b) relive their youth.

It's rather uncontroversial, albeit impolite, to say that legacy-wise Chapman did Lennon a favour. An old guitar magazine I once owned included an offhand remark that, had Jimi Hendrix survived to middle age, he'd be doing Prince covers for five dollar door-charge at Seattle bars. Dying young is a great career move for artists.

Voluntary retirement, unlike death, is easily reversed. Comebacks, for money (Kim Deal said she agreed to participate in an earlier Pixies reunion so Joey Santiago could move to a better neighbourhood) or attention or merely something to do, are always at least a little bit of a letdown, Michael Jordan's first one excepted.

I don't begrudge the rappers, rockers, politicians and boxers who get back in the ring post-prime. I'm sure I would (or, hopefully, I will) do the same. While self-awareness mitigates some of the legacy conservation problems – the Sex Pistols called their reunion the “Filthy Lucre Tour” and a previous Pixies reunion was called “The Pixies Sell Out” - I have a romantic side that wants tidy legacies and careers with no decline.

A man whose contributions rival Shakesphere's, Bill Watterson, justified retiring and staying retired thusly:

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

I'm still buying Pixies tickets. They're playing Doolittle in its entirety!

Watterson quote via the Daily Dish.

Duvalier and disincentives for dictators to democratize

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, a former dictator of Haiti, is back in Haiti and back in the news. He has, well, run into some difficulties, including incarceration, and his difficulties bring up some interesting questions.

Some helpful background is provided by The National Post's Araminta Wordsworth, who discusses the lives of the ex-dictators of yesterday and today:

It used to be a familiar scenario. An aging dictator is ejected from his homeland by a coup. He flees to a foreign bolt hole where he lives in luxury on the proceeds of ill-gotten gains stolen in his years of power. Then, in the fullness of time, he dies in his bed.

     Think Idi Amin of Uganda and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, who became guests of Saudi Arabia and Morocco respectively. Or Ferdinand Marcos after departing the Philippines.

Things have changed, Wordsworth notes:

To begin with, banking authorities in traditionally secretive countries such as Switzerland are willing to freeze suspect accounts. Next, the supply of congenial safe havens is drying up, as Zinedine Ben Ali discovered to his cost last week.
   [...] Another hazard for today’s dictators is being indicted by international courts, like the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (Slobdan Milosevic of Yugoslavia) or Sierra Leone (Charles Taylor of Liberia).
    Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s President, faces the possibility of such a fate should he ever fall from power. The International Criminal Court at The Hague wants him for genocide in Darfur.

While it's certainly infuriating when someone who's destroyed many lives lives in luxury to the natural end of his own, this new trend might be bad news. Dictators are people, and people respond to incentives. It's a heck of a lot easier to convince a dictator to give up power if he or she will be trading it for life in a villa in the Alps, rather than a jail cell.

An example: Augusto Pinochet killed, imprisoned or exiled his political competition, for which he should have faced justice. However, if other dictators had been or were being prosecuted at that time - if he knew he'd face justice at home and abroad (thanks to the ICC and 'universal jurisdiction' laws in Spain and elsewhere) - Pinochet may not have exited as he did: gradually and peacefully stepping aside throughout the 1980s as Chile transitioned to democracy.  In the same way, his own post-power tribulations might mean longer tenures and bloodier transitions for today's dictatorships. The just desire to see former dictators punished might have to be sacrificed for the benefit of those living under current ones.

The key to Loughner’s politics might be an internet film

A popular internet conspiracy documentary called Zeitgeist, not talk-show rhetoric or his bookshelf, might be the key to understanding Jared Lee Loughner’s eclectic and twisted politics. The parts of his worldview that can be pieced together from his YouTube videos, internet chat logs and his classmates’ and former friends’ comments, suggest he accepts the semicoherent ideology of a particular meta-conspiracy theory based fringe. Zeitgeist represents, and drives, its current manifestation.

Loughner’s political and social views, as best as we can piece together, revolve around four seemingly unrelated planks: a) religions are false and evil; b) non-gold backed currency is illegitimate; c) 9/11 was an inside job used as a pretext for two illegal wars; and, d) government and media are out to control thoughts.

Many people have noticed Loughner’s attraction to conspiracies. What suggests Zeitgeist might be a key to his beliefs is its uniqueness among the many other conspiracy theory documentaries circulating the internet. Zeitgeist stands out for its willingness to tie the thesis of the “Truther” movement – that the attacks were an ‘inside job’ - to a number of other conspiracy theories, some traditionally associated with the political left, some with the political right. The result is a semi-coherent meta-theory.

Zeitgeist was created by Peter Joseph. It was ‘officially’ released in 2007, although early permutations had already circulated. It’s been subsequently recut and given a strange pseudo-religious sequel. Zeitgeist’s thesis can be summarized as this: a) all the world’s religions share a common set of beliefs and are used by the rich and powerful to manipulate and control people’s minds; b) contemporary currency policy, most importantly central banking, is unconstitutional and is structured for the enrichment of these same nefarious elites; c) 9/11 was an ‘inside job’, perpetuated by these same actors; d) the media cannot be trusted to report these truths because it is also under their control.

These correspond very well with the picture we now have of Loughner’s political fixations, listed above.

The film’s theses a), b), and d), are, of course, generations old. In many respects, Zeitgeist is just the Protocols of the Elders of Zion updated for the 21st century, and without the explicit ‘blame Jews’ angle. It should be noted that Loughner’s target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, is Jewish. It takes few steps to reinsert the anti-Semitic angle into the Zeitgeist narrative.

Of course, no movie, and no conspiracy theory, is the singular cause of an unspeakable act of political violence. Early indications are that Loughner may have suffered from a delusional mental illness. John Hinckley Jr, who shot President Reagan, and James J. Lee, who stormed the Discovery Channel building last fall, were mentally ill. Both also had an obsession, one with a celebrity, one with a pet cause. Loughner may be like them, with political obsessions strikingly similar to those pushed in Zeitgiest . He could also be like Dan White, Harvey Milk's killer. With White, illness and an obsessive idea are like the proverbial chicken and the egg.

Most of the millions who’ve viewed Zeitgeist, including most of those who believe it, continue to function normally in society. They hold the beliefs in a ‘symbolic manner’ – where their ‘special knowledge’ is somehow walled off from their behaviours. The belief functions as a placeholder for general discontent, and has little consequence in how the person lives. This, according to Julian Sanchez, is what allows for a significant number of Democrats to believe that the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of, or even planned, the 9/11 attacks, and for a large minority of Republicans to believe that Obama’s a secret Muslim “Manchurian Candidate”, without having to devote themselves to the drastic measures those beliefs would logically entail. There is, however, a fringe of the fringe, most often adult males with some history of mental illness, whose twisted beliefs turn into horrific actions.

Zeitgeist’s devotees claim, with some credibility, that the film is among the most downloaded in the Internet’s history. It appears, from his anti-religious, pseudo-libertarian, gold and banking obsessed electronic trail, that Loughner was one of those who took it seriously.

Update I: Between the time I wrote this and the time I posted it, this AP article appeared.  In it, the parents of a friend of Loughner provide this insight into his movie viewing: "Loughner's favorites included little-known conspiracy theory documentaries such as 'Zeitgeist' and 'Loose Change'."

Update II: That friend has now spoken to the press. This ABC news story quotes him as saying "I really think that this 'Zeitgeist' documentary had a profound impact on Jared's mindset and how he viewed that world that he lives in."

It looks like I had it right.

Update III: Now The Daily Beast is all over this angle. This story looks at Zeitgeist specifically, while this looks at the his crazy views more generally.