Innocent though proven Guilty.

 

Mitch McConnell [right]
Sean Hannity, Fox News pundit who wants
McConnell sacked.

Is the shameful result of the attempted Trump impeachment an acknowledgement that the central truth of his divisive, vindictive, racist term of office in the White House, is that most Republican senators are too afraid to publicly cross him [and, importantly, his considerable base]. I am impressed with the speech I have just heard made by Mitch McConnell [a statement I never believed I could, or would 

Mike Pence

want to, make] in the Senate, post the impeachment acquittal. Had he only made it earlier THEN crossed the floor to vote for Trump’s impeachment, the persuasive power of it would have been amplified by a factor of ten. But what does the acquittal, underlined by the timing of McConnell’s stinging speech, say about the current Republican Party? “What was once the proud party of Lincoln and Reagan is now a Trump family rag.” as the Guardian says. Trump has abused and disabused it, similar to his total earlier indifference to his namesake university disaster; his bankrupt companies; his huge debts. His vitriol almost caused mortal harm to his loyal Vice-President, as dramatically demonstrated from videos of the rampage. Though Pence and his brother both voted against impeachment and the strange silence of Mike since January 6 suggests at least a lack of leadership and political courage! The very idea that the U.S. is the world’s greatest democracy has always been

Lisa Murkowski; renegade Republican.

laughable; now it is seen as ludicrous. One can guess that the generals in Myanmar are rather enjoying the current American pageant.

T

Bill Cassidy, another renegade.

he few senators who voted for impeachment have apparently been disciplined for their conduct by their local party leaders who presumably echo the feelings of their electorate and in at least one case, been vilified for their efforts by family members! The mystifying popularity of Trump among over 70 million people apparently remains strong and his support seems to be among the former slave states and the rural areas where Church and conservatism are commonplace and racism too, though whisper it not in Gath. According to Heather Cox Robinson in her excellent Letters From An American, in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 75% of Republicans want Trump to continue to lead the party, while 24%-28% blame him for the riot. But there must be, will be, millions of Republicans horrified by the personality and repugnant conduct of the 45^th President, and consequently, by the impeachment debacle and the cowed, dishonest attitude of their representatives. Let us hope that a sensible partition of the Party takes place and a new, sparkling, whiter-than-white [to use a loaded phrase!] version emerges, totally separate from the GOP Trump cult.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson

But the Trump supporters remain, more numerous in the 2020 election than in the 2016. How can this be? It seems they are solid in their metaphorical MAGA hats, red-faced and determinedly looking back as they desperately seek to keep America white, Christian and conservative. No apparent matter to them that America is splendidly diverse now, acknowledging a variety of gods or no god, and gloriously multi-cultural, a state denied, if I remember correctly, by Pompeo in the dying days of the Trump regime. This large and sad minority found its voice briefly in a man with no integrity or understanding of the direction of America’s journey, but with a megaphone-without-consequence, which led, predictably, to the well-planned assault on American democracy. Exhorted and inspired by Trump but well-planned by QAnon and the Oath Keepers.

A satisfying coda to this little diatribe, again from the divine H.C.R: the 57 senators who voted to convict Trump represent 76.7 million more Americans than the 43 senators who voted to acquit.

There is hope, visible even in the seriously anti-Trump Europe!

This is a man

Libraries.

 

Richard Ovenden.

Nazi book-burning May 10th 1933.

The riveting book which I am currently reading, by Richard Ovenden, Director of the Bodleian, Oxford University, begins its Introduction with a description of the burning of books in Nazi Berlin on May 10th 1933. The site of the bonfire, in Unter den Linden, was well chosen; opposite the university, adjacent to St Hedwig’s Cathedral, the Berlin State Opera House, the Royal Palace and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s war memorial. Simultaneously, book burning was carried out with fervour in ninety other locations in Germany that night. The book burnings, carried out by Hitler Youth in uniform, as a publicity stunt to curry favour with the Nazi Government, centred on thousands of books by Jews and other ‘un-German’ writers like gays and Communists. These anarchic scenes were a clear warning sign of the coming attack on knowledge to be unleashed by the Nazis.

Gathering books for fuel, May 1933.

Ovenden’s point is that Knowledge is still under attack; indeed, is always under attack. The repositories of knowledge have always been libraries and archives and today, funding for these storehouses is constantly reduced while other democratic institutions like the rule of law and open society are similarly, in tandem, under attack. Ovenden’s statement, “Libraries are crucial for the healthy functioning of society” seems self-evident to someone of my generation and background; working class families could afford few books but entry to the municipal library and its treasures was free. I strongly remember the joy of visiting the local library when I was young and also the reverence shown by my mother for books. I also strongly recall my total shock when I saw a fellow pupil in an R.E. lesson, ripping pages from her Bible to encase each finger in a paper-tasselled page to enable her to pretend to play an imaginary piano under the desk. I never had any reverence for the Bible, as such; it was the willful tearing out of pages from a book that shocked me so! My own books now are among a very small group of favourite, cherished possessions, frequently re-visited, re-read; re-enjoyed. Ovenden's book proceeds to demonstrate his anger at both deliberate and accidental failures across the globe to ensure the health and safety of libraries to protect the knowledge entrusted to them.

Wu Guichan

Given that I am currently reading Ovenden’s riveting Burning The Books, I was thrilled this week to read an article in the current issue of Time, describing a man’s life in Nancheng, Dongguan. Wu Guichan was a migrant worker in a small shoe factory earning a modest amount of around 5000 yuan each month. After his arrival in 2003 looking for work, he bought a few cheap books before finding the town’s small library in 2008 where everything was free. He was delighted with the place and thrilled to be able to become a member for the free use of everything. Over the past 20 years, the GDP and consequent size and importance of Dongguan have risen sharply and during this period of increasing prosperity, town authorities have tried to improve the cultural lives of its citizens. In 2002 a huge municipal library was built and two years later it began building an extensive library network; a bus library started to cover a wide area so that factory workers could borrow books freely and without travel. In 2005 Dongguan began offering a 24 hour library service, the first in China and organising free lectures and classes to help migrant workers learn professional skills like lathing and milling. These latter are now available online. In 2012 the American Library Association bestowed on Dongguan Library, its International Innovation Award, a first for a non-American group.

Wu Guichan's heartfelt tribute to 
Dongguan Library.

Wu remained a loyal library-user; he had ended his education at primary school and when he started using Dongguan library, was barely literate. By the time he left in 2020 he was reading classics and devouring around six books each month. In January 2020, unusually, Wu returned to his home village for the Spring Festival and had to remain there because of Covid until June, when he returned to Dongguan, probably, he realised, for the final time as jobs for migrant workers there were very few. He went to the library to return his 12 year old library card and was asked to write in the comments book. He wrote: “Books enlighten people. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, a lot of factories have closed, migrant workers cannot find jobs and we all choose to go back to our home-towns. Thinking about all my years in Dongguan, the best place for me has always been the library. As much as I want to stay, I cannot but I will never forget you, Dongguan Library.” One of the librarians posted Wu’s comments online and his words quickly went round the Internet causing a leap in the membership of the Dongguan Library. Wu returned home in October and to his delight, discovered the desire of his grand-daughters to read, though no books were available. He had previously been awarded a 6000 yuan book token and he cashed this in and mail-ordered the books they needed. His stated desire now is to build a small library for his home-town.

Our man in his natural habitat

I wrote the above yesterday [12/02/21] after which I discovered that the wonderful Time magazine had not found the entire Wu Story!! Apparently, his online message was quickly seen by Zhao Liping, Director of the Job Services Centre in the Human Resources Bureau of Dongguan who messaged the library to say, " We need to keep such a migrant worker with such a deep love of our city."  And he was able to find a gardening job in a local community for Wu who accepted, delighted to stay in the city with his beloved Dongguan Library. He has now decided to improve his writing which is slow and laboured. Always the autodidact! What an impressive and lovely man.

I am sure this story will have made Richard Ovenden’s heart sing, as it did mine. It is extraordinary  how we all take for granted these apparently mundane institutions, using them and appreciating them in a low-key way but never truly noticing their value. I read with dismay that almost 800 municipal libraries in Britain have closed since 2010, almost a fifth of the total; this is against the backdrop of a 29.6% reduction in council funding for libraries. Councils are cash-strapped because of central Government budget reductions which, in turn, are hard-pressed. But Boris needs to notice this dire situation and appreciate the urgent necessity of libraries. He probably doesn't need or use them, not since the occasional Eton visit long ago, but the country needs its storehouses of knowledge with its functions to protect, preserve and transmit. And these must be independent from the currently huge commercial, digital realm.

Rural bus library, Britain..
Similar to that in earlier years in Dongguan.

Dongguan Library now.

Titbits.

 

Jake Angeli
QAnon shaman [organic]

Proud Boy Leader: Enrique Tarrio

Still trying to wean myself off the obsession with American politics and I have just read something which helps a lot. Apparently Enrique Tarrio, swaggering leader of the Proud Boys all seeking to protect their traditional notions of Real Masculinity by behaving like thugs, has been an active collaborator with the FBI and local law investigators, since his arrest in 2012. Poor Enrique. His lawyer spilled the beans in court and he, Enrique, is left to deny it all in a desperate search to keep his street cred. Life’s not easy for a leader of Proud Boys. Trump would understand; he gets easily hurt. Almost as sweet as the recent item that the one in the Capitol riot dressed in horns and tattoos, Jake Angeli, lives with his Mum and it was she who had to take up the cudgels on his behalf recently, to ensure he was served organic food in prison. It’s the little details which so delight!

Jan van Eyckplein in December

And so to Beloved Brugge. Pretty well every day I walk through Jan Van Eyckplein and admire it all; the canal, the statue, the architecture, the cobblestones, the golden feather on the ridge of the House of the American Calligrapher. As half of Bruges seems to be dug up or has been dug up, during lockdown, acts of clever Municipal maintenance with least upheaval given the emptiness of the town, it should not have been surprising to witness the swift removal of the splendid miniature forest of Christmas trees in Jan Van Eyckplein, with them and their myriad lights all gone by December 27 followed by the subsequent
uprooting of cobblestones. Actually, they aren’t real cobblestones; they are tiles which both continue the look of cobblestones and make walking easier. No matter; they have lain, piled high and forlorn

Artist at work

, behind wire fencing, at one end of Jan Van Eyckplein for weeks. Until around a week ago when a small, lone workman started to use a sort of dumper, a Bellcat, to flatten the earth properly before beginning to re-lay the tiles, working, on his knees, solo for day after day!! It must be a fine feeling to work hard and look back at such perfection. I hope so; it is certainly superb to witness the activity and artistry of this one person! Days after writing the above, after several days of rain preventing any activity, I note that the surface of Jan Van Eyckplein is still unfinished but beautiful. Our artist will soon be back!

Late and costly but beloved already

I have experienced, first-hand, one downside of Brexit this week. My youngest daughter and her daughter chose, online, a bracelet from Sarah Pacini in Brugge, for my Christmas present. On discovering online, that it was only possible to send it to whoever ordered, she rang up the Bruges’ shop and they agreed to post it to me. [I live about ten minutes’ walk from the shop.] This was about two weeks before Christmas. The parcel was delivered to my daughter in Suffolk in January and she re-addressed it and posted it to me, having first filled in a Customs form and paid £15. I collected the aforementioned, on Tuesday of this week from the main Post Office here and had to pay 41 euros. One hears every morning on Radio 4 people lamenting the present chaos in import/ezport, especially with fish.

Signpost to the Future.

Firms are clinging on despite, as one owner lamented yesterday, "We haven’t sent a single oyster to Europe since January 1^st. We’ve tried but an eighteen hour wait in France for a lorry of perishable food is just not feasible. We used to send daily lorry loads.” I cannot actually quote the myriad reassurances pre-December 31^st 2020, of how quick and easy Brexit would be; how none of us would notice the difference unless things were better, etc. There was a plenitude of platitudes from Boris and Gove, many untrue at best; mischievous at worst, indeed almost criminal, which ring hollow in the face of the current chaos and extra taxes. I did make a note several years ago, no doubt written by a clever Remainer, of a definition of Brexit. It is “the undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.” Definitely clever though it neglects to mention the lies and incompetence.

Fishy complaint.

The Dig

 

Sutton Hoo map, showing the burial mounds on
Edith Pretty's land. Marked in
red are those opened in 1938 & 1939.

Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty in The Dig

I saw a delightful film last evening, The Dig, set in Britain’s 1939 as the country prepares reluctantly for war. In deepest Suffolk, the excavation of Sutton Hoo is about to begin as Spitfires fly overhead. The film tells the story of that discovery and of two people intimately involved with it. Edith Pretty, a rich young widow who wants to find help in unearthing whatever lies beneath a series of ancient hillocks, some huge, on her farm land and the man she finds, working class autodidact Basil Brown, an amateur astronomer and archaeologist. They turn out to be kindred spirits in their faith in archaeology as an important path to, and connection with, the past. And their combined enthusiasm and skills discover a spectacular funerary monument on an epic scale.

Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown.

Basil had been a gifted child in his thirst for knowledge and his ability to learn; he was studying astronomical texts, inherited from an interested grandfather, from the age of five. As was the way of the working class world, however, Basil left school at 12 and worked on the farm for which his father was tenant. But, extraordinarily, Basil continued to pursue education for himself through evening classes and correspondence courses and taught himself Latin and French, obtaining diplomas in astronomy, geography and geology. Though medically unfit for war service, Brown volunteered for the Suffolk Army Medical Corps during WW1, marrying after the war but eventually finding the farm he had inherited, which was, in truth, more of a smallholding, insufficient to support a couple. He tried various jobs to earn a living outside the farm, while continuing with his archaeological excursions when possible.

Basil Brown in 1939 working on the dig.

In the postwar years and into the thirties, Brown continued to investigate various sites in North Suffolk, chiefly following his interest in Roman remains, and his industry proved fruitful. In 1934 his investigations into Roman industrial potteries led to the discovery of a Roman kiln in Wattisfield, a prestigious find, which in turn led to his friendship with Guy Maynard, curator of the Ipswich Museum and through this connection, he began contractual work for the museum in 1935 from where he eventually found his way in 1939 to Sutton Hoo and Edith Pretty. This is a lovely story of the subsequent mutual respect and admiration which developed between the rich heiress and the poor farmer boy, self-described, ‘excavator’, who was, nonetheless, totally confident in his own ability. Their relationship underpinned the discovery and initial unearthing of the extraordinary burial ship at Sutton Hoo and its treasures.

Gold buckle from a belt.

Reconstituted from hundreds of fragments
to display this 7th century hammered
iron helmet belonging to the Saxon warrior king.

Professional archaeologists working on
the long-ship recovery in 1939..

There were eighteen mounds of varying sizes on Edith Pretty’s land, and Brown arrived in June 1938 to stay with Pretty’s chauffeur. He brought a sizeable part of his extensive library on archaeology spanning the Bronze Age to the Anglo Saxon and started work, copying the cross-trench digging methods he had observed in the 1934 excavations of Iron Age mounds at Warborough in Norfolk. He started digging in Mound 3 and quickly discovered that three mounds had been robbed, probably in mediaeval times, but overall in these early, tentative excavations Brown discovered Anglo-Saxon pottery, chiefly shards, an axe, possibly Viking, and early Saxon rivets There is no room here for a blow by blow, or a dig by dig, analysis of Brown’s work from the summer of 1938 to 1939 but on June 14th 1939, Brown uncovered the burial chamber within the original ship, and by mid-July had discovered the impression left in the sandy soil by a 27 metre long-ship from the 7^th century A.D: he and Maynard [Ipswich] surmised that the original might have been cut in half with one half used to roof, and thus protect, the first half of the ship and its contents. The British Museum was called in and professional archaeologists installed, under the leadership of Charles Phillips, Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, so that inevitably Brown’s leading role was downsized [he was excluded, for instance, from excavating the burial site he had discovered] though in August 1939 he testified at the treasure trove inquest which awarded ownership of everything discovered on-site to Edith Pretty. Subsequently she donated the entire trove to the British Museum in a hugely generous act.

Purse lid  of decorative gold, originally
part of a leather purse.

Edith Pretty, rich, well-educated and well-connected, had been acquainted as a child, with archaeological digs through her father and an Egyptologist friend. She claimed that the intriguing mounds had been a decisive factor in her and her husband’s decision to buy Tranmer House, near Woodbridge, originally, with the intention of eventual investigation. She became the single-minded instigator of the Sutton Hoo dig and fervent supporter of both it and of Basil Brown. The eventual discovery, identified as possibly the burial site for Raedwald of East Anglia, an elite Saxon warrior king, was later described as “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time” by a British Museum curator. Among the stunning discoveries buried in tribute to the dead king, were Byzantine silverware, sumptuous gold jewellery, a lavish feasting set and an ornate, hammered iron helmet. This amazing discovery changed our understanding of some of the first chapters of English history transforming perceptions of a period seen as backward and dark into a richer view of a cultured and sophisticated society.

Edith Pretty.

Gold coins and ingots, from the burial.

Basil Brown.

American er....Democracy

Democracy challenged, Capitol, January 6th 2021

Jon Ossoff

Martin Luther King Jr. and Raphael Warnock

I have long winced at hearing Americans claim to have the greatest democracy on earth; usually I have tolerantly, benignly, attributed this fondly to the usual American penchant for having to feel the best, the biggest, the greatest. But that fond tolerance bit the dust years ago; four to be precise. Since Trump appeared legitimately on the American political scene, I have grown more and more hostile to the very idea of American-ness, unable to believe that so many millions could vote for a person so manifestly unfit in every way, to be President. At each appalling act or pronouncement, I have felt angrier and angrier and more and more dislocated in every way, from anything American. And this is a country where I have family and very dear friends and where I have spent such happy times in the past. I could not have visited the U.S. had Trump clung to power. And, frankly, had the destructive power of Covid19 not intervened powerfully, almost certainly he would have been re-elected. Imagine the mayhem and carnage of that scenario. Painful to imagine based on the history of the last four years. Every single day, we all awoke to the latest crass tweet or series of tweets; to impulsive, implicitly nonsensical or explicitly malign announcements of proposed policy changes or intentions; another irrelevant or supremacist idea from the latest screwball who had sucked up to Trump; almost unhinged rants from various of the Trump tribe; assertions that black was white this week, and that apparently intended policies were suddenly being overturned in yet another upheaval which further turned friend against friend, and family member against others in the family. Small wonder that the New York Times had one front page headline: A nation united in its fatigue post Jan 20.

Former Lord of Misrule.

Stacey Abrams, organising
Supremo in Georgia.

Early on Jan 6^th the first of the day’s shocking events occurred; Raphael Warnock, the black senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Martin Luther King had reigned in earlier times, was elected to one of the two Senate seats for Georgia. Later that day, he was followed by Democrat Jon Ossoff winning the second Georgia seat. All this after Joe Biden had won the State in the Presidential election; all three by tiny majorities it is true but nonetheless, all in the heart of the former Confederacy. These victories were the results of both population change and especially, grass-roots organisation over the last decade, to register black voters and educate them into the importance of actually voting to get out the Democratic vote, principally the black vote so long suppressed under Republicans. But it presented a consistent picture for Georgian Republicans; however slim each majority, there is an emerging political and electoral reality here. Elections cannot be relied upon to produce the desired results in the face of demographic change and the increasing black franchise. Presumably this lent an extra charge to the force exhibited that same January 6 day at the Capitol. Force just might obstruct the future the crowd feared and put Trump back in the White House with his reliable far right nationalism, his racism, his fake news in which he so fervently believed and his naked white supremacism. But it wasn’t until January 6 that I finally realised that all the Trumpery nonsense really disguised Actual Insurrectional Intent. And that the Hollow Man actually believed in his fantasies.

Ted Cruz
Rioter, examining documents, said, 
"Ted Cruz would want us to do this."

The insurrection was planned for the day and the hour when the electoral college vote was in process, and Trump had helpfully, and knowingly, stirred up the anger and sense of betrayal of the 8.000 people in the crowd listening to him, and helpful crusaders like Giuliani and Don Junior, outside the White House, before sending them off to stop, violently, the authentication of the largely ceremonial vote accepting the Electoral College result. [147 Republicans voted against acceptance of that vote following a chiefly fault-free, fraud-free, frankly exemplary process] He will be impeached but there is doubt as to whether the Democrats will be able to persuade the necessary 17 Republicans to vote with them. So this is where my incredulity explodes. Openly, defiantly, these elected lawmakers will cast blatantly dishonest votes to stop the lawful

Josh Hawley

impeachment of a damaged, violent man responsible for the assault on Congress by thousands of insurrectionists, leaving him free if he so chooses, to stand for public office again and incite possibly millions. How IS it that law-makers feel free to do that and ordinary people, ordinary voters, don’t find this reprehensible? Presumably because they all like what he stands for and what he does. They too want the status quo ante bellum because white supremacy has been How Things Have Always Worked.

     So, how is it possible to describe the U.S.A. as a democracy?

Joe Biden
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Vaccination Overview

Edward Jenner 

Queen Mary 11, 1662-1694.
Died of smallpox.

 The first documented use of vaccination against smallpox occurred in China around 1000 A.D. when smallpox sores were opened to remove pus, or the dried scabs were ground into a powder, and the resulting material was either scratched into the skin surface or blown into patients’ nostrils. This procedure became known as ‘variolation’, covered by the more modern term, inoculation. Emperor K’ang Hsi, who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated by variolation in the late 1600s. Queen Elizabeth 1 caught it on October 10^th 1562 and survived but her Lady in Waiting, Lady Mary Sydney, survived but her intense scarring caused her retirement from the Court as did the blight on the former legendary beauty of Lady Katherine Howard in 1619. Queen Mary died of the disease in 1694. In 1721 Lady Mary Wortley Montague, wife of the British Ambassador to Constantinople, decided to have her five year old daughter treated by variolation, having had both sons similarly treated successfully in 1717. The several English physicians who witnessed the treatment, were impressed by the mildness of the subsequent illness and this success stimulated further interest. King George 1 had his grandchildren ‘variolated’ but first, six prisoners in Newgate Prison supposedly volunteered to be guinea pigs in exchange for reprieves and eleven charity schoolchildren received the treatment successfully, after which two Royal children followed suit.

Jenner in action. 1802 cartoon by James Gillray.
Wellcome Institute Library, London.

In 1774, farmer Benjamin Jesty of Yetminster in Dorset, took matter from a cowpox lesion and rubbed it into scratches made with a darning needle in the arms of his wife and two sons. None caught smallpox in spite of living in an area of a smallpox epidemic at the time.

Approximately 10% of all deaths in Britain at this time came from smallpox hence the decision by Edward Jenner in 1796 to attempt to find a cure after noticing repeatedly that milkmaids who contracted cowpox always seemed to avoid later infections of smallpox. Edward Jenner, house pupil of the famous surgeon, John Hunter, at St George’s Hospital, London, had been inspired by his tutor as to the importance of experimentation and after studying cowpox for 20 years, made his first human experiment. On May 14, 1796, he took lymph from a cowpox pustule on the wrist of dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes, and inserted it into two superficial incisions in the arm of a boy, James Phipps. Jenner checked the boy’s condition and symptoms daily, recording the following:

'On Day 7, he complained of 'uneasiness' in the 

Jenner with his gardener's son, James Phipps
May 1796.

 axilla; on Day 9, he became a little chilly, lost his appetite and had a slight headache. On the following day, he was perfectly well. The appearance of the incisions were similar to that produced by variolous matter. On July 1, the boy was inoculated with matter taken immediately before from a smallpox pustule. Several punctures and slight incisions were made in both his arms and the matter was well rubbed into them but no disease followed.'

Jenner continued his experimentations successfully and a few years later published his classic 75 page paper entitled, ‘ An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of Cowpox.’ Although translated into the major European languages, his paper had a mixed reception . However, by the end of 1801, over 100,000 vaccinations had been performed in England with other European countries slowly following. Opposition continued however into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries though approximately half of English children were vaccinated between 1870-73. In 1870 an epidemic [blamed, of course, on French refugees] killed over 44,000, a quarter of which total was in London and this greatly increased demand for infant vaccination. In 1871, 93% of children born in England and Wales were vaccinated, with special officers appointed to ensure no one was missed. Predictably the element of compulsion aroused opposition so that around 30% of children avoided vaccination by 1897.

1808 cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank showing
Jenner and 2 colleagues seeing off anti-vaxxers.
[Online, the handwritten remarks can be read!]

And the story continues to the present day with, anti-vaxxers growing in number in the 21^st century! The last known case of smallpox occurred in 1978.

I am indebted to Wye Historical Society [Kent] newsletter both for the idea of, and chiefly the information on, vaccination. My blood pressure needed a break from Trump and it is always a salutary lesson to learn of human creativity and the predictable emotional resistance to life-saving progress.

America's First Anti-Democratic Leader

On the march.

Much of the world is still reeling from the brutal and violently riotous assault on the Washington Capitol on January 6th. Trump’s Save America rally immediately before the event, specifically called for the attack, singled out Pence, urged the potential rioters to be strong and set them off on their murderous way. Rudy Giuliani threw a little fuel on to the fire, calling, in his Trump warm-up act for

trial by combat. I have just watched [Jan 10th] a 35 minute video, filmed by someone within the crowd [who had no time to do anything other than film] as the building was attacked, entered forcefully and desecrated. The noise, violence, the chanting We want Trump/ Stop the Steal/; the sheer animal force and brutality of a mob totally out of control, drunk on unrestricted power and convinced of the rightness of The Cause. It is terrifying to behold.

The fifty Capitol policemen had no chance against the thousands, many half-crazed with the dizzy excitement of being where they were, with the power to do exactly as they pleased. Despite denials, it is apparent that White House staff and close allies of Trump including former Trump campaign staff and family, worked with organisers such as Women For America First and Stop the Steal, to plan and promote Wednesday’s events. The permit for the march, obtained on Jan 4 by Kylie Jane Kremer, daughter of Tea Party activist, Amy Kremer, was operative between 9.00 a.m. and 5.00 pm and covered 30,000 marchers. The chatter about the planned insurrection was amplified on Twitter and Facebook with supporters openly discussing their plans online. On more extremist media sites like 8kun [linked to QAnon] there was talk “for weeks” about the planned siege of the Capitol. So the remarks of the Washington Police Chief, Robert Contee, at a news conference that there was no intelligence to suggest there would be a breach of the Capitol, seems at least, disingenuous. 8kun put out a message on Jan 5th: As many Patriots as can be. We will storm Government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents and demand a recount. [8kun]

Plato

Aristotle

I learned today [Jan 11th] that Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace and that Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded, in the end, by yes-men and enablers. Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale, in a wonderfully illuminating essay in the New York Times of January 9^th, mused on the similarities between Trump’s methods and those of the Nazis: in 1930s Germany, they used the new-fangled radio to replace the pluralism of journalism; Trump communicated via the unrestrained bullhorn of Twitter. Like the Nazis, Trump declared journalists to be enemies, constantly referring to “fake news”, akin to the Nazi, “Lugenpresse”, lying Press.

Timothy Snyder

Josh Hawley in unhelpful pose.

Snyder also unpicks the strands of the Republican Party to explain the continuing support there, even post-chaos on Wednesday, for the Trump viewed by the world, including a majority of Americans, as terrifyingly disgraced. He identifies the ‘breakers’ and the ‘gamers’. The latter want to game the system to maintain power. They are happy to use constitutional obscurities, dark money and gerrymandering to win elections with a minority of voters. He identifies Mitch McConnell as a leader who consistently indulged Trump allowing his electoral fiction to flourish, without commenting on the consequences. The breakers do not care if they break the system; the aim is to gain or keep power even without democracy. He cites Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz who challenged States’ electoral votes to cause delays and impress Trump followers knowing they could not effect the outcome. They were joined by 8 senators and over 100 representatives who voted for the lie that had caused them to flee their chambers.

Snyder suggests that, at the core of Trump’s fantasy of electoral fraud, there lies the belief that
it was a crime committed by blacks against whites. The persistent, traditional racism which continues to blight American life and politics, remains to underpin all.