Two Families

I can’t believe that in over 400 blog posts I haven’t once mentioned Anton Chekhov, to my mind one of the three best playwrights of all time.* Because of his early death, his oeuvre is unfortunately limited. The Cherry Orchard, his last play, is fittingly his masterpiece. Uncle Vanya, although I love the play, I could never teach because it always moved me to tears. Today, it is The Three Sisters, his next-to-last play that I wish to direct your attention to.

Olga, Masha, and Irina, the title characters, together with their brother, Andrey, are members of a gentle family left behind in a provincial Russian city after their father, an army general, died a year before the play begins.

During the course of the play Andrey marries Natasha, a jumped-up peasant, who eventually dominates the household. We join the play in Act III [translated by Gerard R. Ledger].

ANFISA. (Exhausted.) Dear Olya, my dearest one, don't get rid of me, please don't get rid of me!

OLGA. What nonsense you are talking, nanny. Nobody is going to get rid of you.

ANFISA. (Puts her head on Olga's breast.) My dear child, my darling one, I toil away, I keep working… But I'm getting weak, and everyone is saying 'She should go'! But where would I go to? Where? I'm eighty years old. I'm in my eighty second year.

OLGA. Sit down nanny. You're tired, you poor thing. (Makes her sit down.) Rest awhile, nanny dear. How pale you are!

(Natasha enters.)

. . . 

(Coldly, addressing Anfisa.) How dare you sit down when I am here! Stand up! Leave this room!

(Anfisa leaves. A pause.)

I don't know why you keep that old bag. I just don't understand.

OLGA. (Horrified.) Pardon me, but I also do not understand…

NATASHA. She's absolutely no use here. She's a peasant and she ought to go and live back in the country. Why all this . . . cosseting? I like to see order in the house. . . . 

[S]he could easily live at home in the country.

OLGA. She's been with us for thirty years.

NATASHA. But look, now she's incapable of work! Either I do not understand you, or you deliberately choose not to understand me. She's not fit to do any work, she only sleeps and sits around the place.

OLGA. Then let her sit.

*

Can there have been a more humane line in literature than “Then let her sit”? Contrast this with Natasha’s response:

NATASHA. (In astonishment.) What do you mean 'Let her sit'? She is after all a servant. (Tearfully.) I do not understand you, dear Olga. I already have a nanny, there is a wet nurse, we have maidservants, we have a cook… Why should we need this old woman? Why? Why?

Transactional Natasha considers only her “need.” Anfisa is old and redundant; thus, she should go. 

***

A new biography of William Buckley, Jr. has unfortunately brought his face back before the public. I wrote about him previously here: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2018/10/charming-billy-consciences-and.html

Buckley acknowledged that he benefited from a pampered life:

It simply happens to be the case that I have never in my entire life been without servants, maids, and chauffeurs.**

Growing up, Buckley and his nine siblings lived on an estate populated with “tutors, workmen, groomsmen for the horses, a French mademoiselle, and Mexican nanas.” ***

Visitors to the household remarked on the relaxed atmosphere of the Buckley estate: It was 

alive with pranks, schemes, hilarity, and strife. . . . Buckley’s prep school roommate described “a vast gaggle of smiling, brilliant children, all chattering—in several languages—at once, playing the piano, but, above all, laughing with each other … the whole place rang with music and laughter.”

But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. 

One night in 1937, four of Bill’s older siblings burned a cross outside a Jewish resort in Amenia, New York. Bill was upset that he hadn’t been included.**

Years later, his sisters defaced a nearby Episcopal church.***

In 1954, Julia Child 

received a letter from Aloise Buckley Heath, a fellow Smith College alumna and the sister of William F. Buckley, Jr., the prominent conservative author and proponent of McCarthyism. Heath had written to Child, and to other Smith graduates, urging them to withhold donations to the institution until the college had sacked five professors suspected of being Communists. An enraged Child replied, “In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.”****

So what are we left with? Charming Billy and his smiling, chattering siblings were at bottom a bigoted, anti-democratic clan. Louis Menand summed up Buckley, Jr. as follows:

Since democracy is pretty much the essence of the American experiment, it seems fair to say that Buckley was, at bottom, anti-American.

This is often the case with people who make a big show of patriotism. We can “make America great again”—if we only get rid of due process, or judicial review, or the separation of powers, or birthright citizenship, or the freedom of the press. We might be great if we got rid of some or all of those things. But we would no longer be America.** 

***

* Shakespeare and Sophocles are the other two.

** https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/02/buckley-sam-tanenhaus-book-review

*** https://newrepublic.com/article/195954/buckley-conservative-intellectual-laid-groundwork-trump

****https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-passionate-progressive-politics-of-julia-child?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_SundayArchive_Free_060825&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9e28e3f92a40469f7ada2&cndid=52968002&hasha=4610757384ecaf1ad328813857abb8ad&hashb=8bdf3de145843e1362a258a3e93c74dacad1e748&hashc=14e046c1e18a50fd0321258d2762b948a226611f7a6f74ee556142b582bf4a85&esrc=&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_SundayArchive_NonPaidSubs 

Calling the Tune Without Paying the Piper

Long-Term Capital Management [LTCM], a hedge fund, was founded in 1994, and had on its board two men who a few years later would be awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Despite its rather self-trumpeting name, the fund went belly-up in the year 2000. It lasted that long only because of a massive bail-out four years after its founding, which was arranged to keep the broader financial system from imploding.

Some three decades before the LCTM debacle, the United States military was bogged down in South-East Asia trying to accomplish what the French had previously failed to do—defeat the Vietnamese revolutionary force known as the Viet Cong. American policy was formulated by a group of Washington officials who had been leaders in industry and academia before joining the administration. They were sometimes called “whiz kids.” David Halberstam in his book on the period labelled them “The Best and The Brightest.”

*

I bring up this ancient history to make a really simple point—which I will get to in a bit.

This is a post about voting. The Republican party and conservatives in general have for more than a generation attempted to restrict the right to cast a ballot. Here is William Buckley, Jr. in 1957 opining on how the “advanced race’’—White Southerners (minority)—should prevail over the desires of their Black neighbors (majority):

If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.*

Of course, this is a question-begging proclamation. What is meant by “socially atavistic”? How do you define “civilized standards”? Not to mention the smug assertion about the “advanced race.”

*

Let’s jump to the present. 

Steven Strauss, in an opinion piece in USA TODAY,** gives us just a sampling of Republican voices advocating ballot restrictions:

Andrew McCarthy stated in National Review: “It would be far better if the franchise were not exercised by ignorant, civics-illiterate people." Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, warned of the dangers of voting by the “uninformed.” Kevin Williamson, also at National Review, asked whether America “would be better served by having fewer — but better — voters.” Arizona GOP state Rep. John Kavanaugh commented: “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes as well.” 

Doesn’t that all sound marvelous: To be led by a citizenry that is not “uninformed” or “civics-illiterate”? 

Er . . ., my ignorant response is, “Who decides?” And how? Shall we give every citizen a test before he/she can cast a ballot? Would that determine if that would-be voter was “civics-literate” (whatever that means)?

In an earlier blog post,*** I discussed the self-centeredness of test-making. The person who sets the test has automatically made claim to be no worse than tied for the smartest person in the room—after all, he knows all the answers (otherwise how could he know whether the test-takers were correct or not?). I pointed out that this 

“no one can know more than me” business is really the opposite of the statement of Socrates . . . that the Oracle of Delphi . . . claimed that “no man is wiser than Socrates.” For, said Socrates, he knows that he knows nothing, while other men brag of their knowledge of justice, piety, etc.

So, I ask the GOP brains, who died and left you God to determine what the test for citizen-voters should be? Of course, we trust you implicitly that the questions would be totally non-partisan. But do we have to take our masks off and show proof that we weren’t vaccinated?

*

To go back to the beginning of this essay. Republicans wouldn't doubt that the Nobel laureates of Long-Term Capital Management and the whiz kids of the Viet Nam debacle had the right credentials to determine at the ballot box the future of this country. And they could ace any test. 

They could also lead us down the drain.

***

  * https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/

  ** https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/04/14/republicans-weed-out-ignorant-voters-start-with-their-own-column/7186187002/

 *** https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2015/01/dont-bother-me.html

Charming Billy (Consciences and Conservatives, Part 2)

In November or early December of 1957 I went to see Mort Sahl at the Village Vanguard in New York City. One piece of his satirical monologue remains in my memory to this day—his explanation of the difference between conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans.(1) 

Conservative Republicans, Sahl claimed, would not do anything for the first time, while moderate Republicans were willing to do something for the first time—but not now.

*

The essence of conservatism isn’t hard to discover—it’s right there in the name. It’s the desire to maintain, preserve, cling to what one has. In societal terms, it is to defend the status quo, the existing order against the fear (reasonable or not) of an unleashed anarchy. Probably the strongest statement in literature of this fear is the speech by Ulysses in Act I, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida [excerpt]:

O, when degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows!

Order is achieved through strict maintenance of a class structure (“degree”). Just as the heavenly harmony of all the planets (the music of the spheres) is threatened by disorder in the heavens (“when the planets/ In evil mixture to disorder wander”), the harmonious music of civilization is untuned by class disruption. Maintaining the prerogatives of the established political, ecclesiastical, and commercial powers is of the utmost necessity to the conservative mind. It was the Conservative Party who kept the propertyless, women, dissenters, Jews, and Catholics from full citizens’ rights in England, while advancing the interests of the aristocracy, the landowners, and the established church. That political and religious conservatism go hand-in-hand should not be ignored. It was more than a jest when Maude Royden (1876–1956) famously spoke of the Church of England as “the Conservative Party at prayer.”

*

Perhaps the most notorious American outburst against change is this yelp from William Buckley, Jr., in his introductory proclamation in the first issue of his magazine, National Review: 

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.(2)

It was not so much “Stop the world, I want to get off,” as “Stop the world, I want to preserve ‘civilization’ (the boundaries of which conveniently are co-terminus with my own privilege and power).” Do I detect a scent of solipsism?

The white Ivy League Colossus standing “athwart history,” in the words of William Hogeland,

ordained himself the leisure-class warrior-philosopher, provoked to militancy by ubiquitous barbarism, defending on behalf of conservatism not mere intellect but the highest cultural sophistication and refinement.(3)  

Buckley’s civilization was the civilization of the white race. He asked, should the white Southerners, although in a minority, be allowed to maintain segregation—are they indeed “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally”? [emphasis mine] 

Buckley’s “sobering answer”(4) was “Yes”--they were entitled, because the “White community” is “for the time being . . . the advanced race.” 

Thus it should come as no surprise to learn that Buckley and his National Review opposed school integration and civil rights legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act. Buckley was also in favor of jury nullification—that is, juries deciding against the evidence to acquit in cases where Southern officials were tried for such undemocratic acts as failing to count the ballots cast by black voters.

Buckley’s conservatism was antidemocratic at its core.(5) Hogeland points to the following three-part statement of Buckley’s as the heart of his conservatism:

The claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. . . . If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. . . . sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence. 

Buckley proclaimed the need to defend “civilization” against democracy. Which “enlightened” action was gleefully undertaken by such defenders of the arts and sciences as Bull Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety of Birmingham, Alabama. Meanwhile, Shtarker Billy, the street-fightin’ man in the button-down collar, stayed safely above the Mason-Dixon line, coming out with some memorable lines (quoted by Chris Orlet):

1—“[R]epression is an unpleasant instrument, but it is absolutely necessary for civilizations that believe in order and human rights.” 

Repression is necessary for human rights? The man was positively Orwellian!

2—“It is for each man’s conscience to decide in the specific case whether segregation is being practiced morally or immorally.” [emphasis mine]

Ah, yes, the conservative conscience again. Don’t you feel relieved that it could be at ease with morally-practiced segregation?

***

(1) There were such fauna six decades ago.

(2) “Our Mission Statement” in National Review (19 November 1955).

(3) William Hogeland, “American Dreamers,” Inventing American History.

(4) No, there is no Swiftian irony here.

(5) And authoritarian down to his lace-ups. In a remark that would be crushingly satiric if made by practically anybody else, he excuses Francisco Franco of Spain as “not an oppressive dictator. He is only as oppressive as it is necessary to be to maintain total power.” 

Quoted by Chris Orlet, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/the-dark-side-of-william-f-buckley-jr/

***

Recommended reading:

Robert Sherrill, https://www.thenation.com/article/squire-willie/

***

Addendum:

Here is Ulysses’ complete speech in Troilus and Cressida:

Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,

And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,

But for these instances.

The specialty of rule hath been neglected:

And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand

Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

When that the general is not like the hive

To whom the foragers shall all repair,

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,

The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre

Observe degree, priority and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all line of order;

And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered

Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores

And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead:

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,

Between whose endless jar justice resides,

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then every thing includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,

This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

Follows the choking.

And this neglection of degree it is

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose

It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd

By him one step below, he by the next,

That next by him beneath; so every step,

Exampled by the first pace that is sick

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever

Of pale and bloodless emulation:

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,

Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.